28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 22:1-14
Imagine that you have organised a big feast for your daughter’s wedding and after thinking and debating about who will be on your guest list, with one week to go before the wedding, you learn that a lot of the guests you are expecting to be there start begging off and offering cheap excuses and even worse some of them won’t give a word why, they just say that they can’t turn up. So in your desperation, you offer the invitation to people that you know but you haven’t seen them for a long time and in the end you have a cracker of a wedding feast.
In the gospel for today, the king is in that bind. He had prepared everything for his son’s wedding but the people who he was expecting didn’t want to attend for one reason or another but most of them purposely. And to his shock and horror, his messengers who he sent out to see who was coming, were abused and killed. So, he exacted revenge on those evil people. And when the wedding was drawing near, he decided to invite everybody and he filled the wedding hall, to his delight. And then he saw somebody who was not wearing a wedding garment, and he threw the guy out of the hall.
In Jewish culture, it was normal to make two invitations. First, one would make an initial invitation, then those who were invited would try to suss out who was invited and who would or wouldn’t come. Usually, these people would look at the guest list and see if there were VIPs on it. Because we have to understand weddings are social events. Normally, a person who was organising a wedding would invite people of his class more or less in society. In our world today, it is also the same, just take a look at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine, several years ago. Their guests were not only their relatives but also fellow royalties from other countries like the Sultan of Brunei or the King and Queen of Denmark and more. Most probably, these invited people also had feelers out to ascertain who would and would not attend.
However, in the gospel, the king did something very different, instead of calling off the wedding as was the custom in that situation, he invited all the people in the town plaza who in normal circumstances wouldn’t be invited.
What Jesus is telling us today in the gospel is that since the original “invitees” to the banquet refused to attend, the wedding banquet is now offered to everybody. Sadly, those who were invited may have accepted the invitation, however, since they learned that the wedding involved Jesus, sadly some of them, particularly the Pharisees, scribes and the elders of the people rejected him and we who have accepted Jesus are now the ones who get invited.
However, this invitation is not necessarily a freebie. Remember that in the parable, the king saw one person who was not wearing a wedding garment and got kicked out in the process. For us Catholics, we believe that this wedding garment is actually our baptismal garment that we wore when we were baptised. In the ritual of baptism, the priest tells our parents and all present that the baptismal garment is being presented to us to wear always and keep it unstained until the coming of the kingdom.
We have to realise that while we are invited, we have two questions to answer: First, do we want to accept this invitation even if we are not worthy of it? Second, have we done our best to wear our wedding garment and keep it unstained?
God continues to invite everybody for the wedding feast, which is actually eternal life in heaven. All we have to do is to accept it and make sure that we are wearing our wedding garment. And with what God is offering, why would we refuse?