The image of the banquet
abounds in Scripture. Back then there
weren’t any supermarkets and fast food joints to lavishly lay layers of weight
problems. In those days, almost everyone was skinny, and many were down right hungry.
It was natural then for people to dream about food and scrumptious banquets and
to look for opportunities and excuses to feast and celebrate. In the first
reading today Isaiah gives heart and hope to all the skinny and hungry people
before him saying, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide a banquet
of richest food and the finest wine for all peoples” (Is 25:6).
The banquet image abounds
in many of the Sunday gospels. In one of
them Jesus warns us not to grab the best places at a wedding feast. Those were
the places where the food was served first and where the wine never ran out. The
host, Jesus says, might embarrass us by asking us to step down to make room for
a more important guest (Lk 14:7-14).
When the prodigal son
returns home after his fling with life in a far off land, the father seizes the
opportunity to feast. He kills his fatted calf and throws a banquet to
celebrate the return of a son who was lost but now has been found (Lk
At the wedding feast in
Cana of Galilee, where people are making up for lost time eating and drinking,
the wine runs out, and Jesus works his first miracle changing water into the
nectar of human celebration (Jn 2:1-12). The image of the wedding banquet is
painted on the very last pages of the New Testament. In the Book of Revelation
we read, “Then the angel said to me, `Write this: Happy are those who have been
invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb’” (Rv. 19: 9).
Too busy to come
In today’s parable the
banquet doesn’t run out of wine; it runs out of guests. A king is throwing a
wedding party for his son, and he sends out elaborate invitations to his very
special friends. You can be sure as shootin’ they’re neither skinny nor hungry.
They’re big shots who are busy with their very busy lives. So they decline the
invitation. One goes off to his farm and another off to his business (Mt 22:
5). Luke’s gospel spells out their busyness in more detail. “One of the invited
guests said, ‘I bought a field and have to go and look at it; please accept my
apologies. Another said, ‘I bought five pairs of oxen and am on my way to try
them out; please accept my apologies.’ Another said, ` I have just gotten
married, and so I cannot come’” (Lk
An e-mail
Every now and then I find a
pearl of great price amidst a mountain of useless and mostly pornographic e-mails.
Sometime ago I found one entitled AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD. It is an outstanding medley of visual, audio
and especially of very meaningful words. It so seized me that I immediately
placed it in my store of favorites. It speaks to those who are off to their
farms or off to their businesses. It speaks to those who are often out of
breath with the busyness of life. It reads:
I dreamed I had an INTERVIEW WITH GOD. “So, you
would like to interview me?” God asked. “If you have the time,” I responded.
God smiled and said, “Oh my time is eternity. What
questions do you have in mind for me?”
I asked, “What surprises you most about us humans?”
God answered, “This surprises me: that they are so bored
with childhood and rush to grow up and then long to be children again.
“That they lose their health being so busy about
this and that and then lose their money trying to restore their health.
“This surprises me: that they think so anxiously about
the future that they forget the present and live neither in the present nor in
the future.
“That they live as if they will never die, and they
die as though they never lived.
“This
surprises me as one goes to his farm and the other to his business: that they are
so busy making a living that they have no time to live.” No time to come to the
banquet.”
The weekly
wedding feast
For Catholics Sunday Mass
is the weekly invitation to come to the wedding feast of the Lamb. All are invited to come and feast upon the richest
food of God’s Word and the finest wine of the Eucharist. Though all are invited, many don’t come. The empty
pews of the Sunday assembly call to my mind an old song which we sang in that
period of our great immaturity immediately after Vatican II. We dumped
Gregorian chant and in its place we sang an anti-war song: “Where have all the
young men gone?” (Another profound favorite was, “Michael, row your boat
ashore, alleluia!”)
Looking at the empty pews
I wonder where have all the young ones (and also the old ones) gone? All have
been invited to the weekly feast of the Lamb but many don’t come. Our kids come
as long as they are under the heavy hand of their parents, but when that’s
lifted from them by simply coming of age and getting out on their own, many say
good-by to us.
Some don’t come because,
like those invited in today’s parable, they’re too busy to come. Sometimes it’s simply the busyness of life
itself. Sometimes, though, it’s a busyness of their own creation. A sense of
priority could fix that.
Some don’t come to the
Sunday assembly because they are addicted to slopping themselves at the cultural
trough (where all are wiggling their rear ends). Sunday Mass with its tame
movements can’t possibly compete with that. That one’s hard to fix.
Others don’t come to the weekly
banquet because they’re not yet in touch with their hunger. Life itself with
its passage of time often fixes that. Disasters like 9/11 and Katrina often put
people in touch with their hunger. When
a loved one is tragically snatched from us, or when everything we have is suddenly
blown away and we feel empty, then we are in touch with our hunger. When the
fullness of summer fades into autumn with its leafless limb and barren bush,
and we feel empty in late October, then we are in touch with our hunger and go
in search of a banquet to fill us with meaning for our lives.
Second time around
In his first attempt to summon
a great wedding feast for his son the king sent out elaborate invitations to his
well-fed friends. They didn’t come; they weren’t hungry. In his second attempt
he decides to dispatch his servants into the highways and byways to gather in
the skinny and hungry. Luke’s gospel says
“The king dispatched his servants saying, `Hurry out to the streets and alleys
of the town and invite to the banquet the poor, the crippled, the blind and the
lame’” (Lk
The second attempt of the
king was a great success. His servants went into the highways and byways and
invited whomever they found, and scripture says, “The banquet hall was filled
with guests” (Mt
Some don’t come to the Sunday
assembly because they are too busy or too addicted to the wild beat of the
culture or simply not as yet in touch with their hunger. The fault for not
coming is theirs. Sometimes, though, the fault isn’t theirs at all but the
fault of the banquet itself. The menu isn’t very tasty. It isn’t the rich food
and fine wine promised by Isaiah. Sometimes
the Liturgy of the Word is a platter full of out-of-touch reality that says
nothing to them. Or a platter full of narrow-minded religion which irks them.
Or a platter full of pharisaic morality which makes them very impatient. Or
simply a platter full of pious platitudes or yawning boredom or just plain
nothing to satisfy the hunger in them.
Sometimes
the Liturgy of the Eucharist is a rote obedience to the words, prayers and
gestures prescribed in the liturgical books by some liturgist somewhere
sometime ago. The Liturgy of the Eucharist should be infused with a living obedience that’s in tune with
momentous events (like 9/11 or Katrina or yesterday’s massive earthquake in Pakistan),
in tune with the current season of the year (like fall with its apple and
pumpkin) and in tune with the Word of God as proclaimed in the homily and as
hovering over the rest of the assembly’s celebration.
A fatal banquet
Karl Jung, the father of
modern psychology, forcefully describes a banquet that miserably failed him
because of the menu offered. He describes the day of his First Holy Communion
which he thought would excel Isaiah’s banquet of rich food and fine wine. He
waited for it with eager anticipation. It finally came. Behind the altar stood his father, the
minister, in his familiar robes. He read off the prayers from a book. He ate a
piece of the bread and sipped the wine, then passed the cup on to the others,
who looked stiff, solemn, and it seemed to him, uninterested. He waited in
suspense for something out of the ordinary to happen but it did not
happen. He saw no sadness and no joy on
anyone’s face. When his turn came, he ate the bread which tasted flat, and
sipped the wine which tasted sour. After the final prayer all pealed out of the
church, neither depressed nor illumined with joy, but with faces that said,
"Well, that's that."
Only
gradually in the course of the following days did it dawn on Jung that no rich
food had been served and no fine wine had been poured. He found myself saying,
"That’s not religion. That’s the absence of God. I must never go back there again.” That banquet failed him so miserably he never
took Communion again (Memories, Dreams,
Reflections).
Conclusion
The week ahead
Happy
are we who find Isaiah’s banquet of rich food and fine wine in the Sunday
assembly. It has us exclaiming with Peter, James and John on the Mount of
Transfiguration, “Oh how good it is for us to be here! Let’s hunker down on
this lofty height and stay up here forever. ” Fortified and encouraged by God’s Word proclaimed in the homily, and assured by the Sacrament held on
high at the elevation that there’s more to life than meets the eye, we are
prepared to get off the lofty height and go down into the valley of real life
and face the week that lies ahead.