“Did you receive my invitation?  I am waiting for a response…”  We have all found ourselves in the situation of trying to decide how we are going to respond to an invitation that we have received.  The parable in our gospel reading this coming Sunday is about an invitation, an invitation that is sent by the Father, the King.  The kingdom of heaven is like an invitation…  Our life is like the response to that invitation…  God is constantly sending out invitations and waiting for a reply from us.  Like the King in the parable, he doesn’t send just one invitation but he is inviting us time and time again to share with him in a celebration of life.  God is the Lord of life and he has prepared a beautiful celebration of life to which we are invited.  Like the King in the parable, God has gone to great lengths to prepare wonderful things for us to enjoy in life.  Everything is a grace.  He has provided all that is necessary for an abundance of joy and delight.  “Everything is ready; come to the feast…”  God is waiting for our response to join him in the great banquet of life that has been prepared.

The life of joy, delight and abundance that celebrates a union in love is the divine life of the Holy Trinity.  God the Father is always sending forth the Son and the Spirit to invite us to participate in this divine life and exchange of love.  God desires to share his divine life with us and we are created to share in this divine life.  Throughout Sacred Scripture the call echoes, “Come, eat; come drink; come rest; come celebrate; come delight; come live:”  The call is given to us and all we need to do is to respond to this call and leave our trivial and selfish pursuits behind and share in the divine wedding banquet that has been prepared for us.  The ultimate act of freedom is to let go of our worldly concerns and to come and be seated at the banquet table of divine life and love.  The true human vocation is to share in the divine life of union in love that is being celebrated in the Father’s house.  What could possibly keep us from entering into such a wonderful banquet and celebration?  How are we going to respond to the Lord’s invitation?  Certainly we will say yes?

Surprisingly, there are many different responses to the Father’s invitation.  Jesus outlines some of these negative responses to the invitation of the King today.  For many, they just ignore the invitation and they turn their backs on God and walk away.  They respond with indifference.  They are not interested in God and they find his celebrations boring and tedious.  There are more important things going on in their lives and so they go to their farms and their businesses.  For many the plans of human beings are more important than the plans of God.  The affairs of the human person are real and engaging to them.  God’s plans are so mysterious, hidden and beyond their understanding.  So many in our world today respond to God’s invitations coldly with indifference.  They can’t be bothered to enter into a relationship with God, to pray and read his Word, to celebrate new life in the Eucharist and to attend to their spiritual growth.  Perhaps we are so identified with our work, our possessions and our plans that to let go of them would mean to lose all sense of our selves and all that brings meaning to our lives.  Our great fear is that in the end all of these things really add up to nothing.

The second group of people respond even more surprisingly.  They become angry, violent and murderous!  What could cause such an extreme response to a simple invitation to celebrate life and love in the Father’s house?  It seems to be an absurdity and yet we witness violent responses to those who are the King’s emissaries and are simply inviting others to new life happening in our world all too often.    Remember what happened to John the Baptist.  There is a great amount of martyrdom happening in our world today.  Daily Christians are being killed, simply for being Christian.

God simply wants to invite us to a wedding feast, the wedding feast of his Son.  He wants us to have life and have it abundantly.  He wants us to know that we are loved and remembered.  This wedding feast is a great celebration that has been extensively planned and prepared.  All we need to do is to enter into the feast and share in the celebration of life.  In this parable we are not told who the bride is.  The great surprise to us when we arrive at the banquet is that we are the bride.  This is our wedding feast.  The marriage is the wedding feast of the Lamb who weds the bride the Church.  As members of the Church we share in the love of Jesus for his bride.  We are the beloved of the Lord.

The final lesson in this rich parable is that if we should plan on coming to the feast then we must prepare ourselves and clothe ourselves in a wedding garment. The wedding garment is the conversion of heart that is necessary for us to share in the divine life of love with God.  The wedding garment is a pure heart.  “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt.5,8)  The bride needs to be chaste and have a pure heart that is ready for faithful love.  To be worthy to enter into the feast and share in the divine life of love and unity with God then we need to have an open and receptive heart.  So, are our hearts ready for God’s call in our lives and ready to enter into the great celebration of life and love when the Lord calls?  “My heart is ready oh Lord, my heart is ready…”