2-Oct-2011 Dear Friend, Whenever we don’t do the things we are supposed to do we always have our excuses. These excuses justify our action, and help us to hold on to whatever we are busy with. They help us to resist change. In life God is constantly calling us to live full lives, to live not only for ourselves but for others and for God. Often we resist or delay our response for flimsy reasons. We cannot delay or we will be left behind. Have a grateful weekend responding to the invitation to His banquet! -Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: Twenty-eighth Sunday–“God will fulfill our hopes and desires! ” 9-Oct-2011 Isaiah 25: 6-10 Philippians 4: 10-14, 19-20 Matthew 22: 1-14
In the first reading, Isaiah proclaims the goodness of God, who is preparing a banquet for all his people on the holy mountain. The banquet symbolizes the celebration of God's closeness, his concern for the people and the celebration of final victory over sin, suffering and death. Isaiah seems to stress that the Lord himself will prepare this banquet for all people. This feast is not exclusively for the Israelites but for all people. God desires to invite all people to his kingdom with no one excluded, and he will give us the best. The call of the Christian is the call to hope in the Lord, who is concerned about everything that affects us, and will lead us from our present trials and tribulations to new joy and hope that comes from being with the Lord. Towards a Banquet of Nations God’s plan for our humanity requires that we work with God to realise it. Great plans need landing gears as well as wings. It is not enough that we are willing to become part of the Kingdom, we must do it. Hence God invites us to get caught up with his desire for our humanity and work with him to wipe away tears from cheeks and to take away people’s shame. The venerable servant of God, Canon Cotolengo, when but a boy of five years, was measuring with a cord one room after another. His mother, rather confused, asked him what he was trying to do. “Dear mother,” was the reply, “I want to see how many beds can be placed in this house: when I am grown up I should like to fill the whole house with sick people.” A tear of emotion glistened in his mother’s eyes. In 1832 he founded at Turin the ‘Little Asylum of Divine Providence’, and today it is world famous. It shelters 5000 men and embraces within its precincts a church, a number of houses, terraces and courtyards. -Like Canon Cotolengo, there are some who respond to God’s call with passion and reach out to others to realise God’s vision for the human race. But there are many who like the invited guests in the parable (Mt. 22:5) are complacent in their response to the Lord’s invitation. Vima Dasan in ‘His Word Lives’ The Gospel reading of today is a combination of three different stories put together by Matthew. There is the story of the marriage feast of the King's son, to which the King invites special guests and dignitaries; then there is the story of the man who gives a feast to his friends and neighbours and then there is the third story of the man who is not properly dressed for the wedding feast, who has to be cast out of the banquet hall. The Gospel first tells us that the Father desires to celebrate the marriage feast for his son and so he sends out his messengers to summon the invited guests to the banquet prepared for this special occasion. Those invited refuse to come to the banquet, thus insulting the King, they maltreat and kill the servants, adding insult to injury, which incenses the king who punishes and destroys them. Since the banquet is all set, the King now sends his messengers to invite anyone whom they can find. And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found; so the banquet hall was filled with guests. Matthew's parable goes on to describe the royal host seeing a guest not wearing the 'wedding clothes.' He is speechless when he is questioned as to how he got into the wedding hall in such unsuitable attire and so he is thrown out. His failure to dress properly for the occasion is as insulting to the host as was the rudeness of the first guests who rejected the wedding invitation. Are we ready for God? Recognizing God’s Coming Advertising by commercial development agencies often features individuals who had a good idea and who also had the initiative and willingness to follow it up. Each of those featured is now running a successful small business. They recognised an opportunity for what it truly was and they made the most of it. In different ways, each of us is called to do something similar in our relationship with God. Failure in life is to miss recognising God in the circumstances of daily lives. It is the inability or unwillingness to see the opportunity he offers to know him more clearly, to serve him more generously and to be secure in his love. The Jews of Christ’s time were blind to that opportunity and so lost out. In an attempt to alert them to what they were missing out on, Christ used the image of a marriage feast to which many of the invited guests failed to turn up. They did not realise what they were missing. Outsiders saw their chance and came but even among them, some were not prepared to enter fully into the spirit of the celebrations. Anyway, they too were rejected. As well as recognising an opportunity, one must be prepared to pay the price of personal change in following it. Today’s gospel challenges us to recognise God in daily life and, recognising him, to be changed in heart and lifestyle. The temptation is to settle for mediocrity when we are given the opportunity of being truly great as children of God. Tom Clancy in ‘Living the Word’ The Homeless Boy Some tine ago a minister told this story on himself. One night he went over to the church to lock it up for the night. He found a boy asleep in the last pew. He woke the boy apologetically, and told him he was going to lock up. The boy explained that he had no place to stay that night and was hoping to remain in the church. The minister said that he hoped the boy would understand, but he didn’t think that was a good idea. The minister then invited the boy into the church office while he called two refuge centres in town, trying to find a place for the boy to stay. Unfortunately, neither centre had a vacancy that night. The minister apologized to the boy. The boy said he understood, shook hands with the minister, and disappeared into the night. When the minister returned home, he told his wife about the incident. She looked at him and said, “Why didn’t you bring the boy home? He could have stayed in the guest bedroom.” The minister thought momentarily. Then he shook his head sorrowfully and said, “Well it’s too late now.” With that, he sat down in an easy chair. He picked up his Bible, opened it, removed the marker, and began to read the assigned section for the day. It was the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Suddenly the minister realized that the boy he sent away was like the injured man in that parable. He, too, was badly in need of somebody’s help. The minister saw, also, that he was like the priest in the parable. He had passed up the boy without helping him. The minister closed the Bible. He thought about a story he had heard, years ago, when he was a student in the seminary.-An old Jew came up to a rabbi and said, “Rabbi, I’ve just read through the entire Bible for the fifth time in my life.” The rabbi looked at the old Jew and said, “The important thing, Abraham, is not how many times you’ve been through the Bible, but how many times the Bible has been through you.” Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’ Excuses, Excuses! Once there was a tailor who mended the clothes of everybody in town, yet he himself went about with his coat in tatters. And to the embarrassment of everyone he appeared like that in church on Sundays. One Sunday a friend said to him, ‘its disgrace that you, a respectable tailor, should go around in a tattered coat. Shame on you for coming here dressed like that.’ “But what can I do? I’m a poor man and I have to work all week long to make a living’, the tailor replied. ‘Where am I going to find the time to mend my own clothes?’ ‘Look,’ said the friend, “Here’s ?20. Think of me as one of your customers, I’m paying you to mend your own coat.’ ‘I’ll agree to that,’ cried the tailor as he took the money. However, when he came to church on the following Sunday the friend noticed that once again he was dressed in his old tattered coat. Extremely annoyed, the friend said ‘Didn’t I give you ?20 last Sunday to mend your coat? Yet you never even touched it.’ ‘What can I do?’ said the tailor ‘When I went home last Sunday I realised that I’d be losing money on the job if I did it for ?20.’ A man like that will always find an excuse. Flor McCarthy in ‘New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies’ Banqueting at the Borders I was once invited to attend a meeting of NGOs at Taj Connemara Hotel, Chennai, South India, to discuss how the corporate world can support social causes. It felt sad to be living in a paradoxical world: rich discussing how to help the poor in 5-star hotels, First World feasts coexisting with Third World famines, and Afro-Americans in New Orleans’ bylanes rummaging for food after Hurricane Katrina opened floodgates of neo-racism in the year 2005. Today’s readings speak of banqueting with God’s special guests: The hungry on society’s ‘borders’. -Walking through Delhi’s Ridges, I see joggers buying bananas to feed monkeys, and in Ahmedabad, pujaris feeding chappatis to cows while starving children beg for their share. The readings must awaken our consciences that we might conscientize the unawakened. O that today we can truthfully say, “take, eat, this is my body!” Francis Gonsalves in ‘Sunday Seeds for Gospel Deeds’ Contentment There was a young lady, who was the daughter of a prominent doctor, who bequeathed her a considerable fortune. But this property was in litigation. She borrowed money and fought the case. Unfortunately, she lost it. As she was returning from the courtroom, her lawyer turned towards her and said, “You have lost everything. Yet, you are not panicky or hysterical; you give no signs of going to pieces nor are you even upset. Instead you are so calm that I fear for you.” The young lady replied, “You may not understand. All through the trial I prayed that God’s will should be done. The verdict is against me and while I don’t understand it, somehow I know it is God’s and I accept it and feel only peace in my heart.” Months passed; one day she felt a deep urge to take the case to the higher court. She persuaded her lawyer to reopen the case. After some weeks a new verdict was handed over to her and it was in her favour. This time, she gained more than what she would have gained had she won the case at the first instance. As she walked out of the courtroom, her trusted lawyer friend turned towards her and said, “I have a new name for you. From now on you will be called ‘Little Miss Faith’.” John Rose in ‘John’s Sunday Homilies’ May we recognize God’s coming into our lives and find contentment in Him! Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site www.netforlife. net Thank you.
