Oct. 15, 2017: 28th Sunday A
Oct. 15, 2017: 28th Sunday A
Among many expectations a bride and a groom have on their wedding day, a church packed with all the invited guests would be on the top of their list. One engaged couple decided to send wedding invitations to unusual guests-- inviting the President and the First Lady of the United States, the Pope, and a saint. Regretfully, all four guests wrote back saying they could not attend. George and Barbara Bush sent the RSVP card, the Vatican sent a blessing, but Mother Teresa sent them a personal letter. Her letter, typed on a manual typewriter and personally signed at the bottom, read: “Dear April and Thomas, Jesus has called you together to become one heart full of love in His Heart. Remain always so… On your wedding day, you will receive many gifts--some very expensive ones. But the most precious gift you will be receiving on that day is the gift of each other. So know each other as God’s special gift of love to you. So love and cherish each other.” Although Mother Teresa could not be there in person, she was at their wedding in spirit and by her prayers.
Normally, people are honored to receive a wedding invitation and respond accordingly. For the past six years that I’ve been in this parish, I have not seen a wedding guest poorly dressed nor arriving late as the bride entered the church with her father. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord used a parable of a King inviting guests to his son’s wedding banquet to explain the Messianic banquet and the final judgment. We are all invited guests, albeit unworthy, to the banquet and thus are called to actively prepare ourselves in this life for this banquet.
To the listeners of Jesus, the wedding banquet in the parable foreshadowed the Messianic banquet in which at the end of age, all of the people of Israel would enjoy a transition from this life to the life to come. In the parable, the King was angry at the guests who ignored his invitation and killed the servants who were sent to invite them. When the invitation was extended far and wide to everyone, a guest showed up without a wedding garment and was ejected from the banquet.
What could be the significance of the wedding garment that one guest failed to wear? And what did Jesus mean when he said, “Many are invited, but few are chosen”? Each of us received an invitation through our Baptism to spend eternity with the Father. He has prepared a feast for us, to join Him in all eternity in Heaven. What have we done with our invitation? Have we ignored it or even thrown our invitation away? At the judgment, those who reject God’s free invitation of grace will be left out of the banquet. The wedding garment then represents our intentional trust and faith in God lived out in action. To wear the wedding garment means to lead a life of humility, where we are gentle, compassionate and generous. Where we find people oppressed by hatred, despair, and darkness, we are to bring joy and compassion of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Our Lord expects us not to live for ourselves, but like him, to live for others and being instruments of His peace.
https://youtu.be/6Aboc4uATPE
