Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 20, 2009 - St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
[Judges 11:29-39A and Matthew 22:1-14]Many are invited, but few are chosen.
For the past few days, the Gospel of Matthew has presented us with various invitations or gifts from Jesus. These have come with considerable challenges and little room for accommodation. The common desire for "negotiation" and "options" does not appear to have a place on the table. Indeed, today's gospel passage literally deals with an invitation to the "table." Both Jesus and St. Paul (at least initially for the latter) exercised a "preferential option" for the Jewish faithful. However, the gospel accounts show Jesus as being open to faith wherever he encountered it (e.g. the centurion and the Canaanite woman). The various issues surrounding the incorporation of non-Jewish converts occupy a lot of attention and the subject made for broad and narrow interpretations. Today's parable suggests a broad interpretation with the usual challenge at the end that we have experienced in the last few days. The initial guests (the Jewish faithful) are the first invited but they reject the invitation, some violently. The invitation is given a second time to anyone "in the main roads" to "whomever you find." However, one of the "new" guests shows up without a proper "wedding garment" and suffers the same fate as those who initially rejected the invitation. The "chosen" are those who respond willingly and properly to the invitation. The issue is not about the "what if's" that inevitably arise ("What if the guy didn't know or didn't have money, etc. etc.?"). It's about taking the invitation for granted. Whether Jew or non-Jew, the invitation to God's table requires action on our part not to "earn" it but to be worthy of it. The wedding garment is not an option. AMEN
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