The banquet is ready. Come!

10-11-2020Weekly ReflectionFr. Arul Doss

Dear Friends,

We are in the month Of October which is dedicated to our Lady of Rosary. It is a very good pious work to recite Rosary everyday in your families. Praying Rosary is a best weapon to fight against our temptations and evils in our lives.

This twenty eighth Sunday readings talk about the banquet of the Lord. The Prophet Isaiah tells us in the first reading that God will provide a banquet for all peoples. Everyone is invited. God wants all to be saved and that should always be our prayer for our sisters and brothers.

The gospel too talks about the wedding banquet that a king prepares for his son, only to have the invited refuse to come and even mistreat his servants. The King then invites strangers to the meal, who have a whopping great time. Then, in what really is a second parable added on, the king spots a man without the proper wedding garment. He gets really upset and throws the man out where there will be a weeping a gnashing of teeth. Jesus uses this image as an image of the Kingdom of God. We are all invited! Are we going to respond to the invitation of Jesus? God wants us. God also invites us to live in a way given to us by Jesus Himself.

When we acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, God and Savior, then we can understand how important it is to respond to His invitation and to live as He has shown us: love for all others, sacrifice of ourselves for the sake of others, trying to give our lives completely to the Lord through the service of others.

Just as in today’s Gospel, God will not force us. Jesus accepts our freedom to reject Him and His invitation to the banquet of the Kingdom. Even though Jesus is God and Lord, He will never compel us against our own choices. So, we are left in the end with our own choice. Let’s try to participate in this heavenly banquet through our worthy life. I found a nice prayer in connection with the today’s readings. Let us pray it silently.

O God, Ruler of all peoples, from the beginning You have prepared a banquet for Your children and You wish to gather us around Your table to share in Your own life. We thank You for having called us into Your Church through Jesus Your Son. May Your Spirit make us ever attentive and ready to continue to accept Your invitation and may we, through the same Spirit, put on the new person, created according to God in justice and in true holiness, in the image of Christ, so that we may enter the banquet of Your Realm together with a multitude of brothers and sisters. Use us, if You so wish, to continue to call others to the universal banquet of Your Realm. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen

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