Hors d'oeuvres

I hope everyone is enjoying their fair share of hors d’oeuvres.

We've all been invited to the Great Feast.

We’re not quite there yet, but we've all made it this far.

We're in the outer hall milling about.

Preparing to enter the Great Hall.

Out here, bad things sometimes happen to us.

We sometimes even do bad things ourselves.

But there’s a lot of good out here too.

And there are rewards—treats.

A table full of them, free for the taking.

And trays full of them that servers carry right up to us.

They whet our appetite, they keep drawing us toward our goal.

They give us a foretaste of the Feast to come.

...

Maybe this food/feast metaphor isn’t a perfect analogy.

But it’s been around for a very long time.

And we’re all pretty familiar with it.

In today’s Scripture, Paul speaks to the Philippians of being well fed.

Our psalm speaks of God spreading the table before us.

Isaiah tells us that the Lord will provide all peoples with a feast

Of juicy, rich foods and pure choice wine.

And then in the Gospel, Jesus speaks of the great wedding feast.

He says straight out what we already know.

His parable of the Feast is actually an allusion to Heaven.

We've all been invited to the Feast.

All of us here have RSVP'd saying we plan to come, we want to come.

But many others have not responded.

We don't want them to lose their invitation, like some in our Gospel.

And we especially don't want to lose our own invitation.

The feast has already begun.

Jesus came and started the Kingdom of Heaven right here on Earth.

We've already entered to some degree.

That's why we can sample the hors d’oeuvres—
The true joys and wonders and good things of this world.

But we haven’t yet entered the main hall of the Feast.

We’re still dealing with the distractions of our worldly business.

And they're not all idle distractions, there are many necessary things.

But the parable shows us we need proper balance, we need prioritization.

We can see reflections of ourselves in the characters of that parable.

We unfortunately have a lot in common with those initial invitees.

We too, sometimes ignore the King and his generous gifts—

We’re unworthy.

And we're also like the guests gathered in from the highways.

Each of us a mix of good and bad—also unworthy.

But present nevertheless; admitted on totally unearned invitations.

Welcomed through the King’s abundant generosity and mercy.

And let’s hope we have a lot in common with those servants.

Those who set out to help gather others into the Feast.

We had a baptism before Mass this morning.

A young child, brought by parents 

To become a new member of the Church.

Clothed in a white gown 

Symbolizing the robes of the wedding feast guests.

Most of us too, first entered the Church that way.

Set off toward the Feast that way—with our invitation.

Unearned by us, given before we could even understand or appreciate it.

No matter how or when we received our unearned invitation, 
We now continue toward our ultimate goal, that Great Feast—Heaven.

What will that be like?

We have some clues.

But no one knows precisely.

We've seen the Renaissance artists’ imaginings.

Books and movies have shown us what some others imagine.

We even have these Feast stories and parables in the Bible.

But what is Heaven really like?

We should try to build our own image.

We don't have a lot of concrete detail to work with.

But we do know that, at the end of time, 

We'll have body and soul reunited.

We won't just be vague spirits floating around.

Or absorbed as some unidentifiable parts of one great spirit.

We'll have bodies—not these damaged bodies—but glorified bodies.

That's an important fact to start the imagination on the right track.

We also know that we'll have the Beatific Vision.

We'll see God.

We'll understand things that were total mystery in this life.

We'll know everything that a glorified human could possibly know.

Those few facts actually give our imaginations quite a bit to work with.

And a lot of room to tailor our own expectations.

The more clearly we envision our own image of Heaven

The more thankful we'll be.
And the more motivated we’ll be to keep working toward that goal.

And the more comforted we'll be

When we or our loved ones are leaving this world.

In building our image,

We should be as excessive, as exorbitant, as we can be.

Consider today’s hors d’oeuvres—today’s joys and wonders—

As only weak, bland foretastes of the Great Feast.

Pile on the glorious details.

We really can't overdo it.

Because one more assurance that Scripture gives us to work with is that

We can never fully imagine how wonderful Heaven will be.

It will be better than whatever we imagine.

As we heard in today’s readings:

God will destroy death forever and wipe away the tears from every face.

God will fully supply every need from his glorious riches.

And we’ll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 22:1-14   Read this Scripture @usccb.org