Homily for the Week of October 12, 2008

HOMILY: Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2008
Isaiah 25: 6-10; Psalm 23; Philippians : 12-14; Matthew 22: 1-14
At one time, and maybe even today, when invited to a celebration like a wedding fashion conscious people ask one another: What will I wear? What is the appropriate dress for this party. While there may be no dress code for going to a wedding, or to a high school football game, or to shopping at Walmarts, or to a funeral, or a hunting camp. showing up with blue jeans and a baseball cap at a White House wedding might get the Secret Service’s attention. I received an invitation today to a dinner for the 50th anniversary of Catholic Charities in Plattsburgh with the note saying that dress was semiformal. What does semiformal mean for a Catholic priest? In reality must persons have a sense of what is in or what is out at such occasions. Those who make and sell clothes more or less tell us what to wear.
Our Gospel for today is about a wedding, a wedding invitation and the appropriate dress for this wedding. In honor of his son’s marriage, the king throws a big party and sends invitations to many to come to the wedding. The invited guests refuse to come. We do not know why. Like most weddings we have a lot of guests who can’t make it. The kings problem began when the first list of those invited refused. Then the king gets angry, and send out his army to destroy them. But note also that the king does this only AFTER the invitation is refused. He then sends other invitations to both good or bad. The kind wants people at his son’s wedding. These persons come. But there is a man who was not dressed properly and he was thrown out of the banquet hall. Our initial judgement of the king’s action might be that he was too concerned with clothes.
Like all stories which we Jesus told, this story of the wedding is not really about clothes or the invitation list, but mostly about us. It is about you and me. It is about our goodness. Wearing the clothes of goodness consist in the quality of life and the conduct of the person. The clothes of goodness reveal the authentic character of the person. Wearing the clothes of goodness is the fundamental requirement of a Catholic life. It is really the story of how a person will get to heaven, or how the human race can get to heaven.
Whether we know it or not, we all live with the hope of immortality. We do hope to live for ever with the Lord. How do we attain this immortality? How do we respond to God's invitation to us? Do we just let it happen?
We may have a hard time understanding the power of the wedding banquet image for the people of the time of Jesus, because we so often have so much. All of us may have eaten in a restaurant that features an ALL YOU CAN EAT buffet. But imagine a time and place where only the very, very rich, the kings, did not have to worry about their children going to bed hungry.
In the land of Jesus, as in California and the Southwest, rain greens the hills with grass during fall and winter months but sun and heat slowly scorch them over the course of spring and summer. It is at this time when the land where Jesus lived started getting green. We just prayed Psalm 23, the Good Shepherd psalm in which we picture God as a good shepherd who finds green pastures and running water for the sheep and the cook who prepares a great meal in the sight of his enemies. God is the won who prepares a meal at which all of us are invited to eat.
Isaiah's vision of God's kingdom is of abundance, joy and peace, all the gift of the Lord. He describes the reign of God using familiar, tangible images, and we can easily grasp what Isaiah describes. It is an immortality that immediately appeals. But Isaiah does not simply describe: he teaches. On the day when we attain the kingdom, we will recognize the Lord's goodness and truly rejoice because it is God who saved us.
St. Paul takes a similar approach. He prays that God will supply our needs completely. Paul’s prayer is in response to the generosity of those who supplied all his needs. According to Paul all of us are invited to share in the banquet.
Many think that the story that Jesus gives us in the gospel is about his own life. Jesus did not know how to tell us what it would be like when we died and went to God. So he invites the people of his time to a meal. He invites all kinds of people: tax collectors, Pharisees, those with physical handicaps, the poor, the rich. The first time he invited them, they all came, but when the rich realized that they would have to sit with the poor, and when the Pharisees saw that they were expected to eat at the same table as sinners, they did not come again. They all made excuses so that they would not have to be with those they considered as undesirable.
As we notice from the uninvited guest, God wants all of us to come to the feast. God offers us forgiveness, reconciliation and healing, and rejoices when we accept these gifts. Rejoice with me, the good shepherd says. I have found the sheep that was lost. Rejoice with me, the father says, I have found my son who was lost.
All these voices are the voices of God. God’s joy is to be shared by all. God’s joy is the joy of the angels and saints; it is the joy of all who belong to the reign of God. God rejoices, not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end; and not because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising God’s goodness, not because our countries financial condition is under control. NO. God rejoices because one who was lost has been found.
Most of us are not use to rejoicing in things that are small, hidden and scarcely noticed by those around us. We are generally ready to receive bad news, to read about wars, violence and crime, and to witness conflict and confusion. Many of us are so use to living with sadness that we have lost the eyes to see the joy, and the ears to hear the gladness that belongs to God. These can be found in the hidden corners of the world.
One hidden act of repentance, one little gesture of selfless love, one moment of true forgiveness is all that is needed for God to welcome a returning son or daughter and to fill the heavens with sounds of divine joy. If that is God’s way, then we are challenged to let go of all the voices of doom and gloom that drag us into disbelief and allow the small joys to reveal the truth about the world win which we live.
Do we really love others as Jesus taught us? Or do we just say that we love others? If we love, then we must forgive. Forgiveness is a measure of our love for neighbor as well as for ourselves. How do we love ourselves? One of the ways we can test our love of self is how well we take care of ourselves physically and spiritually. Do we find time each day to be with others whom we love, or even to be alone to relax and to rest? These are the clothes of goodness-- love of God, love of others and love of self. Are we wearing these clothes? Are we dressed properly for the heavenly banquet of everlasting life with God? Which group of people have not been invited to our table? Putting on Jesus is risky. It means laying ourselves open to being made new and changed.