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Mass Text - Latin
Mass Text - English
“Many are called, but few are chosen.”
The parable that our
Lord recounts today ought to give us reason to stop and think about our own
spiritual life. Of course, He is not talking about the proper etiquette for
attending weddings and other big parties. Rather, He is talking about the
conscious and unconscious decisions we all make about our relationship with
God.
First of all, God
extends an invitation to salvation. And for a variety of reasons, a
surprising number of people say “no” to God's invitation. It may be that
like many of God's chosen people, they are looking for the wrong thing. God
offers them holiness, but they are looking for social prestige, or political
connections, or economic advantage. Or, perhaps, God offers them the Faith,
but they are unwilling to accept the responsibilities of Christian behavior
that go along with being a Catholic. God touches their hearts, but so does
the devil, and they are seduced right back into their bad behavior. Or
maybe they are just simply lazy; too lazy to get to Mass on Sunday, too lazy
to learn anything about their faith, too lazy to pray.
Some, like the people
in the parable, even react brutally. God extends an invitation to them, but
they respond only with hatred, trying to claim that God and religion are the
source of the world's troubles. Sometimes this sort of hatred even bubbles
over into violence and revolution. The history books are filled with this
kind.
The parable goes on to
say that when the wedding party was finally filled with guests, the king
came in a found one who had refused to dress properly for the
occasion—particularly insulting since it was the custom for the host to
furnish the guests with the proper attire—the man simply would not make use
of something that was provided freely to him.
And isn't that just
like the way so many of us conduct our spiritual lives? We accept God's
invitation to salvation; we are baptized, we are members of the Church, we
come to the wedding feast, but we just “go through the motions.” We come to
the wedding feast, but we refuse the garment of sanctifying grace, rarely if
ever confessing our sins and receiving the forgiveness that God so freely
offers to us.
Or we come to the
wedding feast and we refuse to wear the garment of charity.
Neither are we there because we love God, nor because we love our neighbor.
Again, we refuse the use of something that costs nothing and earns us
everything.
Or we come to the
wedding feast, but we refuse to do what Saint Paul tells us today when he
says we must “put on the new man.”
We claim to be Catholics externally, but we refuse to make the internal
conversion that is so necessary if that external label is to have any
meaning.
Or we come to the
wedding feast and we refuse to eat. And that is precisely what we do if we
try to be Catholics without nourishing ourselves freely with the
Sacraments. Or, perhaps, we come and refuse to spend any time in
conversation with our Divine Host; which is what we do if we ignore prayer
and meditation on holy things.
Now probably, to some
degree, each one of us is guilty in some measure of all of these things.
And, undoubtedly, there are additional ways in which we may attend the
wedding feast while still rejecting God's hospitality, at least in part.
That's why our Lord
gives us this parable today: so that we might make an examination of
conscience. Have I been away for too long from Confession or Communion?
Have I allowed the fire of charity to grow cold; neither loving God nor my
fellow man? Have I tried to look like a Christian on the outside, yet
remaining a pagan on the inside? Have I avoided conversation with God in
prayer?
Questions like these
may well be some of the most important you can ever ask yourself. For the
Kingdom of Heaven is like this very wedding feast. Even though we have
accepted God's invitation for salvation, we will still be judged on the way
we conduct ourselves in this life. We don't want to have come this far only
“to be cast into the exterior darkness.” So make that examination of
conscience, and make changes where they are necessary. Make sure that our
Lord wasn't talking about you when He said those ominous words:
“Many are called, but few are chosen.”
