Before I begin, I want to ask some questions and you can think about them, but I will answer them to start things off. Why a wedding feast that the King invited his people to? Why not a birthday party or a beauty pageant or a winter solstice party? And secondly, what is up with that poor guy at the end of the Gospel who got invited off the street and yet is expected to be wearing a wedding garment (which seems ridiculous) and then he is not merely asked to leave but he is cast out, bound hand and foot and sent to a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, which seems slightly extreme.
So why the wedding feast? I will tell you something about me – I love weddings and I certainly don’t mind the banquet afterwards either. Why do I love weddings? Because I find them inspiring. Some priests like funerals because they never have to see the person again perhaps. I find weddings inspiring because the human heart is at its best, love is proposing its greatest ideal and it is so heroic in its vows, “I promise to love and honour you all the days of my life.” Now in the pews and in the real world we may say, “Yeah right, you are going to fail friend.” (Which may or may not be true. I’d like to see someone brave enough to say it.) I often look at the cross and think, “I cannot love like that,” as a groom might think when he unpacks his wedding vows. But, I also know that with God’s grace I can love like that. So I love the heroism of a wedding. I love the inspiration and who would not want to go to a good wedding. The question then is also who would not want to go to the King’s son wedding? Are you that confident in your position that you can afford to snub the next of the kingdom? Bad idea because the new king will hold the power of life and death in his hands.
I would like to look at the idea of the wedding feast from three angles. First, I think most of us can get the end times and final judgement ramifications of such a parable that it would be a bad thing to miss that invitation, the options are heaven or hell. I think we can see that point of the parable.
Another point I would like to make is that the King wants to invite you to a wedding banquet each day of your life so that you can have the strength to live your life heroically each day. Remember, we are called to be the light of the world and how can we do that without God’s grace? This is why St Paul said in the Second Reading, “I can be content with much or little,” because he already had it all because he ate at the Lord’s table of grace each day. Look at your own day. Many people wake up, turn on the news, same old same old. Someone killed someone, Donald Trump said something that they don’t agree with and bad stuff is happening. How does eating at this table make you a better person? Some of the people invited went their own way and many people do exactly this, go their own way without eating at the table of God each day. Another accusation is that they seized the messengers and killed them. That does seem extreme but it is easily done, we simply tune out the messenger by keeping ourselves distracted with music or other time wasters. So ask yourself – are you eating at the banquet God sets before you each day so you can live your life abundantly?
The third thing is the Mass is also the wedding banquet and it has all the things we are looking for here –heroics, food, love, mercy and true joy. We can rejoice each week, or even daily, with the Lamb at His wedding feast. We should come here expecting great things so that God can fulfill us.
So what about that guy who gets tied up and cast out? Well here is the rest of the story. The King gave everyone a wedding garment but this guy decided not to put it on. The wedding garment represents that in order for us to be worthy to attend the wedding feast of the Son, we must allow God to prepare our soul through Baptism and then through Confession. The only way we can be worthy is if the King gives us His own clothes to wear. Let us daily come to the feast and allow God to prepare us for the blessed life He has called us to.