The Church of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul shared a reflection on Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast.

"In this passage, Jesus tells the story of a king who is hosting a wedding banquet for his son," Bro. Silas Henderson said in the church's Oct. 11 bulletin. "Even though the invitation is from the king, the invited guests decline to attend."

While the king tries to be gracious and to offer the guests another opportunity to attend, they still ignore the invitation. 

"What was the king to do?" Henderson asked. "His son was still to be married and the banquet tables had been laid. He orders his troops to punish the people who attacked his servants. But, more significantly, he told his servants to go out 'into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.'" 

The king was willing to throw away all decorum and turn his back on the guests that had been so ungrateful in order to fill his table with guests who were grateful to be invited to the feast. 

“Although the king would have known that the rich and poor, local people and foreigners, the well and sick would have been in the banquet hall; he still singles out a man whom he feels is not appropriately dressed for the occasion, and he has him thrown out of the hall into the dark of night,” Henderson said.

While this may seem unfair given the fact that no conditions were provided to the guests, Jesus is getting at a more important message. Though the people invited were from all walks of life and were invited without regard for their status, they were still expected to prepare themselves for the banquet. 

In the same way, if we fail to clothe ourselves with the correct virtues— humility, grace, forgiveness, love and more— we may find ourselves unworthy of being invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.