The wedding robe

Today’s readings: Is. 25, 6-10; Phil. 4, 12-14.19-20; Matt. 22, 1-14.

We have used and misused St Cyprian’s old dictum that there’s no salvation outside the Church for a long time. Today’s readings, especially the gospel parable of the wedding banquet offered by the king for his son, warns that salvation is not guaranteed inside the Church.

The parable is addressed to the chief priests and to the elders of the people to show that the inner core of those who consider themselves believers can be the most resistant and alienating where authenticity is concerned. It speaks of an inclusive liturgy and confirms how distant those who are near and how near those are distant can be.

Both Isaiah and the gospel parable unveil how easy it is for the mainstream churches to discriminate when it comes to dealing with diversity.

The prejudice of the faith communities against those outside the Church is, in fact, one of the biggest obstacles to a renewed sense of mission.

Unfortunately, we continue to project an image of Church that seems entrenched in past times, failing to recognise that at the end of the day, God is capable of gathering all sorts of people from the crossroads in the town.

The crossroads indicates a place that has no fixed boundaries and yet is a meeting place for all sorts of people.

The wedding banquet in the parable was ready, but those invited, after accepting the invitation, made last-minute excuses for not coming.

Matthew’s ending that “many are called, but few are chosen” highlights the mission to the whole world while affirming that the call does not automatically mean salvation achieved.

It may sound strange and difficult to understand in the parable that it speaks of a generous host who invites to the table both the good and the bad but has a problem with one who is not wearing the proper attire.

God’s generosity and mercy are infinite. Yet there are conditions that need to be observed.

Isaiah also projects an image of God as a generous host. His promise is very reassuring in the face of various threats that obscure God’s light from shining on his people. “He will remove the mourning veil; he will destroy death forever.”

This is Isaiah’s vision of the death of death. In ancient Israel the dominating idea of afterlife was that of a survival somewhere here on Earth. But gradually throughout the Bible this idea continues to develop.

Isaiah’s version of the final apocalypse is very different from the ones we are used to in the Scriptures, even in the gospels wherever they speak of the final judgment.

For Isaiah also, it is a “banquet of rich food and of fine wines”, it is the moment when “the Lord will wipe away the tears from every cheek”.

It is a day of reckoning in the sense of being the day when peoples will say: “See, this is our God in whom we hoped for salvation”. So both in Isaiah and in the gospel, one very important aspect that features extraordinarily in the imagery of banquet and feast is precisely the liberating effect of true worship.

God’s feast is a summons to everyone, and it is a very inclusive invitation. It is the liturgy that God prepares for us and which is very different from the stereotypes we offer in his name.

The world needs to hear this new song, and the Church, sitting at the table of humanity, needs to be clothed with glory to be exactly who she is called to be.

This is the “wedding robe” that the Church is called to put on, evoking the same imagery we find in the marriage supper of the lamb in the Book of Revelation at which the dress will be “fine linen”, understood as the righteous deeds of the saints.

It is the call for the Church in our times to be purified.