A Word for the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

In the Gospel read today, the Lord Jesus Christ likens the kingdom of heaven to «a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying: tell those who are invited: see, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready; come to the wedding. But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious, and he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants: the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him: friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants: bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen» (Mt 22:2-14). Here today’s reading from the Gospel ends.

This account is called a parable—that is, a likeness, or a kind of riddle. It must be worked out. Who, then, is this king who arranged a marriage for his son? This is God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth and the King of all creation. Who is the king’s son? This is the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ; and the bride is His Church—first, the Jewish people, chosen by God, and, second, the soul of every believer, every Christian; Christ loved the Church, it is said, and gave Himself for her (Eph 5:25); the Apostle Paul says: I have betrothed you to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ (2Cor 11:2). By the wedding feast is understood the kingdom of heaven, in which the truly faithful will be united forever with the Lord Jesus. To this marriage, or into the kingdom of heaven, the Jews were invited first, through the prophets and the apostles, but they refused the invitation; more than that, they even mistreated God’s messengers and killed many of them. For this, God, in the course of time, destroyed the Jewish nation by the sword of the Romans and razed their city and their temple. In place of the Jews, God called to the marriage, or into His Church, through the apostles and those equal to the apostles, the pagan nations—including us, the Russians. But not even all Christians of pagan descent, nor the Christian generations following after them, will enter the kingdom of Christ. Those among them who do not keep in purity the bright wedding garment of innocence and holiness which they received at baptism, or who, after defiling it with sins, do not cleanse it with the tears of repentance, will be cast out at the dread Judgment into outer darkness, where there will be eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. Such is the explanation of this parable!

But there may be another, similar, and equally true interpretation, one that applies even more directly to us, you and me, brothers and sisters. The wedding feast spoken of in today’s Gospel is the Divine Liturgy, at which the faithful are offered not a slaughtered calf, but the Lamb of God Himself, slain in sacrifice for the salvation of us sinners, that we may be fed by His most pure Body and Blood, that we may be united to Him in the closest of unions, that we may become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones. This is the marriage of the king’s son—the union of Christian souls with Christ in the Mystery of Communion! This is the feast—the partaking of His Flesh and Blood! A divine, most holy, incorruptible, heavenly, and deifying feast! But how many, even today, hasten to this divine feast? Does not the greater part of people, even today, avoid being present at this heavenly supper, out of negligence and laziness, and for various worldly reasons—for instance, on account of business, or little faith and pride of intellect, or long sleep, and so on? Who does not see this, does not notice it, does not know it? Such is our little faith, such our spiritual dullness, such our attachment to the world, such our inattention to the greatest Mystery of the faith, to the Mystery of immortality and deification! Such is the vanity and ingratitude of Christians toward the Lord, who offers Himself as food and drink for our cleansing, sanctification, and immortal life! What, then, do such people deserve? Is it not rejection by God—since they themselves have rejected Him for almost their whole life? But even those who come to this marriage of the Lamb, to the Divine Liturgy—to remember His life, His preaching, His miracles, His mercies, His sufferings, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into heaven—or to partake of His most pure Body and Blood—do they come in a wedding garment, with a pure soul, with a pure heart? With thoughts set on things above, with a holy disposition? Do not many, even in church, in this bridal chamber, as it were, of Jesus Christ, appear with earthly daydreams and passions? Do even we ourselves, the celebrants of this fearful, heavenly, bloodless sacrifice, always appear and serve in the church in a wedding garment of purity and freedom from passion of soul? Alas! Often we too lack this wedding garment, this reverent disposition and heartfelt thought, and we not infrequently enter in the unclean rags of our passions.

Oh, let us all hasten to repent, and to whiten the garments of our souls with the tears of repentance and with works of righteousness, especially almsgiving, which cleanses sins. I see Your bridal chamber adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter it: enlighten the garment of my soul, O Giver of Light, and save me. Amen.