Ancient wedding feasts lasted many days, and a royal wedding feast was a thing to behold, a glorious celebration of joy and abundance! Do any of the invitees to the king’s wedding feast earn their invitation? No. The invitations come from the king’s generosity and kindness. Yet some of them simply refuse to come, some ignore the invitation, some go about their business as if they had not been invited. But some of them do something hard to understand: they not only refuse to come, but they also mistreat and kill the servants delivering the invitation.
So the king decides that those who have been invited are not even worthy to come, and others should be invited. He tells his servants to go out and “invite whomever you find.” They gather everyone, “bad and good alike,” and the hall is filled at last. But one of the guests is not dressed appropriately and has no excuse for this; he is kicked out “where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
We see in this parable of Jesus the mystery of human freedom. The king could have forced or coerced the invitees to the feast, but he did not. The Lord could have chosen to force or coerce each of us into accepting his invitation to enter his Kingdom of Love, but he did not. Because love that is forced cannot be love. We are not robots that can be programmed by God to do and think what he determines; on the contrary, God created us in His image and likeness, with freedom and reason, so that we can see and think and choose what is good, true, and beautiful. And God is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, inviting everyone to the everlasting joy of the perfect Kingdom of Life and Love that always was and always will be.
We cannot enter the Kingdom on our own terms, however. In order to enter into the eternal Banquet, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, we must be clothed in the white garment we receive at Baptism, and which we keep clean by regularly confessing our sins and receiving the Lord in the Eucharist. The distortions of sin have to be wiped away so that we are properly prepared to be seated at the royal Wedding Feast of Heaven!
Everyone is invited to this Wedding Feast, but only those who welcome this invitation properly by walking in the ways of the Lord will be welcomed into the everlasting joy of God’s Love in Heaven.
Daily Reading
Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 1 Cor 1:26-31 Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.Not many of you were wise by human standards,not many were powerful,not many were of noble birth.Rather, God chose…
Saint of the Day
Saint Raymond Nonnatus
Saint Raymond Nonnatus, delivered by cesarean after his mother’s death, is the patron saint of expectant mothers and midwives.
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