Pope Francis: In God’s Kingdom There Is ‘No Unemployment’

“In the Kingdom of God, there are no unemployed people,” Pope Francis said Sunday, since “everyone is called upon to do his part.”

In his weekly Angelus message, the Pope reflected on the gospel reading of the day, which features Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers who get hired at different hours of the day, but all receive the same daily wage.

“In the end, everyone will receive the recompense that comes from divine justice—not human justice, fortunately!— that is, the salvation that Jesus Christ won with his death and resurrection. A salvation that is not merited but given—salvation is gratuitous—so that ‘the last will be first and the first, last,’” Francis told the crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Saint Peter’s Square.

With this parable, “Jesus wants to open our hearts to the logic of the Father’s love, which is free and generous,” Francis said. We need to let ourselves be “astonished” and “fascinated” by God’s thoughts and his ways, which “are not our thoughts and not our ways,” he said.

“God uses mercy,” the pontiff continued. “He forgives broadly, He is full of generosity and kindness that He pours upon each one of us.”

Jesus tells this parable to convey two important aspects of God’s Kingdom, Francis said. “The first is that God calls everyone to work for his kingdom. The second is that in the end he will give to all the same recompense, which is salvation, eternal life.”

“God doesn’t exclude anyone and he wants each person to reach his own fullness,” he said. “This is the love of our God, our God who is Father.”

At the end of his message, the Pope told his hearers that on Saturday in Oklahoma City a missionary priest named Stanley Francis Rother was proclaimed “blessed,” a major step toward becoming a canonized saint in the Church. The priest was killed out of hatred of the faith because of his work of evangelization and human promotion among the poorest people in Guatemala, Francis said.

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