28th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle
A
Many are invited but few are chosen. Actually, all are
invited but few choose to attend. Why do people reject God and his gifts? It
doesn’t make sense to me.
I think the most common reason why people claim to not
believe in God is the existence of evil and suffering in the world. How can the
good and loving God that we proclaim allow such pain, suffering and evil in the
world? If God is as we say, then wouldn’t we have heaven on earth? Why does he
punish us and often so indiscriminately? It’s easy to understand their point of view,
especially if the pain and suffering they have experienced in their lives has eclipsed
the good. It is easy to be overwhelmed by that. But I also think it’s often an intellectually
lazy argument, an easy way out that absolves them of any responsibility to try
to understand or change their lives.
Ironically, for many Christians who do profess a
belief in God the question really is, how can I believe in a God that loves me
so much? It seems too good to be true. Many of us have been raised with a
spirituality of fear versus one of love. We have been taught to focus on our
sinfulness and unworthiness and not on the gift of God’s mercy. The Salesian
brothers forced me to read that awful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God” by Jonathan Edwards, which literally put the fear of God in me.
One of the things Saint Faustina said Jesus revealed
to her is what hurts him the most is our lack of trust in his Mercy. We don’t
experience that sort of trust and mercy from those around us, and we rarely
give it ourselves, so it’s hard to understand and accept it from a God we
cannot see and touch and feel.
I don’t deserve that type of God. I am a sinner in the
hands of an angry God.
Isaiah says the Lord will supply the banquet for all
peoples. It’s not just the atheists and agnostics who have rejected the banquet;
it is the good church going folks as well. The banquet being offered can be
understood on two levels. The first is the banquet of life itself, all the good
gifts everyone has been offered by God, starting with life itself. The second
is the Eucharistic banquet, the life that all people are also called to but
even fewer accept.
So many of us are so busy with life that we don’t
experience life and how wonderful it is. We look so inward that we are blind to
the beauty around us. We are so concerned with success and obtaining stuff that
we overlook the joy that life can bring, especially life without those things. Or
we are so overwhelmed by the hurt in life that it’s hard to see the good. And we
so often fail to share the banquet with those we feel are not chosen as we are.
If people have never experienced the banquet, it’s up to us to show them our
experience of it. When was the last time we went to the highways and byways and
invited the marginalized into our lives?
I don’t think many Catholics reject the Eucharistic banquet
outright, they just don’t think about it deeply or often. They ignore it or don’t
see it as a priority. Other things are more important. Life gets in the way. It’s
a powder day, so I won’t go to Mass today. Anyway, isn’t God everywhere? The mountain
is my church. Or the kids have practice or a game, and it’s such a hassle to
get everyone up and ready on Sunday. Or it doesn’t really matter if I go or
not. God understands. I’d rather sleep in. People expect heaven on earth, but
they reject the heavenly banquet we can experience each and every day in the
Mass. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “If you only knew the gift of God and
who asks you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water.”
The saddest ones are those who don’t feel worthy to attend
either the banquet of life or the banquet of the Eucharist. They think they don’t
deserve good things. They have not earned them. Those are the ones who need it
the most. Those who are hungry need the banquet. Those who are starving even
moreso. Salvation is offered to everyone. The good gifts of the Lord are for
all people, not just those who think they deserve it. God is more accepting of
sinners and the humble than of the ungrateful, because sinners at least can
accept his mercy while the ungrateful do not even acknowledge they need it.
It’s even worse for those who have been told they don’t
deserve it. But you do deserve it just because he has given it to you. You are
worthy because he has made you worthy. He has made you worthy of all the good
things in life so that you can also be purified by the pain and suffering life
can bring. He didn’t create pain and suffering, our sinfulness did. He
understands our pain. He lived it. His suffering gave meaning to our suffering,
and his death destroyed death itself. He wants to heal you.
He wants you to share in his peace and joy. He has
prepared the banquet for his son, and he has invited you to it. No, he is
desperate for you to come. He has created you to come. His invitation began the
moment he first thought of you, and it will continue until you finally accept
it.
God has given us himself. What more can he give? He
wants us to have eternal life with him in heaven, and he wants us to have
heaven on Earth. He has made us little less than gods, higher than the angels. Why
would we reject that? Is it that we truly do not understand? If we truly understood,
would we still accept it?
In the end I think it all comes down to trust. We
treat God like we treat each other. It's so hard for us to accept gifts and
trust from others here on Earth, how much more is it difficult to trust the
gifts and promises of God?
So many work so hard to create the banquet themselves
when the gift is already being offered to them. But we need to prepare ourselves
for it. We need to always strive to put our best foot forward. We need to show
up with our best selves. That’s what the wedding garment symbolizes. God invites
all to the banquet, but we need to be ready to accept it. We need to be sure
that our hearts and souls are open to the gift, that we are reconciled to the
giver as much as we can be, and that we commit ourselves to constant repentance
and improvement with true humility. Most of all, we must trust in the mercy of God.
It is too good to be true. God is too good to be true.
But then, so are you.
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