Second Sunday after Pentecost
But part of what I’m doing is more than enjoying a good game or a beautiful performance. I decided early on as a priest that, as I can, it’s important for me to be involved in the lives of young people in their hobbies and extra-curricular, and to show up as much as I can. Not infrequently, other parish responsibilities will lessen my availability, but when I can, it’s nice to be able to support the young men and women.
It’s also sending a message that I, and, by extension, God, care about what they do in life. So often, people only see a priest at confession or Mass, and it can lead to this skewed vision that the priest only cares when I’m repenting of my sins or going to Mass. By meeting them at their joys, the activities that make them feel alive, I’m showing them that God loves not just their religious practices, but their entire life, and wants to be a part of it.
We make time for what we love. We show, by our attendance, what is important to us. Part of the struggle in the Catholic Church right now is Mass attendance, and not simply because of COVID (but certainly exacerbated by it). Young people, present couple excluded, do not attend Mass regularly, even monthly. Why not? Among other reasons, because their parents didn’t go, and/or didn’t make them go. And kids are very quick to pick-up that if something is important, you will be there. In my own life, going to Mass was never a question of “if,” it was always a question of “when.” Even if I had a Boy Scout lock-in Saturday night, which meant that I was up until about 2 or 3 a.m., we were going to be at Mass, and I can remember where I still had to be ready for 9 a.m. Mass on Sunday morning (I may have slept through the homily).
In the parable our Lord gives us today, we are presented with a great feast, for which no one has time. The excuses aren’t all that bad, either. If you had just bought a farm and needed to see what needed to be planted, what weeds need to be cleared, a feast might not sound like something important. Or if you just got married, you probably want to spend time with your wife. In fact, in the Old Testament, one could be released from military service if a marriage had just occurred. Maybe inspecting the five oxen wasn’t such a good excuse, but they would have been worth a precious sum. And yet, the man giving the feast is angered because no one will come!
The man considers the great banquet the most important thing, which no one should miss. He values it above property, above livestock, even above marriage. But no one values it as much as he. So the man throwing the feast tells his servants to gather all those whom society has rejected–the poor, feeble, blind, and lame–and invite them in. And there is still room, so the servants are sent to beat the bushes to drum up more people so that the house is filled for the feast.
It’s easy to tell the face-value message of this parable. Jesus is letting the Pharisees know that they have been invited to His great feast, but they are finding excuses for not attending. They are showing their lack of love for God by rejecting the one He has sent. So others are being invited in whom the Pharisees would’ve rejected. But how easy it is to notice the splinter in the Pharisees’ eyes, but not notice the plank in our own. Isn’t it the sign of a troubled conscience that we so quickly try to put the spotlight away from our own souls and on to another.
Now, obviously, you are here for the Mass, the wedding feast of the Lamb. But what about in your daily life? Are there times when the Lord is inviting us to spend time with Him in private prayer, in works of charity, in simply silence, and we find excuses and things that we would rather do? St. John tells us in the epistle that we are called not to love in word or speech, “but in deed and truth.”
How do we spend our time? How do we betray what we truly love by the time and attention that we give to it? What witness are we providing about what is most important in our life? The world may mock us, as St. John also reminds us, for putting our Lord, our Church, our family first. But we are still called to give witness to the importance of those first things.
And as our best example, we have Jesus, who showed His love for us in laying down His life for us. That’s how we know the love of God. God not only showed up, but gave His all for our eternal salvation. May we make time for God, not only here at Mass, but also in our daily lives, so that the world and God may see the importance we place on our relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
