19th Sunday after Pentecost
8 October 2023 – Canton
Praised be Jesus Christ!
“For many are called, but few are chosen.” “Give
not place to the devil.” If you would be part of the Lord’s great wedding
feast spoken about by Christ in the Gospel, you must renounce sin. That is, you
must break with Satan, with all his works, and with all his empty promises.
The great English
martyr bishop, St. John Fisher, stated clearly that three things are required
of us in that regard: 1) contrition, that is, genuine sorrow for our sins, 2) confession
to the priest of all our mortal sins, and 3) satisfaction, making amends in
order to scrub away what lingers on our souls of past sins now forgiven. A
great nineteenth century French spiritual author commenting on this Sunday’s
Gospel explains that dreading the loss of heaven and the pains of hell is a
worthy motivation for working to expiate past sins, correct our present faults,
and guard against falls from grace in the future.
In our Gospel
today from St. Matthew, we hear recounted the parable of the king eager to
celebrate his son’s wedding feast with his subjects. When the invited guests
refused to come and even mistreated or killed the king’s servants, the king had
these ingrates and their cities destroyed. He then filled the banquet hall with
all sorts of people whom he had constrained to come in from the highways and
byways. The king and his officers would not take “no” for an answer. Even so, the
man who presented himself at the feast without a proper wedding garment was punished,
hogtied, and cast into the darkness outside. “For many are called, but few
are chosen.” This man who failed to dress properly for the wedding is the
soul who fails to make satisfaction, to undergo the third scrubbing taught by
St. John Fisher and all the great tradition of the Church.
The Gospel scene may strike us as a bit odd to
the extent that we find the king’s behavior unreasonable, his forcing someone
to come to the party and then on top of it insisting that person dress up like
a proper guest. “My king! Take me as I am! Like it or lump it!”
For a lot of
years that may have been my reaction to the reading of this parable. Why is the
king so uppity? Why doesn’t he take the man as he is? Why the formality of
dress? After all, this wedding celebration was forced on him! You can imagine
him saying, “There I was minding my own business and then all of a sudden they grabbed
me literally and now here I am at the wedding of the king’s son!”
You’ll hear people, especially
adolescents, who react in much the same way to their call to live the Christian
life by the grace of their Baptism. Like it or not, they are expected to take
on the obligations of life in the Church (The famous Sunday morning struggle:
“Son, get out of that bed! As long as you are under my roof, you are going to
church with your mother and me!”). It has not been uncommon for years now to
hear of people who don’t baptize their children as soon as possible in infancy,
saying it would be better for them to choose Baptism on their own. You do hear
that, but no! It’s wrong. The real life consequences of the faith are those described
in today’s Gospel. They are those of embracing wholeheartedly the call we have
received from our parents, in and through the Church, to come and share in the
king’s wedding feast. How could we deprive a child of the great gift of
Baptism? It would be like depriving that child of life’s greatest good.
Let us leave aside for a moment parents who
for whatever reason fail to pass on their Catholic faith to their children,
whether by failing to baptize, by not setting a good example, or by not properly
instructing them in the faith! Let us also not talk of the tragedy of those who
themselves walk away from the practice of the faith (and they seem to be many
these days)! Rather let us consider for a moment those who claim to set their
own terms for being Catholic! Being Catholic on my own terms, forgiving my own
sins, showing up not properly dressed for the party is something which just
cannot be. That too would be a rejection of the king and his invitation. Here
too punishment is due. Hogtie him and throw him outdoors into the dark! This
snub of our duties as Catholics must have its consequences, this rejection of
the king, whether overt and aggressive as it was done by the first group of
invitees or somewhat cynical and passive as in the case of the man hauled into
the wedding from the street still refusing to dress the part of an honored guest.
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me
scatters.” (Matt. 12:30)
The invitation to
come to the feast cannot be anything other than a call to engagement with the
king and ultimately a call to obedience to the king’s will. People sometimes
refer to such demands put upon us as forced fun. What do I care about the
king’s son getting married? Why should I engage myself by going all the way and
getting dressed up for the occasion? What ultimately is in it for me? It is an
awkward sort of conversation and so perhaps we’re better off taking another
approach. Let’s try couching the thing in negative terms and saying that to
reject the king’s invitation is to throw our lot in with the devil. By siding
with God in His Church, we are committing ourselves to rejecting Satan and his
lies.
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of
the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the
tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall
die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that
when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.”
(Gen. 3:2-5)
My suspicion is
that all of you are eager to correspond to the wishes of the king and to live a
good and holy life. Even so, we have a burden to carry for others who fail in
this regard. We must also hasten to teach those in our care about the urgency
of a prompt and wholehearted response to the invitation of the king. And why
not state it negatively both for them and for us? A little dread may be a great
start on our path to the wedding feast of heaven, lest we end up in the
darkness outside.
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