The king says, “My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?” The man doesn’t make an excuse. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t even claim he shouldn’t have to wear such ridiculous garb after being brought in from the street. He doesn’t do anything. He is reduced to silence. Like the king in the parable, our Heavenly King—God—demands a response from us every day of our lives. We can respond in one of three ways: we can follow God; we can turn away from God; or, we can simply not respond to God.

The wedding garment in the parable doesn't necessarily refer to something special the man had to put on to attend the party. It is entirely possible that it means, simply, that the guests were expected to wear clean clothes to the party. The man came into the wedding party in dirty clothes. He didn’t bother to put on clean clothes. This discourtesy was an insult to the king. The king may have invited people in from the street, but he still had standards! Thus, the king asked the man, "why he did you come in dirty clothes?"

Imagine if someone had shown up in torn up jeans and a t-shirt to a wedding you are attending. If someone had shown up to my sister’s wedding like that, I would have had some questions for that person too! “Did you intend to come dressed like that? Are you in the right place? Do you need some help?”

The man didn’t respond to the king, and so he was cast out.

The results of following God and turning away from God are clear, but not responding to God is just as bad as turning away from him. We are all wounded by sin, and we all approach God unworthily. Using the language of the parable, none of us have a clean wedding garment. God knows this, yet he still invites us to his wedding feast. God knows we need help. We must not be speechless! Instead, we must ask our merciful Lord for help! “I’m trying, please help me!” “Lord, I don’t even know where to begin!” “Lord, I thought I was doing the right thing, but everything just went so wrong!” “I’m sorry, God. Help. Please.”

Through our daily work to accept God’s invitation to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb—to Heaven—, we slowly wash clean our soul. Eventually, we will come closer and closer to having a clean wedding garment—a clean soul. By responding to God, even in our weakness, we allow God to scrub, slowly, the stains of sin out of our soul. Our king is so generous that he will give us all the mercy and all the grace that we will need to cleanse our lives. What fantastic news!

What is this daily work we must do in order to enter into the wedding feast of Heaven? We must cut out those things in our lives that take us away from God. We must cut out those things in our lives that prevent us from responding to God.

We cannot say yes to God when we regularly engage in mortal sin. We cannot hear God when our lives are filled with constant noise and distraction. We cannot hear God when we assault our bodies with substances that intoxicate us and divorce us from our ability to think.

We must live lives of purity, chastity, and goodness.

We must live lives of stillness, making time to listen for God in the silence.

We must live lives of sobriety and good choices.

We must live lives so that when we die we can say:

"Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!

Today’s Readings: Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14