The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to meditate on the experience of exclusion as contrasted with the relationship of intimacy to which God invites us.
Spirit for life
The reading from the Prophet Ezekiel highlights a new spirit put within Israel by God.
* [36:25–26] God’s initiative to cleanse Israel (cf. 24:13–14) is the first act in the creation of a new people, no longer disposed to repeating Israel’s wicked past (chap. 20). To make this restoration permanent, God replaces Israel’s rebellious and obdurate interiority (“heart of stone”) with an interiority (“heart of flesh”) susceptible to and animated by God’s intentions (“my spirit,” v. 27).1
Psalm 51 is a prayer for cleansing and pardon.
* [51:18] For you do not desire sacrifice: the mere offering of the ritual sacrifice apart from good dispositions is not acceptable to God, cf. Ps 50.2
The Gospel of Matthew reveals the Parable of the Wedding Banquet.
* [22:11] A wedding garment: the repentance, change of heart and mind, that is the condition for entrance into the kingdom (Mt 3:2; 4:17) must be continued in a life of good deeds (Mt 7:21–23).3
Ann Mausbauch quotes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” attributed to St. Bernard.
Like the invitees in today’s gospel, it isn’t always bad things that distract us, many times it is the routine demands of daily life. We have to work, take care of children, take care of parents, pay bills, clean the house, the list can be endless, never finding time to “pencil in” prayer. We can also find ourselves saying things like, “We will go to church once the kids are older and can behave,” or “I will speak up against that injustice once I finish my project at work.” What Jesus is asking us to do in today’s gospel is to put God on the top of the list.4
Don Schwager comments that Dieterich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany who died for his faith under Hitler's Nazi rule, contrasted "cheap grace" and "costly grace".
"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves... the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance... grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate... Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."5
James Crampsey SJ helps us to make sense of the sequence of events in Matthew’s version of the parable of the great banquet (Matthew 22:1-14) that comes to a dramatic conclusion when the guest who is not wearing a wedding garment is thrown out of the king’s house.
There is no way of knowing if Matthew understood the end time in the same way as the Book of Revelation, with an interim imprisonment of the devil before a final battle. There is a strong sense that the addition to the parable of the underdressed guest is a revelation about the one who, in the words of 1 Peter 5:8, is roaming about looking for whom he might devour. The door is now closed on him and ,unlike the foolish virgins, he cannot even utter ‘Lord, Lord, open’, muzzled as he is.6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Ezekiel 36:23-28 notes when he poured out the Holy Spirit on us at our baptism, God gave us a new heart and a new spirit as well. But he is always seeking to renew and recreate us, and just as in Ezekiel’s time, it is his initiative that brings about this change.
How does he do this? One way is by allowing us to see ourselves as we really are—with all our sins, failures, and weaknesses. As he reveals to us where we have gone wrong, he also softens our hearts. He helps us see how deeply we need to rely on his grace and mercy in our lives.
Admittedly, this can be a painful process. It’s not a superficial repair job; think of it like a heart transplant of sorts. Like any serious surgery, it cuts deep, causing us to confront our sin. But this is precisely what makes it so effective, especially as we cooperate with God’s grace and take steps to repent and change.7
Friar Jude Winkler connects the new spirit of Ezekiel with Jesus' actions after the Resurrection to breath Spirit into the Apostles. The possibility that wedding gowns were made available to the quests is suggested. Friar Jude reminds us not to refuse our invitation and become excluded.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that there may be nothing more disordering than being diagnosed with a terminal or chronic illness. It upends our lives and yet, as Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen affirms, it can also be the doorway through which we “grow up” and discover our life’s purpose and meaning. At a young age, Remen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which affects all aspects of her life, but ultimately led her to her life’s work: helping doctors integrate their heart and soul into their clinical practices for the sake of healing their patients and themselves.
One of my patients who survived three major surgeries in five weeks described himself as “born again.” When I asked him about this, he told me that his experience had challenged all of his ideas about life. Everything he had thought true had turned out to be merely belief and had not withstood the terrible events of recent weeks. He was stripped of all that he knew and left only with the unshakeable conviction that life itself was holy. This insight in its singularity and simplicity had sustained him better than the multiple complex systems of beliefs and values that had been the foundation of his life up until this time. It upheld him like stone and upholds him still because it has been tested by fire. At the depths of the most unimaginable vulnerability he has discovered that we live not by choice but by grace. And that life itself is a blessing.8
Our journey intersects with invitations and nudges from the Spirit to deeper participation in our relationship with God.
References
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