{"id":4481,"date":"2023-10-15T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-15T11:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4481"},"modified":"2023-10-17T20:02:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T19:02:03","slug":"commentary-on-28th-sunday-of-the-year-a-15-10-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-28th-sunday-of-the-year-a-15-10-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 28th Sunday of the year (A), 15.10.2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie <\/a><\/h3>\n

Mt 22:1-14<\/b><\/p>\n

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:\u00a0 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.\u00a0 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.\u00a0 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’\u00a0 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.\u00a0 Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.\u00a0 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’\u00a0 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.\u00a0 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless.\u00a0 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’\u00a0 For many are called, but few are chosen.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines\u2026.”\u00a0 Thus begins the first reading of today’s Mass, a reading from the prophet Isaiah, who lived about seven centuries before Christ.\u00a0 In the literatures of most countries there is a longing for a future golden age (or sometimes nostalgia for a past one).\u00a0 Such a future time or place is called Utopia, a ‘non-existent place’ (from the Greek, ou<\/em> = not, and topos<\/em> = place).\u00a0 Practical people have always been wary of such thinking.\u00a0 “An acre in Middlesex,” said Macaulay, “is better than a principality in Utopia.” Isaiah’s prophecy, however, was not based on wishful thinking but on God’s promise, a promise that he expected God to fulfil, not in Utopia, but “on this mountain.”<\/p>\n

All God’s promises are being fulfilled in Jesus; this is the faith of Christians.\u00a0 “The Son of God, Jesus Christ\u2026was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes’.\u00a0 For in him every one of God’s promises is a Yes'” (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).\u00a0 Isaiah’s prophecy, like all the others, is fulfilled in him.\u00a0 He is the one who prepares the “messianic banquet”\u00a0 –\u00a0 a symbol of the joy of the “messianic kingdom”, to be inaugurated by the Messiah.\u00a0 There is a special interest, then, when we hear Jesus begin a story with the words, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.”<\/p>\n

We will come back to the story.\u00a0 The Last Supper is presented in the gospels as the messianic banquet in anticipation.\u00a0 Taking the cup of wine he said, “I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Mt 26:29).\u00a0 That will be the messianic banquet.\u00a0 The Mass retains this meaning of the messianic banquet in anticipation.<\/p>\n

The story in today’s reading is about this.\u00a0 He calls it a wedding feast, which was the most joyful time in a Jew’s life.\u00a0 But those who were called refused to come.\u00a0 So he sent his servants out into the highways and byways to invite everyone they could find. “They gathered all whom they found, both good and bad.”\u00a0 This is Jesus talking about his life’s work.\u00a0 Many of his own people were resisting his invitation, so he was now inviting everyone, good and bad alike.\u00a0 This was no fiction.\u00a0 In real life he befriended the outcasts of society, Samaritans, tax-collectors and sinners, foreigners, pagans\u2026and he invites even us!<\/p>\n

What are we to make of the one who was then thrown out?\u00a0 He “was not wearing a wedding garment.”\u00a0 That is to say, he had no appreciation of what he had been invited to.\u00a0 “Friend, why are you here?” the bridegroom asked him.\u00a0\u00a0 Each of us has to imagine these words addressed to him or herself.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter where we come from\u00a0 –\u00a0 the highways and the byways\u00a0 –\u00a0 but it does matter that we know where we are, and what we have been invited to.\u00a0 If we bring with us a spirit of arrogance and division, a spirit of cynicism and discouragement, it is like going to a wedding in our worst clothes.<\/p>\n

A wedding is a celebration of love.\u00a0 This banquet is a love-feast.\u00a0 It is Christ joining himself in marriage to his Bride, the Church.\u00a0 St Paul took up this image. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).\u00a0 Johann Tauler, the 14th-century disciple of Meister Eckhart, wrote about this union.\u00a0 “This love is so close, so interior, so secret, so tender and so ardent as to be beyond all comprehension.\u00a0 All the great theologians of Paris, with all their wisdom, could never express what it is. However much they wanted to speak about it they could only keep silence\u2026. And yet any simple persons, if they have put all their trust in God and if they are humble, may feel and taste something of this love in the depths of their souls; though even such a person will never be able to grasp what it is or express it in words.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Mt 22:1-14 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:\u00a0 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.\u00a0 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4481"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7972,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions\/7972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}