Casual Love

Greetings on this the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: IS 25:6-10A; PS 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6; PHIL 4:12-14, 19-20; MT 22:1-14

Final Things

No doubt you were taught the Four Final Things which are:

• Death
• Judgment
• Heaven
• Hell

Even if you weren’t taught them in the natural order of things and intelligibility we have a primal sense of the facts:

• Our mortality (we die), and
• that we have authentic and true judgment of our actions in life, and
• that the consequences of our actions are either:
  • Peaceful (Heaven) or
  • Negatively impactful (Hell).

Divine Love

The Divine Love in the gospel parable today is given a marriage motif. The Father, delighted at his Son’s marriage invites all to the feast.

Some ignored the invitation and tended to either farm or business.

Still others reject the invitation out of malice for the Father and the Son.

It isn’t if they don’t know the Father. They know Him. They are simply casual about Him.

They actively reject the invitation of Divine Love. They reject the idea that there is a judgment and/or consequences for their actions.

Finally, the others are invited as well. Some good. Some bad. All invited.

Marriage

Maybe these days the idea of marital love being special seem to some to be a weak argument!

But taken by its intended meaning the marital love is an lifelong, all encompassing, all enduring, love that places the needs of the bride above that of the groom.

Family

Marriage is the making of and accepting of the family.

The center of married life is the family – those before us and after us. As well as those who are near and those who are far either in distance or in sentiment. We are to journey with the family from here to there. From birth to death.

Pope Francis Encyclical

In Fraternity and Social Friendship the Pope urges us to think broadly as to who is a member of our family. To think more deeply as to the responsibility we have for one another. To consider our relativistic tendencies to judge rather than journey with each other. He expresses the disappointment at the failure to transcend a simplistic view of the Commandments and the purposefully ignoring the Beatitudes Jesus taught quoting: without charity, strictly speaking do not fulfil the commandments “the way God wants them to be fulfilled (FT, 91).

Marriage

And in a way that transcends basics of ordinary human marriage we can derive the fact that Jesus has married each of us. And some do not want that divine marriage.

Baptism

In the ordinary sense Baptism is the time when we receive our wedding garments. We are to keep them unstained for the wedding feast. There can be no question that the moral life is a core part of living out that commandment.

Come to the Banquet of the Lord

Feast.

Be a bride who is loved, cherished and honored by the Groom who is the Son of the Eternal Father.

Peace be with you,

Deacon Gerry