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Twenty eighth Sunday of the year


There was a wonderful programme a number of years ago called Keeping up appearances. If you remember Hyacinth Bucket was the archetypal snob. Who was always trying to get the great and the good the well off and those who were socially acceptable to her “Candle lit suppers?”  She would spend most of the programme trying to get people to them. It is always blighted by her rather scruffy and unkempt in laws who are constant embarrassments to her.
In today’s gospel we are invited to a wedding feast. In Jewish imagery the King is an image of God and the great feast is a popular Jewish image for the joy of the life to come. As we heard in today’s first reading: “On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will prepare a banquet of rich food and a banquet of fine wines.” When the banquet is prepared he sends his servants who are the prophets out to inform the people that they are invited to this banquet but they refuse to come. The invited are the chosen people.

Matthew writes his Gospel after the destruction of the Temple and the Holy City by the Romans in AD 70 so he would have seen the consequences of the actions of the Jewish people in very real terms.
So what about the Parable for us today? We are invited to the banquet of the Lord the Mass. It is here on the Sunday celebration that we are invited by God to that union with him. We are invited to enter more deeply into the mystery of his love and the death and resurrection of Christ. Through the Mass we get a glimpse of Heaven as the bread and wine is transformed into the Eucharist Christ truly present. It is Heaven on Earth for in the Eucharist we see God’s Glory.

Sometimes we don’t fully understand how wonderful and magnificent this is. And so, and we all do it, look for a quick Mass complain about the Hymns sung or the style of the priest. We look at the Mass as a fast food outlet to get it over and done with for another week. We moan when it is too long or too short. We reduce the Mass to some sort of service provider and the priest looks at his congregation as customers trying to please as many as possible.
We are challenged then to go deeper into the mystery of the Eucharist we come to meet Christ himself who is just as present as he was to his disciples. This is why we come to Mass, this is why it is important this is why it is here that the Mass is heaven on earth.

There is another part of the Gospel that since I preached this some people do not understand and that is the last bit about the man who did not have the wedding garments on. One explanation that I was given is that at these events at the time of Jesus people were given garments to wear. This man did not have a garment and so was not part of those who were invited in with the second wave of guests. And so he was expelled from the feast.  


This is the Book that I have just read on the Mass which is fantastic



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