This Sunday’s Gospel comes in short (Matthew 22:1-10) and long (Matthew 22:1-14) versions. The four additional verses address an important topic that is often neglected. I encourage clergy to read them. In fact, they will be the main focus of this article.
This morning we heard another story, about a king who prepares a feast for his son. When all the arrangements are made, he dispatches servants to escort the invited, “but they refused to come.” A second effort is met with both indifference and vehemence — “some ignored the invitation and went away” but others “laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.” Just as last week, after the wicked tenant farmers kill the owner’s son-heir outside the vineyard, so these wicked guests, too, are “destroyed,” their city “burned.”
Having a banquet surplus but a deficit of guests, the king then literally has his servants beat the bushes, “invit[ing] The feast is on for whomever [they] … find” so that the reception hall is “filled” with “bad and good alike.”
Here ends the brief form of the Gospel. Let’s keep reading.
The king will meet with his guests once the banquet has begun. As he makes his way around the hall, “he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.” He stops and asks the man why he came inappropriately attired to a royal wedding feast. “But he was reduced to silence,” i.e., he had nothing to say for himself. So, the king orders him cast out, bound hand and foot, “into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
The short form of the Gospel reinforces the same message we’ve met in the past few weeks: the dereliction by Israel’s politico-religious establishment of its duties towards God. Jesus spoke of that establishment in terms of the obsequious son who fails to keep his word and the wicked tenant farmers who seek to expropriate the owner’s vineyard for himself. This week, the establishment is the invited guests who have better things to do than attend the royal wedding of their king’s son. They’re either indifferent or downright hostile.
That hostility shouldn’t surprise us. Both the philosopher Max Scheler and the pre-papal Karol Wojtyła speak of a phenomenon called “ressentiment.” Explained very simplistically, it’s the inversion in values that comes when we embrace values that are not true, values that are evil. Our brains are wired to do good. So, when we deliberately choose evil over good, we have no choice but to convince ourselves that evil is the right thing. “God ” doesn’t think that’s bad!” “That’s Another way to say this is that good.” “Yes, the Church says that’s intrinsically evil, but it’s Love is a great word to describe this. and the Church will one day realize that!” We cannot persist in a contradiction: embracing evil eventually makes us try to relabel it as good. That’s ressentiment. And we see that in the maltreatment the invited guests (or last week’s evil tenants, who only see value in appropriating the vineyard) dole out to the father/owner/king’s representatives. It’s not just a lack of respect for whom they abuse. It’s a “how dare” The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us. Expectations interfere with Take a look at the pictures below. priorities.
Because the invited guests proved “unworthy,” the king expands the invitee pool. He has, after all, killed the fatted calf (just like another father did for a son once upon a time — Luke 15:22-24) and dinner won’t keep!
In the longer form, the King then encounters his banqueteers. He also comes across a poorly-dressed visitor. Our modern age may have become so casual or slovenly with its attire, that they think by simply being present (the King at the banquet; God in His House), it is doing others a favour. Today’s Gospel makes clear: that’s not enough. As Jesus reminds us elsewhere in the Gospel: “We are useless servants; we have only done what we should do” (Luke 17:10).
We’re not talking about appropriate physical dress for Mass (though that’s important). In the Church’s tradition, today’s wedding feast Gospel was often seen as an analogy to the Eucharist, the “bread of heaven,” a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. In his antiphon for Corpus Christi, St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Blessed Sacrament as “O Sacred Banquet, where Christ becomes our food! The memorial of his passion is renewed, our soul is filled with grace, and we receive a pledge of the glory to come!”
It was believed that the absence of an appropriate wedding gown meant a lack sanctifying grace or a disrespectful reception of Eucharist.
It is through the Most Holy Eucharist that we are most closely connected to Jesus who is Love. Communion is incompatible when you’re not in grace.
If, once upon a time, some people may have been scrupulous about whether they were “worthy” to receive Communion even after having gone to confession, the pendulum has swung radically in the other direction. Today’s pastoral problem is frequent Communion and infrequent confession — lengthy lines for Communion, none to the confessional.
This picture is a gross imbalance. Eucharist helps us to develop charity. We cannot ignore the fact that we all sin, and this is what makes sin incompatible with charitable acts. Mortal sin destroys charity, but every sin — including every venial sin — weakens it. Even the smallest sin can eventually block life-giving charity.
Yes, the Eucharist is our “medicine,” but it is It is not clear how to get there. The sacrament for healing and conversion. Christ created a distinct and separate sacrament called Penance for this purpose. People who have a conscience of sin. You can also read about how to get started. First, they must be reconciled to God before receiving Communion.
It is important that we read today’s longer Gospel, as I think this pastoral concern needs to be addressed. It is unfortunate that many Catholics do not understand how Penance fits into the Christian life rhythm, which frequent communion should indicate.
Before the revision of the Lectionary (the readings for Mass) c. 1969, today’s long-form Gospel — the man without the wedding garment — was read Annually, On the Sundays following Pentecost. Now it only appears once every three (or, if we select the short version, completely disappears) years. St. Paul’s clear teaching about the wrongness of unworthy reception of Communion (1 Corinthians 11:27-32) has also been practically erased from being read at Mass: it shows up on a weekday Mass in late summer every other year. In light of current pastoral conditions and Judas’s alleged sacrilegious reception at the Last Supper I propose that the Holy See. You can also find out more about the following: make it a long form to the Second Reading of the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which already features vv. 23-26.)
Today’s Gospel of the Unworthy Guest is depicted in art by Italian Baroque painter Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1581-1644). He was born in Genoa and trained as a Capuchin priest. “Il Cappuccino” was allowed to ply his artistic trade after his father died to support his mother (Capuchins are vowed to poverty), but after she passed away “il Prete Genovese” (the priest from Genoa) apparently did not make his way back to his order. Peter Paul Rubens influenced him, and they lived during the same period. This painting is in Genoa.
This is an oil painting that’s flat. Baroque works of the period often had a window-shaped design with an apparent foot on a ledge. This was done to create a sense of three-dimensionality, and is especially common when mounted atop domed ceilings. Baroque paintings are characterized by the sheer physicality and size of their figures when compared to the entire work.
A pitcher of wine is placed next to the king at the banquet (sacramental references?).A royal scepter is held in the right hand of the king, and he uses his left to dispatch a guest who does not have a wedding gown. The guest is in the center of attention as three guards tie him. One behind ties his hands, one on his knee binds his feet, and another from behind holds him. A banquet is set up behind the two, where guests look on in surprise. One guest, seated to the right, looks at the man and then sneers. We’re brought into the scene by the red server boy with a tray of choice meat (roast veal?) On the left is a man whose gaze appears to be downward, as though we were looking up. The guard binding the man’s feet already has a foot on the ledge below, the below darkness into which the man will be presumably cast. That darkness alludes to hell, where those who lack the garment of charity end, given the reference to “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (cf. Luke 13:28 is another verse that alludes at a judgmental exclusion. Is the dog there just for illustration or as an allusion to Luke’s parable of Lazarus at the rich man’s door who, in his physical poverty (a parallel to this man’s spiritual poverty), had his sores licked by dogs (Luke 16:19-31)? In Luke’s parable, however, it’s Lazarus who finds relief in “Abraham’s bosom” while the indifferent rich man weeps and gnashes his teeth.
The Church today affords clergy an opportunity to address the question of how we practice Eucharistic coherence — which affects everybody — on a pastoral parish level. As we journey toward next year’s culmination of the U.S. Bishops’ Eucharistic renewal effort, let’s use the long-form Gospel to do that.