Twenty-Eighth Sunday In Ordinary Time (Year A)

Isa 25.6-10;  
Phil 4.12-14, 19-20;  
Mt 22.1-14

Everything necessary has been prepared. Come to the Wedding Banquet!

Some of the richest and most poetic imagery in the sacred scriptures is found in the oracles of the prophet Isaiah, writing over 700 years before the birth of Our Lord. In today’s first reading, we hear Isaiah describing an immense banquet prepared by God. His description comes in the middle of a section of prophecy which goes beyond the immediate events of his time to look at God’s final judgement.  Isaiah describes the last battle and the desolation of the world, and also the reward that God has prepared for the righteous: a magnificent feast of rich food and fine wine.  Isaiah repeatedly mentions the mountain on which this banquet will take place.  This is Mount Zion, the holy mountain, the site of Jerusalem, thereby showing Isaiah’s great faith and confidence in the covenant between God and his chosen people, the children of Israel. They have been chosen by God and their reward will continue throughout time, and will even continue after God’s judgment of the world, for all the nations will flood to Mount Zion to share in the great banquet.
 
The banquet described by Isaiah is so wonderful that this image was taken up by other prophets to describe the immense goodness of God towards his chosen people and became part of their normal way of describing the end of the world, an image taken up by Our Lord Himself in the gospel passage for today. Belief in the exclusive holiness of the Jewish people was prevalent in Our Lord’s day, especially among the Pharisees, and this parable was addressed, at least in part, to them.  It reinforces the rather critical message in last week’s parable of the vineyard, which concluded with the comment: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them, and so they tried to arrest him.”  This criticism of the religious establishment is also implicit in today’s gospel, for the opening part of the parable tells how the first group of people invited rejected their invitation.  
 
It is as if all of the histories of salvation up to the time of Christ were being encapsulated in a couple of sentences: God has sent many messengers – his prophets – to his people to invite them to his feast, but the people did not receive them or their message as they should have done. Sometimes there was merely indifference to the message; sometimes the attractions of this world seemed to have a greater draw than God’s message; and sometimes the messengers were treated badly or even killed.  Jewish tradition holds that Isaiah was martyred.  In the parable, Our Lord goes on to describe the outcome of this rejection of God’s message by the Jews. They were condemned for their indifference and hostility.  No wonder the Jewish religious authorities took umbrage at His teaching.
 
One of the main puzzling points is this.  The fact that the first people who had been invited did not come does not mean that the marriage feast was canceled.  Far from it. Instead, the reward was offered to the whole world: “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the thoroughfares and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.”  The invitation is now open up to include all people, of every age.  And so in the parable, the king sends his servants out to invite everyone to the feast, but again a response must be made by those who have been invited. Everyone must respond personally and individually to the call they have received, otherwise, they also will suffer God’s condemnation. That is what we are being told in the last section of the parable, the crushing detail of the guest who was expelled from the feast because he did not have a wedding garment.
 
In a homily on this parable, Saint Gregory the Great says: “The marriage is the wedding of Christ and His Church, and the garment is the virtue of charity: a person who goes into the feast without a wedding garment is someone who believes in the Church but does not have charity.”  The wedding garment signifies those dispositions which a person needs to enter the kingdom of heaven. Although we may belong to the Church, if we do not have these dispositions, we will be condemned on the day when God judges all mankind.
 
And how do we gain the right dispositions? By responding to God’s grace. This is a task for our whole life, as was reaffirmed by the Holy Father in one of his great encyclical letters, “Veritatis Splendor” [1993], which centers on the question that a young man asks the Lord, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The answer given to the young man is the same as the answer given to us: we must have charity. We must love God, and love our neighbour, and we must follow Christ. One of the best ways Christ helps us to follow Him is through the Holy Mass. In a few minutes, just before Holy Communion, the celebrant will say some words which should remind us very strongly of today’s parable: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper.”  The eucharistic banquet is a foretaste of the feast of eternal life.  What God gives us in the Mass is a token of the fact that we are all invited, again and again, to the banquet prepared for us by the great king.  So let us make progress towards our final reward by saying and meaning the familiar words, asking God to help us respond positively to his invitation and to persevere to the end: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”  The One on whom we feed in this Mass is the One who will feed us with His own endless life when, by His grace, we reach our destiny: the heavenly banquet of the King of kings, in the life of the world to come.  A blessing I wish for you all.

Fr Joseph Osho