The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with attendance at a great feast.
The banquet
The reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah declares “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food.”
* [25:1–9] These verses praise God for carrying out his plan to destroy the enemy and to save the poor of his people in Zion (14:32), and they announce the victory banquet to be celebrated in the Lord’s city.1
In Psalm 23, the Divine Shepherd prepares a meal in sight of our enemies.
* [23:5] You set a table before me: this expression occurs in an exodus context in Ps 78:19. In front of my enemies: my enemies see that I am God’s friend and guest. Oil: a perfumed ointment made from olive oil, used especially at banquets (Ps 104:15; Mt 26:7; Lk 7:37, 46; Jn 12:2).2
Paul declares, in the reading from the Letter to the Philippians, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
* [4:10–20] Paul, more directly than anywhere else in the letter (cf. Phil 1:3–5), here thanks the Philippians for their gift of money sent through Epaphroditus (Phil 2:25). Paul’s own policy was to be self-sufficient as a missionary, supporting himself by his own labor (1 Thes 2:5–9; 1 Cor 9:15–18; cf. Acts 18:2–3). In spite of this reliance on self and on God to provide (Phil 4:11–13) Paul accepted gifts from the Philippians not only once but more than once (Phil 4:16) when he was in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1–9), as he does now, in prison (my distress, Phil 4:14). While commercial terms appear in the passage, like an account of giving and receiving (Phil 4:15) and received full payment (Phil 4:18), Paul is most concerned about the spiritual growth of the Philippians (10, 17, 19); he emphasizes that God will care for their needs, through Christ.3
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus uses the Parable of the Wedding Banquet to present our choice about joining the Banquet of Love.
* [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). * [22:13] Wailing and grinding of teeth: the Christian who lacks the wedding garment of good deeds will suffer the same fate as those Jews who have rejected Jesus; see note on Mt 8:11–12.4
Mike Cherney’s sense is that the Gospel of Matthew moves the parable into the context of the Gospel’s author, likely a Jewish Christian in the late first century.
This story of a king and his son become a story of God the Father and God the Son with the Jewish people as the original invitees. The prophets can be seen as the first set of servants. The early Christian martyrs can be identified with the servants who are met with violence and the original readers of this Gospel would have been well aware of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a couple of decades earlier.5
Sr. Mary M. McGlone, who serves on the congregational leadership team of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, shares that the parable invites us beyond our self-concern to contemplate God's relentless, unrequited love.
Jesus continually opened the way to transformation and prayed that his persecutors would be forgiven. Knowing that, we'll hear this parable as his depiction of God's unflagging attempts to give us all that we are willing to accept: rich nourishment and an end to sorrow, shame and death. Today, as Jesus gives us a glimpse of his vision of God, he offers us a choice. Let us repudiate the spoilers and allow ourselves to be touched deeply by God's desire that we — all of us — accept the invitation to enter in and fully enjoy the banquet of life God spreads before us.6
Don Schwager quotes “A guest with no wedding garment,” by John Chrysostom (347-407 AD).
"But since you have already come into the house of the marriage feast, our holy church, as a result of God's generosity, be careful, my friends, lest when the King enters he find fault with some aspect of your heart's clothing. We must consider what comes next with great fear in our hearts. But the king came in to look at the guests and saw there a person not clothed in a wedding garment. What do we think is meant by the wedding garment, dearly beloved? For if we say it is baptism or faith, is there anyone who has entered this marriage feast without them? A person is outside because he has not yet come to believe. What then must we understand by the wedding garment but love? That person enters the marriage feast, but without wearing a wedding garment, who is present in the holy church. He may have faith, but he does not have love. We are correct when we say that love is the wedding garment because this is what our Creator himself possessed when he came to the marriage feast to join the church to himself. Only God's love brought it about that his only begotten Son united the hearts of his chosen to himself. John says that 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for us' (John 3:16)." (excerpt from FORTY GOSPEL HOMILIES 38.9)7
Friar Jude Winkler discusses the eschatological nature of the text from Isaiah, comparing it to texts dated to the time of the Babylonian exile. Paul’s acceptance of abundance or poverty shows us the need to live with trust in God. Friar Jude reminds us of a traditional understanding that wedding garments were provided for guests at the door underlining our need to accept a change of heart to attend the Banquet of Love.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, observes that evil is clearly at work in our world, but what can we do about it? Fr. Richard does not pretend to have the answers to such a big question, but what he can offer is the wisdom of the Christian tradition. For the first thousand years of Catholic Christianity, it was assumed that there were three sources of evil: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
When small, easily forgivable transgressions are labeled “sins” and equated with evil, we trivialize the very real notion of evil and divert our attention from the real thing. Before it becomes personal and shameful, evil is often culturally agreed-upon, admired, and deemed necessary. The apostle Paul already had the prescient genius to recognize this, and I believe he taught that both sin and salvation are, first of all, corporate and social realities. In fact, this recognition could and should be acknowledged as one of his major contributions to history. I believe it still will be.8
The great banquet celebrated in love and communion with others is one to which we are invited as we open ourselves to accepting changing our hearts to love as lived by Christ.
References
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