Jesus invites everyone to the eternal wedding banquet of Heaven, but are we prepared to accept His invitation? Discover how the Eucharist clothes us in Christ and allows us to experience a foretaste of Heaven at every Holy Mass. This Homily Short reminds us of the extraordinary gift of union with Jesus through the sacramental life of the Church.
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Alright, so in today’s first reading, God inspires Isaiah to prophesy about the kingdom of God that is to come. And on that final day, the prophet Isaiah says that God will destroy the veil that veils all people. What’s that veil? The veil of our brokenness and sin that distorts our spiritual vision to be able to see the truth of things.
Right? By Jesus’ offering of himself, however, Christ destroys that web and liberates humanity from Satan’s web. The Lord will wipe away the tears of every face. He will wipe away all those tears, so let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.
The Lord will provide a feast of rich food and choice wines. And in today’s gospel, Jesus uses the same analogy of a wedding feast to which everyone gets invited. Right? Everyone.
No one is excluded from receiving that invitation. Which means Jesus personally invites you and me to that wedding banquet. Now notice, however, Jesus does give a serious warning, not only to those who persecuted his messengers, but also to all who would ignore or refuse the invitation.
And he emphasizes that we must all be properly clothed with the wedding garment on that final day. And St. Paul reminds us what exactly that wedding garment is. It’s none other than Christ himself, which is exactly what the sacramental life of the church does to us.
It clothes us with Christ. In other words, no wedding crashers will be let in. Just the ones that the bridegroom knows and the ones who have taken the time to know the bridegroom by sacramentally living out the union that we will have with him for all eternity.
And that comes about with every person that comes up for communion. Body, blood, soul, and divinity. You’re clothed with Christ.
You’re in union with Christ. So brothers and sisters, what we celebrate at every holy mass is an anticipation and real participation in that eternal destiny. And at every mass, the angels and the saints join us and we join them in the reality that is more real than the present reality we experience in this world.
And so the only way the holy mass is not the most incredible thing we experience on this side of reality is because we’re not beholding these sacred mysteries with the eyes of faith to recognize in the Eucharist God’s pledge and promise to fulfill for us all that Isaiah describes in this prophecy. And it is in fact a taste of that heavenly reality here and now for Christ’s body and blood is the purest and choicest of all food and drink. But that veil of brokenness and dark web of sin can obscure our vision to see these hidden mysteries that are present at every mass by which divinity and humanity are spousally united in Jesus Christ.
Fostering your intimate union with God by activating the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. And so may the Mother Church of Jackson have opened doors and may each of us have opened our hearts.