Homily for Thursday, 23 August 2018– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Rose of Lima

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 36:23-28; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 22:1-11

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What does St. Rose of Lima, whose feast we celebrate today, have to do with the relationship between the king and the guest in Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading who arrives at the king’s wedding feast without his wedding robe?

Is Jesus’ parable we hear today not strange, in the sense that the king seems inconsistent in whether he metes out justice toward some who abuse his generosity, while he is abundantly merciful toward others we would expect him to punish more severely? In the case of the guest who arrives at the wedding feast not wearing his wedding garment, the king responds with particular harshness: “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Why is the king in Jesus’ parable so harsh with this guest? This man does not make light of the king’s invitation to his wedding feast or, worse yet, mistreat and murder the king’s slaves as other invitees to the wedding feast do, so why is the man who might merely have forgotten the proper or have been too poor to dress in attire for the king’s wedding singled out to be excluded from the banquet hall?

Here, I would like to return to my reflection on St. Rose of Lima, a third order Dominican from Peru who lived from 1586 to 1617. St. Rose of Lima was the first saint from the Americas ever canonized. Although she was a layperson (she had taken a personal vow of virginity but never took formal vows in a religious order), St. Rose of Lima is almost always depicted in art and icons in a Dominican habit.

The religious order to which I belong, the Basilians, has no habit besides the usual clothing of priests, a clerical shirt and Roman collar when serving in ministry. Yet our clothing, even when we are not in ministry, is meant to reflect the values we strive to live as religious and priests: Poverty as simplicity of life; modesty; solidarity with the people with whom we minister. And yet these values, expressed in the formal vows we take in religious life, poverty, chastity, and obedience, are values to which every one of us, as baptized Christians, is invited to strive toward.

This was true of St. Rose of Lima, regardless of whether, as a layperson, she ever actually wore a Dominican religious habit. She wore the garment of the king’s wedding feast; the Lord’s feast of heaven, in her heart, and this was expressed in a life of outward solidarity with the poor and suffering in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lima.

Jesus asks this of all of us: To clothe our hearts with the Lord’s wedding robe, a garment we are given at baptism. The garment is what we most value, even more than what we wear outwardly, which ideally is a sign of the values deepest within our hearts. If what we most value is love of God, love of one another and especially solidarity with those most in need, then I do not think we will need to worry about meeting the same end as the man without his wedding garment in today’s Gospel parable. The values deepest in our hearts will naturally express themselves outwardly; they will be our God-given garment of the feast of eternal life.