Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 10, 2020

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.10.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.

* In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to us about the kingdom of heaven, the invitation he has given us to join him there forever, and about how we need to respond to that invitation. He does so within the context of a parable about salvation history in which he illustrates for us, basically, how not to respond. He concludes the parable by saying, “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” We obviously want to be numbered among the “chosen few.” The chosen ones are not those whom God somehow favors over others. They are those who respond fully to having been chosen by God. Therefore it’s important for us to pay close attention to what Jesus tells us today that we will respond to his invitation, choose him who has chosen us, and help the “many” we know also learn how to become among the chosen as well!

* Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a wedding banquet a king is throwing for his son. God wants all to come to this feast, he wishes all people to be saved, but there are three parts of this parable that we need to ponder:

* The first is the invitation. Jesus says that the King sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. When they didn’t respond the first time, he gave them a second chance. He sent other servants, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and my fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the feast.’” But again they made light of it. One went to his farm, another to his business, and yet others seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The servants that Jesus has been describing up until now are the prophets who had been sent by God to invite the Jews to this feast, but, as we talked about last week in Jesus’ parable of the tenant farmers in the Master’s vineyard, all of the prophets were mistreated and killed by the people receiving this invitation to communion with God. Only some, like obviously the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, the Apostles and those who became Jesus’ disciples, responded to Jesus’ invitation.

* But God kept inviting still.  The servants went out a third time and “gathered all whom they found, both good and bad,” Jesus says, “so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” This is the mission of the Church. We don’t have a Church only for the good and the holy. All are invited. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that in the Church we find great saints and great sinners, that we find the faithful and the hypocrites. Some respond to the invitation by showing up but without conversion. They are invited, but not chosen, because they cooperate with God’s desire to choose them. We see this in what Jesus says about the wedding garment: “When the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man there who was not dressed in a wedding garment, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

* At first glance, it might seem that the King is both crazy and cruel. He commanded his servants to invite the man to the feast and then he’s picky about what he’s wearin...