Reflection for 10/15/17 (Sunday)

Have you ever had to plan a party or put together a big dinner engagement?  I know many of you have at least had to plan a wedding reception, so you can understand the headaches that go into it all.  You have to arrange for a venue, then you have to decorate the venue, then you have to make sure the caterer is lined up or if you are cooking yourself, you have to prepare all the food.  You have to buy napkins enough for all and drinks enough for all and get every little detail in order.  Not to mention, you have to take the time to formulate an invite list, and you can never invite everyone that you want to because you have limited space, so you have to cut the list down once or twice or even three times.  But finally, when all is said and done and the time arrives for the party, you feel pretty good about what you have done.  You are excited for people to show up and have a good time—to show us and share in your joy.
 

Now, imagine if nobody that you had invited showed up to your party.  How terrible would you feel?  You would probably think that they were late in arriving, the invitations must have been lost in the mail, or some type of accident on the highway is keeping everyone from showing up to your event.  Surely, people would not be so self-absorbed that they would completely ignore your invitation and all the work you had done.  What a horrible and lonely feeling this would be.
 

And yet, that’s exactly what happened to God in his relationship with the Israelites.  The Lord had been preparing a banquet for the Israelites and he was waiting for the proper time to summon them to the meal.  He had to make sure everything was in place—that the calves and fattened cattle were slaughtered and the places were set.  As we know, God sent his Son to suffer and die and to call the chosen people of Israel back to their loving King, but the Israelites rejected Jesus as their Messiah.  They refused to attend the wedding feast, so God sent Apostles like Paul to all the world and gathered in the Gentiles.  If the chosen ones would not accept the love of the Father, the Gentiles would become the heirs to that love instead.
 

But this parable does not lose it’s effect just because we are not Israelites.  Rather, this parable speaks to us quite clearly, “Do we recognize God’s loving invitations in our lives, and do we follow those invitations or do we reject them?”  You see, indeed Christ has died for us so that we might share in the feast of the Eucharist, and it is apparent that we believe in him and have come to accept the invitation, otherwise we wouldn’t be here now.  However, accepting the invitation does not mean merely showing up to the feast and partaking—just because we are here now does not mean we have truly accepted the invitation.
 

In order to fully accept the invitation of the king to the wedding feast, we have to understand all that the invitation entails.  Jesus tells us in the Gospels, “[T]he king will say to [the sheep] on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me…  Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’” The king does not say, “Inherit the kingdom because you showed up.”  He gives very specific reasons for one to inherit the kingdom.  But don’t think that this means we only have to work for the material needs of others and Mass is just Lagniappe.  Mass is also essential, for elsewhere Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”  We must eat the flesh and drink the blood if we wish to have life, but once we have received that life then we have an obligation to go and share it with the world by giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, etc.
 

My brothers and sisters, these are the stipulations for coming to the king’s feast.  If we choose to ignore those stipulations, if we ignore the needs of our neighbors, then we will be bound and cast into the darkness outside.  As St. Paul attests, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself, “ that is whoever neglects the needs of the body of Christ in the world, cannot worthily receive the body of Christ in the Eucharist.  For us to ignore this relational aspect of the Eucharist would be like going to a black tie event but ignoring the black tie specification on the invitation and wearing jeans with a polo.  
 

In the last portion of today’s Gospel, that’s exactly what happened.  You see, in ancient times, the king would give wedding garments to his guests for them to wear to the feast; thus, for someone to show up without his or her garment would be an insult or an affront to the king.  That person would effectively be rejecting the king’s wishes while presuming to attend the feast.  
 

That brings us back to the original question, “Do we recognize God’s loving invitations in our lives, and do we follow those invitations or do we reject them?”  Day in and day out the Lord invites us to love one another.  He places people in our lives that need our help—the woman at the store who just needs someone to tell her hello so she feels noticed, the man on the street corner who needs a little extra help to get out of a rut, the family member in our lives who simply needs someone to take time and listen, the person entrenched in a sinful life who needs someone to reach out and tell him or her that there is hope in God.  Each instance like this is an invitation by God, and if we ignore those invitations, then we cannot come worthily to accept the invitation to the great feast of the Eucharist.  Let us begin to discern the needs of others in our lives, let us begin to live lives for others, and then the Lord will be more than happy share his life with us, now and for eternity.