The Banquet is Ready: Tuesday 31st Week Ordinary Time Breakfast with the Word. Reflection
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Breakfast with the Word Tuesday 31st week Ordinary Time
Luke 14:15-24
The Banquet is Ready
There is an invitation eagerly awaiting you. Today, one of those at the table with Jesus affirms “blessed is the man that will be part of the feast in the kingdom of God”.
This invitation is a call to be part of a feast. It is a feast where God is the host. God is inviting us to be part of His Kingdom. Imagine such a wonderful invitation from our Creator.
The Invitation to the Kingdom
The kingdom of God is where God reigns. So many times Jesus uses a feast to illustrate the meaning and importance of this Kingdom. Therefore, anyone who allows God to reign in His life and in everything he does is truly blessed.
God invites us to have a meal with Him at the table. Therefore, He is inviting us to share in His blessing. He is inviting us to create a perfect relationship with Him. His banquet is always ready waiting for our reply.
This invitation is something we must gain. It is an invitation to be blessed, to be loved, to be favoured and to live with Him forever and ever. It is God’s will that the souls of his beloved ones will not perish. Therefore, God is always ready but the problem is that we are not ready.
The Gospel
In the gospel, Jesus tells the parable of a man who prepares a big feast and invites many guests to the feast. When the time for the banquet approaches, they begin to give many excuses about the reason they will not attend the feast. The master was enraged and thus sent his servant to press all to come and be partakers of the feast. He vows never to allow those who denied the invitation to be partakers of the feast again.
Jesus uses this analogy to talk to the jews and the leaders whom God chooses as his people. Now that the banquet is ready through the coming of the Messiah, they show signs of lack of interest. Because of their indifference to this glamorous and festive invitation, God sends his servants, prophets, apostles to extend this invitation to all both Jews and gentiles, poor and rich, saints and sinners etc.
God Invites Us to a Banquet
In the same way, God invites us to His banquet. This banquet is ready for all to come to dine with Him. Like the Father of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God is awaiting our return. He is always ready to make a feast for us. In the presence of God, there is freedom, healing, abundant graces and everlasting life. What is our response to this invitation? Are we ready to start a relationship with Him or not? Are we still occupied with the many things of this world? What is your excuse? Is our response yes or no?
Our Excuses
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The problem is that we are full of excuses. We have a wonderful invitation to enjoy a life that is full of peace, love, forgiveness, joy, endurance in the midst of suffering, a life of hope, faith that brings results, power, a life filled with abundant graces etc but we have said no to this wonderful invitation to occupy ourselves with politics, family issues, businesses, relationships, etc and hence create problems, disunity, hatred and backwardness for ourselves. These are part of our existence but should not make us relegate God to the background.
Thus, we choose the other way round and hence suffer for it. We create time to spend with people we love but we do not spend a minute with God we said we love.
In the gospel. The first said, I have bought a piece of land and would like to check it. The other said, I bought five yokes of oxen and would like to check them. The first and second excuses in the gospel are characterised with excessive interest in worldly and material things than God.
This is when we allow money, food, political and personal interests to affect the way we relate to God. It is when we abandon God finally but chooses these as our priorities. Some do decide not to go to church on Sunday just to be in a particular meeting or program. We keep God second place and yet we say we love Him.
The third said I have married a wife and will never come. He rejects the invitation immediately because of family affairs.
In the same way, we also reject God’s invitation to have a relationship with Him because we are already preoccupied with many affairs.
It is only at the end of lives that we begin to understand that everything we struggle, kill and fight to acquire will disappear within a second and the God we have abandoned will stand waiting for us on the last day.
The Banquet is Waiting
The banquet is ready and waiting. God is awaiting our return. Are we rejecting Him still or accepting? Do you still have many things on your table preventing you from this feast? This feast is an indication that He is generous with His gifts and graces. He wants us to be partakers of them.
Are we still preoccupied with our affairs and the people we love that we do not have time for Him? What is our response? Our acceptance or rejection will enrage or make Him happy. So let us make a choice. The time is now.
May God have mercy on us and forgive our pasts. May He be with you all the days of your life. Amen.
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