Monday, January 5, 2015

A Homily...28th Sunday in Ordinary Time A, October 12, 2014

My Homily from the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Over the last few weeks we have been hearing several Parables told by Jesus.  These Parables describe the Kingdom of God to the Pharisees, the chief priest, the elders, his disciples, to the people and to us.  We know Jesus often used Parables to illustrate a point and to use situations commonly understood by the people to give them a glimpse of something supernatural.  It was also intended that something about the Parable would shock the listener.

This Parable seems a bit more challenging than the others.  We hear of a King who is throwing a great wedding feast for His Son.  He invites many guests.  Prepares the feast.  Sends his servants to summon the invited guests, but they refuse to come.  Why would they refuse to come to a great wedding feast put on by the king?  He sends servants a second time telling them everything is ready, come, eat, enjoy the feast!  Some ignored the invitation and went back to work.  I like my job, but I know I wouldn't turn down a feast and opt for work instead.  Even more surprising, the invited guests turned on the King's servants and killed them!  Perhaps they should have said "Don't shoot the messenger!"

The king, furious, now has his troops sent out to destroy the invited guests.  He then sends the servants out to the street and to invite anyone they can find to enjoy the feast he has prepared, A feast fit for a King you might say!  He invites the good and the bad.  Then the king comes in to meet the guests.  And when he finds one of the guests without a wedding garment on, he has him bound hand a foot and casts him in to the darkness.  What's going on here?  Why is this poor person, who was just invited off the street and arrives without proper clothing, tossed out of the feast?

Well, as we often hear, God doesn't see things as we see things.  So from this view there is more here than we may initially think.  After all, Jesus is telling us this Parable to describe what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.  Not what our expectations are.  But what it is really like, by using an environment that we can relate to - a wedding feast.

In studying this reading, I found an author in my library who had written over 50 pages reflecting on these fourteen verses of Scripture!  When I mentioned this to Fr Von, he advised me not to deliver a 50 page Homily.  Not to worry - I was the person in school that when the teacher asked us to write 5 pages, I was done at four and a half.  But clearly, 50 pages told me there is a lot going on here that I didn't see.

Delving just a bit deeper, it becomes clear that the King represents God and the feast is for his Son, Jesus.  Those that chose not to come, rejected the King's invitation on their own, and so rejected the invitation to the Kingdom of God.  But then what about the guests who did come.  The King sent his servants out to invite all they found.  He invited the good and the bad.  He has invited you and me.  We are all invited to the Wedding Feast.  Here at Mass today.  The Sacrifice of the Mass today can be compared to the Wedding Feast of the King for His Son, Jesus.  And we have responded to that invitation by coming to the Feast.  But, are we clothed with the proper garment?

Scripture gives us many references to Christ Himself as the bridegroom.  And His bride is the Church.  That makes each of us here an integral, intimate part of the wedding feast we hear today in Jesus Parable about the Kingdom of Heaven.

At our baptism, we were claimed for Christ.  We became heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.  This was won for us by Christ's sacrifice on the cross.  The rest of our lives from the moment of our baptism, we are deciding how to respond to that gift.  At our Baptism, we are clothed with a white garment.  This white garment symbolizes that we have put on Christ.  We are a new Creation and free from sin at the moment of our Baptism.  Now anyone baptized as an infant probably won't remember this, be we are regularly reminded of it in scripture.  We have put on Christ.  We are invited to the wedding feast.  We become heirs to the Kingdom of God.


So how can we be sure that we are not like the man in the parable, unprepared for the feast, not dressed in the proper wedding garment?  Our wedding garment is a spiritual one.  We must develop the selfless love that we are called to by Christ at our baptism and use the grace we are blessed with throughout our lives.  Jesus gives us the answer directly, we must love God with all our soul, all our heart and all our strength.  So God is number one!  Easily said, but then the real world enters in with its distractions and challenges.  And then, we must love our neighbor as our selves.  Look around you.  Everyone here is our neighbor.  The people we work with are our neighbors.  The boss, or the coworker who irritates us is our neighbor.  The family member who doesn't do or say what we expect from them is our neighbor.  Many times the disciples didn't do or say what Jesus would have wanted from them.  But His love for them never wavered.  If someone asked you why you were Catholic, what would you say to them?

God wants us to share in the same love the He shares with Jesus.  That is the Wedding Garment we need to adorn ourselves with.  The Mass we are participating in today as a community gives that glimpse of what the eternal, heavenly banquet is like.  We have been invited guests.  May we strive to put on Christ and bring Him to the world and love each other as He loves us.


May God give you peace.

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