Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Memory of the patriarch Abraham. In faith he journeyed to a land that he did not know, but that was promised to him by God. Because of this faith, he is called the father of believers by Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Read more
Homily
"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food... he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth." This is the great prophet Isaiah's dream that we heard this Sunday. In another passage he writes: "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you" (Is 60:3-4). The prophet's words transcend his time and take hold of a dream written in hearts of all people of every generation, place and faith. So many people need a peaceful life; many desire to set out toward a new future; all need to get out of a disgraceful situation.
The prophet says that the banquet is already prepared; and the Lord is the one who set the table. This is to say that life, peace and fellowship are already prepared. It is the Lord who gives these things to us as a gift. They are not things that are so far off that we must despair in having them, or so high and unattainable that we must fall into despair. They are within our reach. The real problem lies in our refusal to accept the invitation and to go toward that mountain to participate in the banquet of life and peace. Preoccupied by our things, we do not consider the invitation extended to us and we despise the gifts given to us. The defence of our personal interests at every cost and at any price distances us from peace and fellowship. In this sense, the meaning of the parable of the banquet is clear. The protagonist of the parable is a king who, having prepared a wedding banquet for his son, tells his servants to go and call those whom he has invited. After hearing the call from the servants, the invitees refuse the invitation. Everyone has something else to do: one has to tend his field, another has some other business, and yet they all agree in refusing.
The king, however, does not give up: he insists and sends his servants again to renew the invitation. We seem to hear the apostle when he says that we have to insist because of the Gospel in every occasion, whether it is opportune or inopportune. This time, those who are called not only dismiss the invitation but abuse and even kill the king’s servants. This is what happens every time we push the Gospel off to the margins and expel it from our life. In the face of such an incredible reaction, the king, feeling disdained, has the assassins punished. In truth, they are the ones who punish themselves by excluding themselves from the banquet of life, peace and love. In this way they fall into an infernal life.
The king, however, does not abandon his desire to gather men and women. He sends other servants, with orders to turn to everyone they would meet on the streets and in the squares without discrimination. This time, those who are invited come in and the hall is filled with "good and bad" guests. It seems that it does not matter to God how we are; what he wants is that we are there. There are not the pure and holy in the hall. Everyone is there. In other pages of the Gospel, it would say that there are crowds of the poor and sinners. Jesus says that everyone is invited and whoever arrives is welcomed; it does not matter if one has many or few merits, nor if one feels righteous or not. In that banquet hall one can not distinguish who is a saint and who is a sinner, who is pure and who is impure.
What matters is having the "wedding robes." In the East, the guest, whoever it may be, was welcomed with every honour: the guest would be washed and robed before being conducted to the banquet hall. Whoever shirked this custom showed himself to not accept hospitality and to feel as though he or she had the right to just enter as if he or she were master of the house. The wedding robes, therefore, are God's love that is poured out over us, covering all of our faults and weaknesses. The nuptial robes are faith, our holding fast affectionately to the Lord and His word. Speaking to this, we read in Revelation: "There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white" (Rev 7:9).
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
