God is the Lord of joy; with or without us, the banquet of his Kingdom will take place
Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14.
Dear brothers and sisters
1. This Sunday’s readings shed light on two fundamental realities: joy and sadness. The first reading is an “apocalypse”, or “the Apocalypse of Isaiah”, that is, a revelation God made to the prophet about events to come. In it, God reveals himself as the Lord of the feast. The prophet announces that the Lord will prepare a lavish banquet on his mountain. On the menu: rich, succulent meats and fine, well-aged wines. Enough to whet the appetite of more than a few people in this church!
Of course, this does not mean that vegetarians or those who do not drink wine will be excluded. It is rather a banquet where all kinds of food are offered, what is mentioned being our “chef’s special”. The guests are all the peoples of the earth. What the United Nations cannot achieve, God does. Here we have, in images, a word about the end of history, when all the families of the nations will be gathered around the Lord of the universe to celebrate harmony and peace restored. On that day, sadness will vanish: death will be destroyed, taking its procession of desolation with it. God is the Lord of joy, not of sadness. For the Lord, the history of humanity will end on a positive note.
2. The Gospel also speaks of a great banquet, the one a king gives for the wedding of his son. Jesus uses this image to speak to us about the Kingdom of God. The wedding of a prince is usually a joyful event for all his subjects. The celebrations of the royal family touch, in a way, every family in the kingdom. Everything is done to ensure a resounding success: food, drink, music, dancing and guests. Nothing is left to chance or improvisation. That is what the king and his court have planned. When everything is ready, courtesy in the East requires that the guests be told to come.
However — and this is the great surprise — as if they had agreed to sabotage the royal wedding, the guests refuse to come. They knew they were invited and should have made arrangements. On the day of the feast, when everyone is waiting only for them, the guests do not turn up. There may have been poor communication on the part of the king’s servants. That is why the king decides to send other servants with a very clear message. Whatever the case, the guests pay no attention to this message. Some of them even go so far as to torture and kill these servants. Where only joy should reign, sadness sets in.
4. Two things will then happen. On the one hand, justice must be restored. That is the role of the punitive expedition that will enforce the law against the criminal guests: the king destroyed the murderers and burned their city. Here again sadness gains ground, but this sadness is caused by the criminals themselves. They reap only what they have sown. After all, they were not forced to come to the royal banquet, so why kill people whose only mission was to bring them news?
On the other hand, the feast is neither cancelled nor postponed. It will take place, but with new guests. The king asks his servants to go out to all his subjects and extend the invitation to everyone. Let us listen again to his words: “Invite to the wedding feast whomever you find”. Note that the king does not ask his servants to go and seize manu militari anyone at all, willing or not, and bring them to the banquet. Jesus also describes how the servants carried out the king’s mission: “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike…” So at no point is it said that this was a violent, military action that left these new guests no choice, nor even that they did not know where they were going. They must therefore have known how to behave at the wedding of the royal family.
5.Finally comes the episode of the king’s meeting with the guests. The sovereign notices that among them there is a man not dressed in a wedding garment. Many wonder whether this king is really serious. Indeed, they say, how could a man taken from the road have had time to get a wedding garment? The only problem is that the others too were taken from the road, yet they are dressed for the wedding. Moreover, it is not said that the new guests were taken by force, the way demonstrators are thrown into a military truck today. This man’s silence is therefore that of someone who has no valid argument to defend himself. Note, moreover, that he does not apologise. He will end up in sadness, cast outside into the darkness.
6.In the context of Jesus and the first disciples, the parable of the great banquet serves to explain the paradoxical situation surrounding the reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The chief priests, the elders of the people and the Pharisees, in their overwhelming majority, behaved like the guests who refused to come to the king’s banquet. On the other hand, many tax collectors and sinners responded willingly to the Gospel. After Pentecost, they would be joined in the Church by men and women of different cultures, languages, peoples and nations.
7.Dear friends, with or without us, the banquet of the Kingdom of God will take place. Nothing can cancel or postpone it. If the banquet of the Kingdom of God is indeed going to take place, who will be part of it? I must ask myself the following question: are there not certain things in me that are worth more than God? As in the Gospel, it may be that my material goods (my land, my business, my affairs, etc.) matter more than my relationship with God. The Lord keeps calling, but it is as if the message he gets back were: “The number you are calling is either switched off or out of network coverage”. Let us not close our hearts; let us stay within the network coverage that is the Church. For God alone can truly fill us with joy.
8.Finally, it is not enough to be invited by the Lord. We must also make the necessary arrangements. When we are expected at the Presidential Palace or have an appointment with a high authority, how do we prepare? And when the Lord invites us to the Eucharist, which is a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb, how do we place ourselves in his presence? Our dress is not to be neglected: sometimes, by the way we dress and conduct ourselves in his presence, we send others the message that Jesus is not worthy of respect, even though we profess that he is the King of the universe. Above all, let us not forget our wedding garment, namely a life in keeping with the promises of our baptism: to renounce Satan and all his lies, to believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the Church, producing works that bear witness to our faith. Amen.
Originally published on SPIRITANS AFRICA AND ISLANDS on Substack.