Thursday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

Grasshopper

Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready,

but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.

The parable of the king’s wedding banquet is a complex story. It is probably two parables joined together by Saint Matthew, with some allusions tossed in for good measure. Its complexity is fitting for it addresses a most confounding mystery: how can God be both supremely merciful and supremely just? His justice in this story sounds like violence, as the king sends his armies “to destroy those murderers and burn their cities,” and later to toss one of the wedding guests into the outer darkness. But his mercy is compassionate and generous as the king invites the poor and outcasts to the wedding banquet of his son.

I remember an older priest who explained the conundrum of justice and mercy like this: “While you’re alive God is very merciful to you. He will readily forgive all your sins. But when you die you meet God’s justice!” Trained in a later era with a different experience of the Bible, I see God saving his chosen people from oppression. His justice is merciful toward his elect.  

Our Protestant brethren and sistren struggle in various ways with the same issue. Some say, “Once saved, always saved!” They believe the merciful grace of baptism is unconditional and overwhelming so that even the worse criminal would be saved if, at any point in his life, he accepted Jesus as his savior. Other Protestant theologians are more cautious. They acknowledge that even devout Christians are justly condemned if they knowingly and willingly commit heinous crimes.

All of these four positions are rough, disjointed attempts to explain the mystery in which we must live, and to which we must pay attention. The Song of Songs warns us,

“For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.

We must understand the love of God is fierce and must be fierce. That is to say, God’s love for us is overwhelming, intense and demanding. The wise feel its intensity. Likewise our loving response must also be overwhelming, intense and demanding. It drives us throughout our day and into the night.