He dispatched his servants
to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.
The fact of being invited to the wedding feast held by a king for his son was not enough to motivate the invited guests. It was insufficient for them that the king himself desired their company at his celebration. Better citizens would have been already motivated to share in this joy, for the joy of the son of the king pertained ultimately to the whole kingdom. But their interests, as we shall see, were much too narrow to account for that.
In lieu of finding anyone who would simply share the joy of the king and his son for their own sakes the king tried to motivate them by their self-interest, saying "Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast". This was a feast long foretold, really identical with what Isaiah describes in the first reading, "a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines". Surely an invitation to this banquet, to the mountain were death would be destroyed forever, would be enough to motivate people to come?
Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them.
Not only would they not come for the sake of the king they wouldn't even allow themselves to come for the sake of the greater joy that was on offer compared to their routines, jobs, and obligations. Shockingly, they were even willing to defend their daily quotidian existence against the very possibility of this joy as though it were a hostile threat. There must very much have been a veil that veiled their minds and a web that was woven over them for them to be so deeply deluded. They were captives of their unsatisfying lives, but, like those with Stockholm Syndrome, came to love these abusive captors.
Are we any better? We know that we often fail to love God for his own sake, and have trouble motivating ourselves to do so even when we know it will be a great benefit to us. We too are so ensnared in daily existence that we sometimes misinterpret any challenge to that routine as a threat. The king, who very much desires to share with us his joy, has to look hard and try again and again to find a way to make us realize what is on offer in his invitation.
Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.'
One way in which God tries to capture our attention is by bestowing his favors precisely on those who seem undeserving and by elevating them and giving them the full joy of his banquet. In seeing this we are meant to recognize how petty are the little things to which we cling over and against the invitation to the feast. Hopefully we may come to realize that we too are among those who are invited entirely out of generosity on the part of the king, that we are not impressive or deserving, and that whatever else is going on in our lives apart from this feast is nothing by comparison. Our work is not earning our existence or proving our value and it can therefore be relativized, and yield its place in our lives to God's will for us.
But when the king came in to meet the guests,
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
The king said to him, 'My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?'
The expectation of the king was that even those called from the streets, the good and bad alike, could and should come in proper wedding attire. Yet we know that ultimately it is God himself who makes it possible for us to enter his feast. He is the one who robes us with new life at baptism. And it is he himself who gives us the grace to bring our baptismal robes unstained to the heavenly banquet.
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (see Ephesians 5:26-27).
Although God has made our entrance into his feast possible it is his expectation that we will cooperate with the grace given in baptism.
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (see Revelation 19:7-8).
Our ability to cooperate with grace comes from a different source of power than the one we used to use trying to live our daily lives without his help. It comes when we recognize and can say together with Saint Paul, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me".
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