Are you wearing a wedding garment?
In our Gospel today (Matthew 22:1-14), Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a royal wedding feast. The king has prepared everything, but those honored with an invitation refuse to come. Why? Some on the guest list prioritize their farms and businesses, while others turn hostile towards the king’s messengers, mistreating and even killing them. Why?
We can interpret this parable as mirroring what has happened in history and what is still unfolding in our lives today. How often do we turn down God’s invitation? How often do we let our busy schedules consume us? How often do we push away those who bring us the Lord’s truth? And why?
The story then takes an unsettling turn. The king sends his servants out to gather all they can find, “bad and good alike.” But when the king meets these guests brought in from the streets, he notices one without a wedding garment. This man is bound hand and foot and cast into the darkness outside, where “there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” Could it be that the first guests refused to come because they knew this would happen?
Isn’t the poor wedding guest’s fate unfair? The man was just brought in off the street. What if he was not expecting to attend a wedding feast that day? But these questions arise when we take the parable too literally and miss its deeper spiritual symbolism. These objections also fail to connect it to the customs of Jesus’ time and the other parables in Matthew’s Gospel.
“The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike” (Matthew 22:10). “Bad and good alike” should remind us of the parable of the weeds and wheat (see Matthew 13:24-30). When weeds appeared among the wheat, the bad among the good, the master instructed the servants to “let them grow together until the harvest.”
In the parable of the net (see Matthew 13:47-50), fish of every kind are caught—again, good and bad alike. The good are then collected into buckets, while the bad are thrown away. But this is not done right away. The sorting only happens when the net is full and hauled ashore. Jesus then explains, “Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” The phrase “wailing and grinding of teeth” is another sign for us to make this connection.
In Matthew 25:31-46, we see another sorting: The sheep are separated from the goats. The sheep are placed on the right; the goats, on the left. But again, this happens only when the Son of Man finally comes in glory—harvest time in the parable of the weeds and the wheat, the end of the age in the parable of the net.
When the man without the wedding garment is confronted by the king, this does not happen shortly after the man arrives at the feast. During Jesus’ time, grand weddings lasted more than a day. The man would have had a chance to change, as the weeds were allowed to grow, as the bad fish were allowed to remain until the shore, as those who heard the parable of the sheep and the goats were warned long before the time of judgment.
In "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" (which can also be seen as something of a parable), the Sorting Hat could have placed Harry in Slytherin, but Harry himself said, “Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.” And Harry was placed in Gryffindor. The sorting involved Harry’s choice.
Our Gospel today closes with a sobering truth: “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” But the choosing is not a matter of divine caprice. In the end, this also involves our choice—to wear the wedding garment or not. In our parable today, when the king sends his armies to destroy and burn the cities of those who murdered his messengers, dramatic ancient imagery is used to convey a serious message. This is not about the petty whims of an angry deity; it speaks to the historical and spiritual consequences of human rebellion. God honors our free will so much that he allows us to experience the tragic outcome of our choices when we push his grace away.
There are at least two things we must hold in dynamic tension when considering grace. First, grace is free. The invitation is given to us even before we have done anything to prove ourselves. Grace is free because we can never do anything to merit it. But second, grace is not cheap. On God’s part, grace is costly because it cost him his Son. On our part, the cost of grace is discipleship. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught, cheap grace treats divine mercy as a bargain-basement product or a system where God forgives everything automatically while humans live however they please.
Grace is free, but grace is not cheap. Let me try to put these two ideas together using a more spiritual perspective on grace: Grace is the meeting of two desires—God’s and ours. God is always reaching out towards us with the invitation to join him. Will we reach out to him as well? Will we wear the wedding garment of change and repentance? When we do, then it will be a real celebration and a lavish feast.
Your prayer assignment this week:
Kenny Loggins captures the essence of every love story in his song, “Meet Me Halfway."
In a lifetime made of memories
I believe in destiny
But this destiny is not carved in stone without us. We are given a chisel to write our stories also.
In a lifetime, there is only love
Reaching for the lonely one
We are stronger when we are given love
The opening prayer at Mass today says, “May your grace, O Lord, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.”
Grace is always reaching out for us lonely ones. We only need to meet God’s desire with our own. As Kenny Loggins sings, we are called to meet him halfway. And when we do, we find it is not a 50-50 relationship. God’s grace is already there before us, behind us, above us, below us.
Fr. Francis teaches Theology, Education and Scripture at both the Ateneo de Manila University and Loyola School of Theology. As a classroom teacher, he is first and foremost a student. As a professor, he sees himself primarily as a pastor.
