28th Sunday Year A

See Commentary on Matthew 22:1-14


Homily 1 - 2005 

To the Jewish mind, to speak of wedding-feast was to think of “good-time”.  The image was often used in the Scriptures to indicate the good time God was bursting to share with us.  More often than not, it meant “already in this life”; sometimes it was also stretched to mean “life after death”.

In today’s story, Matthew adds a caveat.  You need your wedding garment.  You need to be ready to “rise to the occasion”.  Sometimes the question confronts me when preaching at funerals.  No doubts about God’s intentions.  But what about the wedding garment?  How do we rise to the occasion when presented with the possibility of heaven, of eternal life?  Surely it shouldn’t be hard to love God: infinite beauty, mercy, truth, etc?

Or is there more to it?  I think there is: Loving God is not a matter simply of saying “How nice!” (like I might about an ice-cream, or a chocolate).  No real love is just that.  Love is relationship.  To love is to step into a dance routine, to be caught up in the dance, to let oneself be loved and to love.  To love God is to step into the tumultuous flow of God’s infinite loving, to say “yes”, to let myself be swept along in the irresistible surge of all that is encompassed in God’s loving as it translates itself into practice in: justice, mercy, forgiveness, patience and truth.  That’s scary; that’s stepping well outside the comfort Zone; that means death to all self-centredness, caution, common sense – but it is the only way to take part in and to enjoy the wedding feast.

The wedding garment – dressed for the occasion.  The only way to get ready is to start now: to surrender to the passion for justice, compassion, forgiveness, truth, etc. that express the mystery of the practical love of God.  Despite the hesitation, as St Paul wrote encouragingly in today’s reading, I can do all things in him who strengthens me.  And the wonderful things is that the party already begins the moment that I take that first step.  Dancing lessons start now: today!


Homily 2 - 2008

Today’s Gospel story talks about people who were invited to a sumptuous banquet, but who turned it down, even when they were given a second opportunity to come.  Jesus was thinking of those leaders, those chief priests and aristocrats, who wouldn’t accept the utterly gratuitous love of God who wanted to gift them.

We could draw any number of possible messages from the story, but behind them all lies the image of the gifting God.  Isaiah, as we heard in the First Reading, showed a similar sense of the gifting God: a free feed! a banquet of rich food, of fine wine, of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines.  A king’s banquet to celebrate his son’s wedding would be no less lavish!  The gifting God …  We earn nothing; we simply receive – and it makes no difference who we are.

With the Planned Giving Program getting under way, Fr Peter and I have been asked to reflect today on the gift of time.  In giving us life, God has given us time.  All of us have been given all the time we need, at least, all the time to do what God dreams for us: all the time we need to learn, to love, to experience, to enjoy.  All of us, invited to a banquet, a feast of living and loving.

In Jesus’ story, we read that some of those invited wouldn’t come, weren’t interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business.  Apparently, they all felt they had other things to do – there wasn’t time.  There’s never enough time for other things – never enough time for the myriad other things that we’re pressured into doing, that we feel we must do, or must do first.

But there’s always all the time in the world… God has given us all the time in the world that we need to learn, to come alive, to grow in love and to enjoy.  If there isn’t enough time, the wires have got crossed somewhere.  It can’t be life and love that we’re on about.  And what else matters!  

We have twenty-four hours in each day, and seven days in each week.  There’s time to work - and to make a difference, to eat and to drink - and to replenish, to rest and to sleep - and to recreate.  There’s time to be alone, to be still.  There’s time to be together, and to connect.  We have our talents and our responsibilities.  We live in our families, our extended families; the family of fellow believers, the family of the wider community… The banquet of life to which God has invited us!  By finding the balance – and that’s up to us – we come alive; and we grow in love.

Let’s focus again on the Planned Giving Program.  This week the parish – the family of fellow believers – wants some of your time, too.  At the Information Meeting this Wednesday evening, to be held in the Parish Centre, beginning at 7.30, we will detail our recent achievements, our present financial situation and our plans for the future.  We will also provide details of the current Renewal Program, and there will be ample opportunity for questions.

This is a very important meeting for us, and everybody is invited.  It is your parish, and this meeting will chart our course for the next few years; so, if you consider yourself a member of the parish, you really should be there.  If you can help with the renewal, so much the better; but, even just to be  there and lend your support and to hear of our plans will add impetus to the renewal and reassurance to those who are leading it at parish level.

In order to plan properly for the meeting – including having name tags for everyone so you can get to know others – we need to know who’s coming.  I ask our committee now to hand around some clipboards, on which you can put some details to indicate your presence on Wednesday night.  Please don’t leave it to the person next to you – This time I’m not talking to the person beside you or behind you –  I am talking to you!  The renewal comes around only once every three years, and it will be over and done with in three weeks time – so please get involved, pray for its success and be generous in your response.  Together we can achieve a great deal, alone we can do little….  Thank you for your ongoing support.


Homily 3 - 2023

We often hear of tax-collectors and prostitutes being mentioned in the Gospels, or even in some of Jesus’ own stories. In today’s story told by Jesus, it was other generally overlooked and marginalised ones, the ones hanging around the town’s corners and crossroads, who were in the spotlight.

Kings also figure in some of the Gospel stories. At times, the king may exhibit some benign aspect of God. At other times, kings can behave erratically, either riotously violently or surprisingly generously.

At times, the story can serve a cautionary purpose or an edifying one.

We need to be alert when we listen — and generally expect a surprise one way or the other at the end of the story.

What can we make of today’s story? When I reflected on it last week, what came to my mind was the “fresh off the press” document recently written by Pope Francis on the urgent issue of the environment, called “Laudete Deum”. He issued it with a view to emphasising the coming Conference of world leaders planned for late November: COP 28, as it will be called.

With today’s Gospel also hovering there at the back of my mind, I started to think of the first group of invitees who failed to appreciate what was on offer, and were eventually not invited to the king’s wedding feast due to their lack of interest.

Francis has the clarity and the courage to recognise the precarious situation of the world’s climate. He believes that the leaders who set targets back in Paris in 2015 have generally fallen far short of their respective targets. They have not “come to the party”. They have behaved more like the ones in the story who prioritised their “going off to their farm, or to their business”.

Francis wants those who are honest about addressing the problem this time round to be prepared to set firm dates for effective action. This time they must be efficient, their goals obligatory and readily monitored. Climate concerns must take precedence over the pursuit of maximum gain at minimal cost [what he calls the world’s “technocratic paradigm”].

There is little doubt that the current crop of world leaders lack the courage, or the wisdom, to challenge the rich and powerful of the world.

Though he does not say so, to overcome this blockage may be the reason that Francis has written his document right now. He insists the need is urgent. He accepts that there is a truly high risk of a catastrophic and irreversible levels of global warming with imminent and unpredictable, but incalculable, effects on life — vegetable, animal and human.

He insists on the vanity of believing that technology by itself can painlessly solve the problems caused precisely by itself. In these times of uncertainty, technology needs a clearly informed and formed mind to direct it, along with a balanced hand to guide it.

This fruitful involvement calls for reflection and mutual listening at all levels of society, because all levels of society will be affected and also necessarily involved.

For these reasons, Pope Francis wrote: "May those taking part in the Conference be strategists capable of considering the common good and the future of their children, more than the short-term interests of certain countries or businesses. In this way, may they demonstrate the nobility of politics and not its shame”.

May it have been something like this that moved Jesus in his story today to have replaced those originally invited to the feast, and to have filled their places instead by “ordinary persons in the street”. And could they in that case mean us? And could that in turn mean that even we have a duty to keep pressure on our politicians and business barons to respond immediately and realistically to the calls of global warming and climate change in good faith?

And finally, may the story’s “one man without a wedding garment” simply refer to the one who could not be bothered by it all?