So when the day arrives and the food is ready, servants are sent to summon the guests. But these guests simply ignore the invitation. So more servants are sent out. Again those who have been invited refuse—some refuse outright, others offer excuses: they are busy with their farm or other business. Some actually seize the servants, mistreat them, and even kill them.

Here we begin to see how Matthew is using the parable to review the history of God’s relations with his people. God has always been open, eager to invite his people to greater union with God and with one another. Many servants were sent. These were the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and many others. But the people ignored God’s call through the prophets. So other messengers were sent. Matthew probably sees this next group as the Christian missionaries sent to the Jewish people during the first years after Jesus. These servants, these Christian missionaries, too, are rejected and even put to death. Then came the great Jewish War against the Roman Empire, resulting in the total destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This is probably what Matthew is referring to when he says that the king dispatched his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burnt their town.

As we read the parable, we have to remind ourselves that it is a parable, a story of a king who gets quite upset about being ignored and destroys the town of those who killed his servants. So the king in the story looks elsewhere for guests. He sends servants out for the third time, telling them to bring in everyone they can find. Here Matthew refers to calling the Gentiles to come and replace the Jewish people who have rejected Jesus. These servants bring in everyone and the wedding hall is filled with people from all over, ourselves included.

Then there is one man without a wedding garment. We might wonder how everyone called so suddenly was supposed to have dressed up for the occasion. Someone has suggested that the wedding robes were handed out as people came through the palace gate. Anyway, there is one bloke there without a wedding garment and he is promptly dismissed into the outer darkness.

As I said, we have to remind ourselves that this is a story about an imaginary king, because we tend to see the king as an image of God the Father preparing a banquet for his Son Jesus and we find it very troubling to see that king getting so angry and revengeful. So what can we take away from this parable and apply to ourselves?

God is preparing a banquet for all his children and wants to see us all sitting around the table, enjoying abundant life, full of joy and happiness. All are invited. No one is excluded. Jesus himself shows us this by sitting at meals with everyone. He is even criticized for eating with people that were considered sinners and undesirable. He wanted us to get the picture of what God wants us to do. Jesus understood life as a great invitation from God. It is a freely given invitation and needs to be answered freely.

But Jesus was a realist. He was aware that the invitation might be refused. Even today many people do not have the time or the heart to hear any call from God. They are taken up with themselves and their own interests. The man without the wedding robe represents all those who accept the invitation but do not undergo the conversion of life needed for entrance into the eternal banquet. Those who pretend to be Christians while living a sinful life are no better off than those who refuse to accept Jesus in the first place.

For many people, happiness lies in owning more, buying or selling more, having more things and, hopefully, more security. They try to escape from their problems by plunging into the pleasures of entertainment, parties, drugs, sex, faster cars, new and more sophisticated gadgets. We can keep on running away from ourselves by losing ourselves in a flood of interests, with the danger of forgetting God and our ultimate goal in life. Like the man thrown out into the darkness, we have to take the responsibility for the consequences of our misbehaving.

But God cannot be stopped. The invitation keeps coming despite our refusals and our self-interest. No, God is not absent from us. We are the ones that are absent if we turn a deaf ear to God’s invitations. We Christians are warned not to relax in the mere fact of having been called as God’s people. As we celebrate this Eucharist, a symbol of the eternal banquet, let us examine our conscience. How self-centered are we? How open are we to others? How open are we to the invitations from God that come to us in our daily life? How do we behave toward the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters whom we meet every day and of whom Jesus says “What you do to the least of my brethren you do to me”? Invitations from God come to us through the people and events we meet day by day, today and tomorrow and every day of the week or year.

Let’s remind ourselves of God’s gifts to us and profess our faith in his goodness. 

Robert Chiesa Sj