28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 25:6-10
Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Matthew 22:1-14

A. Text/Context

• The gospel today gives us an explanation about the KOG expressed in the parable of the wedding feast
• And a very powerful figure is the one hosting a banquet it is the king who gives the invitation for the royal wedding of his son
• What happened? The invited guests refused to come after two invitations and the 2nd time around they have plenty of excuses
• As a background for this gospel parable, in the Mediterranean culture the 1st invitation is a survey of who is invited and who is not invited, what are the preparations, and among those invited, who decides to attend, and who do not
• If important people decide not to attend the banquet, then the rest will follow
• So it happened that on the 2nd invitation nobody among the important people decided to attend the wedding feast and the rest followed and so nobody arrives for the wedding feast
• Banquets are social functions and they tell a lot about social, political, and economic classes in society
• And so with no guests coming everyone in the city was invited and people from all walks of life filled the reception hall
• But the one who was not on the proper attire was thrown in the darkness outside where there was wailing and grinding of teeth. And the gospel ended that many are invited but few are chosen
• Listening to the parable it seems that the king is very harsh to those who refused to come
• And the people who received the invitation are so discourteous to refuse a royal invitation from the king
• St. Matthew the evangelist speaks about the disobedience of Israel
• When Adam and Eve have fallen from grace and so do the generations that followed also refused to return back to God
• God sent the prophets to remind the people but what did Israel do? The prophets were ignored and some of them were killed
• So that even Jesus who was sent also landed on the cross in the hills of Calvary
• Those who came to the banquet are the Gentiles who are non-Jews and yet even from among the Gentiles, those who are not fit to enter the kingdom are thrown away
• That is why in the parable story, the guest who was not on his proper clothing was thrown out of the party, where outside there was wailing and grinding of teeth
• Isaiah in the 1st reading tells us that the feast will wipe away the tears from every face but even if we accept the invitation, yet, not of proper garments, we will still be thrown outside

B. Human Situation

• My brothers and sisters in our life as Christians the invitation to the wedding banquet is an invitation for us to start renewing our lives back to God – conversion
• The invitation to the wedding banquet are already warning signs for us to understand properly the signs of the times that we are in at present
• Many years ago, the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio was coerced by the old government to distribute abortion-producing drugs and pay for sterilizations
• The former Obama government wants our university to distribute abortifacients among the studentry in a Catholic university. If they will not follow, they could be threatened of closure. The university follows the tenets of Catholicism and obviously it is pro-life
• Obviously, the former Obama administration is pro-choice and therefore if the school prescribes to the teachings of the Church then it can be shut down
• The distribution of the drugs is encouraging the youth to engage in pre-marital sex that would produce unwanted pregnancies and the government is there to help you with abortion
• It is so grossly insane and immoral that is why pro-life advocates are so against it and they face severe persecutions and some are shot dead defending the cause
• Obviously in the Philippines there are also plenty of abortions performed
• But it is a different story when it is legalized through the laws and the constitution of the country when abortion is funded by the state
• In 2017, President Duterte signed an executive order supporting the RH Bill
• I happened to know also that the RH Bill is supported by the international program of the planned parenthood federation of America
• We are receiving so many warning signs so that if we ignore them by not doing anything we will be brought to our knees and it will be too late because we have already been enslaved by the devil
• This is already happening. Signs and symbols of Christianity are now torn down in public places. You will be censured if you use the name of God in prayers during public meetings
• These signs are anathema to the invitation to enter the kingdom of God
• There is so much persecution against Christians going on all over the world
• The burning of churches in the Middle East have been going on for many years, and recently the churches in the Franciscan missions in California suffered the same fate
• Christian girls are kidnapped and forced to marry Muslims, and if they leave Islam they are killed because that is the provision of Shariah law to kill apostates and so there is no way of escape
• Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has already made a press release on this that Christians are singled out in persecutions
• Apart from the threats of natural disasters there is also the global economic collapse in the midst of this global Covid 19 pandemic now almost a year of existence since it started in China in December 2019

C. Challenge

• There are so many bad things happening in the world but it doesn’t mean that there is no more hope
• The problem is so huge and gigantic and there is no way to fight them because the enemy is so powerful
• It is the elite and the super-rich of the world who wants to control us who wants to dominate and rule the world without God
• There is only one weapon that will weaken and defeat these powerful and demonic entities and that is the power of prayer
• So, the challenge for all of us today is to prepare for the invitation of our Lord through prayer and conversion so the coming of the kingdom maybe hastened
• We make ourselves ready for the kingdom of God to arrive. Let us all be vigilant if the rules imposed on us are counter witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God and we need to oppose them, or abrogate them outright
• St. Paul in the 2nd reading in Philippians says he experienced living in abundance and living in need. The laws enacted will drive us to both abundance or poverty be it in the spiritual or material form
• And through prayer and discernment we may also be able to influence our technocrats if the laws they want to execute is contrary to the values of the kingdom