There are Hints in the Scriptures

Dear Friends,


It has been mentioned before that there is a link between the First Reading from the Old Testament and the Gospel on any given Sunday. That link is very clear this weekend with the prophet Isaiah describing the feast the Lord himself will provide for all peoples and the Gospel parable where Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a wedding feast for the king’s son.


Isaiah’s description of the joys and delights that await the faithful on the Lord’s mountain is often proclaimed at funeral masses, and appropriately so – a reminder of what awaits us when we are finally reunited with those we have lost and with the Lord when he will “wipe away the tears from every face” can strengthen our faith and hope when we are grieving a loss.


The wedding feast in Jesus’ parable has more complexities. The invited guests twice refuse to come and they come to a bad end after mistreating and killing the king’s servant messengers. (Can this be a reference to the Chosen People rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ?)


We know the story. The king sends servants this time out not to the invited guests, but to the main roads to invite everyone they find to the feast. (Is this a prophecy of the universality of the church – where not only the Chosen are invited in but the Gentiles as well; in other words, everyone?)


Then comes the part that is mysterious to me: “But when the king came in to meet the guests, he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. The king said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.”


What are we to make of this? I, for one, have to get beyond my preoccupation with “fairness” and literal-mindedness: How can someone who was drafted into the feast from the highways and byways be expected to be properly dressed for it? And how is it that the other guests, similarly gathered from the great “unwashed herd” are somehow properly dressed?


It leads me to think about what the wedding garment symbolizes (if I do succeed in getting past my literal-mindedness). Maybe it is an interior disposition, an attitude of humility and receptivity without any worry about who else was brought in with me? I’ve heard some say that the missing wedding garment is simply love. 

In any case, if the feast on the Lord’s mountain is for all peoples as the first reading says, and the proper garment is love, then I guess I’ll have to just depend on God’s mercy and providence to somehow get me there. There are hints in the scriptures that that may be a safe bet.


Siempre Adelante,


Dominic MacAller
​Worship Minister 

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