Monday - 31st Week of OT 2017 - Room at the Table

Have you ever noticed how many times Jesus is either sitting at a meal or talking about meals in his parables? Meals feature so prominently in the gospels that scholars have commented: ‘Jesus ate his way through the Gospels.’ A Catholic Scripture scholar even commented, “‘… they killed him because of the way he ate; because he ate and drank with sinners.’ Jesus revealed the Kingdom as he shared meals with others, and so we have much to learn from where he ate and with whom he ate.

The first half of the Gospel of Luke, from which we find our Gospel passage today, Jesus is dining at the home of a leading Pharisee, and he gives a series of lessons.

First, he speaks about the licitness of healing on the Sabbath. Then, upon noticing how the the dinner guests picked the places of honor at the table, Jesus tells the parable of taking the lower place at the wedding feast and waiting to be invited higher. Today’s Gospel is a direct teaching related to that parable. Jesus instructs to not only invite those who will boost your social standing, but to invite those who cannot pay you back.

On one hand, Jesus is challenging us to reach out to the poor, to people who cannot repay our charity. On the other hand, Jesus is challenging us to identify as the poor, in the grand scheme of salvation.
Each of us come to the table of the Lord, poor and hungry, unable to provide for ourselves. The Lord is the host who has invited all of us the physically and more importantly spiritually poor and lame and crippled.

Because the Lord feeds us in our poverty, we, in turn, are to reach out with our meager possessions, to those who have less than us, expecting no repayment, save that of eternal life.

How can we repay the goodness the Lord has shown to us? Paying the debt of our sins through his suffering and death when we were incapable of paying it ourselves? The entire Christian life is a response to the Lord loving us when we were unlovable, feeding us in our spiritual starvation, teaching us to walk rightly again in our spiritual lameness, clothing us when we were in the abject poverty of sin and separation from God.

We must seek to love as we have been loved, looking for opportunities to give without expecting repayment. Mother Theresa said, Jesus often hides behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, and the unreasonable. She prayed to recognize Jesus in these people, and to find the sweetness of serving Him in them; and so must we, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That bishops, priests, and all ministers of the Gospel may seek to imitate Jesus in his charity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and witness to the Truth.

That our president and all civil servants will carry out their duties with justice, honesty, and respect for religious freedom and the dignity of human life. 

For victims of violence, especially the victims of the Church shooting in Texas yesterday, for their consolation, and that all forms of violence may be replaced by the Peace of Christ.

For the impoverished and sick and those experiencing any sort of trial: that Jesus the Bread of Life will be their sustenance, and that Christians will be instruments of God’s mercy for all those in need. 

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased clergy and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.