Vulnerable Love!

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Jud 11:29-39a; Mt 22:1-14

Today’s Gospel highlights the vulnerable love of the King in The Parable of the Wedding Banquet. 

The King’s generous invitation is met with refusal, presumption, and disrespect – all with a callous attitude that betrays a severe lack of inner disposition and reverence.

The Refusal: Those who had accepted the King’s invitation to the banquet now find no reason to go. Forgetting their duty to honor the invitation, they cite reasons like farm and business to reject it now. Their attitude shows that they are not merely impolite but rebel against the one who has been kind, thoughtful, and generous. The problem here is that they deny King’s invitation by choosing lesser important things. Hence, their refusal is firm and premeditated against the one who eagerly awaits to be honored by their presence.

The Presumption: The refusal by the invitees reeks of presumption too. In their arrogance, they mistake that the repeated reminders of the King only manifest his weakness, forgetting really that the powerful King truly makes himself vulnerable for the sake of the company and presence that he seeks. Moreover, their refusal also becomes violent. The invitation becomes offensive, and therefore the King’s messengers are mistreated. Sadly, the invitation that must have been accepted with humility is now treated with hostility. 

The Disrespect: The invitees who respond with refusal and presumption mean a profound disrespect, and this is why the King punishes them severely and gets rid of them. Now, when the invitation is extended to all indiscriminately, though the bad and good alike respond, one person’s appearance reveals his irreverent behaviour. If the ‘wedding garment’ symbolizes inner disposition, respect, and seriousness, the person lacks it completely. In other words, he came to the banquet on his terms, not the King’s. 

The King who makes himself vulnerable for love is made to suffer presumption, hostility, and disrespect. 

The King’s life becomes a testament to the fact that true love is a virtue of the brave. It is only that they make themselves vulnerable for the sake of love. Hence, we must be careful not to equate love with weakness and kindness with inability. 

Let us pray that we may become vulnerable for the sake of love. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar