Week 28 Sunday (Year A)

 Readings: Isaiah 25.6-10a; Psalm 22/23; Philippians 4.12-14,19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

The readings build a beautiful picture of God’s universal and extravagant love. What God wants is the salvation of all people. The celebration of this divine love is described by the prophet Isaiah as a wonderful banquet – the best of wine, the best of food, plenty for everybody. The responsorial psalm is along the same lines. The Lord is our shepherd who takes care of us especially when we find ourselves in dark places and who has prepared a banquet for us. Goodness and kindness will follow us all the days of our life and then, at the end, we shall dwell in the Lord’s house for ever and ever. The second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, repeats the point: God will fulfil all your needs as lavishly as only God can.

Generous, extravagant, fulfilling all needs, unexpected and unsolicited gifts: so is the grace of God in his love for humanity.

But then an off note begins to sound, a fly in the ointment, a bitter drop to distract us from the sweet things we have been hearing up to now. Paul says that such confidence in God’s goodness enable him to cope with whatever circumstances life sends his way: poor or rich, poverty or plenty, he can do all things with the help of the One who strengthens him. It was good, he concludes, that you shared in my hardships. Why good? So as to appreciate the gift, it seems, to realise that even in the dark valleys the Lord is there, not just present with us but sharing those things with us and strengthening us to live through them.

The gospel parable brings even deeper darkness and bitterness. There are some who will refuse to come to the great feast which has been prepared, now described as the wedding banquet for a king’s son. They turn away, valuing other things ahead of that banquet. It even turns nasty with some of them harassing and killing the servants of the king. His retaliation is swift and brutal. The invitation is thrown open to anybody and everybody, bad and good alike, so that the wedding hall is filled with guests.

We could stop there and some think that the parable ends there. It would be puzzling enough. What has happened to the universal and extravagant love, to the power of God to take away all sadness and mourning, everything that might hinder access to anybody’s joyful participation in the banquet? It seems that people are free to refuse and what a tragedy that would be. Failing to appreciate the gift offered, disdaining the generosity of the one who invites you, even to the point of being violent towards those who renew the invitation – it seems as if the refusal must be conscious, deliberate, considered, free.

But we could also read on, listening to what is either the second part of the parable, or a second parable latched on to the first one. This is about a person invited to the wedding feast who is not wearing the appropriate dress and this is the strangest note of all in this passage. Are we all supposed to go around all the time dressed in our best clobber just in case somebody, out of the blue, invites us to a wedding? Imagine the cities and countryside of the world with everybody dressed every day for a wedding! It would be a wonderful sight, a kind of sartorial paradise, and would keep the fashion designers of Milan and Paris in business like never before.

So what is it about? It can seem as if what was unconditional up to then – the universal and extravagant love of God offered to all people – has suddenly become conditional. There is something we must be or do in order to maintain our place at the banquet. Rich and poor are invited, good and bad are invited, anybody and everybody is invited – so what is it they must become or must do in order to secure their place?

Perhaps it is simply a parable of readiness like others in the gospel. Be prepared. Be alert. Be watchful. You know not the day nor the hour. Don’t forget to have oil in your lamp, because the bridegroom is coming at an hour you do not expect.

And what does it mean to ‘have oil in your lamp’, to have on a ‘wedding garment’? Isaiah talks about the Lord removing garments from us – the veil of mourning, the shroud enwrapping all nations. The gospel now speaks of a garment we need to put on which must refer to what Saint Paul talks about when he tells us to ‘put on Christ’ (Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27). To wear the right garment means to follow Christ – especially on the way of the cross, as Paul says elsewhere in Philippians – and so to recognize and appreciate the gift held out to us in the invitation we have received.

The man being cast out is not then an arbitrary punishment by a god once again become irascible. It is rather the truth of the man’s situation, that he has not disposed himself to appreciate the gift for what it is: a gift, freely, generously and extravagantly offered. So not to be presumed upon and not to be taken without gratitude to the giver.

That seems to be it. We are all invited to the banquet. We anticipate it in our celebration of the Eucharist. But we must make every effort to dispose ourselves correctly. It is only the courteous thing to do. But it also means learning how to appreciate love received so that we might become capable in our turn of loving in the same way: freely, generously, extravagantly. Loving one another as Jesus loved his disciples, and loving him, the Father’s invitation to us, so that we will be ready to be with him when the time comes, our hearts filled with gratitude and wonder.

We pray that the Lord will help us to dress ourselves in that way and so be ready. The invitation has already been sent and we have received it. In the Lord’s own house shall we dwell, when God has removed the garments that hinder our joy and enables us to put on the one garment that guarantees our eternal happiness, God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.