All Are Welcome, but We Need to Prepare

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    How wonderful to receive an invitation!  I don’t mean the incessant invitations to subscribe to this, or buy that which we seem to receive every day through email or text.   I mean invitations to some celebration or to become a part of a group or club that means something.  Invitations make one feel desired, appreciated, even treasured.  Especially when not everyone can join, due to cost or space, invitations have a way of stroking the ego in a healthy way.

    And so our Liturgy of the Word, the first main part of our Mass today, begins with an invitation.  “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”  And when paired with our Gospel and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, we certainly understand this banquet to point towards our Eucharistic celebration, the Mass.  I’ve mentioned before the beautiful mosaic at Tabgha at the place of the miracle in the Gospel, where there's a chapel, and underneath the altar is a mosaic with two fish and four loaves, signifying that the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, and that the miracle points to the Eucharist.
    What we see in both the prophecy from Isaiah and the miracle that we hear from Matthew, but which is in all four Gospels, is that everyone is welcome.  God invites everyone to come to him to receive proper drink and food.  And Christ feels compassion for the crowd of 5,000 people who have nowhere to go without being quite hungry.  They were certainly all disciples, as they stopped to listen to Him for an entire day, but we don’t get a sense that they were equally knowledgeable of Christ, or faithful to Christ.  Some may have simply been curious and become quite intrigued with the words Christ spoke.  Others may have been dragged there by friends and simply didn’t want to be rude and return home without the host who brought them.  So we see a certain universal call, a call to all people, to Christ’s banquet where He feeds them.
    However, Isaiah’s prophecy and the feeding of the 5,000 are not the Mass, even though they point to it.  We don’t use bread and wine and milk in the Mass.  Nor do we use bread and fish.  Milk doesn’t really agree with my digestion (though I’ll suffer through it for ice cream, pizza, and lasagna), so I’m glad we don’t use milk.  And imagine trying to keep fish and distribute it at Mass: we’d have to use incense just to mask the smell of aging fish!
    So even within the universal call to the banquet of Christ that we hear issued, which, in some sense, is true of the Mass, we also have restrictions on who partakes of the banquet.  In another parable, Christ speaks about how he invites the unlikely to the wedding banquet after the original invitees demure and do not come, but how the master expects the guests to come to the banquet in proper clothing.  So a universal invitation and guidance on how we carry ourselves in responding to that invitation is not foreign to the Gospel.  Imagine thinking that because your friends invited you to their wedding, you could show up in your pjs, because that made you feel the most comfortable.  Your friends may not mention your attire to your face, but I assure you everyone would be talking about it.
    So how do we come to this Eucharistic banquet to which we were invited?  I know it was vogue to say that clothing doesn’t matter when you come to Mass, but that’s simply not true.  I’m not saying everyone has to be in suit and tie or best dress, but there’s a reason why we call certain attire “Sunday best.”  Your Sunday best may be different than others, but do we give our best and show that this banquet means something to us, at least as best as we can muster as a college student, or parents with an infant, or established adults, or senior citizens?  Again, as long as we can say we’re giving our best to God, that’s what counts, not as much of what type of clothing we wear (though, if you’re over the age of 5, pjs should never be considered one’s best).
    Another consideration on the invitation to all is what we believe.  St. Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, says that only those who have been baptized and believe in what the Church teaches receive the Eucharist.  That’s why we generally don’t have intercommunion, even for baptized non-Catholics, because they don’t believe in the fullness of what the Catholic Church teaches.
    Likewise, in order to receive the full graces of the banquet, we should prepare for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  If we are aware of grave sins, like skipping Mass, using God’s Name in vain, improper use of our sexual faculties, etc., we need to go to confession first.  If we receive Holy Communion in a state of grave sin, we add the sin of a sacrilegious communion to our previous list and damage further our relationship with Christ.  We fast from all food and drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion in order to prepare even our bodies, which are united with our souls, to receive Christ into us.  We might even, on Saturday or earlier in the week, read the Sunday readings ahead of time so that we’re more ready to hear them proclaimed at Mass, or if our kids are distracting us, as kids do, we still know what God is saying through the Scriptures for that day.  This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want you to come at all to His banquet, but that while attendance is open to all, the full participation in the banquet does require certain actions and forbids others.
    There is room for everyone in God’s kingdom and at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  God invites each of us to union with Him and attendance at His banquet because of His great love for all of us.  But He expects that we will prepare ourselves for the banquet, because it is such a joyous occasion, just like we prepare ourselves for a wedding.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!