Matthew 22:1-14 for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The King’s invitation to his son’s wedding feast is all grace, graciousness and gratis.
The invitation is to all, bad or good, but all must come dressed worthily for a wedding.
Openness, but also conditionality: the same contrast and tension were present when Christ first began to preach in public.
Openness: The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Conditionality: Repent and believe in the Gospel!
The kingdom of heaven is open, but to walk into it is repentance: metánoia— a new mind— a challenge to one’s old ways of feeling, reasoning, choosing, acting and living.
Repentance is the worthy wedding garment.
To get one means to work, earn, save, spend, buy and put on a new way that challenges one’s old ways.
Heaven is open, and everyone has an invitation.
To step into heaven’s doors means to put aside what is old, and to work and spend to put on what is new.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Repent and believe in the Gospel!
God wants more and better for us than we can imagine.
He calls us to change into a wedding garment.
He alone makes it possible, but wants us to take up and do what he has made possible.
God in Christ lavishes on us a possibility and a reality better than anything else: he lavishes on us his very own self.
As our Creed at Mass puts it: For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.
He left heaven behind to be with us and like us in joy and sorrow, in life and death, in all things but sin.
In his Eucharistic Body and Blood, God opens for us the wedding feast of the kingdom of heaven, but if we do nothing we lock ourselves out.
There is hope for us in the Eucharist of Christ the Bridegroom, who for us all and for our salvation was tied up, thrown out of the holy city, stripped of his garment and crucified.
For us he suffered, died, was buried and descended into hell.
On the third day he rose from the dead, in the garment of nuptial Flesh and Blood made forever undying and glorious.
So, in his Eucharist, Christ lives, suffers, fulfills and surpasses the whole parable in today’s Gospel.
Here in the supreme goodness and love of his Eucharist, Christ clothes us with the wedding garment of his own ever-living, glorious Flesh and Blood.
The resurrection of God the Son in our humanity, our flesh, and blood is the Royal Wedding.
God the Spirit gives everlasting life and glory to our flesh and blood in Christ.
The Spirit is the Lord, the Giver of Life.
It falls to us to take hold, wear and live the life God freely gives.
This is the wedding feast, the supper of the Lamb.
Let us approach with joy and hope, but also with faithful love that repents.
Let us live what we receive, so that the Father may recognize us clothed with Christ his Son both now and in the life of the world to come.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
