READING OF THE DAY
PHIL 2:5-11
Brothers and sisters:
Have among yourselves the same attitude
that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and, found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
LK 14:15-24
One of those at table with Jesus said to him,
“Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.”
He replied to him,
“A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many.
When the time for the dinner came,
he dispatched his servant to say to those invited,
‘Come, everything is now ready.’
But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.
The first said to him,
‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen
and am on my way to evaluate them;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have just married a woman,
and therefore I cannot come.’
The servant went and reported this to his master.
Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant,
‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town
and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out
and still there is room.’
The master then ordered the servant,
‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows
and make people come in that my home may be filled.
For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.'”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
In his homily at Holy Mass on Tuesday, […] Pope Francis commented on the Readings for today’s liturgy taken from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans (12:5-16a) and from the Gospel of St Luke (14:15-24), in which Jesus teaches his disciples about the Christian call to the Kingdom of God through the parable of “a man who once gave a great banquet, and invited many”.
The Readings for the day’s liturgy, the Pope said, “show us the Christian’s ID card… the Christian life is an invitation: we can only become Christians if we are invited”. It is “a free invitation” which comes from God. Therefore, the Holy Father added, we cannot say: “I’ll buy the ticket at the door!”. In fact, he continued, this is quite impossible. “We cannot pay to enter; either you are invited or you may not enter. And if in our conscience we are not sure if we have been invited, then we have not understood what a Christian is. We are invited freely, through the pure grace of God, through the Father’s pure love. For it was Jesus who, by his blood, opened this possibility for us”.
God’s mercy, the Pontiff said, reaches even to those who decline the invitation or pretend to accept it but do not truly participate in the feast. Listing the excuses given by those in the parable who were too occupied to attend, Pope Francis said: “They participate in the banquet in name only, but they do not truly accept the invitation”.
“They say yes,” but they really mean no. He likened the invited guests in the Gospel to “Christians who are content to remain on the guest list”. Unfortunately, he said, “being listed as a Christian is not enough… If you do not enter into the banquet, you are not a Christian; you will be on the list, but this does not help your salvation”.
Pope Francis concluded his homily by exhorting those present to pray for the grace to understand “how beautiful it is to be invited to the banquet, how beautiful it is to share one’s gifts with others, how beautiful it is to be with God” and to the contrary, what a pity it is “to vacillate between yes and no; to say yes, but to content ourselves” with only remaining on the guest list.
(Santa Marta, 5 November 2013)