October 9, 2011,
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 25:6-8 Philippians 4:12-14 Mathew 22:1-10
Isaiah 25:6-8 Philippians 4:12-14 Mathew 22:1-10
First
reading: a banquet for all the nations
Here on Mount Zion the Lord Almighty will prepare a banquet for all the nations of the world—a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine. Here He will suddenly remove the cloud of sorrow that has been hanging over all the nations. The sovereign Lord will destroy death forever! He will wipe away the tears from everyone’s eyes and take away the disgrace his people have suffered throughout the world. The Lord Himself has spoken.
The Word
of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A reading
from the holy Gospel according to Matthew
Glory to you, Lord.
A wedding
banquet for a son
Jesus again used parables when speaking to the people. The kingdom
of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He
dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they did
not want to come. Then he sent other servants to tell the invited guests, “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my
calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready. So come to the
banquet.” Some ignored the invitation
and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of the
servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his
troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his
servants,”The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to
come. Go out, therefore, into the streets and invite to the banquet whomever
you find.” The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found,
bad and good alike, and the wedding banquet was filled with people.
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
Introduction
The
year is rolling on
The
last leaves of brown are tumbling down. There’s crispness in the air. The
football season has finally arrived to distract us from the sad state of the
economy, and to make life worthwhile living again. The stores are already
bedecked with the Halloween motif. Even the Christmas season is already popping
up on store-shelves. The new year of 2011 has indeed grown old.
The
Banquet-theme
The banquet-theme abounds in Sacred Scripture
which was written by and for hungry people. When Jesus notices how guests were
looking for the best places at a wedding banquet, He tells a parable about the
advantage of purposely looking for the lowest place at table, “For whoever
humbles himself will be exalted.” (Lk 14:7-11) Jesus tells another parable
about a loving father who holds a banquet for a prodigal son returning home
after a wild fling in a foreign land. (Lk 15: 11-32) When the wine runs out at
a wedding banquet in Cana of Galilee, Jesus works a miracle to change tasteless
water into the nectar of human celebration. (Jn 2:1-12) The
wedding-banquet-theme is painted on the very last pages of the New Testament:
an angel says to John, “Write this: Happy are those who have been invited to
the wedding banquet of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19: 9)
The invitees’ fault
For Catholics Sunday Mass is the
weekly invitation to the wedding banquet of the Lamb. Though all are invited to
come weekly, some do not come. Like the invitees in today’s gospel, they’re too
busy to come: one
has to look over a field he’s just bought, another has to try out five pairs of
newly purchased oxen, and a third has just gotten married and can’t come. (Lk
14:15-24) Some of the busyness of life is indeed inevitable.
Some of it, however, is of our own choosing. Some don’t come to the Sunday banquet because they’re too stuffed to come. Gorging themselves at the cultural trough, they simply have no yen for Isaiah’s “banquet of the richest food and the finest wine.” The Sunday banquet has to compete with the cultural trough, and that’s a very big job. Either too busy to come or too stuffed to come - in both cases it’s the invitee’s fault, if the banquet fails.
The banquet’s fault
Sometimes, however, it’s the fault
of the banquet itself. That's the case when the menu offered is a platter full of
out-of-touch reality, pious platitudes, or just pure boredom. Karl Jung, the
father of modern psychology, powerfully describes how the day of his very first
Holy Communion (which was supposed to be the Banquet of Banquets) had miserably failed him. That day, which he waited
for with great expectation, was utterly boring and disappointing.
I
waited for the day with eager anticipation, and it finally dawned. There behind
the altar stood my father in his familiar robes. He read prayers from the
liturgy. On the white cloth covering the altar lay large trays filled with
small pieces of bread which came from the local baker whose goods were nothing
to brag about. I watched my father eat a piece of the bread and then sip the
wine which came from the local tavern. Then he passed the cup to one of the old
men. All were stiff, solemn, and it
seemed to me, uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but could not see nor
guess whether anything unusual was going on inside the old men. I saw no
sadness and no joy. Then came my turn to eat the bread which tasted flat and to
sip the wine which tasted sour. After the final prayer the people went out,
neither depressed nor illumined with joy, but with faces that said, "Well,
that's that." (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
Gradually
it dawned on Jung that nothing had happened on that very long-anticipated day. It
had, in fact, utterly bored him: “Well, that’s that.” When the service was
over, he with the majority of the congregation peeled out of the church, happy
to get back into the real world. The banquet of his very first Holy Communion
had failed him so miserably that it turned out to be the day of his very last Communion; Jung never took Communion
again!
Vatican II -- 49
years ago this coming Tuesday
Pope
John XXIII was elected in November of 1958, and in January of 1959 he announced
his decision to summon the Church to an Ecumenical Council. It took three years
to prepare for it. Then on October 11th
1962 (49 years ago this coming Tuesday) Vatican II opened. Pope John, like the
king in the parable, said to the Church, “Behold, I have prepared my banquet,
my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready. So come to
the banquet.” (Mt. 22:4) 2860 bishops came flocking into Rome and Vatican City from
the four corners of the earth to celebrate the bittersweet banquet of Vatican
II.
On
the evening of the Council’s opening day, October 11, good Pope John appeared
at the window of the papal apartment, in response to the chanting and singing
coming from a sea of a half million people assembled in St. Peter’s Square
below. The Pope addressed the sea of humanity, saying, “Dear children, I hear
your voices.” After expressing in the simplest language his hopes for the
Council, he pointed upward towards the moon which was glowing brightly in that
late summer night. The moon, he said, was looking down on them, and was
watching that great spectacle taking place. Then John added, “Though my voice
is a solitary one, it echoes the voice of the whole world, for here the whole
world tonight is gathered and represented.” Then he told the throng in the
square below, “Now go back home and give your children a kiss, and tell them
it’s from Pope John.”
Ecclesia semper reformanda
When the Church was in dire need of reform in the 16th century, it summoned the Council of Trent which lasted for 18 years (1545-1563).
When the Church was again in need of reform in the 20th centuries, Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council which lasted for 3 years (1962-1965). Now less than a half-a-century (49 years) after Vatican II, the Church is again in need of reform. That shouldn’t surprise us. The battle cry of the Reformation was “Ecclesia semper reformanda” -- “The Church is always in need of reform.”
In a long letter to Pope Benedict Jesuit Fr. Henri Boulad[1] makes the point that the Church, reformed a little less than a half-a-century ago by Vatican II, is again in need of reform. Boulad writes:
"Religious practice is in constant decline. The churches of Europe and Canada[2] are frequented only by an increasing number of aging people who will soon be gone. Soon there will be nothing left to do but close those churches or transform them into museums, mosques, club houses or municipal libraries - something that’s already under way."
Boulad blames the empty churches partly on the menu offered; it’s simply old hat and very tasteless. He tells Benedict:
"In the matter of morality and ethics, the injunctions of the Magisterium, repeated ad nauseam on marriage, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, etc. touch nobody and only engender weariness and indifference. All these moral and pastoral problems deserve more than preemptory declarations. They deserve an approach that is pastoral, sociological, psychological and humane."
When the Church was again in need of reform in the 20th centuries, Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council which lasted for 3 years (1962-1965). Now less than a half-a-century (49 years) after Vatican II, the Church is again in need of reform. That shouldn’t surprise us. The battle cry of the Reformation was “Ecclesia semper reformanda” -- “The Church is always in need of reform.”
In a long letter to Pope Benedict Jesuit Fr. Henri Boulad[1] makes the point that the Church, reformed a little less than a half-a-century ago by Vatican II, is again in need of reform. Boulad writes:
"Religious practice is in constant decline. The churches of Europe and Canada[2] are frequented only by an increasing number of aging people who will soon be gone. Soon there will be nothing left to do but close those churches or transform them into museums, mosques, club houses or municipal libraries - something that’s already under way."
Boulad blames the empty churches partly on the menu offered; it’s simply old hat and very tasteless. He tells Benedict:
"In the matter of morality and ethics, the injunctions of the Magisterium, repeated ad nauseam on marriage, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, etc. touch nobody and only engender weariness and indifference. All these moral and pastoral problems deserve more than preemptory declarations. They deserve an approach that is pastoral, sociological, psychological and humane."
Conclusion
“Dear children, I hear your voices.”
Towards
the end of his long letter to Benedict, Boulad suggests the convocation of a general
`synod.’ (He doesn’t like the word `council.’) The synod would, in fact, be a
`Vatican III.’ It would last for three years, and would courageously listen to the
voices of God’s People expressing their needs and hopes for the 21st
century. The synod would then culminate in a general assembly. Fifty years after Vatican II,
Fr. Boulad believes that the semper
reformanda Church is again in need of being reformed. For him the Spirit in
God’s People is “a groovin’ for a Vatican III.” And Boulad hopes and prays for
the day when the Benedict will come to the window of the papal apartment and say
to God’s People, ”Dear children, I have heard your voices. Come to the banquet
of Vatican III.”
[1] Fr. Henri Boulad, an Egyptian Jesuit, is superior of the Jesuits in Alexandria, regional superior of all the Jesuits in Egypt, professor of theology in Cairo, director of Caritas-Egypt, and vice-president of Caritas Internationalis for the Middle East and North Africa.
