Who doesn’t love going to a wedding? It’s a joyous occasion. We get to witness a testimony of love. Hopefully, the reception is also fun. Today’s Gospel (Mt. 22:1-14) shocks us by telling of guests who don’t want to show up at a wedding.
The king is hosting a wedding feast. So, we are clearly in the general context of a marriage. When he sends out the invitations, it seems like everyone has an excuse to miss the celebration. This bothers him, because he wants everyone to appreciate this wonderful moment in his son’s life. The Gospel looks at marriage especially as an image of Heaven, but we can also look at it through the lens of what human love means, and we should live it out during this earthly existence.
Revisiting Amoris Laetitia
In Rome, the Pope is hosting a discussion of Pope Francis’ post-synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on its tenth anniversary. Pope Leo XIV spoke to them about the importance of marriage ministry within the Church and encouraged them to preach the fullness of the faith to all. He recognized that, when working with families, we are often dealing with fragile situations. How does the Church proclaim the truth when the people listening are fragile?
As much as it often seems that the institution of marriage is in crisis,
The desire to marry and form a family remains vibrant, especially among young people, and this is an inspiration to the Church (Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 1).
Marriage is a topic so important in the Church that our pastors are often thinking about it. After the Synod of Bishops looked at the topic, Pope Francis published his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, “On Love in the Family.” Marriage and the family play a central role in society. At the same time, many people find themselves in difficult or even irregular situations. The problem arises: “How do we approach certain problems pastorally, wanting to hold on to the integrity of the faith while also serving these people as best as possible?”
Aware of Fragility
Amoris Laetitia is famous for trying to propose pastoral solutions to difficult situations. Some of these possible solutions are at the level of pastoral suggestions, and many cannot be applied universally. They need precisely a pastor to walk with the couple and see how they can live in grace within their particular set of circumstances. The Pope never asks pastors to water down the Gospel message. It is more about finding the way to bring the demanding nature of the Gospel to the particular situation, always acting with great pastoral charity.
Reflecting 10 years later, Pope Leo XIV noted that there is a gap between the good we desire and what we actually live. While the Church’s teaching on marriage is clear, often people do not approach the Church before they have gotten themselves into an untenable situation. If your cat comes into the house with a paw caught in a trap, you might be upset that the cat wandered into where it did not belong; but you are still going to try to help him free himself.
Pastoral Closeness
What kind of Church do people encounter when they are most fragile? Can the truth we proclaim be encountered through mercy and gentleness? We need less harshness in the Church, at the same time that we must always proclaim the truth of the Gospel. We should not measure preaching simply by how strict or lenient it sounds, but by whether it faithfully proclaims Christ and invites people to conversion. We need to move away from a tendency to judge our neighbors. We proclaim the truth without becoming judgmental or needlessly confrontational.
We should never reduce people to the sum of their mistakes, nor presume to know the full story of their lives. We should take them seriously enough to get to know them a little better so we can help them discover the freedom and grace that come from living in the truth.
The king hosting the wedding feast wants everyone to celebrate with his son. When there is initial disinterest, he widens the net. Everyone seems to be invited. The only condition is to wear the wedding garment. This sets up the drama of the man who tries to enter without wearing the wedding garment.
Call to Transformation
Putting on the wedding garment means allowing God’s grace to change us. We cannot earn the invitation to the feast; it is a pure gift. We respond to the gift by letting Christ transform the way we live and love. God invites us to Heaven, but he also tells us that there are certain requirements. We do not get to dictate the conditions. We are saved by God’s grace, not by our own achievements. Yet that grace demands a response. He invites us to cooperate, to allow Christ to transform us and teach us how to live. God uses the image of Christian marriage to prepare us for the immense joy of Heaven, which he compares in the parable to a wedding feast.
We should want Heaven more than anything on Earth. For this reason, we try to live, even our romantic lives, in a way that corresponds to the truth of the Gospel. It feels like, in this area, some people have tried to declare independence from God. Rather than recognizing that Jesus Christ teaches us what love is through his sacrifice on the cross, it would seem that we can fall into the trap of wanting to tell Jesus what it means to love. This is like waltzing into the wedding feast while failing to put on the wedding garment.
God wants us at the feast. He does not invite us because we have everything figured out, but because he wants to share his joy with us. The Church is called to be a place where people can approach Christ in their weakness and discover the grace to begin again. This depends on all of us. We should never be afraid to proclaim the truth, because the truth reveals the path to true joy that only God can give. By proclaiming the truth and following Christ humbly, we live in the hope that all can enter into the feast, clothed in the grace of Christ.
I also look at this parable as an image of why Purgatory makes sense.