Matthew 22,1-14. Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 12th, 2014
The Holy Spirit in our first reading describes the intimacy to which God calls each one of us. It is as a great feast, a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of food rich and juicy…The food that is prepared by the Lord for us however, is not just any food, but the food for which every human heart longs and desires; it is the only food that will ultimately satisfy the human heart. The great feast is really the Heavenly Wedding Feast for which all are invited but sadly in the end few respond.
What is the food the human heart longs for, the food that is served at the Heavenly Wedding Feast? It is the love of God; this is the only food that can satisfy. But we have to stop here before we go further. God does not have love; God does not possess love…God IS LOVE! As St. John tells us, Deus Caritas Est…God is LOVE! This means what the human heart ultimately longs for…every human heart…is God Himself. This brings up an important point that we can never hear enough.
God doesn’t just want to give us something, God wants to give us Some One…God wants to give us Himself, totally, and He is the God who is Love. In fact, God wants to actually wed our soul; He wants to make our souls one with Himself in the Wedding of all weddings, the wedding of the Bridegroom, Jesus who is God come to earth, to His bride, the Church, each one of us, the baptized.
Jesus, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity came to earth and continues to come to earth in order to wed our souls to His, our nature to His Nature. This is why He took an human nature, to be able to invite us to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb…This why He continues to take on a human nature in the Holy Eucharist so that at His wedding Feast the soul and God can become one…one in a union of love…one in a union with the God who is Love Itself. Imagine!, God wants to wed your soul…so much does He love you.
And so by your baptism you are called, invited, to this Wedding Feast that our Gospel today talks about. Where is this wedding Feast???…It is here at the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is THE WEDDING, the wedding of all weddings; it is the Wedding feast of the Lamb where God wants, desires to wed you and take you to Himself. He is the source of everything, the source of your family, your possessions, your existence…and this God wants to give you something more than all of that, He wants to give you Himself.
The Holy Mass is the mountain of Holiness spoken about in our first reading, the meeting place of God and Man; it is heaven on earth, the Heavenly Wedding Feast on earth. It is where God continues to descend, to condescend to us by becoming one of us, in order to take us to Himself. The choice of all wines is His Precious blood to be poured out for us; the food is His body to be given up for us…By partaking of His flesh and blood, which is united to His soul and divinity, we can, through faith, enter into Comm—union with Him and through Him with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. But it goes without saying that we have to show up at the wedding in order to be wedded to God!
We are told today that many who are invited never show up for the feast; but, we have to do even more than just show up…we have to come with ready to lift up our hearts to the Lord; that is, to offer them up to the Lord who offers His heart to us at Mass…The Holy Mass is an exchange of hearts, and exchange of persons, God gives us His Sacred Heart and we must open our hearts by offering our hearts to Him… How do we do this?
First our hearts have to be made worthy by the Lord Himself in the sacrament of Confession. We have to repent from our sins, confessing them in the sacrament of confession with a firm intention to leave sin behind in order become more fully one with God by following His Holy Will; and so His teachings and Commandments. Our hearts need to be cleansed and our souls dressed in the wedding garment of sanctifying grace, that is with the life of God restored, healed and alive in our souls from a good and honest sacramental confession. We have to come to the Wedding dress worthily. This includes our bodily dress, but most especially in soul. Our outward appearance should be a reflection of our inward appearance, the appearance of our soul before the Bridegroom, Christ. (We should bring Him as well the good works of our lives, and even our failures so He can transform them).
Second we have to realize that at the Wedding that is the Holy Mass, an exchange of hearts must take place. This is done just as it is done at a wedding, vows must take place (I spoke about his during the mini-Eucharistic conference I gave here at St. Peter’s last July). Just like at wedding between a man and woman, the couple exchanges holy and sacred vows…I do…that is I give myself totally to You for life by offering my life to you….These “I do” of the couples must be first and foremost an act of the will, in which each person intends to give the gift of Himself and Herself to one another. And they seal this intention with a Sacred Oath before God Himself and His Holy Church. Amen…so help me God to live this oath till death do us part…if one or more of the couple doesn’t say the words “I do” or doesn’t mean intentionally the words from the heart then the marriage is not valid and the two can not become truly one flesh at the consummation of the wedding vows which takes place in the marital act the night of the wedding.
So too with the Holy Mass…Holy vows must take place, an exchange of hearts, of persons giving of themselves totally in love to one another. God totally gives His “I do” by giving us Himself through the Sacred Heart of His Son in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the total gift of the Father to us because it is the gift of His Son, Jesus, who is everything that the Father is and possesses. But to receive this gift, we must in response to God’s “I do” give our “I do” that is the gift of our hearts, ourselves, all that we have and are to God. It only then that the consummation truly take place at the Marital act of the Holy Mass, Holy Communion.
We can only truly become one with God at Holy Communion to the extent that we give our “I do” to God…only to the extent we give the gift of our self in response to the gift of God’s entire self can we become “one flesh” with God through the reception of the flesh of God which we receive in Holy Communion. Only communion is far more intimate, unfathomably more intimate than the marital act between a husband and wife because in Holy Communion Jesus whole Body and all of His Blood comes into ours, along with whole Soul and His Divinity!!!
And finally, third, to actively, fully, consciously participate at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb and so bear the fruit of Holiness that is oneness with God, we have to turn to the mother of the Bridegroom-Jesus. We have to turn to the Blessed Mother of God to help us to offer our hearts. Interiorly at every Mass, we should ask her to help us adore the Lord, which really means to make of our selves a living oblation of love to Him.
We turn to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is already perfectly one with the Sacred Heart of Her Son, and we entrust the offering of our hearts, our whole being into her hands. We ask her to place our hearts on the paten. In fact her hands become the living paten on which our hearts are offered up to the Father by the Hands of Her Son who is working in the person of the priest. She then magnifies the offering of our hearts, our lives, our works, joys and sufferings, our everything, by her Holiness and makes them acceptable to Her Son. He then accepts our hearts and our offerings as if they where His Mother’s own. As the great High priest Jesus then presents them as an acceptable offering to His Father, God the Father almighty who accepts our offerings as if they were Jesus own offerings. Our Father God then takes us to himself and Makes us more and more images and instruments of His love and Mercy for others—images of His Son.
With our hearts acceptable to the Father they become worthy to receive the heart of His Son Jesus in Holy Communion because by the power of the Holy Spirit that are transformed into images of Jesus’ own Sacred Heart. The fruit of this worthy reception of the Heart of the Son, which is the Marital act of the Holy Mass, is oneness with Jesus and through Him with the Father. Jesus then begins to live anew in the world in us, through us and with us. Our works become Jesus works, our acts of selfless love no matter how small become Jesus’s own acts of love. Our lives then bear the fruit of love which is oneness with Love Himself and this love effects not only our own lives, and our family’s lives, but the lives or countless of other souls as well. This is the fruit, the fruit of small souls living holiness; that is, oneness with God. It is these souls who accept the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb who will bring about our renewal of our families, our country and our world…they will be used by our Blessed Lord to bring a great renewal of the Church, and so of the world leading to an unprecedented era of peace through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of His Mother.
Let us then end by turning to the blessed Mother for help. Dear Blessed Mother at this Holy Mass which is the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, help us to give our “I do” to the Lord as did you. By your humble words, “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.” “Let it be done to me according to Thy Word,” the Word became flesh and dwelt and continues to dwell among us in the Holy Eucharist…may your words become our own. Amen.
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