The Discerning Voter: Dignity for all who labor

This week in our video series “The Discerning Voter: Gospel Values for this Election Season,” Fr. Ron Will, CPPS, and Precious Blood Companion Pam Demasi discuss the Matthew 20:1-16a, the Gospel for Sept. 20, in which a landowner hires laborers to work in his vineyard.

Each week during this series, Fr. Ron and a member of the Precious Blood Community study the Sunday Gospel, looking for what the scripture says about Jesus’ core values and then discussing what these values say to us as we prepare to vote this year.

The parable in this week’s gospel, Fr. Ron says, is about the way things work in God’s Kingdom. It is another example of Jesus telling us, “God’s ways are not our ways.”

According to Fr. Ron, “The Gospel says something about how God’s ways should be our ways and about how God’s ways could be our ways.”

The gospel value Fr. Ron sees in this gospel is “Genuine concern for the dignity of all workers.”

Pam asks the question: What stands in the way of a worker earning the one denarius, that is, a living wage? Today, she said, that might be a lack of  fair wages, a lack of family leave policies or lack of child care.

If a core value of Jesus a genuine concern for the dignity of the worker, I need to look for and support candidates and policies that promote work opportunities, just wages and just working conditions. What policies will move us closer to God’s ways and not just our self-interest.

Just labor practices are pro-life issues and they should be considered as we discern our election choices.

Watch the video here.

New videos in this series will be posted on Tuesday mornings. All the videos will be collected on this page: The Discerning Voter: Gospel Values for this Election Season.

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Image above © Yshevchuk0206 | Dreamstime.com. Opening and closing music in the video is “Salute to A New Beginning” by the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets.

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