Enter into the joy of the Lord

 Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 ‘She works with willing hands.’

1 Thessalonians 5:1-6 ‘Do not let the day of the Lord surprise you like a thief.’

Matthew 25:14-30 ‘You have been faithful over a little, enter into the joy of your master.’

 

‘You have been faithful over a little, enter into the joy of your master.’

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Faithfulness and joy.

These are two wonderful gifts - to be received and given - two gifts of God to be cherished.

Faithfulness and joy lie at the heart of the Gospel reading this morning.

Faithfulness and joy are features of life in the kingdom of God.

St Paul tells us not to be surprised by the day of the Lord.

The faithful servants in the Gospel are precisely those living faithfulness and joy.

They are already acting as citizens of the kingdom; they’re ready.

St Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that, ‘The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 14:17)

The faithfulness of God is revealed in his kingdom and what he asks of us in return, as citizens of that kingdom, is faithfulness.

That is a way of reading our first reading.

Yes, on one level it is about a man’s practical quest to find a wife, a wife gives him deep joy.

On a more significant level, this is about the faithfulness of the Church that is the bride of Christ.

Christ seeks us out and loves us.

As the first letter of John says, ‘we love because he first loved us’. (1 John 4.19)

And as Christ’s bride we are to him more precious than jewels.

Faithfulness is our response to our union with Christ the Bridegroom, a relationship formed at the foot of the Cross as we are entrusted by him as children of His Blessed Mother and brothers and sisters of the Beloved Disciple.

From that faithfulness we enter into the joy of the Lord.

This joy is not complacent joy, frothy and short-lived, it is deep, enduring, generative joy.

In the New Testament the word for ‘joy’ is Χαρά (chara), which is a word closely related to χάρις (charis), meaning ‘grace’.

Joy then is related to grace which is God’s gift of God’s self to the believer.

And through the Sacraments grace is mediated, transmitted to us in response to our faithfulness and openness to the Lord as we present ourselves to Him.

This grace is the light of Christ shining in us and shining out of us; it is the very presence of God in us.

The gift of grace is utterly unmerited, we have done nothing deserving of it, yet it is given to us: an invitation to enter into the joy of the Lord.

The talents od the Gospel can signify gifts of grace, but let’s not in any way mistake the allocation of talents to the servants as reward or something merited or deserved.

Yes, the master gives the talents in accordance with ability.

Ability makes it sound like this is an allocation based on merit.

The Greek text tells us that the talents are given according to each servant's δύναμιν (dynamis) - their capacity, their ability to bear responsibility.

The point is not that one servant is valued more than another.

The point is that each is called to be faithful with what has been entrusted to them.

Grace is like that.

God does not deal in measurements and comparisons.

He gives to each person what they can receive and grow into.

The servant with one talent was not given less grace; he was given all that he needed.

Grace is like love: it cannot be quantified, yet it multiplies when it is shared.

The problem for the third servant was not that he had too little.

It was that he did not trust the gift he had received.

What he lacked was not grace, but faithfulness and imagination.

And without faithfulness he could not enter into the joy of his master.

His vision of God was of a God who measures out favours, who is restrictive and limited, who is just really a projection of a human master onto the divine.

He says it himself:

“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

Oh really?

Is that really what God is like?

If that is our picture of God then we will never be faithful to receive grace and, never receiving the grace, not enter into the joy that is His.

As the master said, if you knew I was like that then why didn’t you at least put my talents in the bank to earn some interest.

That would be like for us when we feel spiritually barren or that God is distant.

At the very least we must stick with it all, continue to come to church, continue to receive the Sacrament so that we at least receive God’s abundance, even if our ability, our dynamin, our power, is low.

Otherwise we will have shut down, living lives closed in on themselves - incurvatus in se, in the Latin of St Augustine of Hippo, inward looking, shut down to God, which is spiritual death.

So we open ourselves to Him; we surrender ourselves to Him.

Our God is a boundless God.

Out of His eternal abundance, without limit or measure, God replenishes our spirits.

After all, in the Incarnation of the Word God’s glory is revealed in the Son who is ‘full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.’  (John 1.14,16)

Our response to His grace must be faithfulness, from which we receive his joy:

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

So in this new week let us be open to receive the grace of God and allow it to become all the more abundant within us.

We do this first in receiving Him in the Sacrament, with faithfulness entering more deeply into the joy of the Lord.

And, as we go, we have with us and before us she who was ‘full of grace’; she who responded according to her power, her ability, her capacity, which was rooted in her radical openness to the will and purposes of her Creator.

May Our Lady, who is crowned in heaven pray for us, that we may receive grace upon grace, that the Lord ‘who redeems our life from the pit… crown us with steadfast love and mercy.’ (Psalm 103.4)

Ready for the Bridegroom?

Wisdom 6:12-16 ‘Wisdom is found by those who seek her.’

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 ‘Through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.’

Matthew 25:1-13 ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’

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I imagine we all know the feeling of being sound asleep and then being rudely awakened.

Eyes are bleary, the body heavy and suddenly the new day, with all its joys and its challenges, comes rushing in.

Sleeping and waking are big and important images in the scriptures.

Sleep is a metaphor for death: in sleep we abandon ourselves to something that we cannot control and cannot really understand.

Yet we take comfort in the conviction that ‘the Lord who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep’ (Psalm 121.4).

Sleep is often conflated with sloth, but it is also a sign of entrusting oneself to God’s mercies, as we do in the Office of Compline:

Save us, Lord, while we are awake; protect us while we sleep; that we may keep watch with Christ and rest with him in peace.

And then there is the act of waking.

In the wisdom literature of the Scriptures, early waking from sleep is a good thing, as in this morning’s first reading:

He who rises early to seek [wisdom] will have no difficulty, for he will find her sitting at his gates.

Waking is also a metaphor for resurrection.

In our second reading this is what St Paul says quite clearly:

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

From the sleep of death we are wakened to full and abundant life.

Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins takes us deeper into this spiritual dimension and interpretation of sleeping and waking.

In the ten virgins of the parable, we see two different ways to prepare for the coming of the bridegroom.

The bridegroom signifies Christ; the virgins are the Church at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

All ten take their lamps and go out to meet the bridegroom; they are all acting well, they actively seek to meet the coming of Christ to the wedding banquet.

That’s what we should be doing now.

And that is where the parable becomes self-examination too: am I expectant, am I prepared, am I watchful and awake to the coming of Jesus Christ.

The Eucharistic prayer will say these powerful words after proclaiming Christ’s Passion, Resurrection and Ascension:

and as we look forward to his second coming,

we offer you in thanksgiving

this holy and living sacrifice.

Looking forward to his Second Coming, the Virgin Church, prepares to receive the Bridegroom and his Wedding Banquet.

The light of the lamps they carry signify for us the illumination that comes with Baptism.

Indeed, in the Rite of Baptism the neophyte, the newly baptised child, is given a lighted candle and told, drawing on this parable:

When the Lord comes, may [you] go out to meet him

with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.

This is our baptismal task today, not just on the day of our Baptism, it’s lifelong: seek out and meet the Lord as he comes.

The oil of the lamps signifies the anointing of the Holy Spirit which in Baptism protects us against the world, the flesh and the devil, and consecrates us as part of the Royal Priesthood of the Church.

Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6.19) and they need to be replenished with the anointing Spirit which keeps the light of Christ burning in our hearts.

This the wise understand, and the foolish neglect.

It means that when the time comes, when the cry goes up, the wise wake expectant: their wicks are trimmed, a pruning of sorts, and a discipline of body, mind and spirit so that their lamp burns brightly.

The foolish have no oil, they cannot trim their wicks for they are burnt out: they not renewed by the Spirit, they are no longer able to shine as lights in the world to the glory of God the Father, they are not ready or able to go and meet the bridegroom.

The parable is not merely about individual Christians; it also asks what kind of Church we are becoming as we await the Lord's return.

These are two visions of the Church and of Christian disciples: the Church expectant and the Church moribund.

The Church expectant is the new Jerusalem, ‘coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’ (Revelation 21.2).

She is the willing bride ready to receive her husband: she is eager to hear the cry of the angel who says ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ (Revelation 19.9).

And then the Church moribund: burnt out, exhausted, still drowsy.

The lamp has gone out and no one is in; a Church emptied of the oil of the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I know which vision Christ calls us to.

The Church expectant loves the Lord; feasts on the Scriptures and Sacraments; rejoices in her Communion with the saints; comprises disciples who, though not perfect are being perfected, disciples who lead lives that are trimmed by prayer, acts of mercy and self-denial.

The Church expectant, the Bride of Christ, celebrates the Eucharist rejoicing in the Lord who was foretold by prophets, came as child of the Blessed Virgin, and was heralded by John the Baptist, the ‘friend of the Bridegroom’ who ‘rejoices greatly at the sound of his voice’ (John 3.29).

And she anticipates his coming again at the Marriage Banquet of the Lamb, the divine liturgy.

So let us look out, look up, look east (Ezekiel 43:1–4; Matthew 2:2; 24:27) and see the glory that comes from the Lord.

In that way we replenish the oil that keeps Christ’s light burning in us.

We know neither the day nor the hour of Christ’s coming, but, when the cry goes up:

Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready (Revelation 19.7)

Eucharistic Devotion - Solemnity of All Saints

 EUCHARISTIC DEVOTION Solemnity of All Saints

‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’ (Revelation 7.12)

Lord Jesus Christ look kindly upon your people as we gaze at your glory in the most blessed sacrament of the altar.

In your heavenly glory ‘a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, stand before [your] throne and before [you] the Lamb [of God], crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’’ (cf Revelation 7.9)

We come to adore you, to glorify you, to praise you.

We come as sinners yearning to be saints; as those broken yearning to be healed; as your humble disciples yearning to be exalted.

Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory, grant us the vision, with all your saints, of your beauty and goodness and truth.

May we be clothed, as the redeemed, in white robes, washed in the blood of the Lamb and made clean.

May we cry out from the depths of our hearts, coming before your throne of grace, that, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

Salvation belongs to you, Lord Jesus Christ: we place our hope in none but you.

May the saints surround our steps as we journey on, the cloud of witnesses who testify to you, help us to lay aside the sin that clings so closely, help us run with endurance the race that is set before us, with our eyes ever fixed on you, King of Glory, you who perfect our weak faith, you, who endured the cross, who despised its shame, who made it a throne, around which saints and angels praise you, at the right hand of the Father, bound in the love of the Spirit. (cf Hebrews 12.1-2)

‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

Not Perfect, But Being Perfected

 Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 ‘Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.’

1 John 3:1-3 ‘We shall see God as he is.’

Matthew 5:1-12a ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’

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I am not generally one for quoting Gandhi in sermons, but he did have some words to say about the Sermon on the Mount, part of which, The Beatitudes, we have heard as the Gospel for this great Solemnity of All Saints.

Gandhi is quoted as saying that, on hearing it, ‘The Sermon on the Mount went straight to my heart.’

It’s a beautiful sentiment, and the witness of the saints is that The Beatitudes do speak direct to the human heart.

Gandhi even said:

If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'O yes, I am a Christian.'

Oh dear.

It sort of sounds good, but the thing is that the Gospel is not solely the Sermon on the Mount; and it is not a bit of homespun wisdom to interpret to suit ourselves.

But it’s a view that’s been taken on by those who describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’.

Like Gandhi they might say:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Of course, that is a challenge to us that we must take seriously: we are to be ever more Christlike.

As the first letter of John puts it:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Christians are not perfect, but we are being perfected.

And if we want to know whether the Beatitudes can actually be lived, we look not to theories and philosophies but to the saints and to lived reality.

There are striking similarities between much contemporary spirituality and some of the assumptions of ancient Gnosticism.

Gnosticism has the idea that salvation comes through secret or mystical knowledge (gnosis).

This boils down to seeing Jesus as an inspired teacher, but not following his teachings; to seeing the mind as higher than the body, leading to the denigration of the body; to prizing private revelation and insight and rejecting the Church Christ founded.

All which Catholic Christianity refutes.

The problem for the Gnostics of old, and the many there are today, is that Jesus was incarnate; he had a body.

Catholic Christianity is rooted in the incarnation of the Son of God, who is born of the flesh of the Blessed Virgin; we are redeemed by his bodily crucifixion; glorified by his bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven.

Gnosticism is a great temptation for the contemporary Church: ‘spiritual but not religious’ sounds attractive, but it is incomplete, not bold enough: incomplete because it stops short of the bold claim that God became flesh.

The great antidote to all this is the lives of the saints whom we honour today.

To honour the saints is not to honour perfection, but those who are perfected.

The saints are human beings who inhabit the teaching of Jesus Christ in real lives.

We see in the saints the acknowledgment of their poverty of spirit: saints mourn over their sins; they are meek in the face of Christ’s majesty; they hunger and thirst after righteousness; they are merciful, pure in heart and, seeking the peace that is Christ's gift, they bear persecution on Christ's account.

To be sure, there are mystics amongst them, some who disciplined their bodies and undertook great feats of prayer: the saints are spiritual and religious!

The practice of our religion, lived out in our bodies, lifts our spirits to the Lord.

Saints can and should unsettle us too.

They set a bar to which we aspire, and we cannot domesticate them.

Look what is done to St Francis, he becomes a carbon neutral, eco-warrior rather than one who conformed his life to Christ so deeply that he bore, in his body, the very wounds of Christ.

Look at how the Celtic saints are appropriated as cuddly nature lovers, rather than those men and women who braved the elements and their intense and gritty encounter with the King of Glory.

Look at how Julian of Norwich has become a feminist icon whose Revelations of Divine Love are set aside by those for whom the bloodiness of motherhood and crucifixion are not spiritual enough.

The saints are not people who admired Christ from afar.

They followed him.

They suffered with him.

They were transformed by him.

And now they stand before the throne and before the Lamb, rejoicing and glad because their reward is great in heaven.

That is our calling too, because we are not perfect but are being perfected.

We hold before us the image of the Book of Revelation, of:

a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

This is the beatific vision, revealed in heaven and anticipated on earth as we gather, with all the saints at the altar now, bowing down and worshipping God, crying out:

 ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

The Greatest Commandment and the Shape of Love

 Exodus 22:21-27 ‘If you mistreat any widow or fatherless child, my wrath will burn against you.’

1 Thessalonians 1:5c-10 ‘You turned away from idols to serve God and to wait for his Son.’

Matthew 22:34-40 ‘You shall love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself.’

 

 

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‘Thomas’ said my grandmother to my cousin, ‘I love you, but sometimes I really don’t like you.’

Now, you need some context to this outburst.

My cousin Thomas had just kicked our grandmother on the shin, and she was clearly in some pain.

To be frank she could have been a lot more trenchant in what she said to him.

But instead, she said the line that became a family saying, ‘Thomas ‘I love you, but sometimes I really don’t like you.’

My grandmother wouldn’t have realised that she was echoing St Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of what love is, which is not an emotional or sentimental reaction or feeling to someone or something, but an act of human will.

So, for St Thomas, to love is to will the good of another.

We do that after the example and teaching of Christ, not because of what we can get from them or how they make us feel, but simply that we will their good, and in willing their good we act accordingly.

My grandmother continued to will the good of my cousin Thomas, even though her emotional response to him, in that moment, was one of dislike, pain and, no doubt, some anger.

The emotion-based word is ‘like’, not ‘love’.

I don’t like you, at the moment, but I can still will your good: I can say I love you, because what I will for you is the good.

That’s what makes it possible to love our enemies.

We need to will their good, even if we loathe what they do and even who they are.

And in willing their good we begin to find that we cannot hate them anymore.

This command to love our neighbour has a social impact amongst those with whom we share our lives.

That's why the Law repeatedly commands protection of the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

Love is never merely a feeling; it is expressed in concrete care for the vulnerable.

When it comes to loving God there is a different dynamic.

You can’t will God’s good, because God is love.

So what does love of God look like?

Again, Thomas Aquinas can help us here.

To love God perfectly does not mean thinking about him every moment of every day.

Rather, it means giving ourselves completely to God, trusting his word, following his ways, and allowing his love to shape all that we do.

Even as we go about ordinary life, our whole lives can be offered to him.

Such love calls us to put God first above everything else, making him the true centre of our faith, obedience and joy, from which all our actions flow.

And this life is lived in response to God’s love for us.

Everything depends on this, and our response to God’s love.

Everything of the scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, depends, says Jesus, on this love, love for God and love for neighbour.

The Greek text of this verse uses the word κρέμαται (krematai) which means ‘to hang’ or suspend’: so love is the hook on which all the promises of God are suspended.

Without that hook, we lose our grasp of God's promises and our faith, hope and love plummets.

Jesus hangs on the cross: there is love at its deepest.

That is the measure of love, love until the end, love that is steadfast, love that is sacrificial.

Just being told in a word that we’re loved is never enough, yes, we want to hear we’re loved, but we want to see love, feel love, taste love: to know that we are precious, to know even that we are liked: so love is made visible in the Word made Flesh.

The way of the cross is the way of love: love of God and love of neighbour.

Still, we human beings misuse and misdirect love.

In the Gospel today the Pharisees and Sadducees were not seeking edification from him but to test him.

In fact, to say ‘test’ him understates the power of the word, which in Greek is πειράζων (peirazon) meaning ‘tempt’: it’s the word used of Satan in the wilderness, the tempter.

Human love, or what we call love, all too often becomes entangled in tests and temptations.

A good guide to what love looks like is found in 1 Corinthians 13: there’s some good reading on a stormy afternoon like today, and ask: does my love measure up to that? How can I redirect my affection and desires so that they are truly loving?

And on your knees hold before you the picture of Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ who looked upon a sinner and ‘loved him’; who, out of love, washed the feet of disciples; whose heart of love was pierced as he opened his arms on the Cross; who has commanded us to love one another.

There’s the challenge: who is the person whose good you need to will this week - even if you still don’t like them much – and what will that look like practically?

Love God with every fibre of your being; love your neighbour as you yourself are loved: it’s all there, rising above human fickleness.

Our beginning and our end is love: God’s love that brought the creation to be; love that sustains; love that redeems; love that fulfils all things.

God’s love is pure, holy and life-giving, offered without conditions and not subject to change or partiality.

It is the vision into which we are led, as St Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, prays on his knees before the Father:

¹⁷ [May] Christ… dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3.17-19)

Whose likeness and likeness is this?

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 ‘I have grasped the right hand of Cyrus to subdue nations before him.’

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b ‘Remembering your faith, love and hope.’

Matthew 22:15-21 ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

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The fundamental Christian assumption of what it means to be human is that:

God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.27)

This is what we can call Christian anthropology: we are made in the image and likeness of God.

Each human being is always made in God’s image, even if most of the time we fail to bear his likeness, through our own sins.

From this we derive the inviolable dignity of the human person and the call to inhabit and become the persons God made us to be.

And the way we are restored in the true image and likeness of God is through life in Jesus Christ.

It is with the foundation of that belief, about who we are made to be and that we are redeemed, that we hear today’s gospel reading.

Jesus’s scheming, nit-picking critics, want to catch him out and try it using the perennially touchy subject of taxation and money.

Only a lawful authority can enforce taxation, otherwise it is racketeering or demanding money with menaces.

So, should good Jews pay taxes to the Romans?

Say ‘no, they shouldn’t’ and Jesus is in trouble with the Romans; say ‘yes, they should’ and Jesus is denounced as a collaborator with the pagan occupier.  

Jesus both answers and frames the question in a much deeper reality.

In his answer he sets an important principle for how Christians navigate being earthly citizens and citizens of heaven at the same time, picked up in St Paul’s teaching on honouring the emperor and always knowing a higher authority, from whom their power is derived.

Human power is always derivative: as Jesus says to Caesar’s representative, Pontius Pilate, at his trial:

You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (John 19.11)

Even Cyrus, a pagan emperor who did not know the God of Israel, is called God's anointed instrument in today's first reading.

Political rulers often imagine themselves to be masters of history, but Scripture reminds us that God remains Lord of history.

So, give to earthly powers what is theirs on earth; give to God what is his eternally.

And Jesus takes us deeper by asking ‘whose likeness and inscription is this?

It’s not just about the coin, it is about who we are as human beings, made in the image and likeness of God.

The word ‘likeness’ is a translation of the Greek word eikon (εἰκὼν).

We know that word as a rich word that speaks of the likeness, the image, that points beyond the surface to the reality.

The word ‘inscription’ is a translation of the Greek word epigraphē (ἐπιγραφή), from where we get the word ‘epigraph’, meaning some words that sum up the subject and that are written down in an enduring way.

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

Jesus is asking to whom you belong: whose image do you bear, what is inscribed on your heart?

What is inscribed on our hearts? Is it the pursuit of status? Anxiety about wealth? Political loyalties? Resentments we refuse to surrender? Or is it Christ?

Beneath all these questions lies the deeper one: who is your maker?

Is it God or is it you?

We are all tempted to imagine that we are self-made people, authors of our own story, accountable only to ourselves.

As was once said of a vain, self-satisfied person, "he is a self-made man, and worships his creator".

That’s nothing new, but it is certainly the spirit of the age.

This is what Bishop Robert Barron describes as the ‘ego drama’, when we place ourselves at the heart of things, the production in which I am the writer, the director and the star.

The ego drama never features God.

That is the ‘theodrama’, living in a world where God is author, director and centre.

The ‘theodrama’ is far more real than our own petty preoccupations and schemes, because in the drama of God we recover the marred image, and inhabit the true likeness of our Creator, to whom we owe life and allegiance.

Made in the image and likeness of God, human beings are image bearers.

The Blessed Virgin had the joy of being the bearer of Christ ‘the image of the invisible God’.

Inscribed in her heart is the willing and active ‘yes’ to God’s purposes and God’s will.

St Paul’s words to us all apply first and foremost to her:

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3.3)

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

The saints are the image bearers par excellence, because God’s image and likeness is seen most transparently in them, his word is most clearly inscribed in their lives.

We are all God’s saints, with a lower case ‘s’, restored in God’s image by baptism and called to be Saints, with an upper case ‘S’.

We will be counted truly amongst the Saints when we bear God’s image and likeness, when goodness, beauty and truth shine out of us, when God’s commandments are inscribed on our hearts and when we render unto Him all worship, praise and adoration.

Then we will have risen above the petty schemes, manipulations and machinations of the rulers of this world and will know ‘that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Romans 8.21).

 

Blessed are those who are invited

Isaiah 25:6-10a ‘The Lord will make a feast, and he will wipe away tears from all faces.’

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’

Matthew 22:1-14 ‘Invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’

 

You have prepared a table before me

in the sight of my foes.

My head you have anointed with oil;

my cup is overflowing.

 

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‘You have spread a table before me’ says the psalmist.

A veil is lifted says Isaiah, a banquet prepared.

The gospel invites us to a wedding feast.

Today’s reading are rich and deep indeed.

And they all lead to the unveiling of Jesus Christ in the Mass.

In the Mass the veil of heaven is pulled back as the Lord spreads a table before us anticipating the banquet of heaven and, as we eat and drink here and now, we receive Christ’s true, full and real presence into our lives.

We dwell in Him and he in us: we become one flesh with Him.

It is the vision of a banquet that Isaiah paints for us, pointing us to the mystical banquet of the Lamb, beautifully revealed in the vision of the Revelation to John.

Isaiah’s vision speaks of ‘the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.’

This covering, this veil, is, in effect, a funeral pall, the large cloth that is spread over a coffin.

Palls are traditionally dark and heavy, and they are appropriate because they speak of the grief of death and the pain of loss.

But, Isaiah says, this pall will be lifted because death itself will be consumed.

The other time we think of a veil being lifted is at a wedding.

The bride is presented to the groom and her veil lifted.

Now she can be seen by the bridegroom, and she can clearly see him.

The lifting of that veil means that bridegroom and bride can see each other clearly, face to face: the beatific vision.

The Scriptures have an overarching sweep of nuptial imagery, in other words it’s put in terms of a courtship and marriage, the coming together of bridegroom and bride.

Everything sweeps from the Fall, when a pall of separation between God and man descends.

Repeatedly lack of human faithfulness thwarts the chance of union with God.

Of course, man glimpses God on and off, but even Moses cannot bear to see God unveiled; sight of Him would be too overwhelming.

The prophets call for faithfulness so that daughter Israel can be the bride, but, as shown in the prophet Hosea, Israel is unfaithful.

The parable narrates all this as the invited guests don’t show up, and other guests kill those bringing the invitation.

But the story doesn’t end there.

John the Baptist, who describes himself as ‘the friend of the bridegroom’ (John 3.29), proclaims that the Lamb of God, the Bridegroom, is coming, indeed is now here:

‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. (John 1.29)

Behold him, see him: he is unveiled.

Throughout the Gospels unveilings happen and Christ’s glory is made manifest: at the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan; in the proclamation of the Kingdom; the Transfiguration of the Lord; the Institution of the Eucharist; and, very obviously in relation to today’s readings, his glory is revealed at the wedding feast at Cana.

It’s no accident that Christ’s presence and first miracle takes place at a wedding banquet, a sign of the coming of the Bridegroom.

So the King invites guests to the royal wedding.

The guest list of Isaiah’s vision and the guest list of the parable, is all people, all nations, literally, all faces.

These are faces unveiled in the presence of Jesus Christ.

The culmination of the scriptures is a book whose Greek name, the Apocalypse, literally means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’: it’s the book we also know as Revelation.

And what is being unveiled is a marriage:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21.1-2)

And in Revelation who is present at the marriage banquet of the Lamb? It is people, ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’. (Revelation 7.9).

The Lamb is unveiled, and Revelation echoes Isaiah:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21.4)

What Isaiah prophesies and Revelation reveals is that the veil of death is lifted by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus cries out from the Cross, ‘it is finished’, rendered in Latin, consummatum est, ‘it is consummated’ (a marriage image if ever there was one.)

When all is consummated the veil in the Temple is torn in two, and then at the Resurrection the folded grave clothes unveil Christ’s resurrected body.

The invitation of the Mass is to come to the marriage banquet of the Lamb:

You are invited to the banquet of God’s love; you are the honoured guest, you, we, the Church, are the bride.

It is a wedding feast, Christ the Bridegroom united to his Bride, the Church, as one flesh.

That is why it is beautiful when religious sisters wear a veil: it should remind us all of the Church’s call to be the Bride of Christ!

But yet, there is one nagging puzzle from the parable.

There is one guest at the wedding who is thrown out of the banquet because he is not wearing a wedding garment.

Why?

It raises the question of worthiness and humility.

The wedding garment was given to guests to wear; it wasn’t that the man just didn’t have one.

He chose not to wear it.

Again, Revelation gives the answer, which the Church Fathers loved:

Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure” -

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (Revelation 19.7-8)

We have come to a royal wedding, the marriage banquet of the Son of God, we need to dress appropriately.

So, as his Bride, let us clothe ourselves in faithfulness to Christ, keeping the way of his commandments and honouring him in all that we think and speak and do, doing everything to the greater glory of God.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 19.9a)