Is That What You’re Wearing
28th Sunday of the Ordinary Time – Is That What You’re Wearing
Last week I celebrated a beautiful wedding at St. Jude, our parish’s mission church located near the North East River and a favorite worship spot for Pennsylvania boaters who spend their weekends along the Upper Bay. While it was early October, with a hint of autumnal color in the surrounding foliage, it felt more like mid-August, reaching 90-degrees with high humidity. Nonetheless, the bridal party and guests were dressed to the nines, managing to look beautiful in spite of the perspiration and lack of air-conditioning.
And then into that mix came “golf shirt Larry.”
That’s not his real name, of course, but how I judged him as I saw him walk in ten minutes after the ceremony had begun. His khakis were torn at the knee and faded, and his golf shirt seemedas though it needed a good laundering. Among the immaculately-dressed, “Golf-shirt Larry” stood-out like an uninvited wedding guest. Did you forget formal-dress etiquette? What made you think that such a casual, almost-unkempt look would be appropriate for just such an occasion?
My thoughts about Larry feel a lot like the king who arrives to the banquet and spies the party-goer who just doesn’t look like he belongs. In his confusion, the king approaches the un-garmented and says: “My friend, how did you show-up herelooking like this?”
I’m struck by three details in this parable that open me to greater prayer with regards to my own invitation to the Feast. To begin, pay attention to the shift of focus on the invitees.
At first, the wedding celebration was open to the ones that got invitations long ago: the friends of the King and his groom-son who had known them for a long time. How heartbreaking must it have been that so many guests the king held so dear chose other, lesser events to offer as an excuse for their disinterest or inability to attend. “We’ve been friends forever, and you’ve chosen business or chores (or sports or laziness) over time with us.”
How God’s Heart must break every time we choose our own desires – even if they are good and valid – over the call placed upon us to worship, honor and celebrate His Son.
What is beautiful, though, is the thought that even when the King’s invitation is rejected by his inner-circle – the ones he thought would be true and loyal – he can’t hold-back his desire to invite others to celebrate the feast. How much he wants his groom-son to be honored!
And so, out to the highways and byways go the invitations: “Come-one, come all to the wedding of a lifetime. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter if you even really know my son, the groom. Just join us.”
To me, that’s the heart of who we are called to be as the Bride-Church of the Groom-Son. We are by our very nature asked to welcome all: the rich and the poor; the well-to-do and the ne’er-do-well; the haughty and the humble. Servant of God Dorothy Day, the foundress of the Catholic Worker, converted from Communism in the 1920s after having walked into a New York City Catholic Church one weekday at noon and witnessed withinthe darkened, silent nave Wall-Street executives and Broadway prostitutes kneeling side-by-side in worship together. As writer James Joyce once said about Catholicism: “Here comes everybody.”
And thus it would seem to be after the first invitation had been rejected. The banquet hall is now filled with souls of every unique size, shape and personality. And that’s a truly lovely thought.
Until – and here comes the parable flipping everything on its head — until the King arrives and sees someone unprepared to celebrate do we realize that just because he invites all as they are doesn’t mean that they can stay as they were first found.
The improperly-garmented wedding guest certainly wasn’t expected to be immaculately-attired when he was stopped along a backroad and invited to the feast. But apparently, once he did make it through the doors, he was expected to wash-up and change. It was clear all the other invitees had. Even the way the king addresses this guest speaks to what was expected: “My Friend, how did you stay improperly-garmented?”
The King wasn’t angry – he knew he invited someone who was surprised to get the invite. However, the King’s magnanimous heart felt profound sadness that the guest who stayed unkempt was fine with appearing as such for the celebration. In other words: “My Friend, I am glad you are here, but why didn’t you accept the further invitation to clean-up? Why aren’t you wearing the garment hanging-up for you to wear?”
As I imagine that garment, I see it in two ways, a “both-and”scenario.
On one hand, the garment offered and left untouched is similar to the garment of Baptism we have received, most of us as infants. Why are we content with wearing a garment that becomes sullied overtime with unrepentant sin? Why are we okay with saying “I’m in the door and that’s enough for me?” Why don’t so many of us want to wear the gown of holiness, instead settling for spiritual mediocrity? St. Therese, the Little Flower, made it clear: she wasn’t “settling” for Purgatory. She in her humble boldness expected Heaven to be offered and granted by her King immediately upon her death. Why aren’t we wearing such a garment of holy boldness?
Now’s a good time to ask an important question, especially as we are the ones the King has plucked off the highway and invited to the Banquet: Am I content with being a so-so Catholic? Am I only checking boxes? Is being “saved” without truly wearing the garment of grace and mercy good enough for the King’s Love?
All of which then leads to think of the other aspect of this garment that the friend-guest refused to wear. Whenever the Book of Revelation talks about the garments worn by the souls of the just, they are washed in the Blood of the Lamb. The image that stays with me is one in which our garments are not white but red, washed in the outpouring of Christ’s Life and Blood from the Cross. We should be washed in His Cross, and look like Him in His suffering when we return to the Eternal Banquet. My garment should be stained with sacrifice; torn with the marks of selfless service and humble offerings-up to the Father. My Baptismal garment should look like the one that the soldiers ripped from Christ at Calvary – a garment marked by suffering love offered to the Father for others.
Paul addresses this fact himself in his letter to the Philippians (our second reading): “In every circumstance I know how to live with abundance and need,” meaning: I have learned that every blessing and cross offered back to God makes me resemble His own Son. It makes me like Christ for others. I come Home to the Feast looking just like the Bridegroom because he offered me his garment, and I accepted.
Jesus is asking each of us: “Which garment will you choose to wear as you leave this Banquet of Eucharist today? One that smells like mediocrity and ‘who-cares,’ or one washed in the sacrificial, suffering Love of the Lamb?”
As for Golf-shirt Larry, I asked the bride following the ceremony who her guest was who came dressed so shabbily to the wedding. “Did you know him? Did you invite him?”
She smiled, knowing what I was thinking (and judging): “That good man was my neighbor growing-up who took care of me and my siblings when our parents were struggling with their own stuff. He didn’t have much, but what he had, he gave to us when we were afraid or hungry or alone. I wouldn’t be here without him, and I pray my husband is as good a man as he is.”
Looks like I misjudged the guest and his garment. Maybe – just maybe – he was the best-dressed at that St. Jude wedding.