TWENTY EIGHT SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - A

TWENTY EIGHT SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A:
(Is 25:6-10a; Phil 4:12-14, 19-20; Math 22:1-14)

Theme: Our call is always accompanied by the wedding garment, the faith

Reflection:

- Last Sunday we have reflection that accepting the invitation to work in the vineyard is the first step and we have to be ready to face also the consequences and the requirements of the invitation: the sincere and commitment in working till the end; then follows the second step of producing the fruits: the land is given to us and in a word, the world is given to us. It is kept before us so that we cooperate in the creating work of God and make it grow and bear fruits; if the land does not give the fruit, even after the attention and care provided properly, then its proper existence is questioned and it would be and it will be made a desert; therefore, bearing the fruits or producing good fruits and expected fruits is the answer we have to give back to God. Therefore, let us till the ground using all the possible talents we are endowed with and make our life, the vineyard of the Lord, fruitful and successful in faith and in love. And in a word, the garden of joy is in our hands and we have to make it grow with good fruits.
- Today’s Gospel helps us to understand the requirements that are demanded when we are invited; our acceptance of the invitation of God follows also some conditions and one and first among them all is: an unwavering and ever-ready faith. God extends his call for salvation freely and gratuitously to all; but only few are in the grade to accept it and among these very few demonstrate the good disposition to realize this call; we need to wear, therefore as says the Gospel, the appropriate and expected garment – the wedding garment; God himself provides it and we have to only keep it in position of wearing it, that means, we have keep it always clean and pure and this way we can be every ready and ever in position to accept the invitation and enter into the communion with God and with others.
- The banquet of the Lord is holy and our presence should also be in the same manner; we cannot participate in it with unclean heart and unworthy life; if we do participate knowingly and willingly in it without proper preparation we bring upon ourselves the condemnation and judgment of God: ‘to be tied up and be thrown into the dark room’; that means, all our possibilities for the salvation are tied up and we find ourselves in the room of darkness and damnation; therefore, either gaining salvation or buying destruction is kept in our hands and as we sow the seeds so we reap: if we sow good seeds of faith and love then we are permitted to participate and so we are fruitful once again reaping the fruits of joy and communion with the Lord.

First Reading:

- Isaiah and the banquet for the people of Israel:
o God prepares a banquet: the encouraging message of Isaiah to the people of Israel who are in the Babylonian enslavement that this period of hunger and slavery will be expelled and the time for the re-gathering of all the people will take place soon;
o God wipes away every tear: the people who were enjoying the promised land of Cana where God has given them milk and honey – possessions and victories – soon found themselves falling to the worship of false gods, with an attitude of forgetting and neglecting the ‘covenant’ that God has made to them and as a result they have bought ‘the tears and the fears’ of the slavery; once again, God out of his abundant mercy and continuous love promises them through the prophet Isaiah that the time will come when He would wipe away the tears they have;
o Mount Zion is the place of Salvation: Mount Zion is the place where God of Yahweh has made his alliance with his people giving them the commandments that bind the rapport between him and them; it was the first covenant through which God has called them into communion with him and to enter into his love; This alliance is broken time and again by the people of Israel through their infidelity; on the other way God has been always faithful to the promise he made to them and so he kept on asking them to come again (repent and return – is the word often used by the prophets) into his bond of love; once again now, even from the slavery of Babylonia, God calls them to be together as one people and He will himself lead them to the one place where there will be this communion and that is on the mount Zion;
o Therefore, in the Old Testament or in the Old Covenant, the Mountain of Zion is the place for the salvation and the place for the banquet that God will prepare for his people; this is the pre-figuration of the banquet of love and salvation which God will prepare in the sacrifice of His Son and with His Body and His Blood soon on the mount Calvary;
- Isaiah and the banquet for all the people:
o Isaiah is the prophet who enkindles the hope of salvation not only to the chosen people of Israel, although God will act in and through them reaching out to others, but, thus, to all the people of world;
o That is the true meaning of the message of today:
 v. 6: God will make for all the people a feast of rich food;
 v. 7: he will destroy the darkness and death
 v.8: he will wipe away the tear from all the faces
o This promise is been realized in Jesus, his only Son: On the Calvary God has prepared a banquet of salvation in the form of His Son’s body and blood, the innocent and stainless lamb; God has destroyed the darkness of sin and powers of evil and the clutches of death because of the victory he has given in Jesus; thus he created a space for the joy and the tears of all the people who were waiting for the salvation are wiped away and they are given the ‘garment of salvation’ and ‘the banquet of love and communion’.
o It all happened and happens because of the Lord who is faithful to his promise despite of his people’s infidelity and because His Hand is always there on this mountain and therefore, today we are called ‘to see and taste’ the goodness of this Lord and ‘to be glad and rejoice’ in his salvation – vv. 9-10).




Second reading:

- In Christ we can do anything:
o the message and exhortation of St. Paul to the Philippians, a letter which he wrote to them from the prison and there from amidst the trials and tribulations;
o he shows that the missionary has no limits and no boundaries; his message too has no hurdles and no breaks; as the missionary is ever ready to go anywhere for the sake of the preaching Christ, so also his message flows out from anywhere; missionary and his message do not stop or cannot be blocked even in the moments of imprisonment and of sufferings;
o elsewhere the same Paul exclaims that where we are with Christ nobody can be against because ‘no one can separate from the love of Christ’ and he gives a big list of all the possible hurdles that can be found on the way of witnessing Christ’s love but at the end the victory is ours because we are still with Christ amidst all these hardships (Rom 8:31-15ff);
o the same message he gives today also to the Philippians who were discouraged and have lost hope because their missionary is put in prison and the message is blocked; but Paul tells them to ‘have faith in Christ’ because with his strength we can do everything and we can live with balance of mind and heart even when there are indifferent and troubling situation;
- we are always same in Christ:
o we have to learn as Paul to be poor and rich at the same time because our poverty or our riches do not change our mentality for Christ;
o we have to be intact not only in the situation of well being but also when we are abandoned and neglected; not only when we are full of stomach but also in the time of hunger;
o Our manner of being Christian and faithful follower should not change because of our moods and our situations that surround and tempt us.
o Jesus our Savior has already undergone all these and remains for us the model and example for following him in every situation;
o Moreover, we have the hope that God will fill us with his grace and fulfill every need of ours (v.19) and even Jesus promises that we have to search for the kingdom of God first and the rest will be added to us (Math 6:33).


Gospel:

- The salvation is offered to all – its acceptance or its refusal is in the hands of the invitees:
o We are in the presence of the two parables which are interconnected:
 The first is that of all the invitees for whom the great banquet is prepared; is the common passage that is found also in Luke;
 The second is that of the wedding garment which symbolizes the dignity of the invitee; is the peculiar and particular passage that belongs only to Mathew;
o The theme of the first parable is that ‘in front of the salvation offered by Christ the reactions are antithetical, that is, either refusal of it or embracing of it; the first invitees, who are almost privileged, have responded indifferently, even to the stage of difficulty, hostility and contempt (v. 6). It is also the reaction of the audience of Jesus; But here come out the turning point of the parable: the plan of God is not suspended or stopped, the offer of salvation is not off, above all it resounds with more intensity for the people who are strange and whom the Hebrews cannot think of inviting to the banquet: that is, the world of poor, of suffering, or dispersed and of left alones of the streets.
o The second parable is that of ‘having the worthy requirement of the banquet’, that is, the wedding garment: though salvation is refused by those who are privileged and thus, it extended and offered to those who are ‘outside of the chosen race’, it is not guarantee even to these people UNLESS they prepare themselves well for the table meal, the sharing of the banquet of the Lord; the preparation is of having the ‘worthy garment’ of faith and love; but we see here in the parable that one man coming without this garment and such a person, be it privileged or be it called, has to face the consequence of the unworthy participation (v.13), because he is like a person who has patched his old garment with the new cloth (Mk 2:21).
- Being called and elected is not sufficient for the salvation but following the requirements of the Gospel: the conversion and the testimony of life – the vesting of the wedding garment:
o He speaks to them (v.1): the parable contains the aspect of tragedy as in the bad tenants or as in the parable of the ten virgins and of the talents; all these parables have a bad ending; we can think that the ‘proximity of the passion’ of Jesus and the signs of the wrong judgments that will be made against him have contributed to this type of parables;
o God’s Reign (v.2): the kingdom of God is the theme which occurs often in the Gospel of Mathew (13:24, 33, 45, 47; 20:1; 25:1); Mathew presents this parable with lot of particulars proper only to him and explains this as an allegory of the relation of God with his people in occasion of the coming of Jesus; in answer to this invitation that God has extended to them for the wedding of His Son, the Jews have refused the people whom He has sent, the prophets and his disciples; the destruction of Jerusalem temple will be the sign of God’s wrath for all those who have refused his invitation and that has taken place in A.D. 70 and as a curse to the hostile people; the invitation, thus, is offered to the poor, that is, to all the nations. This is the main content of the parable.
o Invitation – refusal – condemnation (vv.3-7): the king sends again his servants to call those invitees like that of the master of the vineyard (21:34-36); the dinner for the invitees is also found in the Wisdom Literature (Pro 9:1-6; Sir 24:19-21); the invitees have killed the servants like in the parable of the wicked tenants (21:35-39); and therefore, the king is angry and sends the troupes to kill those who have refused and acted badly; condemnation of these privileged people is expressed and realized in the fall of Jerusalem;
o Dinner is Ready (v.8): God does not cancel his further invitation just because the called ones did not respond properly; he still waits and extends his offer to all so that the dinner would be consumed;
o Streets (v.9-10): the invitation is sent to those ‘who are found’ and all that are found, ‘good and bad’ and thus, all and also the sinners. In Luke we find two categories of the invites: one, the sick of the city that represent the sinners, and the other, the strangers collected from the street that represent the pagans. These two express one truth that the people of Israel will lose their privileges and Mathew concludes elsewhere saying that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from them and will be given to those who produce good fruits” (21:43); but at the end the message is that ‘the invitation of God should be responded with the personal readiness and worthy manner’.
o Wedding Garment (v.11): in the most of the occasions of the Bible, the vesting of the wedding garment signifies the purification and the true conversion (Gen 35;2; Ex 19:10). This ‘nuptial vestment’ also recalls the garment with which the father covers his son re-found (Lk 15:22); it also reminds us of the new white garment that the first Christian were wearing; Paul, in many places, uses this expression of ‘being vested of Christ’ (Gal 3:27; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). The teaching of the parable is that there should be careful response to the invitation of God with the true conversion and true testimony – the wedding garment.
o Few are chosen (v.14): the sense of this statement is that ‘it is not enough being called (invited) but to be worthy of the acceptance’. Therefore only few are chosen because only few can enter the kingdom of God through the small gate (7:14).

Conclusion:

- We have to respond in time to the call of God:
o each of us has the call of God; God calls each one to have a proper vocation for the glory of his name and for the well being of all his people; the vocation may be differ person to person as St. Paul says that there different vocations and “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” and he continues saying that the gifts (as we call here vocations) such as utterance of wisdom, working of miracles and the prophecy and so on, all of these are “activated by one and same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor 12: 4-11);
o We have to respond to the call taking into consideration the dignity of vocation we are entrusted; the vocation may be to be the parents, to be the priest, to be the catechists, to be the deacons, to be the preachers; but the call is same to all since it come from God; and we are to answer to this call immediately and with full of commitment;
- We have to have ‘wear Christ on our hearts’:
o Having the wedding garment signifies as we have already said ‘to wear’ the will of Christ and to follow him to the end with the continual renew of our life with ‘conversion of heart and testimony of faith’.
o We have to cover ourselves with the mentality and life of Christ; we should learn, always and at any time and at any cost, to be for Christ and in Christ;
o We have to always carry in us and upon our hearts the invitation of Christ with the proper response because our call is always accompanied by the wedding garment: genuine faith and true conversion and perfect commitment.