Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, most of us know what it feels like to prepare carefully for someone who never turns up. The food is ready, the table is set, everything has been arranged but the person invited simply does not come. There is disappointment in that experience. This Sunday’s readings invite us to consider something important, that God has prepared a place for us but are we responding to his invitation?

Isaiah gives us the magnificent image of a banquet on the mountain which are rich food, fine wine, tears wiped away and even death destroyed. Isaiah was speaking into a world familiar with suffering, political uncertainty and the vulnerability of God’s people. Yet his vision reaches beyond Israel that God prepares his banquet “for all peoples.” Salvation is not presented as something miserable or restrictive but as a feast. God intends humanity for communion, joy and life.

Jesus deliberately takes up this banquet imagery in the Gospel. He is in Jerusalem during the final period before his Passion, confronting the chief priests and elders. A king prepares a wedding feast for his son and sends servants to those already invited. In the social world of Jesus, refusing a royal invitation in this way was not simply bad manners; it amounted to rejecting the king and his authority.  But notice why some people refuse. One goes to his farm, another to his business. They are not necessarily doing wicked things. They are doing ordinary things. And perhaps that is where this Gospel becomes uncomfortable for us. Sometimes what keeps us away from God is not some dramatic rejection of faith. We are simply too busy. There is always something else to do like work, appointments, shopping, sport, social media, entertainment, family commitments. Gradually, prayer becomes something we will return to when life settles down. Sunday Mass becomes optional when something more convenient appears. Confession is postponed. Scripture remains unopened. God is not necessarily rejected; he is simply pushed further down the diary.

This is particularly challenging in a society where Christian faith increasingly competes with countless other claims upon our attention. We can become Christians who have been invited to the banquet but are permanently occupied elsewhere. Then comes the astonishing generosity of the king: “Invite everyone you can find.” The servants gather the bad and the good alike. God’s invitation crosses the boundaries human beings create. The Church, therefore, cannot become a comfortable gathering only for people who look like us, think like us or have respectable lives. There must be room for the struggling, the lonely, the newcomer, the person returning after many years and the person whose life is complicated. The doors of God’s mercy are wider than ours.

Yet Jesus does not finish there. One guest enters without the wedding garment. This difficult ending reminds us that being invited is not the same as allowing the invitation to change us. The open invitation of grace is not permission to remain exactly as we are. Biblical scholarship on this parable highlights precisely this demand for a reorientation of life towards God’s reign. We too can be physically present at the banquet and yet resist conversion. We can attend Mass, receive Holy Communion, know the prayers and still carry bitterness for years. We can call ourselves Catholic while treating people badly, ignoring the poor, damaging another person’s reputation or refusing to forgive. The question is not simply, “Am I in the Church?” but “Is Christ changing me?”

St Paul shows us what such a changed life looks like. Writing from hardship, he says that he has learned to live with poverty and plenty such that “There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength.” His peace does not depend upon everything going his way; it comes from knowing whom he belongs to.

And perhaps that is the invitation this Sunday. God has prepared the feast. Christ himself is offered to us in the Eucharist and everything is ready. The question is no longer whether we have been invited. The question is: What are we allowing to become more important than accepting the invitation and what must change in us when we come to the table? May we never become so busy with the gifts of life that we forget the One who invited us to the feast. Amen.