Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 11, 2026. Gospel of St. Matthew 22:1-14. Theme: Dressed for the Party!
Today’s Gospel gives us one of Jesus’ parables that has a lot going on within it. However, the part that seems to always grab people’s attention is the guy who isn’t wearing a wedding garment! What’s up with that? Well, we need to keep in mind that the people and details in Jesus’ parables always have deeper symbolic meanings. And in this case the wedding garment has been interpreted to represent the white gown that new converts were given at their Baptism in the early Church.
You see, back then most of the newly baptized were older youth and adults and baptism was celebrated by being immersed (nude or nearly nude) in a pool of water. Then when they came up out of the baptismal font they were clothed with this garment which was a sign of their new life of grace in Christ. Putting on the garment was meant to remind them that they had laid aside their old self, that is, their natural human condition of sin-woundedness and had become a new person, dressed in the holy clothing of divine life which we call “sanctifying grace”. In his Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul made reference to this when he wrote, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:27).
Ok, now back to the parable itself. In Jesus’ time when an important man such as a king gave a party he often supplied more than food, drink and entertainment. The host would often have a supply of formal garments at the entrance gate. The reason for this was that people often arrived at a wedding party after having traveled for many days and so their clothes were dirty. Because clothing back then was hand-woven, it was extremely expensive so many didn’t own a vast wardrobe which would allow for a fresh change of clothes. So, that’s why the host often supplied party garments and thus they had no polite excuse to attend the banquet improperly dressed.
Applying this to the parable means that the offensive guest who got kicked out may have either refused the garment in the first place or had decided at some point to take it off. Either way, his actions would be extremely rude, being seen as an insult, a gesture of ingratitude to the host. Kind of like giving a big middle finger to the king!
With this in mind, we can interpret the parable in two ways. Either as a warning to those who either refuse God’s generous gift of eternal life through Baptism or to those who were once baptized but then later intentionally turned away from this relationship with God. For whatever reason, they have either refused to accept the garment or have chosen to lay it aside. They have taken off the Lord Jesus Christ and have only their own clothing to wear, which means their fallen humanity, soiled by sin and unfit for the wedding feast of Heaven. I bet many of us know people who would fit into this category or maybe we ourselves were once “that guy”. And I would venture to guess that every now and then we might even find ourselves falling prey to this temptation. We might entertain the idea of taking off our baptismal wedding garment, telling ourselves that we will have both the time and the opportunity to put it back on again later in life.
The famous German Lutheran minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in World War II, coined a term for this way of carelessly mistreating the gift of faith. He called it “cheap grace”. “Cheap grace” means that we want God without His commandments. We desire Christ without the cross. We want to enter the Kingdom of God but without turning away from our sins. It’s a fake version of Christianity that doesn’t cost us anything or challenge us in any way. In other words, “cheap grace” is a religion of our own making, fashioned according to our own likes and desires. In the symbolism of today's parable, cheap grace is our refusal to wear the wedding garment of God in favor of our own clothing. And doing so will bring us to the same fate as that unfortunate wedding guest: kicked out of the banquet and condemned to remain apart from God and the festivities of His kingdom.
The parable ends with the curious saying of Jesus that, “many are invited but few are chosen”. What the Lord is telling us is that in his great mercy and generosity, God invites all human beings to His wedding feast which is a symbol for living in a right relationship with Him both here and hereafter. But not everyone who RSVPs positively to this invitation ends up actually going to or staying at the party! Baptism was our “yes” to the invitation but for various reasons some of us end up never attending. Some take off the wedding garment and relinquish our status as guests. Others arrive but then decide to leave the building. But those who stay at the banquet dressed in their baptismal gowns are the “chosen few”. You see, faith is a gift that can be lost and we must never forget that. We should never take our faith for granted but pray for the grace to remain with the king all the way to the end of the party!
However, Jesus is always giving people second chances. And the good news for today is that people can always rediscover the beauty of their baptismal gown and redress themselves in the wedding garment of saving grace. They can do this by their sincere repentance, turning back to God and striving to live life with Him instead of without Him. They can recommit to the promises of their Baptism and renew their faith in God as Father, in Jesus as Savior, and in the Holy Spirit as Lord and Giver of Divine Life. And this change of mind will enable them to rejoin the party, to re-enter the building and take up once again their place at table in the wedding feast of Heaven.
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