Tuesday of the
Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
(Romans 12:5-16ab; Luke 14:15-24)
In one of her novels Mary Gordon writes of viewing a sunrise
from a mountaintop. A group drives to
the trailhead well before dawn. There it
begins a swift hike up the mountain in the dark. As the light begins to appear, one young
woman notices a patch of flowers in the field.
She rushes toward it in glee.
Meanwhile her companions are yelling after her to forget about the
flowers for now. The sun is going to come
up in just a few minutes. That young
woman may be compared to the invitees who refuse to attend the banquet in Jesus’
parable.
The invitees should realize that the rich man’s table is so
extravagant that it should not be missed.
Yet they absorb themselves in their own limited agendas. The rich man does not sulk with the regrets. Rather, he invites the people of the streets
to take the place of the self-satisfied.
Jesus is telling us that God’s love is not puny. Like the rich man He invites everyone to
partake of the wealth of His kingdom. For
our own good we want to put aside personal interests to participate in it. We will not regret any cost that it might involve. Indeed, we will only have regrets if we
refuse to be part of it.
