28th Sunday A
Knights of Columbus Board
Guardian Angels Cathedral, Las Vegas
October 10 2026
Prime Analogue
Getting ready for a family wedding isn’t always easy. It takes time, planning, patience, expense, diplomacy, and a bit of drama. But it’s worth the anguish and expense when the wedding truly celebrates the beauty of God’s love shining on and through the newly married couple – a celebration of shared faith, newfound joy, openness to life, and a future full of hope. Am I being a bit idealistic? Perhaps! But every priest has witnessed such weddings, and when we do, we rejoice, not simply because a couple was “married in the Church”, but because a wedding like that takes us to the heart of Scripture. For the image of a wedding feast is a one of the most beautiful ways Scripture portrays God’s relationship with us and our relationship with God. Today’s Scripture readings bear that out, beginning with Isaiah.
Isaiah 25:6-10
In the reading from Isaiah, the Lord God summons his people to a feast on Mount Zion, his dwelling place. It is a sumptuous feast of rich food and choice wine. Those who share in this feast have their eyes opened to the glory of God. The veil of ignorance and selfishness is lifted. The dominion of death is broken. Sorrow gives way to joy. The people respond: “This is the Lord for whom we looked! Let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.” Thus did Isaiah forecast the saving banquet of Christ’s sacrifice, the Mass, and fullness of joy that will be ours in the wedding feast of heaven. Isaiah also sets the table for our Gospel, Jesus’ parable about a wedding feast.
Matthew 22:1-14
And what do we see? It is no ordinary wedding feast, even by royal standards. It is the wedding feast God the Father has planned for his Only-Begotten Son. The Father spared no effort in preparing for it. He chose a people. Delivered them from harm. Sent them prophets as messengers. Thus did God the Father prepare for coming of his Son as our Redeemer.
Now all is ready. Christ, the Bridegroom has arrived. But where’s the bride? She makes no obvious appearance in the parable. In fact, however, it is the guests themselves who are the bride. God the Father is presiding over the wedding of his Son to a people he has chosen to be his own. This is a new moment in salvation history. God’s Son has taken our humanity. He has come to dwell among us. He seeks to unite himself to a people from every language and nation. What God said through Isaiah (62:5) is fulfilled: “As a young man marries his Bride, so will your Builder marry you. And as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.”
But the invited guests react irrationally. They absent themselves from the King’s wedding feast thus missing their own wedding. They are busy. Indifferent. Even violent. Jesus confirms what experience teaches. Indifference can quickly turn into anger & anger can quickly turn into violence. Just so, some of the invited guests kill the King’s messengers. In righteous anger, the King confirms the wicked choice of his ungrateful guests.
Here Jesus paints a stunning image of busyness and indifference in the face of the great mystery of God’s love for us. We can be so busy constructing our own lives, so wrapped up in our plans, so bent on creating or even re-creating ourselves – that we ignore or reject what God wants to give us in Word and Sacrament – in the waters of Baptism and in the Eucharistic banquet of the slain Lamb. In our day, the distance between indifference and anger remains short. Indifference to God, to the Faith, and to the Eucharist, easily paves the way to anger against the Church – we see it all the time. Jesus’ warning to us is salutary: May we never be so busy or so indifferent as to miss our own wedding!
The King turns out to be a relentless lover. He is spurned but undeterred. He sends out his messengers to invite people from highways and byways, those who never imagined they’d be invited to a royal wedding – people who, in their simplicity, are happy to be there. As the King strolls into the banquet hall, he is delighted, just as God the Father delights in his people gathered for the Eucharist, ‘for he sees and loves in us what he sees and loves in his Son.’
But there was that one guest without a wedding garment. This was not a matter of etiquette but something deeper. For the wedding garment in question is not a tuxedo or a gown, but a beautiful simplicity of heart and a poverty of spirit that makes one receptive to the gifts the Father wishes to give: the innocence of baptism, the joy of being reconciled, the warmth and nourishment found in the banquet of Christ’s sacrifice. To receive divine gifts we need to be pure of heart, and purity of heart always expresses itself, not in hatred, but in love. That is the wedding garment the unfortunate guest lacked, and that is the garment we must covet: to be clothed in Christ Jesus.
For the Eucharist we now celebrate is a foretaste of the banquet of heaven, where the glorified Christ, the Lamb once slain, sitting at God’s right hand, is praised, adored, and glorified by angels and saints as his marriage to a redeemed humanity is consummated in unspeakable joy. Let’s not underestimate how many people are searching for this very thing, searching for Someone and Something reliable on which to build their lives. We are called not only to hasten to the great King’s feast ourselves, but to be God’s messengers in inviting those who are searching to the banquet of the Word and of Christ’s Sacrifice.
Among those messengers is the Knights of Columbus, dedicated to the spiritual formation of its 2.3 million members, dedicated to helping men be true followers of the Lord, active members of the Church, good husbands and fathers, leaders in their parishes and their communities, servants of those in need. Today, our Worthy Supreme Knight, Patrick Kelly, will install four new members of the Knights of Columbus Board of Directors. They are dedicated Knights and proven leaders in the Knights of Columbus and they will assist in carrying forward the mission of the Order. As you listen to the prayers and instructions of their installation, I hope you’ll get a deeper sense of what we, the Knights of Columbus are all about – especially our strong support for marriage, for family, for life, and our efforts to put our first principle, charity, into practice – all of which we do in fidelity to our founder, a holy parish priest, Blessed Michael McGivney. Thus, do we, the Knights of Columbus strive to be both guests at God the Father’s banquet and his messengers.
May all of us, dear friends, hasten to the Lord’s banquet Sunday after Sunday, and bring others with us – letting it shape who we are, what we do, and how we relate to one another to our world. Vivat Jesus!