301 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST Before Holy Communion 1. “sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast” (Mt 22:3). Consider the angels’ good deeds and services towards humanity. Since the angels are the servants of God, they are sent to invite men to the heavenly wedding. So extraordinarily do they perform their duty that they omit no occasion for showing us the magnificence, the excellence, and the long duration of that wedding, while demonstrating on the other hand how vain are the joys, delights, and pleasures of the world. To you also, your personal companion, your guardian angel, provided this kind of service so many times! How often he recommended heavenly goods to you! How often he moved your spirit to contemplate and to seek them, while demonstrating that the world with its goods is but sheer filth! It is necessary, therefore, that you comply with his wishes, especially today, as the herald of the heavenly wedding calls you to the Lamb’s earthly wedding. 2. “but they would not come” (Mt 22:3). Consider that the people invited are called by God to do penance, to perform good works, to avail themselves frequently of the Sacraments, to exercise virtue, and finally to improve their life through angelic inspirations and various other means. Yet, they do not want to come; they reject God’s ambassadors and treat His servants with contempt. By immortal God! Beware, lest you become one of their number. 3. “Again he sent other servants” (Mt 22:4). O the folly of these men who, uninvited, deliberately crash the world’s wedding party and seek fleeting pleasures! Yet they so disdain the heavenly wedding, and hold in such contempt those perennial delights, that, being invited twice, thrice or even more times, they not only refuse to come, but even kill the bearers of the invitation.
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