It started in 1990, the year when the Iron Curtain was finally dismantled, and – for perspective – I was a spring chicken at the age of twenty. It paused for four years in 2001 (when I was still young-ish at thirty-one), and it’s now been running continuously since 2005. Based on a renewed contract, it will run until 2028, when I will be fifty-eight. The “it” I’m talking about is the hugely successful and popular TV show “MasterChef”. For those few who have just arrived from a different planet, it’s a competitive cooking show where contestants have to produce various dishes and meals to be crowned the Master Chef of the series. Its popularity isn’t underlined by the nearly 40-year-long run only; the show has regional versions in sixty countries around the world. Certainly, the format and so-called production values are two main reasons for its success. But at the heart of it lies our deeply rooted, instinctive feeling that food consumption goes well beyond simple energy provision. We want our food to look good, smell good and taste good – something food producers cannily exploit to sell us more stuff. But there’s more to it; good company makes eating even better. It must be something deeply ingrained in human nature because we find it in every culture. We prefer eating with others and marking special occasions with feasts, even if only modest ones (like takeaway pizza). This specific social aspect is at the heart of today’s readings.
The prophet’s vision in the first reading referred to – a bit nebulous in form – the ultimate liberation of humankind from the shackles of evil, suffering, pain and everything that made everyday life miserable or hard. It would be some five hundred years later (around 200 BC) when the idea of the afterlife familiar to us started to crystallise. It was pretty well-developed by the time of Jesus’ public ministry, though still questioned by some of his contemporaries, namely Sadducees. Jesus’ parable could be interpreted as referring to the eternal banquet in heaven. Yet, considering its context in the gospel, it was another warning offered to his opponents and St Matthew’s fellow Jewish Christians, which I talked about extensively last Sunday. Today, we turn our attention to what it means to us.
The obvious point of reference is the Eucharist, the celebration we are participating in right now. This is a symbolic wedding feast when Jesus, the Son of God, marries his beloved bride, the Church. It makes sense when we remember that in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word ecclesia is female kind. Participation in the Eucharist is our weekly renewal of the strong bond with Jesus, in line with the words from the story of creation in the Book of Genesis: “A man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (2:24) St Paul used this image to a great extent in his letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33).
The parable offered us a variety of characters that we can identify with. There were those invited and thus entitled to take part in the feast. But they ignored the call to come along; each had their own excuses, and some of them even reacted violently. It’s a sad reality that many of our fellow Catholics choose to prioritise everything else over Sunday Mass. Sadly, they are not here. We are, and consequently, we are those servants sent out by the king in the parable to pass on to those absent that their invitation is still open and to encourage them to come along. But our mission isn’t limited to those who skip their Sunday obligations. The servants were told in the parable: “Go to the crossroads in the town and invite everyone you can find to the wedding.” As a result of their efforts, they “collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.”
The phrase “bad and good alike” might be shocking unless we realise that we are invited not to a ceremony of prize-giving for good behaviour but to the field hospital, in line with Pope Francis’s quote: “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle.” The Pope wasn’t a revolutionary here. In fact, this has been reflected in the liturgy of Mass. We begin with the acknowledgement of our weaknesses and failures when we say, “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” We present our wounds so they can be healed by our Host: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Everything that happens between those two moments of Mass leads to that climatic point when Jesus – in the Sacrament of the Eucharist – comes to us and clings to His wife, Ecclesia (the Church), and we become one Body of Christ. “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:32)
