Commentary on Matthew

Matthew 20

222 ST. JEROME will sit on judges’ thrones, condemning the twelve tribes of Israel . For they were unwilling to believe, while you have believed. 19.29–30. “And every one who has left home or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life. But many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first.” This passage agrees with that judgment in which the Savior says: “I have not come to send peace but a sword; for I have come to separate a man from his father and a mother from her daughter and a daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”186 Therefore, those who for the sake of faith in Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel have despised all affections and wealth and the pleasures of the world, they “will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life.” Using this sentence as a pretext, some introduce the “thousand years” after the resurrection. They claim that at that time a hundredfold of all the things that we have given up is going to be given back to us, as well as eternal life. They do not understand that if the promise applies to these other things, then moral disgrace would arise in connection with wives. Thus the one who gave up one wife for the Lord’s sake would receive a hundred of them in the future.187 The meaning, then, is this: He who has given up material things for the Savior’s sake will receive spiritual things, which in comparison and worth will be just as if the number one hundred is compared with a small number. This is why the apostle, who had given up merely one house and small fields in a single province,188 says: “As having nothing and possessing everything.”189 Chapter 20 20.1–2. “The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the workers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.” This parable or similitude of the kingdom of heaven is under186 . Mt 10.34–36. 187. On chiliasm see Introduction. 188. Source? 189. 2 Cor 6.10. BOOK THREE (16.13–22.40) 223 stood from the things that have been said previously.190 For before this the following is written: “Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first,”191 where the Lord is describing not the timing but their faith. And he says that the householder went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He established the wage of a denarius for the work. Then, when he went out at around the third hour, he saw others standing in the marketplace idle, and for these he had promised not a denarius , but “what is just.” And at the sixth hour and at the ninth he did likewise. But at the eleventh hour he found others standing around who had been idle the entire day, and he sent them into his vineyard. But when evening came, he commanded his steward to begin to pay from the last, that is, beginning with the workers of the eleventh hour and proceeding to the workers of the first hour. And everyone equally was roused by ill will against the last ones, and they accused the householder of injustice , not because they had received less than what had been agreed on, but because they wanted to receive more than those on whom the clemency of the contractor had poured forth. It seems to me192 that the workers of the first hour are Samuel, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, who can say with the Psalmist: “From my mother’s womb you are my God.”193 But the workers of the third hour are those who began to serve God from adolescence .194 The ones of the sixth hour are those who took up Christ’s yoke at a mature age.195 Those of the ninth hour are the ones who are already declining with the feebleness of age. Finally , those of the eleventh hour are the ones who are extremely old. And yet, all equally receive the wage, though their labor varied. There are those who have explained this parable...