The Parable of the Wedding Garment
The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a King, who made a marriage for His Son. S. Matthew 22:1
We must have a proper understanding of the Wedding Garment in order to grasp the lesson of this holy parable: in the Commentary on the New Testament (1942) published by the authority of the Catholic Biblical Association we read: the wedding garment does not signify the faith, for the man had accepted the call to enter the Church [the Wedding], but charity and good works, of the preservation of the state of grace which makes man acceptable to God…The man has no excuse to offer; it was clearly his own fault that he had no wedding garment. Evidently the host had offered this guest a festive garment and the refusal to wear it constituted an insult to the host (pg. 149, no. 11 - 12).
The King of the parable is God, Who makes a great marriage feast for His Son, that is, Our Lord to the Holy Church, and all of humanity is invited into the membership of the Holy Church. The servants whom He sends are the Apostles and those whom they send, that is, those with the authority given to them by the King. First there are those who will not come, then there are those who make excuses for not accepting the invitation to the feast, and finally there are those who laid violent hands upon them and put them to death; to which the King responds by sending His armies to destroy and burn their cities. Then King sends His servants to invite anyone they can find, noting that those originally invited are not worthy because they heeded not the generous invitation to the Life of Grace.
The first group who had previously been invited, those for whom the feast was intended are the Children of Abraham, those to whom the promise was made, but they would not come: they have rejected the invitation of the Lord to His Wedding, Who came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him (S. John 1:11). Israel held the invitation to the Kingdom, but when the time actually came for the Kingdom to be made manifest, they refused to enter in (cf. S. Matthew 3:1). Many of the prophets, including S. John the Baptist, had been murdered by their own (cf. S. Matthew 14:10). The king’s reprisal against the murderers can be interpreted as a prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D. 70 at the hands of the Romans (cf. S. Luke 21:5). More broadly, the king’s vengeance speaks of the desolation mentioned in the book of Revelation. God is patient, but He will not tolerate wickedness forever (cf. Obadiah 1:15). His judgment will come upon those who reject His offer of salvation. Considering what that salvation cost the Lord Jesus, is not this judgment well deserved (cf. Hebrews 10:29-31)?
And so to others the invitation is extended. But even they do not accept, instead they make excuses, and some even kill the servants of the King, like the Apostles and S. Steven the first martyr; put to death by their own for spreading the message of the King…the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then the servants go out into the highways and byways, and as many as they found both good and bad they invited to the feast – from all of Judea and Asia Minor, North Africa and as far as Rome and Spain the Apostles traveled sharing the joy of the Gospel to any and all that would listen.
Again, the King is God the Father, and the Son Who is being honoured at the wedding is Our Lord Jesus Christ. Note that it is not because the invited guests could not come to the wedding, but that they would not come (cf. S. Luke 13:34): everyone had an excuse. How tragic, and how indicative of human nature, to be offered the blessings of God and to refuse them because of the draw of world’s temporal and mundane things!
The wedding invitation is extended to anyone and everyone, total strangers, again, both the good and the bad, the rich and the poor. This refers to the Holy Gospel being taken to the Gentiles. Remember the prophecy of Simeon who tells us that Our Lord would be a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel (S. Luke 2:32). This portion of the parable is also a foreshadowing of the Jews’ rejection of the Gospel written in Acts 13, where we read S. Paul and S. Barnabas were in Antioch, where the Jewish leaders strongly opposed them. The Apostle’s words echo the King’s estimation that those invited to the wedding were not worthy… To you it behooved us first to speak the word of God: but because you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46).
Now it must be said here, quite rightfully, many, many prayerful children of Israel came to Christ as the Messias, for they had been prepared for His coming for generation up on generation. The Gospel message, Our Lord is teaching, would be made available to everyone. This also calls to mind the foreign woman who besought the Lord’s aid in her daughter’s cure; who after hearing her told her that He had come for His own, and that He could not take the bread from the children of Israel and give it to the dogs, but she proclaimed that even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table, at which Our Lord remarked at the greatness of her faith and answered her request (cf. S. Matthew 15:22-29). We are those whelps beloved, and we benefit from her pleading and her faith.
Now during the feast the king noticed a man who was not wearing wedding garment (S. Matthew 22:11). When asked how he came to be there without the furnished attire, the man had no answer and was promptly ejected from the feast outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (ibid. 12-13). Our Lord then ends the parable with this statement: For many are invited, but few are chosen (ibid. 14).
The matter of the wedding garment is instructive, as I began this sermon, it would be a grave insult to the King to refuse to wear the garment provided to the guests. The man who was caught wearing his old clothing learned what an offense it was as he was removed from the celebration.
This was Our Lord’s way of teaching the inadequacy of self-reliance and self-will. From the very beginning, God has provided a “covering” for our sin. To insist on covering ourselves is to be clad in filthy rags (Isaias 64:6). Adam and Eve tried to cover their shame and so hid themselves in the bushes. God took away their coverings of greenery and replaced them with skins of (sacrificed) animals (cf. Genesis 3:7, 21). In the book of Revelation, we see those in heaven wearing white robes (Revelation 7:9), and we learn that the whiteness of the robes is due to their being washed in the Blood of the Lamb (ibid. v. 14). Therefore we trust in God’s righteousness, not our own (cf. Philippians 3:9).
Just as the King provided wedding garments for his guests, God provides salvation for mankind. Our wedding garment is grace, the righteousness of Christ, and unless we have it, we will miss the wedding feast. When the religions of the world are stripped down to their basic tenets, we either find man working his way toward God, or we find the Cross of Christ. The Cross is the only way to salvation (cf. S. John 14:6). The false “religions” offer nothing because they have nothing.
For his crime against the King, the improperly attired guest is thrown out into the darkness. For their crimes against God, there will be many who will be consigned to the outer darkness—existence without God for eternity. Christ concludes the parable with the sad fact that many are invited, but few are chosen (S. Matthew 22:14), in other words, many people hear the call of God, but only a few heed it.
To summarize the point of the Parable of the Wedding Feast, God sent His Son into the world, and of the very people who should have celebrated His coming many rejected Him, bringing judgment upon themselves. As a result, the Kingdom of Heaven was opened up to anyone who will set aside his own righteousness and by faith accept the righteousness God provided by Christ. Those who spurn the gift of salvation and cling instead to their own “good” works will spend eternity in hell.
The self-righteous Pharisees who heard this parable did not miss Our Lord’s point: in the very next verse we read the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap Him in His words (S. Matthew 22:15). The Parable of the Wedding Feast is also a warning to us, to make sure we are relying on God’s provision of salvation and remain in His grace, not on our own “good works” or religious service, for works without the Holy Faith are empty (cf. S. James 2:14)!
Sermon from Monsignor Sebastian for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Society of Christ the King, Oratory Chapel of St. Francis
