Homily
for October 12, 2008
Liturgical Year A- Cycle II
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
Keeping the white
garment of Baptism in
Christ Jesus, clean. +
+ +
Gospel
Mt 22:1-14
Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and elders of the
people in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a
king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants
to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come. A
second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tel those invited:
“Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are
killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’ Some ignored the
invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The
rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The
king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and
burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore,
into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The
servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad an
good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came
in to meet the guests, he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding
garment. The king said to him, 'My friend, how is it that you came in
here without a wedding garment?' But he was reduced to silence. Then
the king said to his attendants, 'Bind his hands and feet, and cast him
into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of
teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That is kind of a strange story. Jesus, we all know, taught in parables
and oftentimes those parables were allegories. An allegory is a type of
literature or storytelling that uses symbolic figures and facts to try
to tell stories that contain lessons of great human and spiritual
importance. We heard two allegories tonight in this Gospel account.
The first is easier to understand than the second one. A strange story
but the King has a wedding feast for his son and he invites all the
“chosen people”, all the “big” people, the good people, and they don’t
come. One goes to his business, one goes to his farm and they refuse to
come. They even kill the servants who bring the invitation. The King
becomes enraged and he sends his army to destroy them and destroy their
city. Then he invites everyone else. The old version used to say, “Just
go out there on the highways and byways, and invite everyone who comes;
the worthy and the unworthy; bring them all in because I’m going to
have a wedding feast for my son.”
The teaching of this allegory or parable is of course that the King is
God the Father; and the son is Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is Christ’s
wedding feast. His bride is the Church. The servants that are sent out
and are mistreated and killed are the prophets. Throughout the
centuries, God has sent prophets and people killed them. Sometimes,
they didn’t believe them and they mistreated them. Finally, God became
angry and he destroyed their city. Well, Jerusalem was destroyed in the
year 70 AD, a reference to that, probably. Then he invited everyone
else. In other words the “chosen people” refused to come so now God
opened salvation to all people everywhere; to us Gentiles. Now we can
make it. God bless us.
The lesson that the hearers of the time heard was that “Don’t reject
God’s kingdom.” You notice they went to their jobs and their farms. It
wasn’t an outright rejection. They just had something better to do than
to go to the wedding feast. In other words, we get distracted in life
by our vocations sometimes. We get so busy doing the work of the Lord,
we forget the Lord of the work, and that is very dangerous. We must
keep our eye on why we live and the reason we were born, the reason we
were created is to see God face to face, to achieve the wedding feast
of heaven. If we do not do that, we have failed regardless of whatever
accomplishments we may have on these few years we call life on earth.
The second story though is a bit more difficult to understand. It
leaves us scratching our heads. All the people then come to the wedding
feast and there is this poor guy who’s not properly dressed and as a
result the King throws him out “where there’s wailing and gnashing of
teeth”, a clear reference to hell, all because he showed up out of
uniform? What’s up with that? It is easier to understand that people
who heard this story, understood it because it was a rabbinical parable
that Jesus was telling. They had heard this many times, although he put
his own “spin” on it. The rabbinical parable was this: There was a King
and he called in his servants and he gave them royal robes. He told
them to keep the robes for a while but that he would call them back one
day. After some time he called the robes back. He demanded their
return. The robes were so precious and costly that they were kept in
the treasury. Now some people, some of the servants took the robes and
cared for them with great diligence, kept them beautiful and pure.
Others wore them to work and to play and they became dirty and frayed.
When the King demanded the robes be returned, the royal robes, those
who had kept them in pristine condition brought them to the King, he
put them in the treasury, and he said, “Well done”. He commended them.
When the other servants who had not used the robes well or who had
dirtied them, brought them to the King, he sent the robes to the tailor
to be mended and to the fuller to be cleansed. Then he threw those
servants in jail.
Now that is the parable. It probably reads better in Hebrew than it
does in English. That’s not the greatest story I’ve ever heard told.
You sure couldn’t make a movie out of it. However, they were familiar
with that story. Of course, the lesson of the rabbis, the rabbinical
parable taught a lesson, the lesson was clear enough and that is that.
“You will be called to give your soul back to God, in the good order in
which he gave it to you.” That was his point.
There are Christian lessons as well that we know in light of Christ
today that while everyone may be invited to heaven, to the kingdom, to
the banquet, God still has standards. Some who approach God but insist
on approaching him on their own terms, will not be admitted into
heaven. In other words, those who show up in heaven wearing a soiled
garment, soiled with sin, will not be permitted to come into heaven.
Yes, everyone is invited. Yes, God’s mercy cleanses all people’s sins
if they ask for and accept the mercy. Part of the acceptance of God’s
mercy is the intent to change. You cannot ask God for mercy, “I need
your mercy because I’m doing this sin but I’m going to continue to do
this sin.” That doesn’t make any sense. God’s mercy is endless; The
Crucifix is Exhibit “A”. Mercy flowed from his side but we have to
accept that mercy by changing.
St. Paul tells us how to dress. He tells us in Galatians, “For
all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself in
Christ.” He tells us to “put on” Christ and make no provisions for the
flesh. At baptism, again, the priest or deacon said to the parents and
godparents “See in this white garment the outward sign of your
Christian dignity with your parents and godparents to help you bring
that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven”. You know,
it’s very interesting at the baptism font where we place the white
garment on the baby, the newly baptized, pt if you come into the church
as an adult during Easter, right after you’re baptized you were given a
white robe to wear, an alb, it is the same symbol. And at the same
place in the church when we have a funeral, the funeral director rolls
the casket right in front of that baptism font and we cover it with a
white pall. The baptism garment of the baby is the beginning. The pall,
placed on the body at the end of life, the white pall, unstained, is
the end at least of this little part of our life that we call earth., a
little tiny “wee thing” we call these few years, we have because in
terms of eternity, you couldn’t even measure our span of life.
Our mission is to keep that garment clean. Who here has not sinned?
Maybe that baby over there but he’ll learn. We’ll teach him. We need to
cleanse the garment. We do that by charity, by alms giving, by
sacrificing, by growing in the virtues. We do it by using the sacrament
of confession which Christ gave us. First thing that he did when he
rose from the dead, he gave us this beautiful sacrament that so few
people, so few Catholics use. I don’t know why because it cleanses us.
Some people say, “Well, I can work out forgiveness of my own sins with
Christ.” I hope you don’t have the same attitude towards your teeth. “I
have a toothache. I don’t need a dentist. I’ll take care of that.” How
ridiculous.
I have sin on my soul. I need God’s mercy. I need his priest, this
sorry individual that he has given us.
Paul tells in Colossians, “Put to death then the parts of you that are
earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and the greed
that is idolatry. Because of these the wrath of God is coming upon the
disobedient. In these ways, you too once conducted yourselves but now
you must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander and obscene
language. Stop lying to each other since you have taken off the old
self with its practices and have put on the new self. You have put on
Christ and are being renewed in the image of your creator.”
Our decision to follow Christ is a total commitment. We submit to him
as he submitted to the Father, in obedience freely given not the
submission of a slave but the submission of a free man, a free woman
who gives their life to Christ Jesus, puts him first and then
everything else falls into place. For those of us who have been around
awhile, we know that it is true if we put God first, everything will
fall into place. If we do not, nothing will fall into place. We also
have learned in our lives that sin causes us to be sick. It makes us
miserable. It may give us temporary pleasure; but it never brings us
happiness; only putting God first in life will give us happiness.
We pray tonight that we’ll have the good sense to keep these garments
clean, these garments that are Christ Jesus, our Savior.
Let us pray this prayer of St. Ignatius.
If you’d bow your heads,
Take Lord
and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire
will, all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To
you Lord, I return it. Everything is yours. Do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me. Your love
and your grace is enough for me.
We pray through Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior, now and forever.
Amen.