28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Is 25:6-10a
Second Reading: Phil 4:12-14, 19-20
Gospel Reading: Mt 22:1-14
As St. Paul assures us in this Sunday’s First Reading, “God will fully satisfy every need of [ours] according to his riches.”
God offers us utterly perfect happiness without end. However, he does not merely offer it; he invites us, entices us, and all but compels us to accept it. (In fact, “compel” is the word Luke uses in his version of this parable.)
In his 1994 encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente (“As the Third Millennium Draws Near”), Pope St. John Paul II said that this vision of God is distinctively Christian. Here it “is not simply a case of man seeking God,” he says, “but of God who comes in person to speak to man of himself and to show him the path by which he may be reached.”
In Christ, who is God made man, God not only “speaks to each individual person,” the Pope said, but also seeks us out. “Jesus speaks of this search as the finding of a lost sheep.” Wanting to raise us to the status of adoptive sons and daughters, God actively goes in search of us.
The poet Francis Thompson claimed that while he “fled” God, God actually “hounded” him. He knew that God loved him, but he dreaded that having God meant having nothing else.
This is how the invited guests reacted in the Gospel Reading: they were afraid that accepting the invitation would mean giving up something. Like Adam and Eve and all of us ever since, they did not trust God for their happiness.
When Thompson, at last despairing of finding satisfaction anywhere else, gave in and let God catch him, God explained that all that he had fancied as lost, God had “stored” for him. “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,” God says, “I am He Whom thou seekest!”
What God offers us is infinitely above anything we can desire. However, accepting his invitation is not enough; we must prepare ourselves to enjoy what he is prepared to give.
A wedding guest can be expected to wear appropriate dress, especially if the host is willing to provide it for him. To dress appropriately for the wedding feast of heaven means to “put on Christ,” as St. Paul says: to allow God to make us perfect as he is perfect.
Contrary to what we might think, this is not beyond our power. As St. Paul says, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
If we let him, God will remake us into “sharers of his divine nature.” We must maintain a conscious intention to do his will and renounce anything contrary; to accept what he sends us in our daily lives, whether it seems good to us or bad; and to offer all we are and all we do to him.
This is what we promise in the Morning Offering: “O Jesus, through the most pure and immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you all my prayers, thoughts, works, and sufferings of this day, for all the intentions of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins, and for the good of the whole Church.”
Only if we “put on” Christ will we feel at home in heaven. If our remaking is not completed in this life, God will complete it in purgatory, provided we keep on saying yes to his invitation.
The name God gave to his chosen people, Israel, means “God persists.” He never gives up on us.
As St. Augustine said, “You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”
We can safely entrust our happiness to God.
Fr. Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English” free of charge. All the materials (video and print) are available online at www.beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 6, “The Light of Faith," will be available Oct. 11.
