Tuesday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time
We are all missionaries
One of his fellow guests on hearing this said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.'” Lk 14,15-24
The today parable shows the kingdom of the heaven as a big feast, with many seats, to which we are called, although at different times. The initial guests, however, have all declined the invitation: “I have purchased a field and must go to examine it… ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them …. ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come”. They all have to do something more important: each one has his own plans for the life and nobody wants to change it, even for a good reason as a feast. In front of such “indifference” the alacrity of that servant whom the master sends repeatedly to call new guests is remarkable, but the banquet hall is never filled in: the available seats are many and the servant is alone. The solution of the problem, although the parable does not say it, would be: the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame people, who got there first, should offer themselves to go along with the servant to call other people, but they do not it. And here the problem of lack of missionary zeal on the part of those who adhere to the call emerges. Bringing it to the nowadays time, it is necessary that all those who have welcomed the proclamation of the gospel are transformed into missionaries. Evangelization is not a matter of a few, it is the mandate of the whole Church: priests, religious and laymen. The day on which all will participate, the feast of the Kingdom will be filled in quickly. It will happen as in the scientific and technological development: in the ancient times, when few had the opportunity to study, it has been slow. With the elapsing of the time, the schools have been open to all the people and the development has started to run, so that today it is difficult to even find the time to update it. This is what it would be good to happen for the evangelism: if every believer will be transformed into a brisk missionary, the Kingdom will reach quickly up to the ends of the earth and all the people will participate to the celebration.