The 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 18, 2026

Matthew 22, 15–21

The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

“Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status.”  The Pharisees and the Herodians know this is not true of themselves, and do not therefore think it true of anyone.  This is precisely why they think they can trip up the Lord Jesus with the question they are about to ask.  Still, despite themselves, they do speak the truth about the Lord: he was a truthful man teaching the way of God in accordance with the truth, and who was not concerned with anyone’s opinion.  So many of us and so many of our teachers and authorities calculate and measure out our opinions and positions based not on truth but on what others will say or do in response.  Our bishops, for instance, seem to employ whole banks of public relations people who write out scripts for them to deliver.  Whenever there is a need for them to speak out, their remarks are sculpted and polished as though meaning and sincerity has been quite prohibited.  But most of us do this as well, whether at work, for fear of losing our jobs, or in other public places, for fear of losing friends or positions of trust.  Now, we must be prudent in how we deliver the truth so that we speak it without hope of personal gain or Sheryl out of a desire to hurt someone, but whether we speak in a whisper or shout from a rooftop, we need to speak the truth, and the truth needs to serve God.

“Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”  The problem here was not the paying of money.  Paying this tax meant an acceptance of Rome’s rule.  The Pharisees certainly grumbled against it, while the Herodians, whose legitimacy depended upon Roman support, supported it.  Ironically, the Pharisees who squirmed under Roman rule and thought of it as standing in the way of a new, restored Kingdom of Israel, would later show their obeisance to it in bringing the Lord Jesus before the .roman procurator Pilate.  Pretended sincerity always comes out in the open.  A lie is a very hard thing to keep alive.

“Show me the coin that pays the census tax.”  Interestingly, Jesus calls for one of them to show him a coin, rather than to have Judas, who held the common purse give him a coin.  This also shows the hypocrisy of his questioners: if they rejected the Roman tax, they would also reject the Roman coins, Roman currency.  They would not touch it.  “Whose image is this and whose inscription?”  The Lord acts as a teacher of children here.  He begins with the very fundamentals: What is this everyday thing that I have in my hand?  What does it look like?  Where does it come from?  Whose is it?  The mention of the image on it may remind us that the Jews were forbidden by the law from making any “graven image”.  In fact, we do not have depictions of people made by the ancient Israelites.  Statues or other images exist of the great Assyrian and Babylonian kings, of the Egyptian pharaohs, of the great and even humble Romans.  But there are no contemporary portraits of Kings David or Solomon, and no portrait of the Lord Jesus made during his lifetime — not even a bit of description of him in the Gospels.  The Lord may have intended to warn the Pharisees of their coming exposure as hypocrites in this way.  At this point they should have taken their cue from the incident involving the woman caught in adultery and suddenly melted away.  They were about to get caught in their own snare: “He has opened a pit and dug it; and he is fallen into the hole he made” (Psalm 7, 15).  

They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”  If Caesar’s image is on the coin, then it is his coin, and rendering it back to him does not morally affect or implicate the giver.  We also think of the Lord saying, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven” (Matthew 6, 19-20).  The possession of money does not advance a person in grace.  Jesus, by treating Caesar’s coin and his image with contempt in this way shows up the Pharisees as those who pay attention to “a person’s status”.  The Lord answers them by saying, How is this even a question for you?  And by telling them, to pay “to God what belongs to God”, he implies that they are not doing this.  

We must be men and women of integrity, worthy of respect but uninterested in having it.  And we must also recognize that what we lawfully give to “Caesar” here, that is, to our rulers, pales in comparison with what we should be giving to God.  We have to keep in mind during these days of political acrimony that we cannot subvert what belongs to God by giving it to Caesar.  We cannot vote for politicians supporting abortion, for instance, and think that this is a purely legal matter.  When political or legal opinion conflicts with God’s law, the Christian does not work against God’s law.  The Christian sees that the question posed to Jesus is also posed to us.  Do we give ourselves to Caesar, or to God?

Saturday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 17, 2026

Luke 12, 8-12

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God. Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.  When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.”

The Lord Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.”  The Greek word translated here as “acknowledge” actually means “confess”, “profess”, and even “praise”.  To “acknowledge” someone is to simply state a fact without an opinion or response to the fact: “I knew him”, or, “He is present.”  However, to “confess” or “profess” makes clear that a serious relationship exists: “I believe in him.”  So, Everyone who professes their belief in me before others, the Son of Man will profess an intimate relationship with before the angels of God.  Let us note that this is not simply a matter of believing the Lord, but believing in the Lord.  On the other hand, “But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.”  The Greek word translated here as “deny” can also mean “to repudiate”, that is, to not simply deny, but to contemptuously reject.  “Before men . . . before the angels of God”.  The Lord challenges his hearers and those who would follow him: Whose opinion do they value more?  And the answer cannot be “both”.  And among whose company do they prefer to spend eternity?  With the wicked who sought their rejection of Jesus, or with the mighty angels who serve him?  As for the Lord’d confession and the repudiation, we know what he will say: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).  And: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25, 41).

“Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”  This verse has long baffled even the learned and they have uttered many opinions.  St. Augustine says that the sin of impenitence was the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit because the first fruit of the Holy Spirit in baptism is the forgiveness of sin.  “Impenitence” means a steadfast refusal to repent and to follow the laws of God.  It can be a refusal to reject a sinful way of life or apostasy, which occurs when someone leaves the Faith and refuses to return even on his deathbed.  As a priest, I have seen this in visits to the dying in hospitals.  It is a dreadful thing to witness: an old man or woman who abandoned the Faith years before, then perhaps indulged in depraved activities to their own harm and that of others, and who then waved the priest away with hate in his heart or even with a curse as he or she lies dying, the sound of the respirator droning on beside the bed.  We must pray for ourselves and our loved ones that a steady life of self-indulgence does not lead us to that.

“When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities”.  To this point in St. Luke’s Gospel there has been opposition to the Lord by the Pharisees, but no real persecution of his followers.  This saying may have not made much sense to those who heard it first, though it would have comforted them later when persecution did come from Jerusalem and elsewhere.  This teaching takes up the theme in the earlier verse about confessing belief in Christ.  The Lord Jesus tells those who believe in him as the Son of God not to worry about what defense they shall make for themselves in a hearing or trial.  The Holy Spirit will speak for them then, just as he spoke on their behalf to God when they did not know what to say to him (cf. Romans 8, 26).  We recall here that the Lord Jesus called the Holy Spirit the “Advocate”, one who speaks for another, one who represents another in a legal proceeding (cf. John 14, 26).  Baptized in the Holy Trinity, we are given life and protected by him all our days: the Father, who gives us life and sustains us; the Son, by whose Death we are forgiven and redeemed; and the Holy Spirit who speaks for us in prayer to the Father and defends us in our time of need.

In the verses which make up the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, the Lord speaks openly of what will make for our salvation and our damnation.  It is up to us to take his words personally and to live faithfully, to persevere in the Faith when called to account for it, and to pray for the grace of leaving this world at peace with God.  In this way did St. Ignatius of Antioch live and die, as shown in the brief, inspiring letters he wrote as he was brought to Rome to die in the amphitheater for his belief in the Lord Jesus.

Friday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 16, 2026

Luke 12, 1-7

At that time, so many people were crowding together that they were trampling one another underfoot. Jesus began to speak, first to his disciples, “Beware of the leaven–that is, the hypocrisy–of the Pharisees. There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops. I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. I shall show you whom to fear. Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one. Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God. Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”

According to St. Luke’s careful chronology, Jesus spoke these words to the crowd on his final journey to Jerusalem.  The Greek text tells us that “thousands” of people were crowding together to hear Jesus.  It is as though an army was gathering around him.  “Beware of the leaven–that is, the hypocrisy–of the Pharisees.”  Many if not most of the folks drawn to Jesus as he was clearly headed for the Holy City heard and approved his condemnation of the Pharisees, and saw this as a sign of how he, as the Messiah they expected, would purify Jewish worship.  This purifying was a regular feature of the preaching of the Prophets.  It was also a subject in the Jewish apocryphal books of the time.  The Lord’s remarks were welcomed by those who resented the haughty Pharisee and who looked forward to a renewed worship of God, not controlled by the wealthy Sadducees.  The Lord spoke more than once of the “leaven” of the Pharisees, and Matthew and Mark quote him as using this expression as Luke does here.  Like leaven itself, it is mysterious: small, but packed with meaning.  At first glance, its meaning might seem obscure, and the Apostles found it so when they first heard it (cf. Matthew 16, 6).  The next sentence the Lord speaks helps us to gather what he means: “There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.”  The two sentences taken together speak of how yeast may be worked into a mass of dough and no one other than the kneader would know it was there.  Yet, given some time, the yeast would act on the dough and cause it to rise, to inflate, to enlarge.  A person watching the dough over even a short period of time could see it expand and would know that yeast caused this.  Later, after baking, anyone in the house eating it or purchasing it in the marketplace knew right away that the dough of the bread had been leavened.  In the same way, Jesus is saying, the Pharisees might whisper to one another and make plots and scheme for wealth, but their wickedness would be exposed in time: “There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.”  The Lord issues this teaching as a warning to the Pharisees and also as a consolation to the people.  Coming shortly after 11, 53-54: “They [the Pharisees and lawyers] began be angry with him terribly, lying in wait for him, seeking to trap something from his mouth”, we can also see that Jesus has a more personal warning in mind as well, for he knows that the Pharisees seek his death.

“Whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.”  The Lord elaborates on the teaching of the leaven of the Pharisees, but he is also offering encouragement to the crowd, composed as it was of thousands of men, women, and children who lived out their lives in obscurity, whose good deeds went unacknowledged, and whose piety seemed to go with them into the ground after they died.  To these, the Lord promises that they and their prayers and piety were known to Almighty God and that they would be made known to all the world.  Love and holiness are also like leaven.  They may not seem evident at first, but the cumulative effect of a life lived out in faith and virtue and love becomes fully clear over time.  Grace works in this way too.  We pray for a person’s conversion and in answer to our prayers, God sprinkles yeast onto the mass of dough for whose conversion they have prayed.  The Lord kneads, and if the dough is receptive, the yeast enters into it and begins to act.  The action may take time, and all the while nothing seems to be happening, but the grace is active and making progress.  And then finally we can see it, the sinner repents from sin and lives the life of the redeemed.

“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.”  It may seem as though the Lord is speaking on a different subject here, but we can also see that he is continuing to encourage the crowd, and us.  The wicked threaten with death in order to control others.  They cannot hope to control anyone through reason and so they resort to this.  It is a sign that they themselves are convinced of their weakness.  They do their utmost to stamp out religion and beauty in order to convince other people that the worst thing that can happen is to die.  That is, they instill despair.  Their worst enemy is God and heaven.  “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one.”  That is, fear him if you are wicked.  But for the just, there is no need to fear: “Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.”

“Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”  The Greek says something more like: “Your worth surpasses that of many sparrows.”  For the wicked, the individual is nothing, a statistic.  But Almighty God sent his Son to die for each of us so that we might live in bliss with him forever.  So let us grow in his grace that he may be glorified in us, the Baker glorified by the full loaves he has produced.

Wednesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 14, 2026

Luke 11, 42-46

The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

It may be that what we have in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a continuation of the Lord’s rebuke of the Pharisees in the previous verses in St. Luke’s Gospel which constitute the Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass.   On the other hand, Luke may be adding to it a separate discourse delivered on another occasion, due to the topic.  If this is a continuation, then we must we think of the Lord reclining at table for dinner in a Pharisee’s house and speaking in this way.  We should also consider that he is rebuking us for our sins us as he reclines in our hearts.  He does this not in order to merely complain, but in order for us to seriously consider our lives and our behavior so that we might repent while there is still time.  Urgency rings in his voice here, as though the doors to Paradise were already beginning to close on us forever.

“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.”  The tithes would go to support the Temple.  The Lord accuses the Pharisees — and us, by extension — of paying no heed to “judgment and the love of God”.  We can improve on the Lectionary translation: “You pass by the judgment and the love of God.”  The verb can also be translated as “neglect”, “pass over”, and “ignore”.  The sense is: You pay attention to trivial things and treat the necessary things with contempt.  The Greek says, “the judgment and the love of God”.  It is not simply “judgment”, which, by itself does not mean much, but “the judgment of God”.  That is, You should be devoted to seeing yourself as God does and repenting, and loving God with all your heart.  We often toy with the trivial in order to justify to ourselves not dealing with really matters.

“You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  The Lord accuses the Pharisees of pursuing worldly honors which do not last and which may not even be sincerely bestowed.  Rather, we who call ourselves believers should seek praise from our God through the good works we do for him: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”(Matthew 25, 23).  An “unseen grave” was a source of great danger to the Jews because  walking over them made a person unclean while unaware of his uncleanness.  His participation in various rituals would then result in sacrilege.

The Lord then takes on the scholars of the Law.  These are not civil lawyers, but are like canon lawyers who are appointed in matters involving Church Law.  These scholars tended to make life more difficult for those who needed their assistance.  We might think of the lawyers in “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens, who fed off an estate case until the estate was gone and there was no inheritance to be handed on. “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”  These live to be served and to serve themselves, rather than to serve God.  “Woe to you!”  This is not merely a harmless exclamation but an interjection like “Oh no!” which someone might shout upon seeing a tragedy unfold before his eyes.

Tuesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 13, 2026

Luke 11, 37-41

After Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home. He entered and reclined at table to eat. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal. The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”

While I was making a holy hour in the gorgeous Blessed Sacrament Chapel here, at three o’clock, the sisters sang their mid afternoon office.  Their chapel is on the other side of a wall so they cannot he seen, but they can be heard.  I listened to them chanting their love song to God.  Old and young chant together the ancient psalms, having abandoned everything for the sake of the only One who matters.

In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, St. Luke recounts how a Pharisee invited Jesus to dine at his house.  We might remember how on one such occasion the Pharisee did not provide the normal amenities for the Lord, anointing his head, having his feet washed, and so, but that is not the case here.  After Jesus has been properly welcomed and it is time to dine, water and bowls and towels are provided the guests to wash in.  But Jesus declines this, and “the Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.”  To understand this, we have to remember that the Pharisees had their own customs, and over time they had confused their customs with the Jewish Law so that they seemed one and the same.  The custom of washing is prescribed for the temple or the tent where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and this was done by the priests.  The Pharisees interpreted the Law in their own way so that this was to be done households as well.  Jesus clearly wants to teach the Pharisee that this washing is not of the Mosaic Law: it is a mere “human precept”.  

The Lord also takes advantage of the situation to teach a more personal lesson: “oh you Pharisees!  Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.”  This “plunder and evil” is insisting that all the Jews must adopt their interpretation of the Law in order to be “true” Jews.  “You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?”  That is to say, of course a potter would have made the whole vessel.  It would be impossible to only make the outside and not make an inside to it.  Here, we have to keep in mind that this washing is ceremonial — it has nothing to do with hygiene.  Why, then, Jesus is asking, do you only cleanse the outside? Why not cleanse the inside as well?  Or, why bother cleansing the vessel at all?  Of course, Jesus is also speaking of how the Pharisees cultivated a certain “look”, a certain appearance or style: “They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes” (Matthew 23, 5).  At the same time, by insisting on others going by their unsupported understanding of the Law “they bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matthew 23, 4).

The Pharisees made their mistake because it is an easy mistake to make.  We Christians need to know what the Church actually teaches, what the Bible truly says, and not to substitute our own ideas for them instead.  And we ought not to decorate ourselves fancily, to deliberately draw attention to ourselves by what we wear or how we speak.  Rather, like the Lord, people should say about us, “there was no comeliness, that we should be desirous of him” (Isaiah 53, 2).  But let our kindness and generosity, such rare traits these days, win people over.

Monday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 12, 2026

Luke 11, 29-32

Jesus seems to speak of the “sign of Jonah” more than once during the course of his public life.  On another occasion when he does, he points to the three days and nights during which Jonah resided within a great fish, eventually to be spewed onto the land.  Then, the Lord meant the sign to refer to his time among the dead before his Resurrection.  Here, he indicates Jonah as a sign to the Ninivites.  What did the Ninivites see?  What caused them to convert?  When Jonah came among them, he was a foreigner speaking a foreign language.  He came as an ordinary man, not as one who stood out in any way, except perhaps by his clothing.  As one man, though, he took upon himself the enormous task of going through the whole city of Nineveh, which took days to cross on foot, crying out to the people to repent, or the city would be destroyed.  Perhaps God enabled Jonah to speak Assyrian for this purpose.  At any rate, the people, and most importantly, the king, understood the message and took it to heart.  Indeed, they acted so quickly that it was almost as though they were predisposed to look for a prophet who would speak to them in this way.  Now, Nineveh was the capital of a great empire st the time.  It was girded by thick walls and filled with commerce of all kinds.  The people worshipped many gods and the king was thought to be semi-divine himself.  It was the Rome of its time. (The city of Rome was founded at about this time).  

Jesus compares himself, for the sake of the Jews, with Jonah.  Jesus, too, came amongst the people to whom he was sent as a foreigner — from heaven — but he appeared as one of them, even speaking their language.  He, too, preached repentance, but whereas the Ninivites repented st the word of a stranger who did not worship their gods, the Jews resisted repenting at the word of one of their own who did worship their God and claimed to speak for him.  And while a message of repentance would have sounded strange to the people of Nineveh, the Jews had a long history of prophets calling them back to their covenant with God.  Also, Jonah performed no miracles to underscore and confirm his message.  Jesus had performed many miracles, even raising the dead as signs that God had ratified his.  And yet the Jews resisted, rejected, and ultimately killed the Lord Jesus.  The Lord’s invoking Jonah is a striking indictment of the Jews of his time.  

The message for us is to be as the Ninivites, who acted as one would have expected the Jews to have done.  With the word of God ringing in our ears at the very least on Sunday at Mass, with the knowledge of our religion which most of us have learned from childhood, with truth about God fully revealed to us in Jesus Christ, we have far less excuse than the ancient Jews to resist the Lord’s urgent message for us to repent.  

The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 11, 2026

Matthew 22, 1-14

Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people in parables saying, “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come. A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’ Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’ The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.”

“The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.”  We ought to notice that Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king.  Jesus does not say that it may be likened to a feast made by the king.  He likens it to a king.  What sort of king?  To a king “who gave a wedding feast for his son”, that is, to a generous father, a father excited for his son, a king who wanted to honor people in his kingdom by making a feast for them on the occasion of his son’s marriage.  Jesus does not describe the kingdom of heaven as a place.  As in the parable which precedes this one in St. Matthew’s Gospel, he likens it to a person.  In the earlier parable, he likened it to a landowner who was generous in paying his workers.  Here, to a king.  Jesus reminds us that the Church is not a place, either, nor is heaven.  It is the faithful in union with Christ.  Because it is a “union”, it transcends the physical, the geographical.  Thus, Jesus can say to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.”   St. Thomas Aquinas comments that Jesus himself is the kingdom of heaven.  In these parables about the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us about himself.

The invited guests react strangely to the invitation the king issues them through his messengers.  In fact, even if they disliked the king personally, they should have attended the feast simply because it was in their best interest to do so.  The Lord tells us that some of the invited guests acted as though they had not heard the invitation.  One went to his business, one to his farm.  These people so belonged to the world that they could not imagine living in a different way, or seeing their larger responsibilities in life.  For very many people today, the main matters of life consist of health, career, finances, and sex.  The idea of religion never arises for them.  It does repel others: “The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.”  These folks saw in the king’s invitation a threat to their freedom to do as they wished.  If they agreed to go to the feast, they would have to wash and dress for it, and then act with decency and polite behavior throughout the meal, which was for the king’s son and his bride.  The king’s subsequent destruction of the “city” inhabited by these bad subjects signifies the consequence of their actions, which is death.  To reject God through sin is to die, that is, to lose God’s grace and friendship.  

“The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike.”  Those who first heard the Lord tell this parable, particularly the Scribes and Pharisees, would have understood they were the unworthy invited guests, and that the “bad and good” who filled the hall were the Gentiles.  We can also see here that the membership of the Church is open to sinners who repent.  Jesus himself tells us that he came not for the righteous but for sinners (cf. Luke 5, 32).  That is, all who recognize themselves as sinners and in need of grace.

“My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?” The king may seem here to expect too much of a guest who has just been brought in without much notice.  The fact is that all the other guests are apparently wearing wedding garments.  Either they put on their own garments and came to the wedding feast already dressed, or garments would have been provided for those who came without them.  This man in his normal clothing is showing contempt to the king and the guests, and his refusal to answer the king’s question confirms this.  He signifies one who attempts to benefit from Christ’s promises without seeking the sacraments, or, having received them, without believing in or living out all of his teachings.

“Many are invited, but few are chosen.” That is, few choose to accept the invitation from the King. They reject the feast and the one who prepared it for them in order to continue with their lives as they were living them — for the pathetic pleasures that promised to delight them. If many did accept the invitation, certainly they would be chosen. Let us accept with fervent gratitude the invitation of the Lord God Almighty by living according to the simple commandments he gives us.