Why did Christ speak of a wedding feast after condemning the priests?
After the priests withdraw in anger, Christ turns to the people with a new parable — revealing that the Synagogue will give place to a universal Kingdom of both justice and mercy.
Editor’s Notes
The following commentary deals with the Gospel read on the 19th Sunday after Pentecost.
Delivered in Holy Week, after Christ’s triumphal entry and His denunciation of the Pharisees. The chief priests had just withdrawn in anger after the parables of the Two Sons and the Wicked Husbandmen.
Our Lord reveals the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, warning that even those admitted to His Church must retain the “wedding garment” of faith and obedience. The parable, which is a development of that of the great banquet, moves from the sentence upon the Jewish nation to the moral conditions of belonging to the new Kingdom.
It marks a transition from judgment to instruction – Christ discloses both the generosity and the severity of the Gospel. The new covenant is universal, merciful, and regal, yet demands much from its subjects. For the faithful, it is a warning that outward profession without inward disposition ends in exclusion.
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How our Lord’s teaching turns from judgment to instruction, after the chief priests withdraw in anger and fear.
That He now reveals the transfer of the Kingdom from the rejected Synagogue to a new people—the heirs of Abraham by faith.
Why His next parable, the Wedding Feast, raises the dignity of the Gospel call and warns of royal justice within divine mercy.
He shows us that the rejected priests depart, but the King remains—laying the foundations of His new and universal Kingdom.
The Wedding of the King’s Son
From
Passiontide, Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. VI, pp 91-114
St. Matt. xxii. 1-14; Story of the Gospels, § 137.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost)
The priests retiring
We have seen that after the parables of which we have lately spoken had been delivered by our Lord, the Chief Priests had left Him in indignation. They had discerned plainly enough the intention with which those parables had been spoken. At the same time, they could not help fearing for themselves if they made any open attempt upon Him in the presence of the people.
We may suppose, then, that He was left by them in comparative peace for the rest of the time which could be given to teaching on that day, and that He employed it, as was His wont, in instructing the people in the Temple. His teaching would thus fall back on to its usual lines, though it would to some extent be modified in character by the circumstances of the time and occasion on which He was teaching. It must be remembered, then, in studying the parable now before us, how momentous that time and that occasion were.
The parable which had just been delivered had conveyed to the priests with very little ambiguity indeed, the truth that the Jewish Synagogue was now rejected by God; that the Kingdom of God, that the system in which the true religion, the promises, the hopes of the human race, were all bound up, and through which the special means of grace belonging to that religion had been opened to the faithful was now to be transferred to another people, who were to become the true children of Abraham and heirs of the blessings allotted to his race.
And this solemn sentence had been pronounced in the Temple itself, by the King who had lately entered it in triumph in the name of the Lord, amid the Hosannas of the multitudes. It had been communicated to the Chief Priests, as the representatives of the holy nation, and had been understood by them almost in its full significance. Moreover, the solemnity which had taken place in the Temple had been an offering to God on the part of our Lord of Himself as the Victim for the Redemption of the world, in the sacrifice which was so speedily to be consummated on the Cross.
Under such circumstances, the teaching of our Lord in the Temple assumed a new character. He had not simply to declare the annulling of the former and figurative system, but to lay down the principles and conditions of the new order of things which was to succeed in its fulfilment to the Old Law.
That system was to be wide, and large, indulgent, full of mercy and grace, of life and spirit, it was not to be exclusive or severe, or hard in its requirements and obligations, its yoke was to be light, and its burden sweet, and yet, with all these elements of condescension, it was a Kingdom, the system of a King, and, as the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen had set forth the chastisement of those who had been disobedient under the former system, so there was to be in the new system a royal way of dealing with the presumptuous and disobedient.
Our Lord continues his teaching
The teaching of the parable which immediately follows in the first Evangelist seems exactly to correspond to these conditions under which our Lord was now speaking.
It is not one of those which were directly addressed to the Chief Priests, as distinct from the people. At the same time, it seems to refer to the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen which had just been delivered, in a manner which shows that the particular lesson of the former was still before our Lord’s mind as important to all. The people seem to have been present as well as the Chief Priests when the former was spoken. But the reference to the chastisement of the Wicked Husbandmen is here only introduced in a parenthetic manner.
The more important part of the parable is probably the concluding section, for the sake of which it was perhaps spoken on this occasion, and this section requires the former portion as its foundation. It is also remarkable that the parable before us is in some degree a repetition of that of the Great Supper, which St. Luke places at an earlier stage of our Lord’s teaching. That is, the substance is the same in both parables, though there are many important changes, as might be expected from the circumstances of the time.
The Parable of the Great Supper had not, as far as we know, been delivered in public. It was spoken by our Lord when He was in the house of the friendly Pharisee, and therefore to a comparatively limited audience.1 Above all, it was not spoken after our Lord had assumed, what we may call the character of judge. We shall point out the variations which our Lord introduced, now that He was speaking to the people collected in the Temple, after the beginning of the Week of His Passion, and then give a short commentary on this its second version, as it may be called.
Parable of the Wedding Feast
‘And Jesus answering, spoke again in parables to them, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a King, who made a marriage for his son.’ In the former parable, it is only, ‘A certain man made a great supper and invited many.’ The circumstances are therefore raised in dignity—the man becomes a king, and the feast is not merely a great supper, but a wedding feast for the son of the king.
‘And he sent his servants to call them that were invited to the marriage, and they would not come.’ This summoning of the guests who had been invited at the time of the feast itself, seems to belong to the customs of the Oriental nations. In this parable, it is merely said that the guests would not come. In the former parable, we are told that ‘they began at once to make excuse’—and the excuses are given in detail.
‘The first said, I have bought a farm, and must needs go out and see it, and another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to try them, and another said, I have married a wife.’ This last says, ‘Therefore I cannot come,’ and the others each begged to be excused. In the present parable, although it is a king who invites them on so special an occasion, there are no excuses made, but there is a simple refusal to come.
Another very significant difference is that in this later version of the same narrative, the King, notwithstanding his dignity, condescends to send again to pray the guests to come, whereas in the former it is never open to those who have once refused to regain their opportunity.
‘Again he sent other servants, saying, Tell them that were invited, Behold, my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready, come ye to the wedding. But they neglected, and went their ways, the one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.’ Nor is it simply a case of neglect.
‘And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having contumeliously treated them, put them to death.’ This then is something entirely new, as far as the comparison between the two parables is concerned, and it appears, as we have said, to be a reminiscence of what has been lately said by our Lord in the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.
And it is followed by another entirely new feature, in keeping with it, for our Lord adds, ‘But when the King had heard of it he was angry, and sending his armies he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city.’ These details would have been out of place in the former parable, where the host, whose invitation had been slighted, is a simple individual without authority or power.
It is only said there that the master of the house was told of these things, that is, of the excuses of the invited guests, and was angry at it—so much as to declare that none of those who were invited should taste of his supper. The vengeance in the later parable is quite in keeping with the kingly character of the host, in consequence of which the rudeness of the guests in the former parable becomes an insult to authority and a disloyalty in the parable now before us.
The sequel to the refusal of the guests is more fully drawn out in the parable in St. Luke than in that before us. There the master of the house says to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said to the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. But I say unto you, that none of those men that were invited shall taste of my supper.
In the present parable, there is one sending out into the highways and no more. ‘Then saith he to his servants, The marriage is ready, but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good, and the marriage was filled with guests.’
A new part added
We now come to the last portion of the parable before us, which is entirely new and has no counterpart in the former. ‘And the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he said to him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters, Bind his hands and feet and cast him into the exterior darkness—there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
‘For,’ our Lord adds, ‘many are called, but few are chosen.’ This then is what we gather from a comparison between the two parables, and we have now to explain the several truths which may be found set forth in them.
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The Wedding of the King’s Son
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St. Luke xiv. 15–24; Story of the Gospels, § 112.
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