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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Come to the feast

Come to the feast

Published Aug 21, 2025 12:00 am  |  Updated Aug 20, 2025 04:11 pm
REFLECTIONS TODAY
We can draw important lessons from the parable of the Wedding Feast.
One is that everyone is welcome to the feast. The king in the parable sends his servants to summon first the invited guests and then whoever they can find. He wants his banquet, he wants heaven, to be full.
Second, there is always an excuse not to attend the wedding. People are busy. They have commitments and obligations that consume their time. Maybe they just do not want to go to the wedding! God prepares for us an amazing feast: our salvation, but it is always our choice to accept or refuse his invitation. The choice is really ours to stay in a relationship with God or not.
In life, we are either moving toward God with our thoughts, words, and actions, or we are moving away from him. If we are not actively engaging with him, we are moving away. But eventually, there are dire consequences for ignoring God throughout our life.
When we appear before him, we will stand shabbily dressed for not wearing the wedding garment procured by living an exemplary life.
First Reading • Jgs 11:29-39a
The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. He passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and through Mizpah-Gilead as well, and from there he went on to the Ammonites. Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. “If you deliver the Ammonites into my power,” he said, “whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites shall belong to the Lord. I shall offer him up as a burnt offering.”
Jephthah then went on to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his power, so that he inflicted a severe defeat on them, from Aroer to the approach of Minnith (20 cities in all) and as far as Abel-keramim. Thus were the Ammonites brought into subjection by the children of Israel.
When Jephthah returned to his house in Mizpah, it was his daughter who came forth, playing the tambourines and dancing. She was an only child: he had neither son nor daughter besides her. When he saw her, he rent his garments and said, “Alas, daughter, you have struck me down and brought calamity upon me. For I have made a vow to the Lord and I cannot retract.”
She replied, “Father, you have made a vow to the Lord. Do with me as you have vowed, because the Lord has wrought vengeance for you on your enemies the Ammonites.” Then she said to her father, “Let me have this favor. Spare me for two months, that I may go off down the mountains to mourn my virginity with my companions.”
“Go,” he replied, and sent her away for two months. So she departed with her companions and mourned her virginity on the mountains. At the end of the two months she returned to her father, who did to her as he had vowed.
Responsorial Psalm • Ps 40 “Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.”
Gospel • Matthew 22:1-14
Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the Pharisees in parables, saying, “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come.
A second time he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’ Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.
The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’
But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ 14Many are invited, but few are chosen.”
Source: “365 Days with the Lord 2025,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.

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