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)