A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus began to address the chief priests and elders of the people, and once again, he used parables. The reign of god, Jesus said, may be like unto a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the wedding, but they refused to come. A second time, he sent other servants saying, tell those who have been invited, look, I have my dinner all prepared.
My bullocks and corn fed cattle are killed. Everything is ready. Come to the feast. Some ignored the invitation and went their way. One to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold on the servants, insulted them, and killed them. At this, the king got angry and sent his army to destroy those murderers and burn their city. Then he said to his servants, the banquet is ready, but those who were invited were unfit to come. That is why you must go out into the by roads and invite to the wedding anyone you come upon. The servants then went out into the by roads and rounded up everybody that they met, the bad as well as the good.
This filled the wedding hall with banqueters. When the king came in to meet his guests, however, he caught sight of a man not properly dressed for a wedding feast. My friend, he said, how is it that you come in here not properly dressed? The man had nothing to say. The king then said to the attendants, bind him hand and foot, and throw him out into the night to wail and grind his teeth.
The invited are many, the elect are few. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. If you think that I can give you a satisfactory explanation of this parable, you are grossly mistaken. I wouldn't even attempt it.
There is there are so many ideas crushed, I would say, here. But again, I remind you, it's a parable. And parables are delicate things to handle because they are used, as our lord used them, to focus on one one thing. And in doing that, however, a lot of other items come into the picture and the picture can become confused and confusing. But there there's one little thought here that seems to be perfectly clear.
See our Lord is talking to Jews. And remember they they knew their old testament. They were looking for a Messiah. They were expecting a Messiah. They knew they were the chosen people.
They were the elect. They were the invited guests. They knew that. I mean they wouldn't lose the point of this story on that score. And what our Lord is saying, you turn your backs on me.
And because you have, we will bring in any and everybody. And of course there are other parables of our Lord, and not only parables where he but where he speaks explicitly and straightforwardly to the Jews. That while they are the chosen people, they are the people of first choice to whom the good news is first preached, they will not be the first chosen. Because for the most part, they turn their back, they close their ears, they turned aside from the good news, from the words of Jesus Christ. As we have so many instances in the New Testament where they came to Jesus and they asked him questions, but why?
To fight to get the truth? No. So they could get something to hang him with. To get something that they could use to destroy him. That's how they were pursuing truth.
Now I say this without criticism of them. Goodness knows where if I had been living in those days where I would have stood. Where would you have stood? Just just get the picture. Here you have what we today call the establishment.
Almost 100% opposed to Jesus. Not only opposed to him, but seeking to destroy him because they saw in him a danger to the state, to their religion, to their nation. And they work wrong in a certain sense, in a certain sense. And remember, these were the leaders of the people. These were the educated men.
These were the men close to God. These were the men who were looked upon as the emissaries of God. They were in many instances good men. Think of it. Where would you have stood?
Where would you what would been the your choice? Because here you have against all of this, you have this unknown person coming from the far North up there in those rural areas, gathering around a handful of ignorant fishermen, and coming down to the capital of the nation, and talking with authority, and arrogance. Arrogance. Unless you're willing to even even get rid of your family, to leave your mother and your father even and follow me, you can't be my disciple. Did you ever hear such arrogance as that?
That was Jesus Christ speaking. So where would you have been had you been living in the days of Christ? On whose side would you have been? We can only say with the help of God, I trust I'm possibly might have been on that handful, that minority that had their ears open to listen. Because this is this is the this is the reason Notice how our Lord said here, you are invited to the feast.
You're not forced to come. You were invited. You were invited. Now this applies to us. We have not only been invited, we have been introduced into the banquet hall.
We have been baptized. We are in his family. We are at the banquet. Now we come to this this wedding garment business which is a little bit mixed up too. But the point is apparently everybody else had their wedding garments so it couldn't have been an extraordinary thing.
It must have been either supplied or easily gotten. Anyway out of this whole mob, remember out of this whole malt of the power of many, I don't know. But in this third instance according to the parable, we're talking about a parable. The the king's servants go out and they pick up everybody they can find on the streets. Everybody.
So whatever this wedding garment was, it must have been something accessible, easily available because they all had it on except this one, Mabry. And he didn't have the wedding garment. And notice the punishment the guy gets. Notice, our Lord in many instances is not at all hesitant about talking about being thrown out into the night and suffering and wailing and gnashing your teeth. He uses that figure often, often.
And today is an instance of it. In other words, following Jesus Christ has penalties if you don't. And he's told us what they are. If you turn your back on him you go to hell. That's what he said.
We have not only been invited, we have been introduced to the banquet of Jesus Christ. We are living with him. We have put on his garment, the symbolism in the baptism. We have been given his life, the symbol of baptism. We are Lucifer's, the carriers of the light.
We are committed. We have vocations. We have been invited. Don't all this talk about vocations. We have All of us have a vocation and it's a univocal vocation.
The only difference is how we work it out. The way we actually implement our vocation can be very different, but we're all called to the same goal. And that goal was given at baptism. When the water was poured on your head and the priest or somebody said, I baptize you in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. You were transformed at that moment.
You were not only invited to the banquet, you were brought into the banquet. You were made one with the host, God almighty himself, in the living vitality, in the living body of his church. And that's where you find yourself today. You're not always comfortable in that church. Our blessed lord never said you would be.
He never remotely said you would be comfortable. All he said is was, if you do follow him, if you do take up his cross, you will find it sweet, and his burden light. That's the promise that the master of the banquet has given you. In the name of the father, and of the son, holy spirit. Amen.