28 Sunday A Parable of the marriage feast

Four minute homilies

Parable of the marriage feast

God has invited us to a wedding banquet in the kingdom of heaven. We are all invited; he wants all us to be saved, to be with him. No one is left out of his invitation. But He respects our freedom; it’s only an invitation, it is not compulsory to accept, even though it is for our own good. It is a wedding banquet. For the Jews it was the highest degree of happiness. It lasted for few days. For us a wedding reception is also a big celebration, but only lasts for few hours, where everything has to be perfect and normally it costs a lot of money. We all love going to weddings.

But this is a special wedding. It is the wedding of Christ and his Church. Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. He is not only inviting us to his wedding as guests, but as his bride. He is proposing a union with us, a union more intimate than the marriage union. Marriage is only for this earth, where we need to generate children. Jesus says that in heaven we won’t get married. The union that Jesus is proposing to us is an everlasting union, a union for the whole of eternity. He wants us to be so united with him, that we become more like him. Now here on earth Jesus is already offering us his engagement ring. This engagement normally lasts for the years we live here. But for the saints, the wedding banquet begins here. If we want to, we can also have it here.

But most of us don’t want to go to his wedding. It is silly but we don’t know much about it; we are not sure. We invent plenty of excuses not to go: “I have a business to attend, I just bought a new gadget, I am watching tv, listening to music, resting in my bed, doing my own thing.” Every time we don’t follow his will, every time we sin, we are telling him that we don’t accept his engagement ring, or we are throwing the ring back in his face, breaking the engagement. We fail to see the beautiful, precious stone in the ring. It has more power than the ring of “The Lord of the Rings”. It is the ring that opens for us the gates of paradise.

It is impossible for us to imagine what heaven is like. That’s why we reject the invitation. This rejection can be so blatant that it merits eternal punishment. Both, the no to God and the existence of hell puzzle us. I’ve heard a man saying that he doesn’t believe in a God that created hell. We are the ones who have created it with our evil deeds. God on the contrary wants to be with us for ever. People in hell don’t want to leave, they won’t ask God for forgiveness. We should better concentrate in our yes to God and to the amazing place he has prepared for us.

One of the guests at the wedding banquet is thrown out because doesn’t have the proper dress. Saint Gregory the Great says that the wedding garment is the theological virtue of charity, our love of God. It is the only virtue that perdures in heaven. If we are not dressed with this garment, we are going to be thrown out from the banquet hall into the outer darkness. We have our whole life to weave our wedding dress. We cannot do it in one go; it is a long life task. We do it every day, one step at a time, one thread a day. Sometimes we are like Penelope, who weaved during the day and unraveled it at night. We need to renew our love of God every day.

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