Thursday August 18, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Judges 11:29-39a) Gospel (St. Matthew 22:1-14)
There are a
couple of points of importance that we have to look at here in the readings
today. In the first, coming out of the first reading, we hear about Jephthah
making this vow to the Lord that he would kill whoever comes out of his house
to meet him if he is successful in his battle against the Ammonites.
Well, first of all, we need to understand that unless there is a public
vow that is witnessed, there is nothing that is binding. This is very important
because sometimes, like Jephthah probably, we get ourselves into these
situations and we tell Our Lord or Our Lady something that we are not going to
be able to do: “If this happens, I’ll pray twenty-five rosaries everyday for
the rest of my life,” or whatever it might be. Then, all of a sudden, we find
we cannot fulfill that, and we might think we are in some serious trouble. But
the fact of the matter is that there is nothing binding with a promise or a vow
like that. If,
on the other hand, there is a public vow – for instance, the vows of religion,
the vows of marriage, things like that – those are binding because they are
made publicly and they are witnessed. Those are binding for life or for the
amount of time for which the particular vow would be made. We need to keep that
distinction very clear, so if we get ourselves into a situation like that we
realize we are not held bound by something that we made in some sort of
emotional state or whatever it might be.
The other
thing, of course, is that we are never bound to anything which is sinful. Even
though we look at dealing with our superiors, we say, “Obedience in all things
but sin.” And so this point of obedience, which is extraordinarily difficult
for us as human creatures in the first place, has its limitation. In this case,
he was offering to violate the Fifth Commandment; he wanted to kill somebody.
Therefore, once again, it had no binding force because it was something that
was in violation of the law of God. Again, we see what God does; He just says,
“Well, if this is what you intend. You have such little regard for human life
that what you really are thinking is you are going to kill whichever one of
your servants comes out of the house, so we’ll have your daughter come out.”
This was someone who in his mind had human dignity, but the rest of his
household did not. And so this is the point God is making to him, to recognize
that if one person has dignity and we are all created equal then we all have
equal dignity. If you strip the human dignity from everybody else in your
household then you strip the dignity from your own children, as well as from
your spouse and from your own self. There are lots of little lessons that God is
putting forth for us in this reading.
The other
thing we need to recognize with regard to the point of the dignity is in the
Gospel reading; the fact that, number one, Our Lord tells us that heaven is a
marriage banquet. As we have spoken many times, the fact is that marriage is so
denigrated in our society, and even among Catholics. There are many people who
have the idea that marriage is a lesser vocation: “If I can’t be a priest or a
nun then I guess I’ll have to settle for being married.” That is nonsense.
Marriage is a vocation, it is a call to holiness, and it requires saints to be
able to live it. We see that heaven is a marriage banquet. That is exactly what
Scripture tells us. So if marriage is a lesser sort of thing, what does that
say about heaven? Are we going to suggest that heaven is somehow “less than”
because it is about a marriage and our souls are going to be united with God in
something that marriage symbolizes in this world? No. Marriage is
extraordinarily dignified.
But then we
need to look a little further and see how all of this needs to be done. All of
the guests have come. If there is somebody who is there that is not properly
dressed, they are thrown out. So even though everybody in the world is invited,
many of them have all kinds of excuses for why they do not want to come:
because they want to sin, because they want to do their own thing, because they
have chosen self or Satan over God, whatever their reasoning might be. But then
there are those who say, “Oh, yeah, I want to go to heaven…but I don’t want to
have to do anything to get there.” They do not have on a wedding garment, which
is sanctifying grace. If we are not in the state of sanctifying grace when we
die, we cannot enter into heaven. We will have no part of the marriage banquet,
and the marriage banquet is none other than the Lamb of God Himself.
So we need
to make sure we keep ourselves out of sin and in the state of grace always. If
something happens that we should fall, get to Confession right away. Do not put
it off six months or a year or whatever it might be that many people tend to
do; get there right away, get back in the state of grace, keep the prayer life
up, and continue to grow. That is what Our Lord is seeking. He invited the good
and the bad, so even if we look at it and say, “I’m not worthy,” it is true, we
are not. No one is. But God can make us worthy. He is the One Who can give us
the grace if we are willing to humble ourselves to be able to accept it, to be
able to accept His mercy and His forgiveness, and to be able to confess our
sins and be forgiven. That is all He is asking of us, to confess our sins and
to change our lives, to repent and to sin no more. That is what He is seeking.
He will do everything else if we are willing to do just that little bit: to
confess our sins, to really try to stop sinning, to amend our lives, to truly
repent of what it is that we have done.
This is the
dignity we are called to: to be saints, to be clothed in the life of God
Himself, in sanctifying grace, so that we will be found worthy to be the spouse
of the Lamb, to enter into that eternal marriage banquet where Jesus is not
only the Spouse of our souls, but He is the banquet upon which we will feast
for all eternity.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.