Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Matthew
(14th Sunday After Pentecost)
By St. John of Kronstadt
(14th Sunday After Pentecost)
By St. John of Kronstadt
In the Gospel read today, the Lord Jesus Christ likens the Kingdom of Heaven to a man, a king, who made a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast; and they did not want to come. What disregard! What pride, ingratitude, and insolence! And yet what condescension and longsuffering on the part of the king! He again sent other servants, saying: "Tell those who have been invited: Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and what has been fattened are slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast." What, then, did those who had been invited do? How did they respond to the renewed invitation of their gracious king? They, the Gospel says, paid no attention and went away, one to his own field and another to his business; but the others seized his servants, insulted them, and killed them. But now hear what the king did with these insolent and ungrateful men. When the king heard of such brazen insolence on the part of those invited to the wedding, he became angry, and sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants: "The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy; therefore go out to the crossroads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find." And those servants went out onto the roads and gathered all whom they found, both evil and good; and the wedding feast was filled with those reclining there. And when the king came in to see those reclining there, he saw a man there who was not dressed in a wedding garment, and he said to him: "Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?" But he was silent. Then the king said to the servants: "Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth there; for many are called, but few are chosen" (Mt. 22:2–14). Here ends today's Gospel reading.
This account is called a parable, that is, a likeness, or, as it were, a riddle. It must be unriddled. Who, then, is this king who made a wedding feast for his son? It is God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth and King of all creation. Who is the king's son? It is the Only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ; and the bride is His Church, and, first of all, the Jewish people chosen by God, and secondly, the soul of every believing Christian. Christ loved the Church, it is said, and gave Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25); the Apostle Paul says: "I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a pure virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2). By the wedding feast is understood the Kingdom of Heaven, in which those who truly believe will be united with the Lord Jesus forever.
To this wedding, or into the Kingdom of Heaven, the Jews were first invited through the prophets and apostles, but they refused the invitation; more than this, they even insulted God's messengers and killed many of them. For this, in the course of time, God, by the sword of the Romans, destroyed the Jewish people and demolished their city and temple. Instead of the Jews, God called the pagan nations to the wedding, or into His Church, through the apostles and those equal to the apostles — among them, us Russians as well.
But neither all the Christians from among the pagans nor the Christian generations that came after them will enter the Kingdom of Christ. Those among them who do not preserve in purity the radiant wedding garment of innocence and holiness which they received at baptism, or who, after defiling it with sins, do not cleanse it with tears of repentance, will be cast out at the Last Judgment into the outer darkness, where there will be eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the interpretation of the parable presented above.
But there may also be another similar and equally true interpretation, one which has a still more immediate application to us, brothers and sisters. The wedding feast of which today's Gospel speaks is the Divine Liturgy, at which the faithful are offered not a slaughtered calf, but the Lamb of God Himself, slain as a sacrifice for the salvation of us sinners, so that we may be nourished by His most pure Body and Blood, so that we may be united with Him in the closest union, so that we may be flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones. This is the marriage of the royal Son — the union of Christian souls with Christ in the Mystery of Communion! This is the feast — the partaking of His Flesh and Blood! A divine, most holy, incorruptible, heavenly, and deifying feast!
But how many even now hasten to this divine feast! Does not the greater part even now avoid attending this heavenly supper through carelessness and laziness, and because of various worldly considerations, for example, because of business, or through unbelief and high-mindedness, or because of prolonged sleep, and so forth? Who does not see this, notice it, know it? Such is our lack of faith, such is our spiritual poverty of mind, such is our attachment to the world, such is our inattention to the greatest Mystery of faith, to the Mystery of immortality and deification! Such is the vanity and ingratitude of Christians toward the Lord, who offers Himself as food and drink for the cleansing, sanctification, and immortal life of the soul!
What, then, are such people worthy of? Are they not worthy of rejection by God, since for almost their entire lives they themselves have rejected Him?
But those who do come to this wedding of the Lamb, to the Divine Liturgy for the remembrance of His life, preaching, miracles, benefactions, sufferings, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, or for the purpose of partaking of His most pure Body and Blood, do they come in a wedding garment, with a pure soul, with a pure heart? With thoughts set on things above, with a holy disposition? Do not many come even into the church, this, as it were, bridal chamber of Jesus Christ, with earthly dreams and passions?
We ourselves, the celebrants of the awesome, heavenly, bloodless Sacrifice, do we always appear in the church and serve therein clothed in the wedding garment of purity and freedom from the passions of the soul? Alas! Often even among us there is no wedding garment, nor reverent thoughts and movements of the heart; and we too frequently enter wearing the filthy rags of the passions.
O, let us all hasten to repent and whiten the garments of our souls with tears of repentance and works of righteousness, especially with almsgiving, which cleanses sins.
"I see Your bridal chamber adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter therein; illumine the garment of my soul, O Giver of Light, and save me" (Exapostilarion). Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
