Monday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time, November 6, 2023

Luke 14, 12-14

On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

“When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors.”  The Lord Jesus is reclining at the home of an unnamed, leading Pharisee.  It is a large house with servants and able to accommodate a feast.  This meal is taking place on the Sabbath, probably after the meeting in the synagogue.  The Lord has already healed a man with dropsy who was brought in to test him and spoken to the company of Pharisees about their contention for the seats of honor at the feast.  In both of these actions he has revealed to them their illegitimacy as teachers of the Law.  Here he continues to use the subject of dinners and feasts to reinforce his teaching about the need for humility and to point out that if they are going to teach they should understand what they do is to provide a service to the people rather than to garner praise and prestige for themselves.  When the Lord Jesus tells them not to invite their friends, family, or relatives, he means to teach them to look for the reason they can feast at all: the largess that God has granted them.  But they are not to horde this among themselves: “And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required” (Luke 12, 48).  

All we have comes from God and it is to be used not for self-indulgence but in service to God: “Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”  In this the Lord recalls the Pharisees to the words spoken through Isaiah the Prophet: “Isaiah 58:7 (D-R): Serve your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harborless into your house: when you shall see one naked, cover him” “Isaiah 58, 7).  The Lord tells them, “Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”  And how blessed? “Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your health shall speedily arise, and your justice shall go before your face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather you up. Then shall you call, and the Lord shall hear: you shall cry, and he shall say, Here I am” (Isaiah 58, 8-9).  And for merely following the words of the Law and the Prophets which they made such presence about strictly following, “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”  

The bringing of the local widows, the crippled, the lame, and the blind into their houses would have seemed to the overly social conscious Pharisees madness.  Their neighbors would certainly hold them in lower regard.  But it would have raised up in the eyes of God, the One whose Law they purported to obey and teach.

Hearing the Lord’s counsel to the Pharisees we might wonder how we can invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to our feasts, for in our times it is not as easy to do as in ancient times.  We can do this through contributing to funds for the poor as well as through volunteering in soup kitchens or homeless shelters.  We might also offer fast-food restaurant coupons to the poor we encounter on the street who are looking for handouts.  A variety of ways exist to do this which one can choose according to one’s abilities, health, and other personal circumstances.  Most of all, we can pray for those suffering from mental illness, those in the grip of addiction, and those all over the world who endure hunger because of famine and war.