Party or Perish!

Last Sunday featured an intense and shocking parable about our readiness, our fruitfulness, and our decision to accept and enter the Kingdom of God or not.  The Lord has used the story of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus.  This parable is shocking and speaks to the great and dramatic decision to which we are all summoned:  Will we accept the Kingdom of God, entering into it and accepting its terms, or not?  It is a decision on which your destiny (and that of those you love) depends.  And Jesus is not playing around; He lays out the drama in stark and shocking ways.  Jesus is not the harmless hippie or the mild-mannered Messiah that many today have recast Him to be.  He is the Great Prophet, the very Son of God and Lord who authoritatively stands before us and says, “Decide.

Today’s gospel is perhaps the most shocking and dramatic of all.  The Lord Jesus issues another urgent summons to the Kingdom, the parable of the wedding banquet.  As with the past Sunday, there is the warning of hellish destruction in the refusal of the Kingdom.  But this view must be balanced with the vision of a seeking Lord who wants to fill His banquet and will not stop urging until the end.  You might say that the theme of this gospel is “Party or Perish!”  From Jesus’ banquet parables we realize that he knows all about empty places at table, invitations refused, lack of interest in him and his closeness.  For us, the empty places at the table of the Lord’s wedding feast, whether excusable or not, are no longer a parable but a reality in this very country to which he had revealed his closeness in a special way.  Jesus also knew about guests who come to the banquet without being robed in the wedding garment – they come not to rejoice in his presence but merely out of habit, since their hearts are elsewhere.  Those who do not live their faith as love are not ready for the banquet and are cast out.  Eucharistic communion requires faith, but faith requires love; otherwise, even as faith, it is dead.