Invited

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2014 A

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

On that day it will be said: "Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!  This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!"  For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.  Isaiah 25:9-10A

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."  Matthew 22:11-14

Piety

Prayer, fasting and good works are the garments for the feast of the Lord.  Our piety takes on the textures of the good things we have done for one another.  It is God who sent his son into our lives that we might know the best way to serve God.  God loved us so much that he wanted to be one with us in his son.  The son is the way, the truth and the life of our piety.  We might seem to struggle to put on Christ but the willingness of Christ to embrace us with his love from the cross is how the heart transplant takes its beginnings.  We still have to come to the feast.  Every Eucharist is a return not only to the last supper, but all the more a return to the actual dying of Christ on his Cross.  Our Eucharist celebration is the actual dying of Christ.  And every time we celebrate the Eucharist we are reliving the dying of Christ by our presence and our participation in Eucharist. 

Study

Our invitation to the banquet of the Lord is wide open.  We can be part of the bridal party by how we dress up our lives by our imitation of Christ that gradually becomes the reliving of Christ in our time and age by the way we have put on the spirit of Christ.  How many ways our lives speak the love of God for all of us is seen in the very giving of our lives to the needs of the time we live in.  We are called to be updates of Christ.  If we die with Christ, we rise with him.  Our study of how Christ announced the love of God by giving his life leads us to offer our lives in reaching out to the needy of our world.  Our freedom to protect our comfort and ourselves gradually loses its attraction in the realization that Christ died for us and that we likewise can die for him in what we do for one another. 

Action

We can do all things in him who strengthens us.  The best action of our lives is seen in going to Eucharist as often as we can.  Sometimes our duties and our obligations keep us from making a daily Eucharist, but we are all able to give at least one day to the Lord each week and Eucharist is the mainstay of growing in Christ.  Even as we become what we eat, Christ grows in us both by our frequenting Eucharist and the ways we give our lives for the sake of each other.  The glorious riches in Christ Jesus are ours in each Mass.  Christ is the glorious meal that Isaiah talks about that God has prepared for us on the mountain of the Lord.  We climb the mountain of Christ’s life to find in our climb all the love God has for us in his Son.  Our love for Christ gives us the happiness God has waiting for us.