To receive an invitation to anything is a bit of an honor. It means someone enjoys our presence enough to invite us to be with them: a birthday or retirement party, a grand opening, a clambake fundraiser, to which all of you are invited next Saturday evening. Another nice thing about an invitation is that we are free to accept or decline it. A family birthday party might seem more of a duty than an option, but we are still free to accept the invitation or not.
Throughout Scripture, God is encountered as one who invites. God invites us to friendship with Him. God invites us to trust Him. God invites us to eternal life in heaven. God, the Father, sent His only Son, as a sort of living incarnate invitation, inviting us to follow Him in all things. Jesus often speaks of the invitation to follow Him.
And, In the Gospel today, Jesus tells a parable comparing his Father to a king whose sends out invitations to a lavish wedding party. A long time ago, all the way back before COVID-19, large groups of people, in fact, felt safe enough to gather to celebrate major events like weddings.
Well, Jesus uses this image—the lavish wedding banquet filled with rich food, sweet wines, song, music, and dance—to describe heaven, in a way similar to Isaiah in our first reading, in which heaven is described as a mountain-top-feast filled with rich food and choice wine.
It's no coincidence that the Holy Mass, celebrated each Sunday contains some of these elements: food, wine, song, music, in some cultures, dance. I remember being at an ordination in Madagascar, where following the ordination mass, the entire gathering, including the bishop and priests broke out into a sort of conga line to celebrate the ordinations. The saints describe the Mass as a foretaste of heaven, in which God is encountered and joyfully worshipped.
Outside of times, like our current one, where attending Mass must still be done cautiously, the invitation to attend mass and the invitation to heaven in eternity, virtually coincide. We come to Mass week after week to express our acceptance of the invitation to heaven. And to reject one is to reject the other…in normal times.
What an honor to be invited by God Himself to the wedding feast. To think, we, humanity, who rejected harmony with God in the garden of eden, and reject the invitation to faithfulness over and over in every stage of history, in every stage of life, continue to be invited by God himself into his presence—to communion with Him.
And yet, it’s pretty clear from Jesus’ parable that acceptance of the invitation is not forced on anybody. Christianity is not forced, mass attendance is not forced, heaven is not forced on us. And the choices we make in this life express whether we accept or decline the invitation. For, again, the parable is clear, if we reject the invitation, there will be eternal consequences. For God will respect the decision to reject his invitation definitively.
So what do we do about those who appear to be rejecting the invitation? What do we do about those family members who haven’t gone to church in a decade outside the occasional wedding or funeral. Or those in adulterous situations? We cannot change them. We cannot force them to be here or to repent. So what can we do?
For one, we can nudge, we can gently remind them of God’s invitation. Though our society tells us never to discuss religion, Our Lord commands us to go out to all nations, to share the Gospel, to invite. So we can gently remind family members of God’s invitation back to Church, in our conversations and interactions with them. In fact, it seems God expects us to. With mass attendance down a bit for various reasons, some gentle nudges are certainly needed. Many of our fellow parishioners, too, who haven’t returned to mass because of the virus or for various reasons, too, can be gentle invited back and reassured of the safety of what we are doing here.
Secondly, every one of us should be praying on a daily basis for family members who appear to be rejecting God’s invitation. For prayer is so powerful. There are miracles God wishes to perform as answers to our prayers. So in our daily prayer, to lift up a fallen-away family member to God, to offer that rosary for them, is so powerful.
Also, mortification and fasting. Fasting, has been a powerful spiritual instrument in the history of the Church, practiced by the saints, as a means of bringing about conversion. To fast, perhaps, on bread and water, once a week, for the conversion of a family member, has incomparable power.
But, perhaps the greatest thing that we can do is to be filled with the Joy of the Gospel. The witness of a Christian who is filled with joy because of their love of Christ and His Church draws others to God like a magnet. I never met Mother Theresa, but I met some of the sisters who worked along side her, who emulate her spirit, her attitude, her prayerfulness, and care for the poor. They were brimming over with joy, super-magnets drawing others to Christ. They and so many good consecrated religious remind us that joy is discovered as we pour ourselves out in service. Authentic joy, Mother Theresa says, is a net of love for which to catch souls. One of the terrible thing about these masks is that they cover up joyful Christian faces.
A few years ago Pope Francis warned Christians about having “una cara de vinagre” he says in his native spanish—a face of vinegar. Meaning, don’t be a sourpuss because it does not attract people to the Gospel. The Pope offers a real challenge here, because the pilgrimage of the Christian is hard. We are pilgrims on a hard journey. And sometimes our own crosses feel terribly heavy. In these times, then, we are called to turn to prayer and trust all the more, so that we can be refreshed by God, and witness to his saving help.
For finally, God invites us each of us deeper into a loving and intimate relationship with Himself through prayer, to “spend time in spiritual conversation, in silent adoration, in heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament” of the Eucharist. At the Last Supper in fact, the Lord says, “I have told you all these things so that my joy might be in you, and your joy might be complete.” We believe what the Church teaches, we celebrate it in the sacraments, we follow it in our moral lives, and we engage in prayer, so that we can know the joyful life the Lord wants for each one of us—and again, that joy is a net of love to catch souls, to invite souls.
For, like the servants in the Gospel whom the king sends out into the towns and the streets, Christians are to be God’s inviters. Inviting back the fallen-away and inviting strangers, those out in the streets, in our neighborhood. And yet, we are also the ones whom the Lord invites to be people of greater peace, hospitality, gentleness, and Christian joy.
As we come forward to receive the most Holy Sacrament today, may our hearts be open to all the gifts God invites us to receive for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment