October 15, 2017

28^TH Sunday in Ordinary Time 

A WEDDING FEAST AND YOU’RE INVITED!

Based on the reflections of Msgr. Charles Pope

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

Weddings are wonderful events and so are wedding receptions (unless your table is near the DJ and you have to scream to speak the person seated next to you.) The Lord’s parable is about a wedding feast because he wanted to evoke in his listeners the images of joy, celebration, magnificence, splendor, beauty, love, and unity. He uses it as an apt image of heaven. It is a feast the Lord prepares and to which he invites us. Who would not want to come? And yet, the parable goes on to tell us that many reject the invitation! Are these people crazy?
 
Jesus gives two reasons for their rejection: worldliness and wickedness. One went to his farm, another to his business. Worldly affairs, though not evil in themselves, have these people preoccupied. They are too busy to accept the invitation. Their priorities and passions are elsewhere.
 
Today we might express it this way: “Religion has its place, but it doesn’t pay the bills.” The goal of the worldly is the world and what it offers. Prayer, Scripture, and the Sacraments—those things that will bring us to heaven— are low on their priority list. So the invitation is set aside or at best placed under a pile of other things. Jesus says one goes one to his farm, another to his business. Today one to Sunday sports practice, another to detail his car; one to sleep in, another to play golf; one to the mall, perhaps a bus full to Atlantic City.
 
Others rejecting the invitation do so out of some degree of wickedness. Jesus speaks of how they mistreated and even killed some of the servants who delivered the invitation on behalf of the king. Certainly Jesus was alluding to how Israel treated the prophets and how the world would treat the apostles and early Christians. Many reject the kingdom of God because it is not convenient to their moral lives.
 
The invitation to the feast makes some angry because it casts a judgment on some of their behaviors; it tweaks their consciences. They are disturbed by faith’s demands and challenges. Chastity, forgiveness, care for the poor, right to life— are Gospel priorities disruptive to their lives.
 
The Lord also tells us that “The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.” This is really shocking to us. How can this be squared with the vision of a God who loves us?
 
But be sure of this: God wants to save everyone but he will respect our choice if we prefer “other arrangements”. When some reject the invitation, God merely widens the net. He wants his Son’s wedding feast full. Here is an extravagant God who does not tire at inviting!
 
There is something more expected of those who accept the invitation to the feast—they must wear the proper wedding garment. The garment is given to us by God at baptism. The white robe we wear is an outward sign of our dignity. It is a robe that we are to bring unstained to the judgment seat of Christ. At our funeral, too, the white pall placed upon the casket recalls the baptismal garment. Obviously it is not a material clothing. The dress code of heaven is “holiness of life” or “virtue.” Scripture tells us: Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful (Rev 21:27). and that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14b). This is why the doctrine of Purgatory is so consoling.
 
The Lord concludes by saying “Many are called but few are chosen” so this parable is a call for us to be sober and serious about our spiritual state and our destiny and about the spiritual state of those whom we love. The Eucharist is the foretaste of that feast. Let us ask for grace to be so. And don’t’ worry, I am sure that at heaven’s wedding feast the “DJ” is an angel and we won’t have to scream to speak to the person next to us!