Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord as well as the Sunday of the Forefathers, i. e. all of the Old Testament righteous men and women who waited for the coming of the Christ.

On this penultimate Sunday before the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, we always read the same Gospel reading, the parable of the bidden guests to the supper. This is not by chance, since this parable is about the coming of Christ, about the birth of the Saviour Jesus. Let’s quickly remember that in this parable the Man is God the Father; the Servant is the Son of God; those who were bidden are the devout Jews, the priests, the pharisees; the poor are the simple Jews, those who would become the apostles; and finally those found on the highways and by the hedges are the gentiles who accepted the message of Christ. The supper is the Church, the Kingdom of Heaven. When the Servant is sent to call the guests, this is the birth of Jesus and His earthly ministry. The various excuses are the earthly cares that made the Jews unable to accept the call of Christ and lead to their rejection of the Heavenly Kingdom.

Without a doubt these words can also be applied to each of us. Although we are baptized members of the Church, few of us would say we are confident that we will be admitted to the supper. Those excuses that we heard today in the Gospel are very familiar to us. We use them or other very similar excuses all the time to justify our cold attitude towards spiritual struggle. All of us have good reasons why we can’t struggle. Unfortunately, as we see from today’s Gospel reading, even good reasons for not struggling spiritually (that is, not sloth or boredom or other vices that separate us from God) may cause us to lose the Kingdom of God.

Usually during the time leading up to a feastday we begin to fuss over worldly things. We need to clean and decorate the house, prepare food, finish up our chores at work so as to take a day off for the feast, etc. Therefore, let’s consider that today’s Gospel excerpt is saying the following to us: Come to your senses! Christ is to be born in Bethlehem any moment and is calling you to a great supper, a spiritual feast. Therefore take heed. Don’t be bogged down by worldly things. Put your earthly cares aside and think at least for a moment about your soul. Through the prayers of all the Old Testament righteous men and women, may our Lord God grant us the strength to spend the rest of the days of the Nativity Fast in such a way that we will in truth eat at that wonderful supper.

priest Alexis