Are you envious because I am generous?' Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last."
Matthew 20:15-16
God’s kingdom is infinitely different; it is from any human kingdom or experience because He is infinitely different from us,
His creatures. His ways are as far from our ways as the heavens are from the earth. With Peter and the early disciples, we
have been introduced to His way of responding to sin and death with the announcement of His own sin and death. Like
Peter, we would rather God forbid that He too should suffer and die for the salvation of the world. Like Peter, we too
struggle with the notion to forgive seventy-seven times the sins of those who sin against us. Our tolerance and forgiveness
are very limited: they run out. For God, forgiveness is everything: even His forgiveness of us can only be received by our
forgiveness of others. This is hard work, trying to think and act like God. With the tension between our own voice, Satan’s
voice, and God’s voice, we are invited, with Peter, to follow Jesus faithfully so that we may begin to learn to distinguish
between these voices and obey His voice alone. This is the work of faithful discipleship that we do together as labourers in
God’s vineyard. With Peter’s successors, our clergy and fellow disciples, Jesus our Shepherd gathers us and speaks to us
and gives Himself to us completely at Mass and in the sacraments, so we may come to share in His divinity, thinking like
Him, speaking like Him and forgiving like Him. The Spirit of love with which God cancelled our debts through Christ’s death
and resurrection is the same Spirit He has filled us with at our Baptism and sealed us with at Confirmation that we too may
be powerful ministers of His limitless forgiveness in the world. Fr. Simi.