Homily for 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Oct. 11, 2020
Matt 21: 1-14                                                                      
Is 26: 6-10                                                                          
Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gave a wedding feast for his son” (Matt 22: 2).

Christ presiding over the marriage banquet (Paolo Veronese)

There’s a lot of feasting in today’s sacred Scriptures:  the banquet that God prepares on his holy mountain in the passage from Isaiah (25:6-10), the table that the shepherd Lord spreads before his people (Ps 23:5), and Jesus’ parable of the king’s wedding feast for his son.

The wedding feast is a traditional image of heaven—of its joy, pleasure, contentment, warmth, sense of family and friendship.  The image carries into our Eucharistic celebration when we acclaim, “Behold the Lamb of God!  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb,” which is a quotation from Rev 19:9, omitting one word, wedding, before “supper,” but implying it.  Blessed, or happy, are those invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb in the kingdom of heaven, of which the Holy Eucharist is a foretaste.

That wedding feast of the Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus, God’s Son, is the subject of the parable Jesus tells today, addressing his opponents, the chief priests and elders.  He’s saying to them that God has prepared for them a place in his kingdom, has invited them and “all peoples” (Is 25:6) to a feast celebrating his Son’s marriage.  As Christians we recognize the sacred union of God’s Son with the Church, which is his bride.          

But to Jesus’ distress, many of those invited in the 1st place reject the invitation and even do violence to the king’s servants, the prophets, the apostles, and other preachers of the Gospel.  Jesus—or perhaps Matthew, writing his gospel after the fact—even alludes to the destruction of Jerusalem by the enraged king (22:7), a historical fact of 70 A.D., when a Roman army crushed a Jewish revolt and leveled the city.

With his initial invitation rejected, the king expands his invitation to everyone.  That is, the Gospel is offered to the whole world and not only to the Jewish people:  “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests” (22:10).

Jesus didn’t confine his preaching or his grace to the virtuous—which scandalized the chief priests and elders and many of the Pharisees, the “good people,” but encompassed the “bad” as well:  “Those who are well don’t need a doctor, but the sick do.  I didn’t come to call the just but sinners” (Matt 9:12,13).  And he’s come, in Isaiah’s words, “for all peoples,” for the Gentiles too.  “The Lord of hosts … will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations” (25:7).

We, of course, are part of that great assemblage of the nations invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb of God.  We’re invited.  Choosing to accept the invitation is up to us.  The king wants us at the feast of his Son—at the Eucharist, which prefigures the greater banquet of the heavenly kingdom, and at that banquet itself:  “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, … and everything is ready; come to the feast” (22:4).

So—will we accept the invitation?  Will we show up for the feast?  We make a good start by coming to Mass and welcoming the gospel message.

Jesus tags onto the parable of the wedding feast what some interpreters think is a separate parable, that of the wedding garment.  One doesn’t show up at a royal wedding dressed in raggy jeans and a tank top.  The parable obliges us to assume that the unexpected guests were provided at the palace with suitable attire.  But this particular guest has chosen not to put it on, and he’s speechless when challenged by his host—without excuse—and he’s cast out of the party.

Similarly, just because we’ve shown up for the feast—we come to Mass—doesn’t mean we’re properly disposed to be guests of the king.  When we receive the invitation, whether we’re among the good or the bad (relatively speaking, for “there is only One who is good” [Matt 19:17]), we must be garbed with an attitude of conversion, of rejecting sin, of changing our evil habits, and of doing as best we can the deeds of Christ.  Calling oneself a Catholic hardly suffices to count as a welcome guest at the marriage feast of the Lamb.  As we prayed in the Collect earlier, may God’s grace help us be “determined always to carry out good works.”