And when they had received it, they murmured against the owner of the house,
Read Chapter 20
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
And when they received it. By those who laboured all the day in the vineyard, we are to understand such as have spent their whole lives in the service of God; but we are not thence to infer, that in the kingdom of heaven, where all receive their just reward, there is envy, discontent, or any complaint. By these words, Christ wishes to convey to our minds an idea of the immense honours that will be heaped upon all such as return with sincerity, though at the decline or even verge of life, to the Almighty. So exceeding great will be their reward, that it would excite envy, were it possible, even in the elect. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lxv.)
But we can ask why those who were called, even though late, to the kingdom are said to murmur. No one who murmurs receives the kingdom of heaven, and no one who receives it can murmur. Our ancestors up to the Lord’s coming, however righteous their lives, were not let into the kingdom until he came down, who by his death opened up the paradise that had been closed to the human race. Their murmuring means that they lived in such a way as to obtain the kingdom and yet were kept for a long time from obtaining it …. We who come at the eleventh hour do not murmur after our labor, and we receive a denarius. After our Mediator’s coming into the world, we are led to the kingdom as soon as we leave the body. We obtain with no delay what our ancestors obtained only after waiting a long time.
