A Homily for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

+ “They all alike began to make excuses.”

There are few things more frustrating and annoying than to have gone to great trouble in preparing an event and inviting people, indeed friends, and then to be inundated, not with gratitude and joyful acceptance of the invitation, but with procrastination, excuses, and even an unspoken ingratitude.
 
In the Gospel of this Holy Mass the invitation concerned is to a banquet. We ‘moderns’ may wonder why such a fuss is made of a mere invitation to a supper. However, if we appreciate the very high importance of sharing a meal in common in the ancient world, indeed the fact that it was a preeminent form of communing with others, and if, with the Fathers of the Church, we read this parable as referring to the invitation to the feast that is the Kingdom of God, and indeed more specifically to the Banquet of the Eucharistic Sacrifice – a layer of meaning augmented further by the development of the feast of Corpus Christi in the liturgical tradition of the Church – we can begin to appreciate the anger of the householder in the face of all of these excuses. For, as Saint Gregory taught at matins this morning, “spiritual delights, when they are not partaken of, are in fact disdained.”
 
That we are in fact here, at Mass, is, please God, an indication that we have not ourselves disdained the invitation of Our Blessed Lord. This is not a matter for pride, but for humility, for we are privileged to be invited guests (regardless of whether we were on the original guest list, or were dragged in off the streets). Let us not omit to thank God for this privilege, and indeed to pray for those who so dearly wish to be present at the Lord’s banquet but are today impeded from so being by secular authorities in one way or another. They are not to be counted amongst the excuse makers.
 
And yet so many do make excuses. The Gospel is for all. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ. It is imperative that all acknowledge this truth and come to worship Him. Nevertheless, so many excuse themselves in their busy pursuit of the allurements of the world, the flesh and the devil. Even in the Church we can become preoccupied with activity aimed at improving this world which can so absorb us that we omit to call people to conversion and to faith in Christ. Our worship of Him, which is our first duty, and in which our good works must be grounded and out of which they should flow, can become merely a secondary, almost ‘private’ matter, fitted in after our humanitarian activity.
 
So too, in the circumstances of finding or living out our own vocation, we are all too prone to make excuses. When the Lord is inviting me to follow him in a particular way of life, or more completely in the given circumstances of my life, how many excuses do we make? How many futile questions do we raise? The Lord’s invitation is always specific. It may not be what I expect, nor even what I may prefer. But it is His invitation. If I procrastinate, indulging in perpetual speculation and innumerable ‘what-ifs’, if in my pride-disguised-as-discernment, I refuse to take even the first step in following His call, I may well find that the opportunity has passed and I have missed out on the opportunity to take my invited place in the Lord’s Banquet.
 
The encounter of the rich young man by Our Lord (Mark 10: 17-23) comes to mind. How Our Lord loved him and wished him to come to perfection by leaving all and following him. And how sadly the young man went away from this encounter because of the excuse of his great wealth. Wealth, attachments, ambition, ecclesiastical preferences and predilections, and even a form of self-serving prudence are but some of the excuses that we proffer.
 
At the beginning of matins each morning psalm 94 is sung. It is a call to worship God, our Creator, as faithful sheep of His pasture – unlike the stubborn generation that put God to test in the desert at Massah. (cf. Exodus 17) The psalm prays: “O that today you would hearken to his voice! Harden not your hearts…”
 
My brothers and sisters, when we hear the voice of the Lord inviting us, be that to a greater fidelity in the particular circumstances of my life and vocation, or, be that to follow Him in a particular and new way, let us not make excuses. Let us hearken to his voice. For what He has in store for us is nothing less than the Banquet of His Kingdom, of which this Holy Mass is a sacramental foretaste. Let us not allow anything to harden our hearts, lest we come to be included in those of whom it was said: “None of those men who were invited shall taste of my banquet.” +

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