Called to salvation

"He who has created you without you, will not save you without you". These so often quoted words of St Augustine contain in germ the best ever written theology of salvation. Although God has freely created us in order to be with Him for eternity, He respects the very liberty He has given us and will not receive us without our own co-operation.

This most important truth is forcefully driven home to us in today's Gospel by means of the parable of the wedding feast. A very meaningful concept indeed, and at the same time one which everyone can understand, referring as it does to an almost universally common experience.

The Fathers of the Church begin by looking at our own creation as human beings as a work of love. God loves us so much that He wants to share His very existence with us, not only by creating us, but also by giving us a spiritual soul thanks to which we can know and love Him.

In the writings of the Old Testament we are often reminded that God's election of Israel as His own people is also based on a love of predilection. Israel is often referred to in Holy Scripture as God's own Bride, although, as we well know, it eventually became unfaithful to Him by killing His own messengers, first the prophets and then His very own Son made man.

The Fathers of the Church describe the Incarnation of the Son of God as the celebration of the most important wedding that has ever taken place. In Christ we see divinity and humanity so indissolubly united by the bond of love that together they constitute a person who is both fully divine and fully human. If there ever was a fruitful wedding, that was God's own wedding with human nature at the Incarnation.

From time to time we are able to watch on television or read about some royal wedding, with all the grandeur and pomp one would rightly expect. But what is all this by comparison to the wedding that took place at the Incarnation between the divine and the human nature of Jesus Christ? All human history preceding this 'wedding' was only a preparation for it, and all man's history after it is but its continued and never-ending celebration.

The simile of the wedding is finally elaborated by theologians in their efforts to give us a faint idea of what sanctifying grace really is. In order to save us, God establishes a personal relationship with each one of us, a relationship based on love, a bridal love, and the wedding gift that God gives us is nothing but Himself.

As sometimes happens between husband and wife, the love between God and man can fail to pass the test of fidelity. While God remains faithful in spite of man's repeated offences, man often perseveres in his infidelity to God, lured by the attractions of other creatures, and ends up by falling in love with them and betraying the covenant with God that he has vowed in his own Baptism and Confirmation. If a man, like the one in the parable, decides to present himself for this wedding without the appropriate wedding garb, that is, not in the state of grace, then he alone is the loser.

In today's Gospel we read how those who turned down the king's invitation were severely punished. This will also be the case with those who refuse to participate in the wedding of the Divine King. But then indeed it is not God who punishes them, as we read in the concluding words of the parable. Man's ultimate free option to do without God is in itself his punishment.