19-08-2026, Wednesday of Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
ἀγαθός (agathos Gk) (Good En) (Mt 20:15)
The Word to reflect today is from today’s Gospel passage according to Matthew (20:1-16). The word ἀγαθός means good; moral character of persons good, upright, worthy; the quality of things good, beneficial; of soil fertile; of gifts beneficial; of words useful; of deeds good.
Most modern English translations translate the word as generous. For example, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” (RSV). The literal translation will be ‘Is your eye evil / envious, because I am good.’ Envy arises when a negative passion within me distorts my way of seeing my neighbour. The force of the passion keeps me from seeing the truth about my neighbour and his situation. I see him as I want to see him in order to justify myself.
Worse still, this outward projection of negative passion that blinds true vision has been triggered by the
goodness of another. When the goodness of another wounds me and inflicts deep pain, what does this say about the state of my soul and my manner of relating to the world? What does it say about me that the good deed of another, which deprives me of nothing that is mine, drives me to anger and even a kind of despair? I am enraged because another is generous and the object of that generosity is happy! It is almost as if, ‘For him to be happy at least some others must be unhappy’. The presumption must be that there is only a limited supply of happiness to go around, and so anyone else’s gain must imply my own potential loss. “Take what belongs to you, and go”, the landowner says to the grumbler. “I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”
The specific source of the grumblers’ anger is that all have been made equal by the Lord, whether they deserve it or not. The Lord wants to elevate one and all to a new status, to congregate them in a new community of the graced, to gather them into a “kingdom” in which no one will lack anything and where the only law in force is that of universal generosity by each toward all, in imitation of the manner of the landowner. Consequently, only those who aspire to enjoying a similar spiritual freedom can become subjects of such a kingdom.
“Did you not agree with me for a denarius?” A denarius, symbolically, to the principle of the unity of the many in the one that underlies the parable: one denarius, one kingdom, one king, one community. Unity of life springing from unity of spirit rooted in the one God through the one Lord Jesus: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32). One denarius, one common joy.
What about you and me? Are we trying to be ἀγαθός (good), like the Lord? For, the ἀγαθός (good) person brings ἀγαθός (good) things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. (Mt. 12:35). The Lord Jesus generously offers us all the same denarius, the same Kingdom. Let us also become generous and offer the denarius to others as well, for I and You, and all of creation belongs to Him.