A Homily for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

+ Having been rejected by the invitees, the master of household insisted that his banquet be honoured and the house full. Even after the sick and lame had all been brought into the house, there was still space and thus the servants were sent out again to find anybody they could to ensure that the banquet was partaken of by a sufficient number of people.

In repeating the search in order to fill his household the master of the parable demonstrates that the will of God is set on bringing as many people to Himself as will accept His call. In the first instence this must be referred to heaven. God will send his servants out onto the streets to bring everybody they can to Him. And this He will never stop doing for as long as there are men to convert. But in order to bring all men to God in heaven they must first accept that invitation in a temporal manner.

The wedding feast of the Lamb never ceases to be celebrated by the Church in her Sacred Liturgy. This is the reason the Church has always maintained the sacred number of seven day hours to encompass the entire day. Likewise, she has always prayed twelve psalms in the night office of matins, which is the foundational number from the tribes of Israel and Apostles again having the resonances of completion.

Being the whole Church praying the psalmody, it is fitting that the office is sung according to the full solemnity proper to the relevant office. It is the song of the “whole Christ” as St Augustine would so often refer to the Church, singing the Psalms. In them “we hear the voice of the Head, as we hear the voice of the body,” for He is with us and cannot be separated from us where “he speaks in us, He speaks of us, He speaks through us, and we speak in Him” (En. in Ps. LVI, 1). It is our participation in the life of the Church, and more precisely the prayer of the Church which allows Him to speak through us. Here is the “I” truly put aside to allow God to act in and through us. This reality can easily be overlooked if the Divine Office is merely prayed by one alone.

As the summit of the daily liturgical offering is the most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass wherein this reality is most fully realised. It is here that we offer, as “one body in Christ”, the “perfect sacrifice”, (St Augustine Civitas Dei X 6, cf. Romans 12:3-6) wherein Christ offers Himself for the remission of sin. But recalling that the Church is the mystical body of Christ, St Augustine teaches that the Church offers herself to God. This is the nourishment of our life in Christ, into Whom we have been baptised, and apart from Whom we cannot live. All acts of charity here find their exemplar and power.

How often do we hear the excuse “I don’t need to pray in the Church I can pray at home”? This is nonetheless an excuse not to come to the wedding feast, not to accept the invitation of the master for the reason that I can do things as I like. Anybody who thus relegates all prayer to that which is private, excludes themselves from the mediator without Whom we cannot be freed from our sin and brought unto God. This is no different from the first excuse given to the house owner in Our Lord’s parable – I don’t need to go to the Lord’s house for I must see to my own.

Within all the desert tradition and the most holy rule of St Benedict a monk needs to have supervision before being permitted to live as a hermit. It is only once a monk has learnt after long probation such that he can live “by their own strength and God’s assistance to fight against the temptations of mind and body” that he might enter the “solitary combat of the desert” (RB 1). Yet even in the desert of Egypt where a group of monks had no access to a priest, the sacraments of the Church were brought to them by an angel of God. Similarly, no matter how isolated the Egyptian Desert Fathers, they still came together, at least weekly but more often twice daily, to sing psalms before God.

Liturgical prayer can never, moreover, be separated from private prayer or charity; rather it fosters such acts within our hearts. The dual commandment of Christ -love of God and love of neighbour stand or fall together. “By means of the first the second is also completed, but by means of the second there is an ascent and a return to the first” says St Basil reflecting on the Gospel passage “What you did to one of the least one of these, you did unto Me” (Rule of St Basil 2 cf. Matthew 25:40). So much is this connection true that St Augustine can write of the fostering of each of our virtues as being the offering of a different sacrifice on the altar of the heart (Civitas Dei X 3) as being the fulfilment of each of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant which are also, and more properly fulfilled in the singular sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.

Yet there can only be sacrifice, there can only be prayer, where we have accepted the invitation to come to the feast, where we are surrounded by all the other members of the Church made one in Christ. Members who are at once enjoying the feast and fulfilling the command of the master to go out and bring in all who are found to be on the streets that they may fill his house. We must hasten, therefore, to arrive at the feast. +