The Wedding

Thursday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Ps 84 (83):10-11 Turn your eyes, O God, our shield; and look on the face of your anointed one; one day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

Collect O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Ezechiel 36:23-28; Psalm 50; Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' But they paid no attention and went off— one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are invited, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22:1-14)

The Wedding The first image that our Lord’s parable places before us is of the kingdom of heaven being likened to “a wedding banquet.” God had promised to Abraham that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Abraham would be father to a great people. His grandson Jacob prophesied (in one rendering) that “the sceptre shall never depart from Judah ... until he comes to whom it belongs” (Genesis 49:10). So a “sceptre” is involved — God’s chosen people will be a kingdom in some sense, and “the sceptre” will be held by Judah till the coming of the Messiah “to whom it belongs.” The Messiah will be King. The Scriptures add more and more to profile of the Messiah. He will be the Son of David. He will be the Son of Man, as portrayed in the book of Daniel. He will be “Lord” — “the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies a footstool” (Psalm 110:1). Especially significant for the idea of the Messiah was God’s description of himself as Bridegroom or Husband of his chosen people. God’s relationship with his people involved a covenant, and this covenant was like a marriage. The violations and neglect of the covenant were like infidelities within a marriage. Finally the Messiah came: as Andrew said to his brother Simon (John 1: 41), “we have found the Messiah!” Now, how did our Lord as Messiah describe himself? More often than not he referred to himself as “the Son of Man,” evocative of the prophecies of Daniel. But very importantly, he also described himself as the Bridegroom. John the Baptist described Christ as Bridegroom to God’s people: “I am not the Messiah: I am sent before him. It is the bridegroom who has the bride” (John 3: 28-29). Our Lord, in speaking to John’s disciples, confirmed this by referring to himself as the bridegroom: “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast” (Matthew 9: 15). In our Gospel today our Lord tells the parable in which, right at the outset, he describes the kingdom of heaven as being “like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”

While in the Old Testament God describes himself as the Bridegroom and the people as his spouse, in our parable today God is now the King and it is his Son who is the Bridegroom. While the Son is distinct from the King, of course, the Son assumes the relationship with the people which the God the King had with them in the Old Testament. In fact, the parable assumes that this was always the plan. Moreover, the kingdom is described as a feast, and in this it is the fulfilment of what the prophet Isaiah had spoken of. “On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines” (Isaiah 25: 6). It will be a banquet of immense joy, and our Lord makes clear that it is a wedding banquet. The parable also broadly covers salvation history and its tragedies of refusal. Invitations had gone out, but they were roughly refused. “He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' But they paid no attention and went off — one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them.” This brought down a divine judgment on those specially chosen people: “The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” It illustrates the wonderful prospects that our being chosen by God offer us, and it also illustrates the sombre doom that our neglect and refusal will bring. The king sends out his emissaries to bring in all they can find — an obvious allusion to the mission of the Church to the world. All mankind is called to enter the kingdom. This time they come and the wedding hall is filled — but still, one is found unprepared, untidy, unworthy. So while all are called, all must be found worthy. The kingdom constitutes a wonderful future, but we must so live as to be judged worthy of admittance.

Let us understand the glory of which we are part. By baptism we are already members of Christ’s mystical body the Church. We are in him and he is in us. We are members of his bride the Church, and he is the Bridegroom. The kingdom will be like a wedding feast, celebrating the spiritual espousal of Christ with his Church. Let us make it the principal object of our life, to be wearing a proper wedding garment. That is to say, we must put on the person of Jesus Christ, striving to be like him down to the inmost core of our mind, heart and soul. To it, then!

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Ezechiel 36:23-28)

The Coming of the Sanctifier One of the keystone passages of the Old Testament is that of Ezechiel 36: 23-28. It foretells the coming of the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifier. He would be the Gift not just to particular individuals enabling them to fulfill certain key missions on God's behalf such as to prophesy (as a prophet) or to rule (as a judge such as Samson, or a king such as David). He would be sent to make holy the hearts of all God's people and cleanse them of their sins. He would come as the great Sanctifier of all who believed. Let us notice in the passage that God would do this precisely to manifest his holiness: "I mean to display the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them."

So having received the Holy Spirit, as we have at our Baptism and Confirmation, let us be resolved every day to seek personal sanctity through his grace, knowing that we will thus glorify God and show forth his holiness. In a world of sin that has lost the sense of sin and that cares not greatly for holiness as such, while it passingly refers to God, let us bear witness to a God who is present and who is holy. Be holy, God said, for I am holy.

(E.J.Tyler)

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