August 21: The Day of the Lord

As Jesus makes His way up to Jerusalem (through the entire second half of St. Luke’s Gospel) He is unrelenting in His preaching about the Kingdom of God and the Heavenly Banquet. Along the way, He is asked, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?”

The whole idea of excluding people or locking people out of the Heavenly Banquet is strange and ought to make us uncomfortable. If we venture down that road, we will inevitably begin to think about who is “in” and who is “out,” and whether or not we are “in” or we are “out.” There is a special danger that comes with thinking that we’re “in,” or we that we should be “in,” or we deserve to be “in” because we go to Mass, we listen to the Gospel, and we always do what we ought to do.

Let’s be careful, for in the Gospels there are plenty of stories about those who ate and drank with Jesus and never made His values their own, who never made the choice to walk fully in His Way. They just wanted to be seen with someone famous. For example, there was the Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner and spent the better part of the night judging Him and the woman who had anointed His feet. In contrast, do we remember how Jesus invited Himself to the home of Matthew the tax collector and to Nicodemus? In those moments, there came about a powerful and personal conversion and acceptance of what Jesus stood for – and a willingness to follow fully in His way.

Food for thought this week: Do we want to limit the “guest list” to the Heavenly Banquet? Do we claim any privilege which sets us above or apart from our neighbors? Do we think we “deserve” something from the Master?

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