In the parable of the invitation to the wedding feast, Jesus makes a blistering denunciation of the leading clergy and laity of Israel for both ignoring and rejecting the Father’s invitation to them to come to the wedding feast of his Son, i.e., of Jesus himself.

Yes, indeed: God perceives his relationship to man as an invitation to share in a feast of intimate, joyful and married love. Isaiah speaks of the “rich food and fine wines” of this feast, in our first reading. These can refer to the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist which themselves, in turn, anticipate the gifts we will receive in the Kingdom.

In other words, we will feast and find final satisfaction of all our needs in the love of God, a love which will embrace our bodies as well as our souls by liberating us from the shroud of death.

The messengers sent to invite the guests were especially the prophets. But it is a sad, historical fact that many of the Jewish leaders ignored some of them and killed others, despite the urgent message of God to come to the feast.

Jesus also suggests that the impending destruction of Jerusalem would be the result of their rejection of him.

Then Jesus makes it clear that he will have to turn to the Gentiles, that is, to all the non-Jewish nations of the earth. All of these, without exception, are invited to the banquet; with all of these, God will share the rich food and drink of his love, provided they come dressed for the wedding, that is, baptized or at least dressed with good works of love.

This parable infuriated the chief priests and the Pharisees. They saw Jesus as a blasphemer and an impostor. And here he was, daring to suggest that they, who considered themselves as faithful and holy, had ignored or rejected God and were now being rejected by him! No wonder they wanted him dead!

Of course Jesus knew how they felt! But he too was incensed by their hypocrisy and obstinacy. Contrary to our sometimes superficial understanding of the compassion of Jesus, he pulled not his punches. He went for the jugular without mincing his words. Was it because he did not love them?

Surely he did! Jesus had every reason to love them more than others, because it was among them that he most expected to feel at home. It was because he loved them that he spared no effort to shock them into the awareness of their sin.

Love implies forgiveness, of course, but forgiveness implies the clear and unequivocal pointing out of sin, otherwise there is nothing to forgive; therefore, love implies, and implies urgently, that same declaration of sin. Indeed, the stronger the love, the stronger will be that declaration.

The chief priests and Pharisees thought they were dressed in white wedding garments, but in fact, as the love of Jesus pointed out to them, they were draped in the shroud of spiritual death.

At this point, we might think, “how unfortunate they were and how fortunate we are, now that we have been baptized and wear the wedding garment.”

Not so fast! The parable of Jesus is also addressed to us, not necessarily because we are like the chief priests and the Pharisees, but as a kind of “warning mirror” to help us check exactly which kind of robe it is we are wearing: those for the wedding or those for the funeral – our own funeral.

The fact that we gather around the altar of Christ’s feast of love is hopefully a positive sign that we have accepted enthusiastically the invitation of God. But, like the guest without the wedding garment, we need to look closely at our lives and ask if we are truly prepared to sit at this table.

Jesus identifies two attitudes which may strip us of our wedding garment.

The first is to ignore the invitation, to be indifferent, because one is more interested in one’s farm or business. In other words, I may say yes to the invitation and even go to the banquet, but my heart may really be elsewhere.

Many of the chief priests and the Pharisees had turned religion into a way of making money. They replaced the living God with the golden calf.

Now, of course, it is our moral and religious duty to work and make money, but the purpose of it is to improve our own selves, to provide for the upkeep of our families, to contribute to the advancement of society and to do all of this for the glory of God and our own salvation.

But if money becomes an end in itself, or any created thing like it dominates our entire lives, then we are liable to ignore the invitation of the true God to live and to do all things for love of him.

If the first thing I think of in the morning, or if the constant and nagging preoccupation of my day is money or work for their own sakes, then these other words of Jesus must be said, “You cannot serve God and money.”

If money is your love, God will be your hatred. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and ruin his own soul?”

The second attitude is to reject the invitation, even with violence against the messengers of God. None of us is in any position to judge any individual person in this regard.

However, within the Church and in society, it is obvious that God’s invitation is being rejected. In the name of a freedom and autonomy which are simply unrealistic for mortal man, the path to God given by Jesus Christ is rejected as oppressive, out-dated, unscientific and even “unconstitutional.”

To judge religion by the criteria of democracy is like judging love by the criteria of mathematics. Atheism has become anti-theism: ignorance of God has become violent rejection of him.

Attacks on his messengers may not be bloody, at least not everywhere or not yet, but the icy, calculating fury against them is not unlike that of the chief priests and Pharisees against Jesus.

All manner of effort is made to silence them, to rubbish them, to defame and calumniate them, not in the name of the Law of Moses, but in that of the new-found dogma of human rights, often interpreted as the justification for almost anything one can conceive of.

Human rights are given to us by God: how can we then reject God in the name of human rights? Human rights are based on the God-given dignity of the human person, not on that person’s greed and self-sufficiency.

The tragedy is that the growing chorus of anti-Catholicism, wherever it is found, seeks to drown out the very voice which offers spiritually handicapped modern man the hope and fulfillment for which he longs.

For, indeed, the invitation of Christ is to a feast of love at which he will remove from all peoples the real twin enemy of man: not Gospel and God, but sin and death. The hand of Christ is the only hand that can wipe away every tear from every face.

Despite the claims of the contemporary propaganda machine, the call of the Church of Christ is not to moral slavery to laws, but to genuine moral freedom in the love and truth of God.

Man’s hope is not in his farm or business, and even less in the violent rejection of the messengers of the Gospel. If man rests his hope in man alone, he rests it in death and wraps around himself ever more tightly the shroud of death and damnation.

But the more we welcome deeply, intimately and personally the Lord Jesus into the affairs of this earthly life, the freer we will become and the more truly we will rejoice in the very things of the earth as gifts of heaven.

This stern parable of Jesus is a warning but it is also, and is still, an open invitation.

RSVP!