Friends
Peace be with you.
It’s college football season and I have to admit something: I’m kind of happy that Penn State stinks this year. If you have no idea why I would say that, it’s because the coach of Iowa State left last year to take the head coaching job at Penn State. He also took almost the entire football team with him. So watching Coach Campbell struggle gives me the same joy I have when Nebraska or Wisconsin lose. This is especially true when I have to watch Iowa State struggle to compete this year.
I’m, once again, borrowing some ideas from the Sunday School podcast for my homily. They pointed out that, if you look at the citation for today’s first reading, you will notice that it says Isaiah chapter twenty five verses six through ten a. They cut the last verse in half because, had they completed it, it would have seemed totally incongruous with the optimism of the passage we heard. It says, “For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain, but Moab will be trodden down as straw is trodden down in the mire.” It sounds like God took a hard left-hand turn there at the end. What did Moab do to him? Actually, the passage we read is the left turn. Up until this point, we’re in the middle of the first part of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. In previous chapters, the Lord has been warning the people in the southern kingdom of the destruction of the peoples all around them. And, like me with Penn State, they’re kind of fine with that. In fact, it seems like they want their neighbors to suffer. But then, Isaiah turns to them and warns them “O LORD, you are my God, I extol you, I praise your name; For you have carried out your wonderful plans of old, faithful and true. For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin, The castle of the insolent, a city no more, not ever to be rebuilt.” Why is the prophet celebrating the destruction of Israel?
It might be explained if we look at the Responsorial Psalm for today, Psalm twenty three. This is probably the most famous of all the Psalms, especially among our Protestant brothers and sisters. It’s often used at funerals. Notice that, in order to get to the banquet that God has prepared, the writer has to go through the valley of the shadow of death. The writer of the Psalm says he is not afraid because God is with him with his crook and his staff to protect him. But why go through the valley of the shadow of death in the first place? Is it because the only way our faith grows is if it is tested? Is it because God trusts and loves us so much that he allows our faith to be tested? Is it because God has set a time when the world will come to an end and, prior to that, the evil one is trying to get as many people to abandon their faith as a way of winning a battle while the war is lost? I think there are elements of all of that and probably more in this.
That’s the only way that the end of today’s gospel makes any sense. I understand that many who are invited don’t show up to the banquet. As Catholics, the church asks us to come to Mass every Sunday and holy day in order to remain in good standing unless we are unable to do so. But there are many people who could come to Mass who simply don’t. So God invites the willing to come and is happy with those of us who do prioritize it. Fine. However, what is going on with the guy who isn’t wearing a wedding garment? Notice that the king addresses him as his friend. Notice, too, that the man doesn’t offer an excuse such as being poor or unprepared. It says he was reduced to silence. The commentary I heard said this probably would have been seen, by the people at the time, as hostility toward the king, as though the guest feels entitled to be there and not grateful for the unmerited invitation. So the king tosses him out.
The point of these three readings, then, is that living a life of holiness isn’t meant to be easy. There are moments when it feels like we are in the shadow of death or that God is treating us just like he does all the unfaithful people around us. We can’t respond by looking around and hoping that other people are miserable just to make ourselves happy. In those times, we need to cleave even tighter to our prayer and trust that the Lord is with us in the valley of the shadow of death getting us to the banquet he has prepared for us.
