Twenty Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

I was very fortunate to have had two wonderful aunts as a child and well into adulthood. They were my mother’s sisters. Addie and Eve were their names. Neither of them married. They looked after their parents, my grandparents, into their old age. They were like a second and third mother to us as children. Addie and Eve were very different in temperament. They were a bit like the sisters, Martha and Mary, in the gospels. Addie was like Martha, always busy and a little bit anxious. Eve was more contemplative, and had a very calming presence. One of her favourite verses from the Bible is there in today’s second reading. Saint Paul, writing from his prison cell, declares to his church in Philippi, ‘There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength’, or in another translation, ‘I can do all things in him who gives me strength’.

Eve didn’t have great physical strength at times, especially as she got older, but her relationship with the risen Lord gave her a share in the Lord’s own strength. The Lord is always inviting us to come to him, so that we can live with his strength. Taking up the image of the Lord as shepherd that we find in today’s psalm, he assures us that, even when we walk in the valley of darkness, he is there with his crook and his staff to give us comfort. When we find our strength draining from us, he leads us to restful waters to revive our drooping spirits. Again, in the words of that psalm, his goodness and kindness follow us all the days of our life, until he finally leads us to that great banquet of eternal life, where our drooping spirits will be fully revived. His sustaining presence in the here and now is a foretaste of that ultimate destiny towards which he is leading us.

There is a wonderful image of that heavenly destiny in today’s first reading. It is often chosen by families as the first reading for the funeral Mass of their loved one. There is an image there of the Lord as a lavish host who prepares an amazing banquet for all peoples. This is not a private meal for a privileged few. It is a banquet to which all are invited. Also, it is no ordinary banquet. At this banquet, the Lord will destroy death forever, and, so, the mourning veil covering all people will be removed. The Lord will wipe away tears from every cheek. At this banquet, according to the reading, people will say, ‘This is our God in whom we hoped for salvation; the Lord is the one in whom we hoped. We rejoice and exult that he has saved us’. It is a banquet at which people’s deepest hunger and thirst will be satisfied, our hunger and thirst for a love that is reliable, for a life that endures forever, for the One in whom our restless hearts can finally and fully rest. If at the end of our lives we will experience the Lord as a wonderful host, in the course of our lives we can find him to be a reliable shepherd who leads us to this banquet and who, along the way, strengthens us and revives our drooping spirits.

In the course of our daily lives, we can begin to experience the Lord as a host as well as a shepherd. Here and now he calls out to us as the Bread of Life, inviting us to the Eucharist, calling us to come to him and promising that those who come to him will never be hungry and those who believe in him will never be thirsty. In the language of today’s gospel reading, each day we are invited to the wedding feast of the king’s son, of God’s Son. Each day the Lord wishes to satisfy those deeper hungers and thirsts of our hearts. One of the ways we respond to that invitation of the Lord is by our presence at the Sunday Eucharist. Just before we receive Holy Communion, the celebrant declares, ‘Blessed are those called to the wedding feast of the Lamb’.

The parable in today’s gospel reading suggests that the Lord who invites us needs our free response. Many of those who had earlier said yes to the king’s invitation to his son’s wedding then said no, just as the meal was ready. Undeterred, the king invited others, everyone that could be found, good and bad alike. There would be no empty seats at his son’s wedding banquet. The Lord keeps inviting. Indeed he keeps drawing us to himself. Yet, we need to allow ourselves to be drawn. As we allow ourselves to be drawn, as we grow in our relationship with him, he will want us to be properly dressed, in the image of that parable, to be clothed with his values. We are to dress as people who find ourselves on the Lord’s guest list, through no merit of our own. In the words of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we are to keep clothing ourselves with ‘compassion, kindness, meekness and patience’ and, above all, with ‘love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’. This is our baptismal garment, and our wedding garment.