Christ the King, cycle A

Matthew 25:31-46

Have you heard this gospel before?  Of course you have.  I bet some of us could recite it from memory.  And certainly the top message is crystal clear.  Whatever we do for the least of our brothers, that we do for Jesus -- and that has eternal consequences.  But you know me, I can’t leave things alone.  When I read this passage from Matthew, I was struck by three things.  First, this takes place at the last judgment when the Son of Man will judge the nations.  It doesn’t say, “judge each person”.  Jesus is judging the nations.  

The second thing is that I’m not sure why Jesus has it in for goats.  In his time, shepherds generally kept sheep and goats.  Sheep for their wool;  but sheep are not very smart and need a lot of looking after.  Goats are smarter, more aggressive, and generally can be of great service to the shepherd.  And they reproduce faster.  And they give more milk.  In fact, since they have more babies, the male baby goats are a source of food for the shepherd.  You remember the older brother in the story of the prodigal son?  He told his father, “you have not given me even a kid so that i could have a party with my friends”.  A kid is a baby goat. So why the sheep on one side, the good side, and the goats on the other?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but people have tried.  Goats being smarter have more responsibility.  Maybe Jesus is criticizing the leaders of the people.  Or, since we started with nations, rather than people, maybe the goats are the nations that have everything and the sheep are the ones that have nothing.  The first world countries, as anyone with eyes can see, are first world at least in part because they have taken advantage of third world countries.  Are the goats the first world countries?  YOu might get the impression that Pope Francis thinks so when you read his encyclicals and letters.  But I don’t really know if that’s what the Lord had in mind.  Jesus never seemed terribly political.  But maybe we can take away the idea that we Christians bear responsibility for what our nation does.  We can’t isolate ourselves, we have to be politically active at least in the matter of informing ourselves and voting.  As Catholics we have a responsibility to promote our church’s social teachings when we vote, or maybe participate more deeply in our political system. 

The third thing is that the righteous as well as the unrighteous had no idea that their actions on behalf of the hungry, thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned had anything to do with Christ.  And yet, every saint on the calendar and all who are not, as well, acted because they saw what they were doing as flowing from Christ’s teachings.  I don’t think Mother Theresa would have said the words, “When did I see you hungry and I fed you?”  That’s exactly why she lived her life the way she did.  She saw Jesus in the people she served.  So who are these people Jesus is talking about?

One very interesting idea is that Jesus uses the words “least of my brothers”.  We know that elsewhere he says that his brothers and sisters and mother are those who hear the word of God and keep it.  Jesus identifies his family by their response to his teaching.  But if you are imitating Jesus, you risk being hungry, thirsty, seen as a stranger;  we probably don’t have to worry too much about being naked, at least not in this country.  But being ill or imprisoned because we follow Jesus, those are real possibilities as well. Not so much here in the United States in the twenty-first century, but our Christian brothers and sisters are suffering throughout much of the world.  And in Jesus’ time it was much worse.  If you were a Christian in the Roman empire of the first century, you might very well be thrown in prison, deprived of food and drink.  If you weren’t you might be prevented from getting a decent job because you wouldn't worship the emperor.  And if things were really bad, you could be paraded naked through the streets like the terrorists did with the hostages they captured in Israel.  It’s a great way to insult someone, to make them go naked in public.  

There is a story about Cardinal Van Thuan who was imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists for thirteen years.  He made friends with one of the guards.  The guard offered to pray to Our Lady of La Vang, on behalf of the Cardinal, since he walked past the shrine on his way home every day.  He would pray, “Dear Lady, I am not a Christian, but please give Cardinal Van Thuan what he needs today.”  

Maybe Jesus is making a promise that he won’t forget even the slightest bit of kindness rendered to one of his followers, even by non-believers.  In another place in scripture he says, “If anyone gives one of these little ones who is my disciple a cup of water, he will not go unrewarded.”  

On this feast of Christ the King let us remember again that Jesus desires the salvation of all human beings, and he will achieve that through his people, you and I.  And while we are so fortunate because we belong to the Church he founded, he makes possible his salvation to everyone, if they do nothing more than to come to the aid of one of his brothers or sisters -- you and I.    

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 25:14-30

I’m sure many of you football fans have been following the career of Mac Jones, who led the Patriots to the playoffs two years ago. We thought we had another Tom Brady. And then things started to go sour. Under Mac Jones the Patriots now have the worst record in the American Football Conference. When you read the sport pages and sometimes I do, various theories about why the change are advanced. It’s the coaching; it’s the defense, which no longer is the best in the league; it’s the changes in personnel at the top. But maybe it’s possible that Mac Jones, who once went out on the field to win games, is now going out trying not to lose; and that is a terrible way to play football or do anything in life, I guess.

If you go back and read the Sunday gospels for the last three Sundays, you will see that the parables all have something to do with what we are supposed to be doing while waiting for Christ’s return. The greatest among you must be your servant. Therefore, stay awake, you know neither the day nor the hour. And today, for everyone who has, more will be given and he will become rich. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away from him.

The parable of the talents which we just read, needs a little exposition. A talent is a lot. A talent was a unit of weight for precious metals, kind of like we use carats for weighing diamonds. If you google it, you would find that the average laborer would probably not quite earn a whole talent if he worked for twenty years. So this man going on a journey is really rich, and I don’t know what fraction of his wealth he entrusted to his servants, maybe all of it, maybe some; but imagine how those listening to Jesus must have reacted. They are thinking, what would I do if someone gave me a talent? And what kind of man would trust his servants that much?

Maybe that’s the first thing about this parable. How much God trusts us. He gives us free will, a beautiful world, clear instructions through his prophets and the Church and especially through his Son, and then he stands back crossing his fingers, waiting for us to make real the kingdom of God which is among us. And we make a little progress, and we fall back, and by fits and starts maybe we see a little progress -- and ultimately we trust that somehow God’s side will triumph in the long run.

Notice that the servants get different amounts of the talents. That should be reassuring. Not everyone can be a mother Theresa or a Saint Francis; some of us can aspire to be like Saint Louis and Saint Zele Martin, the parents of Saint Therese of Lisieux; or maybe Saint Guiseppe Mosconi, who spent his life becoming holy as a physician; or maybe Blessed Carlos Acutis, or Saint Maria Goretti, who died as teenagers. Or maybe someone who isn’t even on the books yet. But what they all have in common is love; they died like Jesus did, having done everything they could to take the love in their hearts and reach out to others in the way God inspired them to do. That’s what God does. He gives us his love in proportion to our capacity to multiply it. Some tenfold, some five fold, some two-fold. And God doesn’t compare one with the other. If you multiply what you have been given, you will be told, Well done.

But the man who received one talent. Instead of multiplying the love in the world, which is what building up the kingdom of heaven is all about, he holds it back. He doesn’t love. Oh, he feels the impulse, he has the opportunity, but maybe like Mac Jones, he’s always second guessing himself. And over time his capacity to love diminishes until there isn’t any at all.

And I think there is another thing here. You get the feeling that the man who went off on a journey is a hard taskmaster who gathers where he did not scatter, and so forth. Maybe not; maybe our poor one talent guy talked himself into believing that. The master kind of agrees with his opinion, but points out that the one talent guy could have racked up a little interest -- that would have required very little of him, and he would still have received his master’s praise.

Some of you are aware of Matthew Kelly, who seems to be on fire evangelizing. He recently sent us something called the “Holy Moments bucket list”. It consists of thirty things to do in order to have the best month of your life -- and I suspect, bring you closer to passing on the love God has for you. Here are a few:

Mail a handwritten note to someone you care about, telling them how much they mean to you.

Tell your supervisor about something good that your co-worker did.

Practice generosity by leaving a 50% tip.

Make a list of things that scare you, pick one out, and do it.

You get the idea. Practice loving by doing loving things, for others, for yourself, for God. And you will begin to hear those words - Well done, good and faithful servant -- and you will find yourself eager to do more for your master.

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle

Matthew 25:1-13

I was a boy scout once. I remember the motto of the scouts -- Be prepared. And we were. All of us had a boy scout knife with a screwdriver, a saw, a can opener and an awl in addition to the knife blade. Part of being prepared was to have a flashlight that worked, a collapsible drinking cup, and of course on a long hike you would carry water in a metal canteen, coated in canvas, so that if the water got warm, you could splash some on the canvas and it would cool down. To cap things off, I remember one of our scoutmasters taking us through the woods identifying plants we could eat if things got desperate. I’m afraid I forgot all that lore. But we were prepared, we thought, for anything.

But five of the young ladies in our gospel story are prepared for everything except waiting. And that’s one message to take home today. Are we prepared for waiting, and waiting for the Lord? Because the bridegroom is a symbol for the one we wait for -- the one who will come again as promised, Jesus. And after two thousand years it’s easy to assume that it might be another two thousand years before he comes, so naturally, we aren’t holding our breath. And that’s where we fall down.

I hate to wait. If I am put on hold when I call about a problem, that’s a good way to ruin my day. I imagine there’s one person trying to address twenty different problems, and he’s hoping I’ll give up and hang up. And after I wait ten minutes or so, I’m too invested to hang up. I can waste a lot of time this way.

We don’t know why God is making us wait. The early Christians thought the return of Jesus was just around the corner, and that colored everything they did. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that people were selling their possessions and laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles -- if Christ was coming soon, what good was there in owning a farm? By the end of the first century, people were making excuses -- He would come when the whole world had a chance to hear the gospel; he would come in one thousand years like it sort of said in the book of revelation. The second letter of Peter tells us that for God, a thousand years is like a day, and he reminds us that 400 years passed before God kept his promise to the Israelites that he would free them and give them a land of their own. God is outside of time and space.

While we wait, we know God is not waiting, he’s always acting in the world. And he is acting in us. One of the reasons we wait is so that we become aware of what God is doing in us. How do we do that? One of the Psalms tells us “be still and know that I am God”. If you really want to know what God is doing, you have to make time to listen. We think praying means that we do all the talking. Part of praying is listening.

Another thing we can do while we wait is stock up on oil. We do that by doing what Christians have been doing for two thousand years. Praying, studying scripture, form a stronger relationship with Jesus. And he told us how to do that -- feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and so on. Whatever we do for the least of our brothers, we do for him.

And we have to recharge. God gives all of us something special that recharges us -- it may be listening to music, taking a walk in the woods, playing a sport, or maybe a video game. Blessed Carlos Acutis, who died in his teens, allowed himself one hour a day to play video games. And all of us should devote a little time to recharging our batteries.

And that of course is why the smart bridesmaids didn’t share their oil with the foolish ones. You can’t share your oil. If I admire someone who can play the violin, he can’t share that with me.

This parable has a sad ending, not just because the foolish ladies get locked out of the banquet. The really sad thing is that the bridegroom says, “I do not know you”. But the good thing about the parable is that it reminds us that we still have time, we still have the opportunity to store up extra oil, we still can change our lives so that we will hear those words, “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Matthew 23: 1-12

Because I’m a deacon, A lot of people open up to me about how they feel about this priest, or that bishop, or often, the Pope. Usually it’s a criticism. I don’t hear a lot of people saying, “He’s doing a great job.” Pope Francis gets a lot of flack. Unlike previous Popes, he’s not very careful about how he answers reporters or interviewers.

Today’s Gospel begins with a surprising statement: “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatever they tell you.” Most of the time the gospels show Jesus fighting with the teachers of the law, often when they try to trap him into saying something divisive or dangerous. But here he tells his hearers to do whatever they tell you.

We need to reflect on a typical worship service in the synagogue in those days. The people would gather, men on one side, women and small children on the other -- or men in front, women and small children in the back, as is still done in mosques. The rabbi, or in Jesus’ time a scribe or a Pharisee who was also a scribe, since scribes could read, would lead the prayers, then read from the Torah scroll, and then from the scroll of the prophets or the scroll of the teachings -- the latter containing Old Testament books other than the first five and the prophets. It was something like our own lectionary. You probably remember when Jesus began his public ministry, he read from the scroll of Isaiah, and declared afterwards that “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.” After reading, the scribe, or perhaps another authority, would sit down and explain how that reading applied to life in general. That seat was referred to as the Chair of Moses. Someone who sat in it to teach was considered to have some of the authority of Moses himself, who, you may remember, gave some of his authority to seventy elders to help govern the people.

But Jesus goes on to say, “do not follow their example -- because they preach but do not practice.”

It’s very similar to what we Catholics believe. We believe the Holy Spirit keeps the Church from error. God shepherds his people through the Pope, the bishops, and our priests. But we all know that all of those individuals are humans, and all have some fault or other -- not necessarily sin, although we are all sinful; but rather faults that interfere with their mission.

Sometimes our teachers do act like hypocrites. They did in Jesus’ time as well. Jesus is telling us a couple of things here, true in his time and in ours: respect the fact that some people are given the authority to teach and listen to them. That does not mean we should necessarily act like them.

Then Jesus gives his disciples the bottom line. How do you tell good teaching from bad? You look to Jesus. He’s the only one we can ultimately call “rabbi” or teacher. Another point: if we are all brothers under the same Father, then anyone whose teaching threatens that bond between brothers is a false teacher. If you chip off chunks of the Church and go your own way, like the Protestant reformers, that’s pretty much an indication that despite their sincerity, their teaching is tainted with falsehood. And finally any threat to God-given authority which ultimately resides in Jesus himself, is another sign of false teaching; “Do not be called Master.”.

Sadly, we human beings still have to muddle through. Take the controversy over the old Tridentine rite of the Mass -- Latin, multiple repetitions, priest facing the altar, movements carefully practiced in the seminary so that once you were finally ordained you would say mass just like all the other priests in the world. Some people wanted that to continue. Pope Benedict lifted previous restrictions and allowed any priest to say the mass privately, and lay people could attend -- but it wasn't’ to be said in place of the regular liturgy. And of course Pope Francis put more restrictions on who could say the mass and when and where it could be said. Now none of this has to do with what we are to believe about the Mass, it has to do with church discipline. But you can see how a person who considers himself or herself a faithful Catholic but loves the Tridentine rite, and there are many who fit this description, might wonder which Pope is the one I should listen to? And confusion reigns.

And Jesus again teaches us who we should imitate -- the one who humbles himself, the one who takes the role of servant. And Jesus himself acts out this role and reminds us at the time of the last supper that he is the servant, he is the one who washes the feet of the apostles, he is the one who will lay down his life for his friends; he is the only one whose example we should follow.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:34-40

When Jesus gives us his answer to the scholar of the law in today's gospel, it isn’t anything new.  He literally quotes the Old Testament, directly from the Torah, the part considered the holiest section.  You can see an expansion of that second part in the first reading, when the lord tells the Israelites that there is no question, he is on the side of the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphan.  But when you read the historical books of the Old Testament, you see that there wasn’t much recorded about how well the people followed these directions.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true.  And I don’t think things have changed much since Jesus’ time either.  We certainly can point with some satisfaction to our Church and how down through the ages there have been movements within the Church to show love to those in distress -- the many religious orders, the lay movements, the founding of hospitals and colleges and orphanages -- Jesus is not talking about institutional charity.  In a similar passage in the gospel of Luke, he follows this with the story of the Good Samaritan, to point out the way we are to love our neighbor.

But we don’t. I don’t anyway.  I encounter someone whose cardboard sign tells me they are homeless, and I look the other way.  If I’m ever downtown, and I hardly go anymore, I try to avoid the person whose belongings are all in a borrowed shopping cart.  And I bet most of you are the same way. Oh, I want what is best for them, and I guess that’s sort of love.

Perhaps we should look at the words of Jesus more closely.  Our attention is naturally drawn to the first statement, the love of God.  But Jesus really mentions three loves -- of God, of neighbor, and of ourselves.  And I wonder sometimes whether our inability to carry out Jesus’ greatest commandments in a wholehearted way has to do with our not loving ourselves.  Most of us, especially in this community, take care of ourselves physically.  We aren’t given to drug or alcohol abuse. Some of us exercise and watch our diets.  I guess taking care of our physical needs is love of self.  But what do we put in our minds?  Where do we go for mental stimulation? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s hard not to follow the clickbait trail when I turn on my computer.  Before I know it, I’m learning things like “what the Catholic Church does not want you to know.”

And now that I can get almost any program any time, thanks to Netflix, I’m watching old shows that I missed when they first came out on network tv.  And there are people that fill their minds with porn or spend hours playing realistic video games.  This sort of thing is not loving myself, it’s the opposite.  And what do we put in our souls?  Jesus said, “where your treasures are, there your heart will be”.  And he urged us to lay up treasures in heaven” so our hearts will be there as well.  And I can only hope God is giving me some slack about all the distractions I experience when I’m praying or trying to study scripture, both of which I don’t do often enough or well enough.  That’s not loving myself.

If you read the biographies of some of the great saints, like Saint Therese of Lisieux, you often find a moment in their lives when things changed, and they settled into proper love of themselves, which freed up their power to love their neighbor and God. Theresa realized that she didn’t have to be a missionary or a martyr, she would be love, love in the heart of the church.  Saint Francis discovered his true self when he heard Jesus tell him to build up his church and began doing exactly that.  When we really learn to love ourselves, we embrace who we are, warts and all -- and in doing so we become in tune with God, who long before we do, has already embraced us.

Then we can love our neighbor, which indeed means meeting them at their point of need, like the Good Samaritan, like Jesus himself; but it also means that we look at our neighbor and see that he or she bears the image of God.  When we see that, our whole attitude towards our neighbor changes; and we are more inclined to love them as we love ourselves.  Sometimes it’s tough love, which takes courage; but tough love is better than no love at all.  If we have removed the beam from our own eye, we can help remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye. And if we are always aware that God loves us as we are and has our back, it’s easier to meet the needs of those we are called to love.   

And as we love our neighbor who is stamped with God’s image, we begin to love God even more, since we realize that wherever there is love, there is God, because as John tells us in very simple terms, God is love.  

So begin by loving yourself as God loves you, inadequate and sinful as you are; then look for God in your neighbor and love your neighbor because of that; and then as you exercise love, you will discover that where there is love, there is God.  And in loving this way, you will love with all your heart, soul, and mind.

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:15-21

I was educated in Catholic schools all the way through college, as many of you were.  I remember as a grade school student we of course began and ended our days with prayer, throwing in a little extra at noon, when we said the angelus, and of course when we got into a season like Christmas or Easter.  But I was not shocked or surprised that kids in my neighborhood who went to public schools also began and ended their day with prayer.  And Christian oriented prayer, as well. There were two Jewish families in town when I grew up, but they attended the Episcopalian church.  

In 1947 the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was founded, surprisingly, by several protestant denominations, who opposed what seemed to be going on in publicly supported schools in which most of the students were Irish or Italian -- Catholic oriented prayer!  Hail Mary’s! The purpose of the AUSCS was to get rid of Catholic influence in public schools.  As time went on the agenda became more and more radical.  The organization now consists mostly of people who profess no religion.  They proudly refer to the wall they are continuing to build between church and state.  And of course a superficial reading of today’s gospel suggests that maybe Jesus himself would be on board.

But when you get into the gospel, maybe there is a deeper message here.  The Pharisees felt that paying the census tax was wrong for several reasons; this tax, and it was one of many, went to pay the roman soldiers who kept the people under control.  And it had to be paid with Roman money, which had an engraving of Caesar’s face on it, which was against Jewish law --- you couldn’t depict people.  The Herodians on the other hand, were people who supported the Jewish royal family.  They were mostly people who didn’t believe in life after death and tried hard to conform to the Roman customs.  They favored the census tax, obviously.

I suspect they both felt threatened by Jesus, which is why these two groups got together to get him in trouble.  And we always admire the clever way he refused to side with either group.  But is he endorsing separation of church and state? 

Someone recently remarked that Jesus only gave us two commandments -- to love God completely, and our neighbor as yourselves.   But he gave others as well.  I know because I googled it.  There seems to be consensus around seven statements, but one source counts 49 statements you could call commandments, although most were in context, like when he told the rich young man to sell all he had and give to the poor.  But I think we could all agree that the commandment Jesus gives today is directed to all of us.  Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what belongs to God.  We have to answer the question of what is Caesar's and what is God’s for ourselves.  What is Caesar's, in my mind, has to do with our participation in  the world.  Taxes, yes, but taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, taking care of the environment, working at our jobs, enjoying our leisure time, and so forth.  What is God’s on the other hand, is everything.  All there is is ultimately God’s.  Now among practicing Catholics we see people who get to Mass at Christmas and Easter, and on the other extreme, monastic orders who rise at 4:00 AM to begin a day punctuated by prayer and fasting.  Most of us are somewhere in between.  But that in itself doesn’t define giving to God what is God’s.  

Giving to God has perhaps been best defined by Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei.  He said that every person is called to work -- humans were given that duty before the fall of Adam.  And we have to strive to do our work in a Godly way -- striving to do it well and as perfectly as possible; we need to make our work holy.  And we need to make ourselves holy through our work, primarily.  And finally, we have to make the world holy through our work.  All of this requires that we pray about our work, meditate on it, and think about how we are progressing in this threefold goal, which ultimately becomes the task of giving the world back to God.

And whether you are a homemaker, a mechanic, a priest or even a cloistered monk, you can choose to render to God what is God’s.  Because we are made to work, to make the world and ourselves holy through our work.  

So ultimately, you can give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s when you make it your goal to give yourself to God through the work that you do.  We are the coin with an image -- we are made in God’s image.  And we belong to God. 

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:1 - 14

You know that each gospel writer uses Jesus’ words in different ways, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  Luke has Jesus telling a similar parable, maybe the same one, in which he talks about a certain man who gave a great feast, invited guests, who turned him down, and then made two forays into the surrounding countryside to fill up his banquet hall.  There is no vengeance, no destruction of v villages; at the end, the man says, “Those who were invited will never taste my supper.”  

Matthew is giving us a similar parable, but one which has several more layers than the one in Luke..  You can look at the parable in a superficial way -- the king is God, the people who reject the invitation to the wedding are the Jewish people, and we Christians are the people gathered up from the highways and byways.  That’s probably how Luke meant his story to be understood -- he was writing for a largely gentile audience, part of the growing Christian community outside Palestine.  But Matthew adds touches that require a little more thought.

First, who are the first set of guests?  Notice, not only do they ignore the king’s invitation, but they mistreat the servants who offered the invitation, killing some of them.  I’m sure Matthew, who is writing for a community made up largely of Jewish converts, is referring to the murder of some of the prophets.  We don’t know which prophets were murdered, you can’t find that in the scriptures, but in Jesus’ time it was widely understood that some prophets had died at the hands of the authorities.  Jesus refers to that himself.  

Second, who is the king?  He doesn’t sound like the God we believe in.  He not only becomes enraged, but sends his troops to destroy the murderers and burn their city to the ground.  I asked myself, what city would that be?  Matthew is writing after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Romans.  That may be what he has in mind.  But in any event it seems strange that the king burns down the city -- and it must have been his own city, since those he invited would have to drop everything to attend his banquet.  And the king continues to be a little bit over the top with the wedding guest who shows up without a garment.  He doesn’t just kick him out, he binds him and casts him out into darkness, where apparently there are other miserable people wailing and grinding their teeth.  

And who is that man?  In those days if you were invited to a great king’s feast, you would be sent the clothing he wanted you to wear.  We still do something like this when we write on an invitation to a wedding “black tie”, expecting the guests to dress appropriately and not show up in shorts and a t-shirt.  So our man has no excuse for not wearing a wedding garment.  

And who is the son?  He may be there just to give color to the story, but Matthew does make this a wedding feast, and there were Christians in those days who likened heaven to an eternal wedding feast, as you can find in the last book of the bible.  And there were Christians who referred to the celebration of the Eucharist as a wedding feast in which the Son gave his own body for food and blood for drink.  

So it’s an interesting parable with many unanswered questions.  But I think in the end we have to ask, how does it apply to me, to my life, here and now.  

There are a lot of people who turn down the invitation to the wedding feast.  Matthew is talking to an audience of Jewish Christians, who all have relatives and friends that had heard the message and ignored it.  And the point Matthew is making is that this choice is so serious that to make the wrong choice is deadly.  It isn’t that God is vengeful, it’s that to choose not to follow Jesus is condemning yourself.  And we are all at risk for deciding not to follow Jesus.  We all know people who are members of that great religious body, ustabe Catholics.  And we have to keep in mind that even though God is infinitely merciful, it isn’t that he condemns, but they are in danger of condemning themselves.  We should imitate Saint Monica and do everything we can to bring our Augustines back to the Church.  

But we need to look at ourselves as well.  We have accepted the invitation, we are those wedding guests.  But we are expected to put on the wedding garment we have been given.  We have to grow into people who love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.  We have to take advantage of what we are offered by our Church, the bride of Christ; sound teaching, the sacraments, especially the sacrament of reconciliation.  It's always amazing to see the crowds who turn up for ashes on Ash Wednesday, so that for part of a day they can display a sign of their penance; and contrast that with the vanishingly small lines outside the confessional.  And we have to become real disciples, trying to imitate Jesus in our daily lives with prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  That’s the garment that has been given to us.  That’s what we have to put on before we attend the banquet.