Gospel Reflection: 12–18 October 2026 — An urgent response to the Lord’s invitation (Mt. 22:1-14)
By Rev. Fr. Oloserian Lesenga, PhD Student, Department of Biblical Theology
On the 28th Sunday in Ordinary time (October 11, 2026), the Gospel reading puts before us a theme concerning an invitation to the wedding banquet but with a condition of being well prepared.
The invitation to the banquet is extended to all people. Those who were invited in the first place did not avail themselves and therefore the invitation was extended to all people.
This parable is well structured with a unique pattern: invitation to the chosen; Refusal of the invited guests and mistreatment and killing of the messengers; Sending of the troops by the king to destroy murderers; Invitation of everyone;
And finally, rejection of the one without a wedding garment. This flow functions to convey a rich theology of salvation history. Since the parable is about the Kingdom of God, the king is God himself. He began the journey with Israel as a people whom He chose as his own. Unfortunately, they did not respond to that invitation wholeheartedly, but they followed their own ways. This is the message that Jesus is passing to the chief priests and elders of the people of Israel.
Israel as a chosen nation had a privilege to experience God’s love. From the call of Abraham and the role of the other patriarchs, liberation from slavery in Egypt and the journey to mount Sinai, the Lord reminds them: “You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagles’ wings and brought you here to myself” (Ex. 19:4).
God treated Israel in a special way and invited them to be his special possession. The Lord sent his prophets in different times but they refused to listen to them and they mistreated them and even killed them. All these efforts did not bear desired fruits.
The invitation was extended to the gentiles just as Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said: “It was necessary that the Word of God be proclaimed to you first, but since you reject it, we now turn to the Gentiles” (Ac. 13:46). This invitation was then extended to other nations. We are all invited to the wedding feast. In the new invitation, there are conditions to join the new community, a community founded by Christ. The wedding garment is a symbolic representation of these conditions.
Despite the fact that we have received this invitation, we have behaved the way the people of Israel did. There are times we are so occupied by the ‘world’ to the extent that we cannot respond fully to this invitation. We are preoccupied with materialism, secularism and many other forms which are hostile to God’s invitation and to his messengers. Every year during the Easter vigil we renew our baptismal promises. We deny Satan and all that pertains to Satan but we are not faithful to our promises. The banquet is not merely a future hope but a present reality experienced through participation in the community of faith. That is why the invitation to the banquet is an urgent appeal for all of us to fully embrace God’s grace without wasting or ignoring it: “Behold, now is the acceptance time; behold, now is the day of salvation! (2 Cor. 6:2).
The wedding garment stands for righteousness, inward transformation, and genuine faith though the invitation is open to all, participation in the Kingdom demands genuine transformation. In order to embrace the new garment and make it part of our everyday life, we are invited to overcome spiritual complacency, thinking that my faith is fine while unknowingly my inner zeal slowly dies. An urgent response to the Lord’s invitation will enable us to be in the number of the chosen ones.