Tuesday 31st Week, even numbered ‘Happy the one who will be at the feast of the Kingdom of God !’ Ph.2,5-11 Ps.21 Lk.14,15-24
On hearing Jesus speak, one of the guests gathered around the table said to him : ‘Happy the one who will be at the feast in the Kingdom of God !’ By His Word, Jesus comes to set us free, inviting us to great happiness, coming to our help. We as humans can so often close ourselves off in our little daily life. I can give rice or bread to the one who is hungry in the street, and this will fill him up, but how hard it is to satisfy the hunger of the one who is afraid, living on the outskirts of society, lacking love. Mother Teresa said this : You living in the Western world know what it is to live spiritual poverty, far greater than material poverty. This is why your poor are amongst the greatest of the poor. Very often there are very spiritually poor people amongst the wealthy. I find it so much easier to give food to the hungry or to give a bed to a homeless person than to bring some consolation or to rid someone of bitterness, anger and isolation stemmeing from spiritual indigence. This requires much longer, she said. Jesus gives his Life so that we live from Him, through Him, for Him, and so that we may be saved. But humanity remains in darkness and in my death’s shadow it is ensnarled in the liars’ nets. The Holy Spirit is at work and we ask Him for the grace to learn form Christ obediant to the Father’s Love. He was humiliated and rejected so that we may rise with Him.
« Jesus said : There was a man who gave a great banquet, and he invited a larg number of people. When the time for the banquet came, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited ‘’Come along, everything is ready now.’ But all alike started to make excuses. The first said ‘I have boght a piece of land and must go and see it. Please accept my apologies. Another said ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out. Please accept my apologies.’ Yet another said ‘I have just got married and so am unable to come.’ We are asked this question : shall we too refuse the invitation just as the ones who were invited first of all : ‘Come, the meal is ready now !’ The poor person is not just hungry for bread but he is also terribley hungry for human dignity. We have a need for love and to exist for someone else. We really do make a mistake whenever we push people down,not only refusing to feed the hungry but also considering them as good for nothing, putting them out into the street, holding back their rightful dignity as God’s children. Today’s world is famished not just for bread but for love ; hungry to be loved, to be desired. People hunger to feel Christ’s Presence. Mother Teresa says to us that in many countries people might have plentiful goods but not Christ’s Presence, His Benevolence. This can be lacking. The wedding guests are called to accept Jesus’ confidence towards them, for he loved us right to the end and lowered himself to become Bread of Life ! Jesus, the Beloved Son of the Father, God’s Word ‘leaving’ his place of eqaulity with God, clothed humanity once more so as to come to our encounter. He made himself a slave to all, the Bread of Life, taking the last place so as to strengthen us and so raise up the least person.
« ..The householder said to the servant : ‘Go to the open roads and and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full, bceause I tell you not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet. » When faced with the refusal of the first guests invited to the wedding feast the master in the parable sends off a servant into the town to fetch the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. These people were the ones whom Jesus loved in a speacial way, whereas they were on the margins of society. The master sent his servant also outside of the town, onto the roads and country paths to bring back those who were even further away than those marginalised in the towns. As wedding guests our wish is to have the same sentiments as in the Heart of Christ. He chose the last place to such an extent that no-body can ever take it away from Him ! He made the Life within Him to triumph so as to communicate it to us in such a way that we may communciate it to other people. Jesus is the One who raises us up : ‘Come in the meal is ready !’. We ask for the rgace to be invited to the Father’s table.
Monday 31st Week even numbered year “Jesus said to his host”When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers, or your relations or rich neighbours, in case they invite you back or repay you."
When a relationship made up of friendship is taken freely and opens up to another, recognising the other person for his person, without any contradiction.This is how a future of communion is built peacefully and is completely gratuitous. Jesus always invites us to this huge freedom without any perspective of turning back. This gratuity is founded upon the gratuity of God our Father. To give freely because we have freely received. This is just how Jesus lived his life one earth, he was a gift in return for the Father’s generosity.
We desire to enter into the recognition of all the benefits we have received from God. A real generosity so as to be able to love and serve God in all our sisters and brothers, ’the poor, the lame, the blind, all who are forbidden entrance into the Temple! Jesus wishes to re introduce those who were excluded into God’s people, God’s Salvation is free, to b received.
“No, when you give a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”
Jesus calls us to live in the depths of our humanity, inviting u to a real fraterity that always passes through humility and poverty. God alone is capable of living pure gratuity, pure generosity for he is God, he has nothing to receive, he just is.
As for us, we are in a process of becoming and we discover in Jesus, God who makes Himself so dependent of us out of pure free choice.
Jesus is first of all attentive to those who are insignificant in the world, those who are poor, speechless, without the capacity to love or even to love themselves.
The Kingdom of God is received freely. We have to get out of the dynamic of worldly ’business when we are in contact with our sisters and brothers. God doesn’t make any difference between men, he bears a privileged attention
towards the poor. When we frequent the milieu of the poor and handicapped e come to understand of how we ourselves are poor and disabled. And so we can go down right to the bottom of our hearts and see there our misery. We can build with the poor a new world where Love comes first.
“You will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you!”
On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. He prepares for us a banquet of God’s Kingdom. We are invited by God to his table, into his intimacy. Our whole life is a response of love to the lovng invitation of God.
Jesus opens up for us a magnificent school of humility and an opportunity is given to us to enter into communion with God’s life.
Each one of us is invited, called and loved. Jesus wants to see us I mitate the generosity of our Father who gathers us together with his poor ones.
We let ourselves be transformed by this generosity of God, by this wideness of God’s Heart at the moment we celebrate the Eucharist.
Saved by Jesus’ Love and death, all invited together e are so happy to be already part of his feast. Jesus bore upon himself all our sufferings and illness by hi Cross. We want to honour Jesus’ Cross!
’Lord, I do not have the heart that is proud or ambitious,’
In human misery we keep our soul quietly still and silent, offering ourselves up to God. The poor make us draw closer to Jesus in the mystery of his Love and comfort and encouragement of the communion which never leaves our heart.