God at the Center of Our Lives!

Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Rom 12:5-16; Lk 14:15-24

In today’s Gospel, Jesus helps us understand the need to place God at the center of our lives. 

The parable of the wedding feast contains several layers of meaning in its construction. 

Failure: The invitees accept the invitation. But when the reminder is given to them by the host, they begin to make excuses. They fail to keep their promise. 

Offense: The invitees offend the host with the sort of excuses they make. The first man who has bought a field wants to examine it. Do we examine a field before or after buying it? The same question holds true for the one who has bought five yoke of oxen. The lame excuses to boycott the invitation imply deliberate insult and disrespect of the host. 

Lack of Priority: The third man lacks priority when it comes to honoring the host. As a result, he lets his marriage serve as a substitute for disregarding the invitation. 

Jesus helps us see the curse of denying the Divine Invitation. It is not that God will curse us, but we curse ourselves by ignoring it. When God is not the center of our lives, something meaningless and irrelevant will overwhelm us, so that our ruin may be inevitable. 

When the chosen ones boycott God’s invitation, He gladly extends it to all others, sometimes even compelling them to accept such blessedness. 

If God is at the center of our lives, we will be able to see the blessings the invitation contains!

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar