COMMENT ON THE LITURGY OF THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
Collect
O Almighty and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things which thou commandest;* through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Readings
Ef 5:15-21; Mt 22:1-14
Comment
The parable of the wedding guests reported by Matthew is divided into two parts: the first recall the judgment of Israel, for its rejection of the promised Messiah; the second, as a "gloss", refers to individual judgment and is not present in the other Gospels.
We find a similar story in the Gospel of Luke: that of the "great banquet" (Lk 14:15-24), where the banquet is prepared by a wealthy man, while the Gospel of Matthew tells of a king, who invites his son to the wedding. The parable takes on a greater messianic meaning in Matthew and prefigures the persecutions and outrages that not only the prophets of the Old Testament, but also the disciples and apostles of the Lord, in every age, suffer for his name.
The reaction of the one who sent the invitation is also different between the two Gospels. In Luke, the guests are replaced by beggars, mutilated, lame, and blind. In Matthew the king decides to completely destroy the city of those who refused the invitation: "The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city" (Mt 22:7). Jerusalem, the city of God, has now become "their city" because God has abandoned it to the enemy (Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans a few decades after Christ's death). Already in the book of Exodus we see that, after Israel has built the golden calf, God turns to Moses calling Israel "your people" and no longer "my people" (Ex 32:7).
At this point in Jesus' earthly life there is a decisive course change, represented by the king's words to his servants: ‘Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find’. While before Jesus had intimated to the disciples ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans’ (Mt 10:5), this prohibition is now abolished; the same can be said of the distinction between people and people. We can say with Paul that "Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free" (Col 3:11), but all are equally sinners, to whom Christ offers his salvation. Now the doors of the wedding room are open to everyone.
There is no discrimination even on the basis of good works: they "gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests" (Mt 22:10). That the possibility of attending the banquet is given by grace is clear in the description of the new guests in the Gospel of Luke: "the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame" (Lk 14:21) represent our human nature, marked by wounds and by the blindness of sin, which prevent us from reaching salvation alone.
In the Matthean parable, however, "the king came in to see the guests, [and] he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes" (Mt 22:11). The king's entry is the image of the final judgment and the separation of the hypocrites from the Church of Christ. He enters when all the guests are seated at the table, as was the custom in the ancient Middle East.
The faith necessary to present oneself at the banquet is symbolized by the wedding dress, which one of the guests does not have. It was customary at that time for kings to distribute clothes to the guests to present themselves at the feast. It was in fact inadmissible for anyone to show up with worn-out clothes. It is clear the idea of refused grace and of the freedom of human conscience to welcome the Son of God and his saving word.
This image is also used by the prophet Isaiah: "I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Is 61,10).
Although sinners are invited to go to Christ in the condition in which they are, and although salvation is obtained "without money and without price" (Is 55:1), Paul acknowledges that God "has freely given us [his grace] in the One he loves" (Eph 1:6), with whom we are called to conform ourselves.
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
