Thursday of the TwentiethWeek in Ordinary Time
My friend, you have no faith
Jesus again in reply spoke to them in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come. A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet … come to the feast.”‘ Some ignored the invitation and went away …The king was enraged and … said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready … Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside …‘ Mt 22,1-13
The Kingdom of heaven, tells us the parable of today, looks like the feast which God the Father, the King, has laid for the wedding of his Son, Jesus. The bride is the humanity, which changes in the marriage her name and she is called the Church. At the feast, as also it happens in the marriages of Castaldi’s house, relatives and close friends were invited, which in the parable symbolizes the people of Israel, to whom the invitation had been done quite two thousand years in the past. Since the feast had already been opened and the first invited people did not join it, then God the Father turned immediately to the pagan world – of which we are the heirs – which, in the heavenly planning, should have to be invited at a later time. It was a really great feast, which was attended by people coming from all the countries, which have become immediately friends and then went on to convene also afterwards, in the several eucharistic meetings, organized now here now there, not to disperse the wonderful atmosphere which was formed in the initial feast. During the celebration, though, there is a hitch: the King enters in the room and sees, by his expert eye, a person who does not have the appropriate dressing. He is a person eating and drinking with the others, but he does not participate to the banquet, he does not applaud the married couple and he does not converse with the other guests. It is an infiltrator trying to reap the benefits of the feast, but he is thinking to his own business. In other words, he is there but he does not have the faith, which is the only needed dress. The King approaches him and says, ”My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?”. He falls silent and the King orders to throw him out of his house. Two thousand years have elapsed from those early celebrations and the heirs of those diners continue to meet, even today, but some have lost the dress, or its colors are faded over the time. What will it happen? Perhaps the King will call new invitees to revive our tired feasts. It may be that the heirs of the first ones called at that time arrive, those who had declined. Who knows it? One thing however is certain: the King is attentive and surely he will manage to have the banquet, which lasts since two thousand years, to be full of joy.