Today's readings were all about a banquet arranged by God (Isaiah), and a wedding banquet with a list of invited guests (Christ). The prophecy of Isaiah foretells, in the times of the coming of the Messiah, the coming together of the nations, the assembly of many peoples at Jerusalem, at God's holy mountain:
"A time is coming when the Lord of hosts will prepare a banquet on this mountain of ours; no meat so tender, no wine so mellow, meat that drips with fat, wine well strained. Gone the chains in which he has bound the peoples, the veil that covered the nations hitherto; on the mountain-side, all these will be engulfed; death, too, shall be engulfed for ever. No furrowed cheek but the Lord God will wipe away its tears; gone the contempt his people endured in a whole world’s eyes; the Lord has promised it." - Isaiah 25: 6-8
God's relationship with his covenant people has always had the character of a marriage, and this is demonstrated in so many ways in the Hebrew Bible. By making a covenant, God had married his people. This image is not a Christian invention, but is drawn into Christian imagery by the Apostles, and is evident in the New Testament as well, not least in the gospel story we have today. Christ is almost finished with his mission and this is among the last of the parables in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. The parable, like the one before it about the workers in the vineyard, is a thinly-veiled attack on the Jewish authorities of the time and their inability to look beyond the superficial observance of the Law. Isaiah's banquet has now become a wedding banquet, which we could say is the pre-arranged banquet for the wedding of God to the People, or Christ to the Church - this was prepared in the Incarnation of Christ. The Jewish people, as inheritors of the promises God made to the Hebrew people are invited to it, and decline to come (in the parable) for one reason or the other, and drive the king who has invited them into a rage, in particular when they kill the messengers he has sent to fetch them - read: the prophets before and including Saint John the Baptist. The king now sends out the invitations to anyone and everyone who is willing to come, from the highways and the byways. And then comes the interesting situation of the man without the wedding garment:
"'And his servants went out into the streets, where they mustered all they could find, rogues and honest men together; and so the wedding had its full tale of guests. But when the king came in to look at the company, he saw a man there who had no wedding-garment on; "My friend, he said, how didst thou come to be here without a wedding-garment?" And he made no reply. Whereupon the king said to his servants, "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the darkness, where there shall be weeping, and gnashing of teeth." Many are called, but few are chosen.'" - Gospel of S. Matthew, 22: 10-14
So, then, what is this wedding garment? If the banquet/feast is the Church, the garment is not a baptismal garment, for the man will already have had that. It's something else. There's a grave warning in this for us Christians, for it demonstrates that our salvation is not a given. There are conditions that ensure that we have a wedding garment on. We are in anticipation at the wedding feast of the Lamb, but we could be chucked out into the darkness if we don't have that wedding garment on. The wedding garment is an interior disposition of the soul, towards mercy, charity, kindness - the heart of the Gospel. In short, thinking with the mind of God. The ancient Christian philosopher Origen put it like this:
"But when He was come in, He found there one who had not put off his old behaviour; 'He saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.' He speaks of one only, because all, who after faith continue to serve that wickedness which they had before the faith, are but of one kind."
The New Testament warns us repeatedly that, as Christians, we cannot take anything for granted - we must be born anew and put away our old lives of sin. Saint Paul, in one of his letters (Philippians, 2:12), says that we must prepare our own salvation in fear and trembling, and this must mean nothing else but trying our best to be clothed for the wedding at all times. Here's a quote on his death-bed from that young gentleman who was only recently beatified by the Holy Father in Rome:
"I am happy to die because I lived my life without wasting even a minute of it on anything unpleasing to God." - Blessed Carlo Acutis
No comments:
Post a Comment