Monday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time, November 4, 2024

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.”

“On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.”  St. Luke is careful to note for us that the Lord Jesus ate with the Pharisee and his friends on a Sabbath.  This tells us that we should not picture him at a big feast with roasted calf and other foods that would take a lot of work.  According to the Law, food had to be saved up for the Sabbath.  It could not be purchased or prepared that day.  The Pharisee might have been able to offer salted fish along with bread and some vegetables, but little more than that.  We might ask why Jesus would eat with a Pharisee, a member of a sect which opposed him.  He does it to show that he would eat with anyone who asked him, even a Pharisee.  And not all Pharisees despised him.  Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea believed in 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.”  The Lord is instructing this particular Pharisee, but also anyone of means.  “In case they may invite you back and you have repayment.”  The Lord addresses the purpose of holding a lunch or a dinner: it is to provide nourishment for others.  However, he says, we ought not to provide this for those who can provide for themselves: “Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”  These are the destitute who are unable to earn a living and depend entirely on the charity of others for food and shelter.  Besides suffering from poverty, these also suffer from humiliation and intense loneliness.  Bringing them together would offer them consolation and ease their burden.  “Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”  No merit accrues to a person who helps those who do not need it, but it does accrue to those who assist those who are in great need.  “For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”  That is, the just man who feeds the hungry and clothes the naked will rise with the righteous when the Lord comes again and take his place with them at the Lord’s right hand.  He will rejoice in the eternal reward the Lord gives him but shall be astounded by how the little he did on earth could bring him such a return.  But as it is written in Proverbs 19, 17: “He who has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord, and he will repay him.”

Does the Lord Jesus absolutely forbid our having family and friends over for dinner?  No, but he does emphasize the necessity of taking care of those who cannot care for themselves.  The Lord teaches us that we have a responsibility to do so.  We can provide help through donations to the church poor box or to Catholic organizations that provide goods and services to the poor and suffering.  We should consider this a priority over the feeding of friends and relatives, which we can then do.

Every act we perform ought to conform to the will of God.  We belong to him, for he has created us, and when we sold ourselves into the slavery of sin, he purchased us: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers . . . with the Precious Blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1, 18-19).