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!

Invites, RSVPs, and Attendance

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ironically, as I was preparing for the homily this past week, I received an invitation in the mail for a wedding that is being celebrated in July.  Talk about the Word of God being active and alive!

With Facebook, there are more and more events to which we can be invited.  Sometimes there are still the paper invitations, especially with weddings, but I have seen more and more people go to online invitations for open houses, parties, and we use it on our parish Facebook page for different events happening in our parish.

An invitation is, firstly, a sign that we are important to the person doing the inviting.  I remember when I was helping to plan my ordination reception with my parents.  There were all the considerations about whom to invite.  Because you can’t only invite one second cousin.  If you invite one, you have to invite them all.  But sometimes you’re closer with some family members than with others.  So if we’re invited, it is a sign that we are important enough to get the invite.  And I think that’s one of the takeaways from the Gospel reading today: God considers each of us important enough to invite to His wedding feast.  That’s no small thing.  God wants each of us to share eternal life with him.  

Isaiah describes that wedding feast using the image of the mountain of the Lord.  There will be the best of foods and the best of wines.  The quality of the food and wine is so good that Isaiah does something common when something is too good for words: he repeats himself.  But beyond the food and wine, on the mountain of the Lord there is no more death, no more tears, and no more reproach (which is a word we don’t hear that much and means “the expression of disapproval or disappointment”).  The day of the mountain of the Lord is a day of rejoicing, because God has saved us.  And this reading is one of the suggested readings for funerals, because the mountain of the Lord should be the goal of our life, and it’s where we hope our loved ones go after death.

But, another takeaway from the Gospel is that not everyone RSVPs to the invitation in the affirmative.  There are people who decline the invite for things of lesser importance: farming, business, or even just ignoring the invite altogether.  Even though invited, they don’t give much weight to the relationship with the person who is inviting them to rejoice with him and his family.  And when there is more room for guests, because so many people have not accepted the invitation, the king invites others, some who are good, but even some who are bad.  Just because we are invited does not mean we go.  We have to choose to go to the wedding; simply having the invitation is not enough.

And lastly, Jesus talks about one of the guests not having the proper garments for a wedding.  Even though the king was glad to invite the good and bad alike, there were expectations about proper dress for the wedding.  And the one who did not have the proper garment was thrown out into the darkness, in the place of “wailing and grinding of teeth.”  When I hear those words about a garment, I immediately think of the words that I tell a child or adult at baptism: “you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.  See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.”  We are told at our baptism, when we receive our invitation, that on the mountain of the Lord, at the Lord’s wedding feast, there is a proper clothing requirement, and that requirement is supposed to white to represent our purity from sin.  Reconciliation is, as it were, bleach, that, by God’s grace, washes clean our baptismal garment that we have soiled by our disobedience to God.

So often, evangelicals will ask the question, “Are you saved?”, and our Gospel helps us answer that question with a Catholic answer.  We were saved when we were baptized, when we accepted the invitation from Jesus to attend His wedding feast in heaven as we died with Christ in the waters of baptism that freed us from sin and made us children of God and members of the Church.  We are being saved as we, by the grace of God, try to keep our baptismal garment clean and daily act in such a way as to show that we want to attend the wedding at the end of time.  And we hope to be saved when we are invited to the banquet hall, with the proper wedding garment, and are able to rejoice with Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven forever.  

Being baptized isn’t enough.  Baptism is the invitation to the wedding feast.  We have to respond to the invitation that Jesus extends to us each day of our life.  Because Jesus also says at the end of our Gospel, that, “‘Many are invited, but few are chosen.’”  Let’s not ignore this invitation, or act in such a way that shows that we have better things to do than to go attend the wedding feast of the Lamb.  Let us make our own the words that we hear at each Mass: “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

You're Invited!!

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

            In terms of the social life, it seems to me that there is nothing bigger in the mind of a kindergartner than being invited to a birthday party.  It’s a sign that you’ve made it in the innocent jungle of social interactions between 6-year-olds.  And it doesn’t seem to leave us.  Even as we progress through school, we want to be invited to a friend’s house; we want to be chosen for the basketball team; we want to be chosen as first chair in our instrument’s section of the band; we want to be chosen as the lead in the play or musical.  And let’s be honest: as adults we still like being invited over: to a friend’s house; to a sports game; maybe for an adult beverage at the local watering hole. 

            Jesus invites Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John in our Gospel today.  And maybe they, too, were just so happy to be invited and chosen.  But it is amazing that they just left everything.  This Jesus, whom they didn’t know well, called them to follow Him, to be his disciples, and they did.  There were no questions, no caveats, no conditions.  They just followed Him.  And, as we know the rest of the story, their acceptance of the invitation took them many places they never imagined: the Sermon on the Mount; the feeding of the 5,000; Mt. Tabor and the Transfiguration for Peter, James, and John; the triumphant entry into Jerusalem right before Passover; the Upper Room as both the priesthood and the Eucharist were established; the Garden of Gethsemane, again for Peter, James, and John; the foot of the cross for John; and the Upper Room again where they saw the risen Christ.  And then they continued the work of Jesus after Pentecost, “teaching,…proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.” 

            We were given the same invitation at our Baptism.  We were called to put Jesus ahead of everything else.  We were invited to be a follower of Jesus and to teach, proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, and heal people.  As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week this week, we celebrate schools that can offer that invitation to our children Monday through Friday, not just in religion class, but throughout the entire day.  But have we, no matter where we went to school, accepted this invitation?  Or do we stand at the fringes of our faith, like the Rich Young Man who wanted to follow Jesus, but was not willing to give up anything to follow Him?  Is the extent of our faith life, our relationship with Jesus, simply going through the motions each week, or do we know Jesus personally?  To put it another way, if I were a stranger and I came up to you and said, “Why do you follow Jesus?  What’s so important about Him?  Why should I become Catholic?” what would you say?  Think about that for a second.  What would you say?

            In our preface, our prayer reminds us that even though we had abandoned God through sin, through Jesus’ blood and the power of the Holy Spirit God reconciled us to Himself, made us the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Church.  That’s the invitation we received: to claim as our own that reconciliation and the gift of God’s friendship.  Because without God’s friendship, we are at enmity with God, as St. Paul says.  Without God’s friendship, we deserve God’s wrath.  But God invites us to His banquet, and to be a part of Jesus through the Church.

            And that Church is supposed to be one as the Trinity is one God.  This past week we celebrated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  Too often, those who are invited, and who seek that invitation, work against that unity by dividing into camps: “‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’  Is Christ divided?”  Pope Francis recently said that there is one word that describes Christians not being united: scandal.  We have grown too accustomed to the disunity of Christians.  We have grown too used to divided Christians.  Instead, there should be one Church of Christ, united in true belief of what God teaches us through the authority of Scripture and the Teaching of the Apostles and their successors; united in governance under the one Vicar of Christ, the visible sign of the unity of the many Christians spread throughout the world; united in the sevenfold sacramental economy of salvation, where we receive God’s life of grace in the way Jesus Himself established.  If we have friends, and many of us probably do, who have left the Church, how have we invited them to come back home to the Catholic Church?  If we have Christians friends, and I’m sure all of us do, who are non-Catholic Christians, have we done our best to explain our faith to them to promote understanding? 

We have received the greatest invitation, better than a birthday party, or a spot in the band or the play, or a member of a sports team.  We have been invited to be a part of the one Church of Christ and to use our diverse gifts and personalities to spread the kingdom of God and invite others to follow Jesus, not from far away, but in a close, intimate relationship with Him.  Yes, we may have to leave some things behind that were dear to us, like Peter, Andrew, James, and John did.  But we will receive a hundredfold in this life and in the life to come if we accept the invitation from Jesus to follow after Him and become fishers of men.