Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
When I was in middle school in 1966, the Medical Mission Sisters put out an album “Joy is Like the Rain” that became very popular. The final cut on the album was “Wedding Banquet”, which was based on today’s Gospel. The refrain still sometimes echoes in my head and I’ve been caught singing it out loud sometimes: “I cannot come to the banquet don’t trouble me now, I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow, I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum, I cannot come, I cannot come…”
That’s all I remember of the song but the refrain pops up when I’m feeling particularly stressed – and aware that I’m not paying enough attention to the invitations that God extends to me in my daily life. The little invitations are the ones that I think we most often miss – to listen a moment more to one of my colleagues, or to really SEE the beauty of the leaves on the trees in these last days before they all fall, or to risk asking someone I pass if they’re okay when they are looking particularly stressed or upset.
The last line of this Gospel is troublesome. It makes the “master of the house” sound vengeful and angry. Rather, I think it is a lament. The invited didn’t come, so they won’t benefit from the richness of the fare. The Gospel is full of the urgency God has for us to come into the banquet – to be nourished and fed. And to join in with all the diverse others – the folks from the streets and the highways and byways – not just those we’re familiar and comfortable with. God shows Godself as wanting to fill the hall and to lavish those who heed the call with good things. The great Christological Hymn of Philippians that we have in the first reading shows the extent of God’s desire - how Christ poured himself out for us. Let us hear the invitation and respond – take time, sit down with the people God has brought together from near and far, and be nourished.
—Sr. Laura M. Leming, FMI, PhD