First Reading
Isaiah 25:6-10
1. How can a feast––juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines––be a sacramental vision of the universe? Does banquet imagery describe well the fullness of life in the presence of God?
2. “He will destroy … the web that is woven over all nations.” What are the “webs” over all nations today that God will destroy? And in doing so will God wipe tears from every face? Are the pandemic, racial injustice, and the climate crisis webs over all nations?
Second Reading
Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
1. Will the Lord ever test you beyond your capacity? Will he always be with you? When difficulties arise in daily life do you remember Paul’s words, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”?
2. The readings show God bestowing gifts on us without measure. Do you “measure” when you give? How could you be a little freer?
Gospel
Matthew 22:1-14
1. Besides answering God’s invitation to the feast, what is expected of us? Are we the guests or are we also the ones doing the inviting? How does this banquet not only sustain life but also transfigure it?
2. Before he was the Pope, Cardinal Bergoglio gave the three minute speech below. The Cardinals at the Conclave started thinking seriously about electing him. How does his speech relate to today’s Gospel, “Go out therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.” Which “existential peripheries … of injustice, ignorance, all misery” that the Pope mentions, would you like to see the Church travel in, or to travel there yourself and invite people?
The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only in the geographical sense but also to go to the existential peripheries: those of the mysteries of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and of religious indifference, of thought, of all misery.”
