How rude is that? You’re being awfully rude! Are you just naturally rude or have you been working at it?

Rude is an interesting word. No one likes to be called rude, especially if we are not trying to be rude. Nevertheless, we are sometimes very rude to one another...often without knowing it.

This Sunday, we have a story personifying rudeness. A king announces a wedding party, but the invited guests do not show up. Isn’t that rude, especially when a king invites?

After a second invitation, the guests had, so to speak, more important things to do: go to the farm, go to one’s home or business. Some just ignored the invitation. Even some of the servants were killed.

Jesus tells this story to illustrate a point. The king invites the people to a rich banquet – a banquet filled with all that we could possibly want. In the story, the king is God inviting us to his heavenly kingdom, a kingdom that will provide all that we could ever hope for.

God’s kingdom begins here on earth. It’s called the People of God, the Church, God’s people joined together in that kingdom begun here on earth reaching its fulfillment in heaven.

The erosion of participation in Church life that we have witnessed over the past 40 years replicates very well what we heard about in today’s Gospel. God gives us a weekly invitation to come to his feast, but so many are living in a parallel universe laden with excuses for not showing up.

We, meaning you, need to keep inviting people to come and worship together. After all, our religion is not a private affair. Even going back into the Old Testament, we see that worship was meant to be public and communal in addition to private worship.

Don’t say something like: “I don’t want to hound them because it might turn them off.” God does not stop hounding us even when we turn him off. Your voice expresses your faith and your concern for others. Do the advertising executives at McDonald’s say: “We had better stop advertising because we don’t want to turn off our customers.” No, they clearly state why we should go to McDonald’s. Do you ever say to your child: “Well, I think you should stop studying. After all, I don’t want you to wear out your brain.”

Accepting God’s invitation is not a matter of saying yes once and then forgetting all about it. Accepting God’s invitation resembles the “I do” of marriage. The “I do” does not end the process, rather it begins the process. Saying yes to God is not graduating from school. After all, graduation does not end one’s learning but should be the first step towards further learning.