The King Called Him Friend.

Brother,

This Sunday's Gospel: a king makes a marriage for his son, sends out the invitation, and is refused.

Some refusals were violent. Some were only a shrug: "But they neglected, and went their own ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise." (Matthew 22:5, Douay-Rheims)

Nobody in that verse looks like a villain. They are busy.

That is the refusal to watch for in yourself. Not a fist. A calendar.

Bad and good

Remember who was listening: "And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they knew that he spoke of them." (Matthew 21:45)

So when the king "destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city" (Matthew 22:7), do not turn it into a verdict on a people. St Paul settles that: "God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew." (Romans 11:2) The Church teaches that the Jewish people may not be called cursed or cast off by God on the strength of Scripture (CCC 597).

Nor is the king cruel. His anger answers the murder of his servants (Matthew 22:6), and his next order is a wider invitation (Matthew 22:9). The hall fills with "all that they found, both bad and good" (Matthew 22:10). Isaias saw the same table, set "unto all people" (Isaias 25:6).

What the king looked for

"And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment." (Matthew 22:11)

This is not about a poor man in the wrong clothes. St Augustine, preaching on this Gospel: "The garment that was looked for is in the heart, not on the body; for had it been put on externally, it could not have been concealed even from the servants."

St Gregory the Great, in his homily on this parable: "What ought we to understand by the wedding garment, but charity? For this the Lord had upon Him, when He came to espouse the Church to Himself. He then enters in to the wedding feast, but without the wedding garment, who has faith in the Church, but not charity."

Do not hear that as a dress code you sew for yourself. Charity is a gift before it is a task: it is "poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us" (Romans 5:5). Your part is to keep it and let it grow. Augustine again: "Let charity be born in thee, if it be yet unborn, and if it be born, be it nourished, fostered, increased."

Many are called

The king asks him, "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" Notice what the king called him: Friend. Then what the man did with the question: "But he was silent." (Matthew 22:12)

Then the king's order: "Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." And the line that closes it: "For many are called, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:13-14)

Do not hear these lines as a head-count, or as cause for despair. Hell is real, and the Church speaks of it soberly: a man's refusal of God made final, by dying in mortal sin without repenting or taking the mercy God holds out (CCC 1033). No one is predestined to it; it takes a deliberate turn from God, held to the end (CCC 1037). Scripture's warnings about hell exist to turn a man back now (CCC 1036). The Lord is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance" (2 Peter 3:9).

Gregory's comment on that last line is about the road, not a number: "For some never begin a good course, and some never continue in that good course which they have begun."

The man in the parable stood silent. You do not have to. Mortal sin kills charity in a man (CCC 1855), and Christ left the way back: God's mercy and a turned heart, ordinarily in the confessional (CCC 1856, 1446).

This week

One act. Tonight, name the person you would least like to see at that table: someone who wronged you or yours. Pray for them by name: for their good and their salvation, not their ruin. Praying for them is not pretending nothing happened.

Augustine puts it in God's mouth: "Be thou My recruit against the devil. In no other way wilt thou fight at all unconquerably, unless thou dost pray for thine enemies."

Then do it again every night this week. Same name. The Sanctum is built on reps.

Altar. Arms. Allegiance.

— The Sanctum Dispatch

On the channel

The short films are on YouTube — subscribe at youtube.com/@1765Sanctum so they find you.

P.S. — Who wore that garment in front of you? Tell me who they were to you — a grandfather, a sergeant, a neighbor — and one thing they did. Hit reply — I read every reply.

One last thing this week. Charity is learned first at home. The Priest of Your Home is a free 30-day program for Catholic men, husbands and fathers first: one three-minute email each morning, one order for tonight, one prayer. The priesthood it means is the priesthood of the baptized (CCC 1657), not Holy Orders. No card, unsubscribe any time; thirty emails, then it ends: 1765sanctumco.com/priest-of-your-home

For God.  For country.  For the fight.

In Christ and Our Lady,
Will
Founder, 1765 Sanctum Co.