Matthew 22,1-14.
 This parable is a composite version of a simpler story about a wedding invitation found in Lk 14,15,24, with two other stories added by Matthew – the king’s revenge on the ungrateful and violent invitees, and the expulsion of the guest without a wedding garment.
Jesus’ audience is the chief priests and the elders, who have already rejected his preaching and teaching. Wedding imagery was commonly used for the messianic times, (ends times), by contemporary Jewish thought of the time, so it would be quite familiar to Jesus’ hearers. The meal is a royal wedding feast. The invited guests turn down the invitation for their own selfish reasons. Those who ill-treat and kill the servants receive a similar treatment from the irate king. Those first invitees represent the Jewish people who rejected Jesus’ offer of salvation. By their refusal to respond positively to his invitation they prove themselves unworthy of being part of the wedding feast
The invitees from the crossroads, chosen to replace them, are the Gentiles, and these are both good and bad.  The wedding guest who hadn’t a wedding garment is one of those bad people who failed to prepare himself properly for the wedding feast. It was common courtesy that a wedding guest be dressed in clean and preferably white clothing. The wedding garment is symbol of right living in keeping with God’s call, invitation, will and values.
The king’s entry into the wedding feast is a moment of judgement for the ill-clad guest and a reminder of what will happen to those who face the final judgement ill-prepared, i.e without the clothing of right living, in harmony with God and people.
Some of the first group of invited guests rejected the invitation because they gave priority to their own business interests over the invitation. Many people reject God’s invitation today because they are too busy with more pressing private matters of their own, like making money, gaining power, prestige, celebrity status, or pleasure. Others of the first group rejected the invitation with a violent reaction involving the murder of the servants. Throughout the gospels we witness violent reactions to Jesus’ preaching and teaching culminating eventually in his death on the cross. It should not surprise us if the same violent reactions to the good news arise today from people opposed to the message of the gospel or disinterested in the claims of religion.
Today’s gospel challenges all Christians to look at the way they present the invitations of Jesus to their contemporaries and to our modern world.  Are we so obsessed with bad news that we have forgotten how to tell the good news?
St John Paul II called for a new language, new methods, and a new enthusiasm for the new evangelization. Have you discovered them?
Have we reduced the story of God’s love and call to a series of boring platitudes devoid of the joy, the love, the energy and the wonder with which the gospels throb?
The market-place or crossroads in the town was the place where the second group received their invitation to the wedding feast.  Do we go out into the equivalent of the market-place today to share the good news of the gospel with people, or do we wait until they come into church to hear it?
Can you think of new  imaginative methods  or means for presenting the gospel message to our world today?
 Have you ever tried to make the good news of the gospel known to your work colleagues?
Father Geoff O’Grady