God’s call goes out to all. Many, that is to say the immense multitude of human beings, are called, no one is not called to the celestial banquet. But Our Lord goes on: few are chosen – few are actually chosen to take part in it. We must ask ourselves: Why is this? Why does not everyone make it to the goal? Today’s Gospel gives us some of the reasons: “they neglected and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise, and the rest inflicted the gravest of insults on their Lord by mistreating and even killing the servants and messengers of the King”.
We have here an explanation as to why, – and we say this with great sadness – so few accept the divine invitation, enter the Church and are saved, namely that most either prefer their worldly attachments and interests, or they actually turn against God and seek to be rid of Him. In every age, those who lose eternal salvation can be put into one of those categories: either they turn against God and reject Him, pretending He does not exist, or they ignore His commandments and Church and live as if He did not exist. Fools, they prefer the dust of the road which they see, to the gold of the Kingdom that is promised them.
At the same time, in every age, the call rings out to those who find themselves on the highways and byways of the world, those who are in need of a guide and a saviour. Among them are to be found souls who open themselves up to the saving grace of conversion, leave aside the world and its attractions, and humbly embrace God’s proposal.
But the story does not end there. Among those who accept the invitation, some do not prove themselves worthy; they enter the wedding feast as they would enter a bar; they come to have a good time and get out of it something for themselves; they are bereft of the wedding garment, that is to say, the state of grace, Divine charity in their hearts. And here we have a third category of souls who lose God. They would make a God in their own image and likeness, a Church curtailed to their petty and shortsighted vision. They are like the seed sown on the rocks; they receive with joy the invitation, and they start out on the path, but they have no depth of soul; they are suffocated by the thorns, that is, the riches and distractions of their own making, preferring their own Gospel to that of the Lord, or simply, after a good start, they refuse the effort to go further in the path God has shown them.
The privilege of taking part in the wedding feast of the Lamb, of receiving the flesh and blood of the Son of God, and then marching with the strength of that divine food to the eternal Jerusalem, is one for which we must be prepared to pay a price. Nothing counts, nothing has any weight whatsoever when compared with the eternal communion with the Triune God. Let us keep this in mind frequently as we go about our daily lives. Let us each day ask of ourselves an account of the way we have used our spiritual and physical energies. Let us always be ready to go the extra mile, to do without, to give up things, and take on the burdens of others. If we do so, we will give proof that we do indeed have that wedding garment of Divine Love, and are worthy to be counted among those who will share in God’s eternal banquet.
We will do well to contemplate once again those other words addressed by Our Lord to His would be disciples: “If any man will follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For he that shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation: the Son of man also will be ashamed of him when he shall come in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mk 8:34-38).
