Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20;
Matthew 22:1-14
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will
provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy rich food
and pure choice wines. On that day it
will be said: “Behold our God, to Whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD
for Whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that He has saved us!”
This passage, indeed the whole of the
first reading, is wonderfully suited to portray the blessings of Christianity,
and by that, I mean above all, the blessings of the Catholic faith when lived with
humble and sincere gratitude.
For all non-believers or nominal
Christians who – as serious and sensitive human beings -- have felt
the anguish of ‘not-knowing-what-to-do’ when oppressed by a vague sense of
‘wrong-ness’ in a particular situation or in their own life; who have felt
the insufficiency of all merely human ideals to enable them to withstand
the trials and temptations of life, which occasion that suffering captured in
those words of St. Paul: “I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19); who
have suffered or still suffer from divisions within themselves, within
family, society; for all those who have experienced, and want to learn from,
such occasions of suffering and sorrow, the Catholic faith offers a most
wonderful reconciliation with God, with one’s own self, and with the world: a reconciliation
that brings us peace of mind and freedom of heart as it restores meaning and
hope to our life, and delights us with a beauty that can inspire and thrill but
never enslave. However, the hard skin of
a previous worldly, selfish and/or sensual, experience of life, can make it
difficult for these wonderful blessings to penetrate through to the warm,
sensitive, core of human beings as individuals intended by God.
Human beings are formed by, and live most
fully in, their personal relationships; and it is in the deliberate and free
gift and acceptance of personal love -- not the impulsive, driving, passion
of sexual encounters -- that a human being first opens up him- or her-self for
maturity. When a man or woman gives or
receives such love for the first time they are changed thereby, and life is no
longer the same as it was before that encounter, which is the initial warrant
and seal of one’s worth as a personal being.
It is the Eucharist which brings that glow of personal,
loving, encounter, fully into prominence in the spiritual life of a Catholic;
for the Eucharist is indeed a feast, a
banquet, of rich food and pure, choice, wines. For the truly stupendous fact and unfathomable
meaning of the Eucharist is that Jesus, the very Son of God, made Man-for-us,
there presents and renews (not repeats!) the original and eternally-enduring
gift of Himself made on Calvary in His self-sacrifice-of-love to His Father for us all, and in His offer of Personal
love to each and every one of us who
wills to call on Him in faith and receive Him fittingly.
That gift of total love by Jesus is unique
and absolutely inimitable. We human beings can only offer ourselves partially
to another, and only receive another’s gift partially, though our intention be both
sincere and dedicated. In the Eucharist, however, Jesus is total gift and
commitment, to be initially discovered and embraced by us through the inspiration
of His most Holy Spirit, a gift to be treasured life-long, by being gradually
and most carefully nourished in us who receive Him by our following the
teaching and guidance of Mother Church, and the enlightenment of the Holy
Spirit Himself. As foreshadowed on the
human level, so here most sublimely, this union of love, CHARITY, is indeed the
ultimate fulfilment of one’s human being, it is the total vindication of one’s
worth as an individual now become a child of God the Father, in Jesus. For Christ comes to us that He might give us
a share – chosen for us by the Father – in His Own eternal Life of Truth and
Love before the Father.
All these blessings, which reach to and
transfigure the core of our human being can be ours, but only through our faith in Jesus, and we have to
pray that we might grow in faith precisely in order that we may ever-more deeply
love, esteem, value, and respond to those blessings to which our Father invites
us.
Now. that is not always easy for us since
we -- like children who seek all that glitters -- are very subject to the
impressions of our external senses and our inner emotions, and these can easily
drive us to over-involvement in worldly concerns. It is not wrong to be fully involved in what
we undertake -- indeed St. Paul warns us against half-heartedness – but over-involvement so easily leads us to
over-esteem worldly activities and under-value spiritual blessings, which we
can only perceive through faith, and to which our instinctive emotions
do not immediately respond. And it is here
that we must turn to our Gospel reading.
The ‘invited guests’ in Our Lord’s parable
were first of all, God’s original ‘Chosen People’ established as such by their observation
of the Law of Moses, and the OT covenant with God was the first invitation
given them. The King’s feast ‘prepared for
the wedding of his son’ figured the Messianic feast, long foretold, and now
prepared and ready. The excuses came
back thick and fast from all sides, with varying degrees of politeness: but
they all had the same fundamental meaning, ‘We have more important things to do
just now than come to your feast.’ And,
in fact, that is the situation still today, the former ‘Chosen People’ did not
accept Jesus – the incarnate Word, Son, of God – as their Messiah sent by God;
they did not ‘come to the feast’ of God’s Messiah, the Eucharistic Sacrifice
which we are now celebrating.
That parable of Jesus highlights the great
danger for many people today, who can come to regard earthly obligations, to value
emotionally stirring activities, as supremely important, if they allow
ourselves to become too wrapped-up in them; for example, by wanting to start off too high up on the
tree of life, and thus over-burdening themselves with obligations and costs that
can come to stifle all other aspirations: ‘the cares of life’ as Jesus called
them.
In today’s parable Jesus teaches us on the
one hand that no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven by his own efforts without
an invitation from God – and all of us, willingly here, have received
that P/personal invitation. And, on the
other hand, Jesus tells us that no one is condemned to remain outside
the Kingdom except as a result of their own willful disdain or deliberate
rejection of God’s offer of love.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads and
invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The
servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good
alike, and the hall was filled with guests.
People of God, a choice has to be made
by all of us, a choice involving life or death; that is, a choice for life in
Jesus, Who alone rose from the dead (three days in the tomb) and rose from
there to eternal life, in his Ascension.
It is a choice to be made not just once but one to be re-affirmed by
ourselves many, many, times over the years of our life because, as I said
earlier, we ordinary human beings cannot give ourselves wholly or receive
another’s gift wholly immediately. How
much more is that the case, therefore, when our love is with Jesus. Our Lord
and Saviour, God the Father’s only-begotten and most beloved Son!
Let me quote some tragically beautiful, and
yet so sadly mixed-up, thoughts of a modern philosopher of renown, Bertrand
Russell:
“The centre of me is always and eternally
a terrible pain – a curious, wild pain – a searching for something transfigured
and infinite. The beatific vision—God, I
do not find it. I do not think it is to
be found – but the love of it is my life.”
The only-begotten, most beloved, Son of the heavenly Father came as our Lord Jesus to save those ‘original likenesses’ of God still loved by His Father but cut off from the benefits of that love by life-preferences and practices adopted through ignorance and weakness. Our Lord died and rose from death to save such spoiled ‘likenesses’; and ascending back to His Father in heaven He offers them the Gift of His Most Holy Spirit to enlighten their ignorance and support their weakness, and lead them, as living members of the Body of Christ on earth, Mother Church, to the fulness of earthly life and heavenly glory as ‘other Christs’ in the beatific vision divinely revealed to us in Mother Church, and so vaguely wanted and yet doubted by Russell.
