TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Year A

Readings

First Reading
Is 25:6–10a

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 23:1–3a, 3b–4, 5, 6

Second Reading
Phil 4:12–14, 19–20

Gospel (Long Form)
Mt 22:1–14

Gospel (Short Form)
Mt 22:1–10

Meditation on Today’s Readings

Taken from the Vatican II Sunday and Weekday Missal
Written by Celia Sirois

Matthew’s hand is evident in a number of places in today’s parable of the wedding feast, which appears in Luke as the parable of the great supper. Two of the most noteworthy Matthean additions to the parable are the violence with which the king’s servants are received and with which he retaliates, and the appending of the parable of the wedding garment. The first is an attempt to associate the rejection of the king’s invitation with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the second reflects Matthew’s concern with the theme of judgment.

In the parable of Jesus as in the oracle of Isaiah, today’s first reading, the final triumph of God, God’s kingdom, is imaged as “a feast of rich food and choice wines.”—No doubt it is his sure hope that this banquet awaits him in God’s future that allows Paul to live with feast or famine in the present. As Matthew sees it, however, the feast is ready, even now. Some (his Jewish rivals) have refused the invitation, while others (his Christian Jewish community) have accepted. But even for them, he warns, admission to the feast is not enough; they must don the wedding garment by living lives worthy of the Gospel.

The copyright for the Sunday Missal Introductions is:
Copyright (c) 2001, Daughters of St. Paul
The copyright for the Weekday Missal Introduction is:
Copyright (c) 2002, Daughters of St. Paul