The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.
But when the king came in to meet the guests,
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
The king said to him, ‘My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?’(Mt 22:10-12)
Only a choice?
“Bad and good alike” were invited to the wedding feast. Naturally, we are dealing with symbolic language of the Gospel and the wedding feast of the Son is God’s Kingdom. We pray for it to come daily when we say “Our Father”, we hope to get there although we believe that may take place after some time spent in the God’s school called Purgatory. How much do we know about the Kingdom and the eternal wedding feast? Are we hungry for the Kingdom? Or is it just a more promising alternative to Hell? Are we headed for a multiple choice exam with A) standing for Heaven B) indifferent C) Hell?
After earthly life
I teach a lot of (Ancient) Greek and Roman Mythology this year – over 80 students enrolled in two sections of this popular course. Once or twice during the course I ask these young people to answer (anonymously) some questions which aim at helping them understand that certain human problems are timeless. When we are about to study myths of “gloomy” Hades I ask them, for instance, what they believe will happen to them after they die. The answers come to me on carefully folded pages torn out of notebooks. I collect them and shuffle publicly to make them even more anonymous.
Then I unfold the pages and read the uneven writing (everything is now typed, so few students write legibly) with compassion. There always a few students who admit they have never thought about death. No one died in their own families, they have had no religion in their families, have never been to a funeral, grandparents are far away. Three or four are dead sure there is no afterlife and always aggressive about it– “you just disintegrate or rot in earth and that is it”. This group, I have noticed, has shrunk quite a bit over the past ten years or so. So has the number of believers in reincarnation. In late 80ties and 90ties they would constitute a vast majority.
Someone who is waiting for us
The largest group begins with “I wish there was a Heaven”… and continue in variety of ways, sometimes going on“ but I really do not know. There is no scientific proof of existence of such a place” or “No one ever taught me any religion that but I still hope there is someplace to go after we die and someone to greet you there”. I have also read many frank admissions “ but – if there is a Heaven – I am not sure I am good enough to go there”. There is almost palpable longing for Kingdom in the young of our age..
Only three or four in each group firmly lay out Catholic teaching on the “life everlasting” in detail. “I hope to be with Jesus forever”, they boldly write.
Required only one thing
Returning to the “bad and good alike” who in today’s Gospel were “gathered” from the streets right into the wedding feast. Who were they? Surely these Gospel figures that we know so well: Zacchaeus the tax collector who climbed the tree to see Jesus (and soon returned double amount of stolen property), the Samaritan woman, (concubine of five men) whom Jesus met at the well, the penitent woman who washed His feet with her tears and anointed His head with costly perfume, the adulterous woman who was an inch from death and whom Jesus asked not to sin any longer. There must have been in the number of the invited also the poor widow who, trusting in God’s Providence donated her last “penny” to the Temple – Jesus admired her faith, also the shepherds who greeted Jesus the Child and the three Kings of Orient. Certainly the pious woman who fasting and praying waited for the birth of the Messiah was accepted. A Good Thief, a convict was “brought in ” there, too, no doubt.
What an uncommon crowd has the King gathered to celebrate the wedding of his Son!
Only one thing was required – a festive robe… What did the “festive robe” symbolize? Open, childlike heart? Humility? Hunger for God and His love, something of this longing for Heaven that so many of my students feel?
We will all find out – in time.
Maria Kozakiewicz, Edmonton