What if you opened the invitation?
- Fr Raphael Ma, CR
- Matthew 22: 1- 14
A Resurrectionist Vocation Minute for October 22, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
What if you opened the invitation?
So many of Jesus’ parables sound so familiar at first, that we do not stop and think about what is really going on. The wedding banquet in today’s parable was no ordinary wedding reception. It was a wedding banquet for a king’s son. It was a royal wedding. Whatever your attitudes may be towards the British royal family, I think we would be genuinely surprised if we received a personal invitation in the mail to something as grand as one of their weddings.
Although Jesus was speaking directly to the chief priests and Pharisees in today’s Gospel, the parable is also about us, because we are the “everyone you find” who the slaves of the king were sent to invite.
And while this parable is about being invited into the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s also about vocations – because nobody is “just” a part of the Kingdom of Heaven, nobody is “just” a guest at the wedding banquet. If you are invited – and you are, since everyone is – then you are also called to a specific role. Imagine if you opened that invitation to the royal wedding. What do you think you might find? It probably would not be what you’d expect. I have never heard a vocation story in my life that went “exactly” as expected.
“Each member is charged with the serious obligation and responsibility of fostering and developing vocations for the Congregation. The vocation director will lead and animate these efforts.”