Some days the Scriptures feel like a mirror held uncomfortably close. Today’s readings expose our motives around power, work, comparison, and grace. A thornbush is elected king (Judges 9:6-15), a psalm rejoices in a crown not of our making (Psalm 21:2-7), the living Word cuts to the heart (Hebrews 4:12), and a vineyard owner unsettles our sense of fairness with a generosity that refuses to be rationed (Matthew 20:1-16). On the Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church, the themes converge: authority purified by humility, desire healed by love, and labor transfigured by the Giver’s goodness.
When Trees Choose a Thornbush: Power Without Fruit
Jotham’s parable is piercingly modern. The olive, fig, and vine decline the crown because each is already fruitful in its place; only the buckthorn—leafy, loud, and combustible—reaches for rule (Judges 9:6-15). The warning is stark: when utility and appearance replace character, fire follows. In workplaces, civic life, and even our online circles, the temptation is to prefer visibility over virtue and immediacy over integrity. We anoint what glitters, then live with the heat.
St. Ambrose of Milan read power through the lens of responsibility. The bishop who could stand before an emperor insisted that authority must kneel before truth. He once reminded imperial power that it is within the Church, not above it, because moral law binds all. Ambrose’s pastoral realism illuminates Jotham’s fable: the best leaders are often those most reluctant to rule, already occupied with the “oil,” “sweetness,” and “wine” that bless others. When a culture pressures the fruitful into frenzy or sidelines them for the flashy, it casts its lot with the buckthorn.
St. Clement of Rome, writing to a divided Corinth, listed envy as the acid that corrodes order, harmony, and good leadership. Jealous ambition had toppled worthy presbyters, he lamented; the body’s health required repentance and restoration. Clement’s counsel reaches beyond church governance to our daily collaborations: unity grows where roles are received as gifts rather than seized as trophies, and where deference to rightful authority coexists with the courage to correct abuse. The point is not leaderlessness but ordered love.
Are You Envious Because I Am Generous? The Scandal of Equal Wages
The vineyard parable still stings. Equal pay for unequal hours offends the calculus of merit (Matthew 20:1-16). Yet Jesus is not constructing an economic policy; he is revealing the heart of the Father. The “wage” is life with God—the denarius of salvation promised freely. The landowner’s question, “Are you envious because I am generous?” exposes what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the vice of envy: sorrow at another’s good as if it were our loss. Envy misconstrues grace into competition (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.36).
Aquinas helps distinguish justice and generosity. God never defrauds the early workers; He gives what He promised. That is justice. But He also chooses to be lavish toward the latecomers. That is mercy. For Aquinas, mercy doesn’t cancel justice; it brings justice to its fullness by exceeding what is owed and healing what is broken (ST I, q.21, a.3). The parable asks whether our hearts can bear a world where love is not a zero-sum game.
Clement’s first-century diagnosis remains chillingly relevant: jealousy breeds murmuring, murmuring breeds factions, and factions choke joy. The first workers’ grumbling echoes Corinth and, truth be told, our feeds and group chats. There we feel the sharp sorrow of someone else’s promotion, engagement, conversion, or healing—especially when we have labored “in the heat of the day.” The Gospel invites a different interior posture: delight in the Giver’s fidelity to us and in His kindness to others.
The Word That Cuts, Then Heals
“Living and effective,” the Word “discerns the reflections and thoughts of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). St. Bernard of Clairvaux knew this incisive mercy. The “Mellifluous Doctor” could move kings and popes, but he spent his best words unveiling the movements of the soul before God. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs and On Loving God, Bernard traces how the heart, inflamed by divine charity, is weaned from poisonous comparisons and seized by a love “without measure.” When the Word cuts, it is to excise envy’s infection; when He binds, it is to restore freedom to love.
Aquinas would add that God’s Word judges our acts and also heals our powers. Grace does not humiliate reason and desire; it elevates them. That is why the interior work matters. The same Gospel that unsettles our demand for strict equivalence in rewards also strengthens our capacity for magnanimity—the virtue that rejoices in great goods, whether received by us or by our neighbor.
The True Crown and the Joy of God’s Face
Psalm 21 sings of a king who rejoices not in conquest but in God’s strength; the crown he wears is bestowed, not seized (Psalm 21:2-7). Christians hear in this a figure of Christ the King—crowned first with thorns, then with glory—and also a template for any stewardship we hold: parent, manager, friend, citizen. The psalm culminates in a promise stunningly personal: “You gladdened him with the joy of your face” (Psalm 21:7). Bernard would linger here: the soul’s true reward is not a ledger balanced but a Face beheld. Our envy fades when we believe that the Father’s gaze is not scarce.
Saint Bernard: Fruitful Love in a Noisy Age
Born in 1090, Bernard entered the young Cistercian reform and helped shape an era by recalling it to contemplative charity. He advised popes and princes, founded monasteries, penned luminous theology on love, and preached with a honeyed urgency that earned him the title Doctor Mellifluus. His influence was immense, his temperament intense, and even his mistakes—such as the fervor surrounding the Second Crusade—were those of a man convinced God’s love must matter in public life. Bernard’s most enduring lesson is interior: “The measure of loving God is to love without measure.” That love makes leaders humble, laborers joyful, and latecomers welcome.
Practices for Hearts That Rejoice in Another’s Good
- Examine the day with Hebrews 4:12 in mind. Where did the “living Word” reveal envy, comparison, or entitlement? Name it before God; ask for freedom to rejoice in another’s gift.
- Bless a latecomer. In work or family, identify someone just beginning and advocate for them. Let your advocacy be your “denarius” freely given.
- Lead like the olive, fig, and vine. Before seeking a platform, seek fruitfulness. Ask whether ambition is serving your vocation or substituting for it (Judges 9:6-15).
- Pray Psalm 21 for those in authority. Intercede that power be crowned by God, not by the thornbush of vanity or fear (Psalm 21:2-7).
- Read a page of Bernard. Let a short passage from On Loving God or a sermon on the Song of Songs reorient desire toward the Face that gladdens.
The Gospel does not deny the ache of those who have borne the day’s burden. It dignifies their labor and then asks for a deeper trust: the Father is not short on wages; He is rich in mercy. Ambrose steadies our public life with the courage of truth; Clement steadies our common life with the humility of concord; Aquinas steadies our interior life with the clarity of virtue and grace. Bernard sings over all of it: love is the reason and the remedy. The last and the first find their place when the King’s joy becomes ours (Matthew 20:16; Psalm 21:7).