412. Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Meditations no. 613 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

God invites everyone to participate in the marriage of his Son with humanity.

THE KINGDOM of Heaven is like a king who celebrated the wedding of his son, and sent his servants to call the wedding guests; but they would not come. The prophets had already compared the messianic time to a wedding. They announced a new covenant in which God would ratify his faithfulness despite the betrayals of men. Jesus uses the same language to open the minds of his listeners to what they were witnessing at that moment. And now, after twenty centuries, God the Father continues to address his call to us to participate in the wedding of his Son with all humanity.

If the priest is called, by his ministry, to consecrate the Bread from Heaven, those words of the Gospel have not been spoken only to him: blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom of God (Lk 14:15). All souls, without exception, are called by baptism to participate in the banquet of the Great King, Christ Jesus. To each of them, it must be said: amice, ascende superius (Lk 14:10), aspire to participate in the banquet, do not forget your great dignity (cf. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistulae, 244); look to Christ, whom you must imitate (cf. 1 Cor 4:16 and 11:1), who says to all souls: ecce prandium meum paravi, my banquet is prepared; venite ad nuptias (Mt 22:4), come to the wedding.

The tone of the parable is compelling. Accepting the King’s invitation is not only a private matter for the guests, who could decline the call according to their personal preferences. It is certainly an individual decision, but it affects other people as well. Accepting the call is a duty that takes precedence over any other occupation, no matter how important it may seem.

We, as our Father wrote, must cry out, with all the force and urgency that are necessary, so that the scene of the parable is not repeated: illi autem neglexerunt: et abierunt, alius in villam suam - and they declined the invitation: who because they go to their selfishness, to their comfort - alius vero ad negotiationem suam (Mt 22:5): who, because they are absorbed in their professional task, without knowing how to make it - no one taught them it - divine way on earth and a very important part of their divine vocation as Christians, since it is precisely in the profession or in the office of each one that the Lord wants us to sanctify ourselves.

We must teach all men and women that being a Christian is something very great, because the soul of the believer is the holy temple of God (cf. 1 Cor 3:17), where the Most Blessed Trinity dwells (cf. Jn 14:23); but that it is necessary, if Christian perfection is to be attained, to fight with courage the battles of the interior life, because the kingdom of God can only be attained by living strength.

To reject the King’s invitation is a great mistake that will bring many misfortunes to the ungrateful guests and, reflexively, to so many other people. St. Josemaría expressed this consideration in words that are a call to responsibility. Keep in mind, my son, that you are not just a soul who joins with other souls to do something good.

This is a lot … , but it is little. “You are the Apostle who fulfills an imperative mandate of Christ. On the fulfillment of God’s Will depends our earthly and eternal happiness, and that of so many other people. On you and I behaving as God wants-do not forget-many great things depend.

No one is excluded from the call to holiness.

ABOVE the severity of the punishment shines God’s mercy: at no time does the Lord revoke his offering; indeed, the reproach of the men in the parable leads him to extend his call to the whole world. He said to his servants: “The wedding is ready, but the guests were not worthy. So go to the crossroads and call to the wedding as many as you find.” The servants went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, bad and good; and the wedding hall was filled with diners.

In this crowd we can distinguish three classes of people. In the first place, the large group of men and women who have accepted the invitation because of the advantages it offers them: a great feast, abundant and free food and drink, the spectacle of the royal ceremony. Perhaps they are also attracted by the possibility of establishing contacts that will provide them with some advantages in the future. The reasons that unite them to the king are external and conditional. In the end, they are not very interested in attending weddings, but in the benefit they can obtain.

Then there is the group of servants. These men are more closely linked to the king and his family: they serve faithfully and to a certain extent share the life and destiny of their master. Their stay in the house is not temporary, like that of the guests; but they are not free, they are subject to their master. Certainly, over the years, through love for their master, inner freedom can also be born. But this does not change the fact that they are in the wedding hall out of obligation, because they are servants.

The third group, finally, is made up of the king’s family, especially his son. The son is in the father’s house in his own right and freely. He shares everything with his father: life, destiny, joys, sorrows; the good and the bad for his father are also good for him.

In the social life of that time, and not infrequently even now, men and women were born in a social state: they were born free or slave, rich or poor, with or without the possibility of formation. Very little could be done by individuals to change their situation. In the interior life, on the other hand, everything depends on each person, because no one lacks grace. It is we who decide to which group of people we want to belong: to the upstarts who seek only their own advantage, to those who serve without interior freedom, or to the family of God.

Jesus’ call to holiness is addressed to all: estote ergo vos perfecti, sicut et Pater vester caelestis perfectus est (Mt 5:48), be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. And our Father in heaven has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he may be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Rom 8:29), because to all who received him he gave power to become children of God: to those who believe in his name (Jn 1:12).

God asks all of us to have in our hearts the same sentiments that Christ had in his (cf. Phil 2:5), conforming our lives entirely to the one program of Christian perfection (cf. Rom 10:4 and Col 1:28). All of us, priests and laity, are offered and required alike to be contemplative souls and identify ourselves with Christ in every circumstance - even in the midst of the world (cf. Gal 4:29). In this way, we will follow the Lord, we will put on him (cf. Gal 3:27) and we will live his life, being able to say with the Apostle: vivo autem, iam non ego: vivit vero in me Christus (Gal 2:20). And then each one of us, as a good Christian, is no longer alter Christus, but ipse Christus.

The Christian virtues are the fibers that make up the wedding garment.

The king went in to see the guests, and he noticed a man who was not wearing a wedding garment; and he said to him, “Friend, how did you come in here without wearing a wedding garment?” But he was silent.

The king’s question is sincere. He calls that guest a friend, his interest in him is genuine. But he must meet one condition: to wear the simple white and clean tunic, which was distributed free of charge at the entrance, and which each one placed over the garment he wore. This was how interior joy and festivity were expressed.

What is the garment that God requires to take part in the wedding of his Son? Saint Augustine answers: “It is that garment which only the good possess, those who are to remain at the banquet, those who will remain at the banquet to which no evil will have access, those who are to be led by Him by the grace of the Lord.” And after showing that he does not refer to Baptism, or to other spiritual practices that can be fulfilled by both the just and the sinners, he specifies: “What, then, is the wedding garment? It is this: the end of the commandment, says the Apostle, is the love that proceeds from a pure heart, from an upright conscience and from unfeigned faith (1 Tim 1:5). This is the wedding garment.”

It is not enough to stir people, to facilitate a first encounter with Jesus Christ. It is necessary to help them develop solid virtues informed by charity, to encourage them to preserve the illusion of the first encounter with Jesus, and to move them to constantly improve. In a word, it is necessary to teach them to cultivate a solid Christian life. I like to compare, writes St. Josemaría, the interior life to a dress, to the wedding garment of which the Gospel speaks. The fabric is made up of each of the habits or practices of piety that, like fibers, give vigor to the fabric. And just as a garment with a tear is despised, even if the rest are in good condition, if you pray, if you work … but you are not penitent-or vice versa-your interior life is not-so to speak-complete.

The fact of not having worn the wedding garment is much more than forgetfulness or negligence. It is a remarkable injury: the contempt for the means gained by Christ to follow Him, which cannot go unpunished. Then the king said to the servants: “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Participation in the wedding, through union with the Lord by grace, offers the only possible liberation from sin and opens the doors to the holiness to which we are all called. No one is excluded from salvation if he freely acquiesces to the loving demands of Christ. Outside of Him, there is only desolation and shadows of death.

Being gratuitous, the divine invitation is an urgent and imperious call. The Lord addresses it to all men, imposing on them only one condition: that they clothe themselves with the merits of his Son as with a wedding garment. This is the kingdom of Christ: the divine action that saves men and women and that will culminate when history ends, and the Lord, who sits on the highest part of paradise, comes to judge men definitively.

Jesus concludes by recalling personal responsibility for the gift of grace. You know perfectly well the development of the parable. Now, I only wish to draw your attention to the words with which it ends: multi enim sunt vocati, pauci vero electi (Mt 22:14); many are invited and few are chosen. I am convinced that indeed all are called, but there are many who do not want to enter the banquet hall, or come without putting on the wedding garment that the owner himself provides (cf. ibid., 11).

No one ever lacks the help of Heaven, but everyone must accept his call with a personal response. Let us follow our Father’s advice for this. Have constant recourse to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God and Mother of humanity: and she will draw, with the gentleness of a Mother, the love of God to the souls you meet, so that they may decide - in their ordinary work, in their profession - to be witnesses of Jesus Christ.