Tuesday
of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
November 3, 2015 8:30am
Did you
ever wonder why the people in today’s gospel did not accept the invitation to
the dinner?
The
dinner, as you probably imagine, stands for the meal that Jesus offers.
For us,
this meal consists of the Word of God and the Eucharist.
The
people in the parable give work-related or family-related reasons for refusing
the invitation.
But, as
the passage itself says, they are not really reasons but “excuses.”
They
just do not want to come.
The
question is: Why not?
Why do
we formulate reasons or make excuses for not spending time with God in prayer, whether
it is here in the church or chapel or at home?
I can
think of two factors and maybe the first leads to the second.
The
basic factor is that we just get taken up with doing things.
One
author says that we have become human doings instead of human beings.
We
think that if we are not doing something, we are wasting time.
We fear
that if we are not needed to do something, we have no inner value.
And, of
course, we don’t conceive of just being with God or praying as doing something
and so we do not make time for it.
This
leads to another factor.
If we
have not really experienced the meal God offers, we haven’t given it a chance.
So we
are not inclined to try it.
And the
more we say no to the invitation to the dinner, the farther and farther we get
away from it and the less and less we even think about it.
The
only answer I can think of is to grab hold of our cultural need to be doing
something all the time and realize how lacking this is.
And
then, with that awareness, we might begin to make a little time for God.
And if
we do that, if we try the first course of the dinner, my bet is that we will
want the whole meal and start saying yes to the Lord’s invitation every Sunday
and maybe even every day.
