2nd Sunday after Pentecost 14.6.09
We are the poor and outcast, that have to be brought into the banquet. None of us is rich in this context. We are all sinners and we all need mercy. We are all the sick that the Doctor has come for.
It is not just that some are sick and some healthy, as we have in the physical realm. Spiritually speaking, every living person is in need of salvation, even if presently sinless.
The parable was aimed originally at the Jews, some of whom thought they qualified for salvation just by being Jewish, on racial grounds. They were God’s chosen people.
Yes, He had chosen them, to lead the way. But they also had to be saved by faith; by being in union with Jesus Christ.
Just being Jewish was no guarantee. Just being Catholic is no guarantee. We are not saved by labels. We are saved only if we are in union with Our Lord, in a state of grace, if we have His life in us – or, in today’s Gospel, we come to His banquet, to eat of His life-giving flesh.
Most of us will receive Holy Communion today. Imagine if we could not receive Him for a long time. Cut off. Would we miss the sacrament?
We need to rekindle the desire.
Many are indifferent. They receive Communion occasionally – maybe at Christmas, a funeral or wedding, the odd Sunday – it’s like ‘catching a movie’; just fitting it in to a busy schedule. This is a very casual approach. These people do not think of themselves as sick, needing a cure.
If they were physically sick they would not be so casual if there were a remedy available.
They must either think they are ‘healthy’ and do not need the doctor, or they do not think the Eucharist is anything special.
Faith operates at two levels: one to perceive our need as beggars; the other to see in the Eucharist the healing of that spiritual poverty; to be as though desperate to reach that cure.
If we had a disease and there was a cure we would crawl across the ground to get it if necessary. So for the Eucharist we should be willing to crawl in here!
If not, we must either not believe we have anything wrong with us, or not believe that the Eucharist is a cure.
We have to realize our own nothingness, and the everythingness of this sacrament.
The Eucharist is our cure, but not in isolation from the Sacrament of Penance.
Our spiritual Doctor gives us both sacraments to work in conjunction with each other. One to remove the sin, the other to fill us with grace. We make use of both.
We are still sinners, still in need of cure, but now clothed in the wedding garment.
We are still sick insofar as we have any sin, even if we are better than we used to be. Even if we do become perfect it will not be by our own efforts.
Always we will be obliged to God for where we have reached. Even the eternal banquet is free food; we have to be grateful for all eternity.
Look at the saints how they wrote about themselves. They were very harsh in their self-assessment. This was not just poetic licence; they really did see the chasm between themselves and God. And see also their great love of the Eucharist.
We are healed only if we realize our lowliness AND accept the medicine offered to us.
So we do both on this Sunday after Corpus Christi. And we keep coming; we never let our love grow cold (cf epistle). The more we know our need, the more we benefit from the cure.
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