THE GOOD NEWS AND THE WARNING OF A WEDDING

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mt 22:1-14

In the Gospel of every Mass, seldom do we have two parables. Today we have two. The first is the Parable of the Wedding Banquet while the second is the Parable of the Wedding Garment. The first is good news; the second is a warning. Let us heed both.

The Gospel today opens on a banquet scene. It opens not on any ordinary meal, but on a banquet. The king, representing God, celebrates the wedding of his son and invites his subjects to sit at table with him.

This idea of God inviting men to His table is an image unique to Christianity. In other religions, God is often pictured as an omnipotent being, quite remote from humanity, and welcomes people in His presence like well-schooled courtiers only. In that concept of God, one enters God’s presence in a rigid standing to attention manner. With that idea of God, it is totally unthinkable for God to throw a party, much less to invite people to partake of His banquet. But our understanding of God is different. Our God enjoys inviting us to share His table. And His meal is not stingy. It is a banquet. God, from our Christian point of view, not only delights in us but is also ever generous to us. Lavishness is second nature to God’s love for us.

The banquet God prepares for us is no ordinary banquet. It is a wedding banquet. God is our lover. And He is madly in loved with us. In the Old Testament we see God as a suitor trying to win over Israel. He desires to marry her. But Israel keeps on prostituting herself. Nonetheless, God constantly offers a covenant that is bridal in character: “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name” (Is 54:5). In the New Testament, this love story continues in and through the very person of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though rejected by His own people, “has become the corner stone” (Mt 21:42).

Our relationship with God is therefore a love story. In Jer 31:3, God confides to us the inner recesses of His heart: “I love you with an everlasting love”. All He asks of us is to live by His commandments, foremost of which is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Dt 6:5).

Our God is not a complicated God. All He wants is to love us and all He desires for is our love.

Only a fool will reject an invitation to such a wedding banquet, to such an offer of everlasting and lavish love, from an unchanging God. He who prostitutes himself to other gods misses this good news very badly.

What is further striking about God’s loving invitation for us to enter into marriage with Him is that the call is extended to all and not only to a chosen few. “Go therefore,” says the king to his servants in the parable, “to the main crossroads and invite to the banquet whomever you might find there” (Mt 22:9). And the servants went to the thoroughfares and there gathered all those they found, the bad and the good alike.

Have we never ever wondered why no testimonial of good behavior is required of us for us to become Christians? One can have been the worst criminal, and yet receive the same baptism as that of a newly-born infant. The same invitation to the loving relationship with God is offered to all, saints and sinners, pure and blemished, innocent and guilty. The only condition imposed is that he who says yes to God’s love should turn his back to his sinful past. God’s love is never a reward, but a gratuitous gift to all, without distinction of merits or virtues.

A warning though!

Many are called but few are chosen. While all are called to share God’s table, not all will be chosen to sit at table with Him. It is not enough to accept God’s invitation to enter into marriage with Him. While His marriage proposal is a gratuitous gift to all, each must strive to make himself ready for the eternal embrace of the Divine Bridegroom.

In the Gospel today, the king is greatly dismayed to see a man not properly dressed for the wedding banquet. There is no excuse, not even the surprised invitation from the king. The man could have told the king’s servants, “I accept the king’s gracious invitation and I am deeply humbled by his great kindness. Let me therefore make my self less unworthy of so undeserved an offer.” But this man remained the same man that he was before he entered the wedding banquet. Thus, though he accepted the invitation, he was nonetheless thrown out of the banquet hall.

It is important therefore that we wear the right wedding garment always as we have already been “married” to God. In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul describes this garment thus, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful” (Col 3:12-5).

We were called, we responded, but are we rightly garbed?