28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A); 10-10-2020

Is 25:6-10a.  Ps 23.  Phil 4:12-20.  Mt 22:1-10

Deacon Jim McFadden

            The parable we hear in today’s Gospel focuses on a royal wedding party, which will tell us a lot about the Kingdom of God.  The central character is the king’s son, the bridegroom whom we can easily identify as Jesus.  The parable makes no reference to the bride, but does pay attention to the guests who were invited, and those who wore wedding garments.  Consider yourself invited because the Lord wants to celebrate the wedding with you.  He wants to inaugurate a lifelong personal relationship with you, an intimate I-Thou communion that is meant to endure forever.  Such a relationship with our Lord  has to go beyond being dutiful subjects, being faithful servants with their master, or dedicated students to their teacher.  All of these relationships are good to be sure, but, Jesus is calling us to a deeper level of relationship: namely, one of a bridegroom to his bride.  In other words, Jesus wants to marry you; he wants you to fall in love with him!

            People of God, it’s not enough that we fulfill our  duty, obey the Ten Commandments, play by the religious rules of our Catholic faith.   He desires a true mutual sharing of life with us, a relationship based on conversation, trust, and forgiveness.

            Since God is love (cf.  1 John 4:8) and Jesus is the perfect incarnation of God’s love, then Christianity can be understood as a love story with God.  The Lord clearly takes the initiative: he invites us, but, we’re not the only ones because he extends the invitation to everyone, which is why we are Catholic.   More to it, no one has the preferred table, but everyone has the opportunity to enjoy God’s attention, favor, and care. The Christian life is always born and reborn of this tender, special, and privileged love  which we see in Hosea 11 and  Isaiah 43. How do we respond to such love?  At the very least, we should say to our Lord on a daily basis: “ Jesus, I love you!  Your love is more precious than my life.”  If we’re not falling in love with Jesus, then our Catholic faith will inevitably become empty.  Because once love is lost, its like a severed  branch from the vine that shrivels up.  It’s like a body without a soul.  Without this vibrant relationship with our Lord, Catholicism just becomes an impossible ethic, a combination of rules, commandments, and laws to be obeyed for no good reason. 

            The Lord of life has sent you his invitation; he waits your response.  Since the invite comes from love, our response should be the same.  But, too often our relationship is tepid, lukewarm.  Speaking to one of the early Christian churches, the writer of Revelation  has God make an explicit reproach:  “You have abandoned your first love” (Rev 2:4).  You used to love me, but now you act as if you don’t.  This is the danger of religion, which can become routine, content with the normal, going through the motions without much drive, zeal, enthusiasm.  And, an arid faith comes with a large dose of a short memory: we forget how much God loves us every moment of our existence.  So, we need to rekindle those coals to get back to that first love.  We are the beloved, the guests of the wedding, and our life is one pure gift: so, everyday is a wonderful opportunity to say to Jesus, “Here I am; I want to say ‘yes’ to your invitation.”

            The Gospel has a sobering warning that this invitation can be refused.  Many of the invited guests said “no,” because they were caught up in their own affairs—they had “better” things to do. We hear that “They ignore the invitation and went away one to his farm, another to his business” (Mt 22: 5).  The guests didn’t think the wedding would be dreary or boring; it’s just that they were preoccupied with their own affairs.  They were probably more interested in having something they thought was important (the goods of the world)  rather than risk something that the wedding demands.  You see, brothers and sisters, this is how love grows cold: it doesn’t happened out of malice but out of a preference for what is our own:  my security, my status, my pleasure, my control.

And, when we spend our lives pursuing these finite, transitory, ephemeral idols,  we end aging very badly and quickly because we’ve gotten old inside.  When our hearts don’t expand, they become closed.  In the spiritual life, there are only two directions: we’re either moving towards God or we’re moving away.  Pope Francis is frequently challenging us to let go of  our individualistic, self-referential lifestyle where the pursuit of happiness depends upon me and my agenda.  If I process life in terms of what benefits me, what I prefer, what I want, then I become harsh, unbending, and calculating. When things don’t go my way, I lash out at people for no reason, like the guests in the Gospel, who treated shamefully and ultimately killed those sent to deliver the invitation simply because they were bothering them. 

            The Gospel is really getting in our face: it’s demanding  that we look at where we stand: with ourselves or with God?  It’s an either-or choice and there is no in between.  Because God is the opposite of selfishness and self-absorption, we can’t have it both ways.  But notice that despite the constant rejection, God does not cancel the wedding feast!  He does not give up, but continues to invite.  When he hears a “no,” he does not shut down the gathering, but simply broadens the invitation.  In spite of the rejections, the vincible ignorance, the ingratitude, God never stops loving us.  Unlike us who hold grudges and harbor resentment, God, while undoubtedly disappointed by our rejection, keeps on doing good even for those who are doing evil.  For us, this seems mind-boggling, but this is what Love does: it’s always self-gifting—there is never a time or place that God stops loving us.  When we hear this Gospel today, it  challenges us to do what he does, to live in true love with God and our neighbor, to overcome inertia, resignation, and the whims of our petty ambitions.

            The Gospel ends with caveat that if we’re going to enter the wedding feast, we’ve got to  dress properly.  It’s not enough that we accept the invitation, but if we’re going to enter the wedding reception, we have to dress a certain way.  Since the bridegroom is love Incarnate, that means we have to put on a wedding garment of Love; we have to follow the example of the Lord.  It’s not enough that we say, “Lord, Lord or Praise Jesus,” but we have to put into practice doing the Father’s will just as Jesus faithfully and consistently did.(cf. Mt 7:21). We need to put on God’s love and to renew our choice every day.  We don’t make a fleeting, “I love you Jesus” every once in a while, but that profession is made and lived daily.  The wedding garment that we wear is the love of Jesus which is generous self-giving.  It’s the same crazy love that Jesus has for us who loved us to the end on the Cross, who always offers us his forgiveness because he loves us. 

            What’s more we get to practice being in love with Jesus every day because can put into action by how we relate to others, especially those who in most need (cf. Mt 25).  And, this wedding garment is special; we don’t want to get it dirty.  How do we keep it spotless?  We humbly approach the Lord fearlessly asking his forgiveness.  This is the one step that we have to take before we can enter the wedding hall to celebrate with him the feast of love.  Brothers and sisters, you’ve got the invitation.  What say you? Amen.