What are we willing to die for?
Jennifer Lash, (mother of
actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes), decided to go on a pilgrimage as she was
dying of cancer. Her experiences have been published in the United Sates
posthumously in the book On Pilgrimage. Among
other places she visits the French ecumenical community of Taizé on her way to
Santiago de Compostela.
Approaching the Church of
Reconciliation in Taizé for the Sunday Mass she encounters young people who
welcome the crowd with signs that hang around the necks that read,
"Silence" in a multitude of languages. On the walls outside the
church more signs again in the variety of languages urging all who enter to be
reconciled, "parents and children, husbands and wives, believers and those
who cannot believe, Christians and their fellow Christians."
Then as Lash, an admitted
lapsed Catholic, enters the Church, suddenly feels the need to escape. "I
have never before felt so acutely unbelonging," she says. It is everything
that she can do to keep from running out of the place of worship.
Reading Lash's account
immediately made me think of today's Gospel and the Parable of the Wedding
Feast. There is an invitation that is open to all (“the bad and the good
alike”) to a wedding feast. But in the midst of the celebration there is one
who doesn’t belong, a person not dressed for the occasion.
Why would someone come not
dressed for a feast?
The answer is rather simple
if we apply it to ourselves, it would be because we really didn't want to go to
the feast but half-heartedly figured what the heck, I might as well check it
out, in other words not as a participant but as a spectator.
Lash’s feeling of not
belonging certainly arose from this, the people around her were all plugged
into the Taizé movement and she wasn’t. But before we all sit back and high
five each other thinking that we are in the crowd an examination is in order.
When I am present at God’s banquet am I a spectator or a participant? Or in
other words what is my focus on at Mass, my own unworthiness and God’s great
gift or other things?
Saint Augustine likened the
ill-clad wedding guest to those who reject God's abundant and free gift of
mercy. We might all be tempted to say that we accept God's mercy and therefore
accept the invitation to his Kingdom. But do we allow that mercy to change the
way we appear, act and yes feel?
