This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

Reading 1, Ezekiel36:23-28

23 I am going to display the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am Yahweh — declares the Lord Yahweh — when in you I display my holiness before their eyes.

24 For I shall take you from among the nations and gather you back from all the countries, and bring you home to your own country. 25 I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your filth and of all your foul idols.

26 I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. 27 I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments.

28 You will live in the country which I gave your ancestors. You will be my people and I shall be your God.

“I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you.” This promise is echoed in the psalm, “Create in me a clean heart O God; and renew a right sprit within me.” Those of us who can remember our childhood or even teenaged years, are tormented by the memory of a better heart and spirit than we now possess. Then we had a readier love, a more daring spirit. Nor is it our greater awareness of the world’s evils that has led to this decline, but rather, knowledge of our own. Although that self-knowledge is precious in diminishing our arrogance, it diminishes also our delight in life. For these reasons we pray the psalm with great passion and receive the reassurance of Ezekiel’s prophecy with great joy.

Gospel, Mt 22:1-14

1 Jesus began to speak to them in parables once again,

2 ‘The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. 3 He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. 4 Next he sent some more servants with the words, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, my banquet is all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding.” 5 But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, 6 and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. 7 The king was furious. He despatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town.

8 Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy, 9 go to the main crossroads and invite everyone you can find to come to the wedding.”

10 So these servants went out onto the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, 12 and said to him, “How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?” And the man was silent. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.”

14 For many are invited but not all are chosen.’

"Foxes have holes but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head"-the cost of discipleship

Matthew turns a number of Jesus’ stories (principally that of the “Great Feast”) into a complex allegory of the Messianic Banquet: the servants are the prophets, the original invitees are the Israelites, but they are either negligent or brutal in their response. For this they are punished (The Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE) and now all and sundry (sinners and gentiles) are “called” to the Feast. They crowd in, but the man who gatecrashes without a wedding garment (good deeds? true faith?) is ejected.

“Many are called but few are chosen” is probably a genuine saying of Jesus, pointing to the inclusive nature of the evangelical announcement and the discriminating demands of discipleship. This is a helpful description of the church’s mission: the invitation of the church must be all-inclusive, but because the way of the cross is arduous, those who stay the course are self-selecting.