28th Sunday in Ordinary Time - October 9, 2011: RSVP to Heaven

Click here for the Mass readings for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A):

"Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.'" (Mt 22:8-9)

When it comes to talking about heaven or hell, a lot of people have a lot of questions.  What is heaven like?  What do we know about it?  Fortunately, Jesus spoke about heaven and hell all the time, often through the use of parables.  So it's definitely worth our effort to explore and reflect on the meaning of this Sunday's Gospel if we wish to learn something about the final goal to which we are all called.

Once again, it's late and it's been a long (but good) weekend.  So I will quickly summarize the parable of the Wedding Feast and highlight two points which I find to be rather important for anyone seeking to follow Christ.  The entire Gospel reading revolves around the story of a king who has prepared a wedding feast for his son and sends his servants to invite people to the feast.  With this analogy Jesus is comparing the king to God the Father who invites His chosen people (the Jews) to share in the eternal banquet of heaven.  The first wave of servants sent out represent the prophets of the Old Testament who faced rejection, suffering, and death for calling the Israelite people to repentence and faithfulness to God's Law.  The second wave of servants represent the Apostles and disciples sent out to invite everyone into the Kingdom of heaven, "the bad and good alike".  It goes without saying that God's invitation to partake in the eternal banquet of heaven is met with a variety of responses - most of them negative.  At first glance it's a bit bewildering to think God would find so much resistance to His invitation to heaven!  And yet He does - which tells us gaining entrance into heaven isn't something "automatic", nor is it to be taken lightly.

It's only right, therefore, to consider briefly the variety of responses to the king's invitation in the parable so we don't make the same mistakes.  Immediately we can identify two main groups of people in the parable - those who refuse God's invitation, and those that accept it.  Within the group that refuses, we can also see two types of refusal: one that is vehemently hateful toward God and violent, and another which isn't hateful, but simply indifferent or apathetic to the invitation.  It's clear from the parable that at the end of the day both exclude themselves from the kingdom of heaven.  But I want to look at the response of indifference since it's something all of us need to be on guard against.  It's essential for all of us to protect the fire of divine love in our hearts - to guard it and feed it so we do not become lukewarm (see Rev 2:4 and 3:14-22).  The best way to do that is to make sure we have quality prayer time scheduled into our day.  We manage to eat each day, and check our email, Facebook, etc...and several times a day at that - but what about prayer?  Our faith falters, our hope fades, and charity grows cold without prayer.  All of these are necessary if we don't want to one day find ourselves numbered among "the indifferent" in today's Gospel.

Finally, there's the group that accepts God's invitation to the eternal feast of heaven.  But here too Jesus indicates two types of acceptance: one good, and the other inadequate.  The inadequate response is personified in the man who shows up to the wedding feast without a wedding garment, is questioned by the king and ultimately thrown out of the feast.  Entering the kingdom of heaven is not simply a matter of sauntering through the pearly gates as we are and grabbing a seat at the table - a real change is required.  And the wedding garment is a symbol of the change all of us must undergo if we are to be made worthy of heaven.  The "wedding garment" in the parable symbolizes the soul which undergoes a complete transformation through an acceptance of the grace and love of God.  God's grace is effective; it has the power to transforms us from within and make us a "new creation" - a tramsformation which, like the wedding garment, must become visible in our love for God and manifested in concrete acts of charity toward our neighbor.  Let us remember that we have already been clothed with this white "wedding garment" at the time of baptism and exhorted to keep it pure.  And if we fail, there's always hope.  The sacrament of confession is given to renew within us the dignity of our baptism.  Through the confession of our sins we open ourselves once again to the mercy of God and are washed clean.

May we ponder carefully the parable in this Sunday's Gospel and implore the Lord to set our hearts on fire with His divine love, and purify us from within so our "yes" to Him may be worthy of His invitation.  And I pray that our lives may always be a living invitation to others!  God bless!

(Photo of the "The Martyrs Before the Lamb" courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.)