This Sunday's Gospel is one I've prayed through more than most others. It got me through one of the hardest stretches of my formation as a deacon.

After the first year of diaconate formation, our class had shrunk from eight men to five. Enough discerned out that by May, there were only five of us left in the classroom. It happens - formation is supposed to be a time of discernment, and not everyone is called to finish.

At our retreat that June, we were told we were being "held back" a year.

The diocese wanted to find more men to join our class and bring them up to speed. So we would pause formal classes but continue meeting monthly. We'd continue our work in our pastoral assignments. And we'd wait.

The guys were mad. Frustrated. Angry.

We had signed up for five years. We had rearranged our lives, our families, our schedules. We had done everything asked of us. And now we were being told to wait - not because of anything we did wrong, but because the class was too small and the diocese needed time.

It felt like being cheated.

This Gospel came to mind that summer. The workers in the vineyard.

The ones who came at dawn worked all day in the heat. The ones who came at five o'clock worked one hour. And they all got the same wage.

The early workers grumbled: "You have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat."

And the landowner said: "My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?"

I prayed through that parable a lot during the bridge year, and I know some of my brother classmates did too.

Are you envious because I am generous?

We had agreed to the usual daily wage - progress that might lead to ordination, service, the call. The diocese wasn't taking that away. They were asking us to wait. And they were being generous to the men who would join us later - giving them the same opportunity we had, even though they were starting behind.

It didn't feel fair. But the landowner never promised fair. He promised just and he promised generous.

The first reading this Sunday is Isaiah:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."

We couldn't see what God was doing. We could only see what we were losing - a year, momentum, the timeline we had planned.

I had gone into formation thinking, "I'll be done before any of my sons hit high school", and that got tripped up by at least one year.

What we couldn't see was what we were gaining.

The men who joined our class during that bridge year turned out to be exactly the right fit. Our class became stronger, more balanced, more unified. By the time we reached ordination, we weren't a patched-together group of leftovers and latecomers. We were brothers.

And here's the thing I couldn't have known in that June retreat:

We were ordained in 2021.

If we had stayed on the original timeline, we would have been ordained in 2020.

In 2020, COVID shut everything down. Ordinations were postponed, restricted, or held with a handful of people in attendance. Some men were ordained in nearly empty cathedrals. Families watched on livestreams.

In 2021, the restrictions had lifted. Our families were there. Our parishes were there. The cathedral was full.

The year we were held back turned out to be the year that made everything possible.

I think about those early workers sometimes - the ones who bore the day's burden and the heat. I was one of them, that summer. Angry. Grumbling. Counting the hours I had put in and measuring them against what was being given to the latecomers.

But the landowner wasn't cheating me. He was being generous in ways I couldn't see yet.

God's thoughts are not my thoughts. His ways are not my ways.

Thank God for that.