J


 

 

  

 

A WORD FROM THE PASTOR

Wearing the Wedding Garment

In this parable of the wedding feast, Jesus unfolds the entire story of salvation history. He tells a disturbing story about a king who planned a wedding feast for his son. When the invited guests refused to come, he brought in street people to take their places. But there was one who was found without a wedding garment. What does it mean?

“Wearing the wedding garment” means living out the Gospel message. We are called to live the moral and ethical values embodied in Jesus’ life on earth in flesh and time, and in his teachings. It refers to true discipleship rather than uncommitted membership. When one freely accepts Christ as one’s Lord and Savior, one must dedicate one’s life to Jesus.  In other words, the Christian must be clothed in the spirit and teaching of Jesus.  Grace is a gift and a grave responsibility.  Hence, a Christian must be clothed in a new purity and a new holiness. 

While God, through the Church, opens wide his arms to the sinner, the sinner can only accept his invitation to this relationship of mutual love by loving him back, and so by making some effort to repent and change his life. It is not enough for one to say, “I Believe,” and then simply to continue living one’s life in one’s accustomed sinful ways.  Although Jesus accepted the tax collectors and prostitutes, he demanded that they abandon their evil ways (“Go, and sin no more!” Jn 8:11).

The permanent and universal lesson taught by the parable has nothing to do with the actual clothing we wear when we go to Church.  But it has everything to do with the spirit in which we enter God’s House.  It is true that Church-going must neither be a fashion parade nor an occasion of scandal for others, but the garments of the mind and of the heart we wear when we go to worship God are more important than our material clothing.

Hence, the wedding garments are the garments of faith, reverence, repentance and love of God and neighbor.  All are called for God’s banquet (feast – Salvation). But you will be chosen to enter into it only by your ‘wedding garment.’ Let us check this weekend, what is that wedding garment I need to wear/have in my practice of faith. The right answer will offer us God’s eternal banquet.

 

In the Service of the Lord,
   Father Thainese Alphonse

 

 

   
     
Copyright ©2003
St. Bernadette Catholic Church