XXVIII Sunday of Ordinary Time A
Mt 22, 1 - 14
The parables heard in the past few Sundays have reminded us of a fundamental reality of our faith, the fact that we are called: the Father calls his children to accept his gift and to partner with him.
But if the theme of the vineyard, the protagonist of the past parables, might have led one to think that God's call was aimed at hard labor, today's parable (Mt 22:1-14) corrects the tune and clarifies the terms of the contract.
God's call is not that of a master who exploits his workers for his own profits, but that of a king who invites us to a wedding: we are invited to a feast, and this is the first important datum of today's Gospel.
A datum so important that it is worth pausing for a moment, and remembering, for example, that John's Gospel opens the series of Jesus' signs precisely with a wedding feast (Jn. 2:1-11), in which Jesus, invited, gives new wine and new joy. The wedding thus becomes symbolic of what is about to happen to humanity through Christ's presence among us: the covenant that God has always sought to make with his children has now come to a turning point, to a new possibility of fulfillment. The Kingdom is indeed near.
This is what today's parable, which consists of three parts, is all about.
In the first one (Mt 22:2-7) there is a strange fact yet astonishing, namely that the guests chosen to attend the wedding refuse the invitation, and do so in order to go about their own petty business and interests.
Even, some guests, just like the vinedressers of last Sunday (Mt 21:33-43), show themselves violent with the king's messengers to the point of killing some of them...
How is this possible?
The joy that the wedding symbolizes is a difficult feeling because it requires the ability to welcome and receive, to make room for life. It requires a poor heart. And we often prefer to cling to our small securities rather than welcome life as a gift.
But God does not give up on his plan, which is to make man a participant in His own life, and he does an unexpected thing because it is typical of love to not give up in the face of obstacles, but to know how to turn them into possibilities, in a creative way.
And so we come to the second part of the parable (Mt 22:8-10): the king finds that the guests are not worthy so he extends his invitation to all, good and bad. Here is the second oddity of the parable: the guests reject the invitation and become unworthy; all others, good and bad, accept it and become worthy.
We found this adjective, worthy, several Sundays ago (Thirteenth Sunday): in Mt 10:37-42 ("Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; ... whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me..."), at the end of the missionary discourse, this term had returned several times. And we had said that worthy is not the good person, but the one who hears, who accepts the call, who opens himself to a greater world, who is clothed with the same dignity as God; worthy is the one who lives as a son, and we are all called to this dignity.
And so we come to the third part of the parable (Mt 22:11-13), which reveals to us that there is another reason that prevents us from opening our hearts to the joy of the wedding: we struggle to accept God's gift of life because, the moment we accept it, the gift transforms our existence, makes us worthy.
In fact, after the king has extended his invitation to all, and after the poor and the least have accepted the invitation, he enters the hall, sees a guest without a wedding garment, and has him thrown out, so his fate becomes similar to that of the first guests, who excluded themselves from the feast: he too, from being worthy becomes unworthy.
Therefore, it is not possible to enter the party without making a change, without living in a new way, and without allowing oneself to be transformed by cultivating a relationship and even a friendship with the Lord.
He who pretends to do so, who wants to remain in his old way of life, loses everything, just like the new wine -to remain in the context of the wedding feast- which cannot be poured into old wineskins (Matt 9:17): both are lost.
All, then, are called (Mt 22:14); but not all the called are willing to be born again, to clothe themselves with the dignity of Christ. Not all are willing to abandon their own measure of life, to open themselves to a greater measure of love, the same measure of the One who agreed to lose his dignity so as not to stop loving, and to invite us to his feast.
+Pierbattista
