'How camest thou in hither?' The Wedding of the King’s Son
Who are the first guests, why did they refuse to come, and why did they kill the messengers? Why did the king burn their city, and what is the wedding garment? Father Henry James Coleridge explains.
The Wedding of the King’s Son
From
Passiontide, Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. VI, pp 91-114
St. Matt. xxii. 1-14; Story of the Gospels, § 137.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost)
In this chapter…
Context of this Gospel passage (Holy Week, rising tensions)
What the ‘wedding garment’ represents, conditions for membership of the Church, and ‘Putting on Christ’
Charity and schism—and how schismatics act.
The priests retiring
We have seen that after the parables of which we have lately spoken had been delivered by our Lord, the Chief Priests had left Him in indignation. They had discerned plainly enough the intention with which those parables had been spoken. At the same time, they could not help fearing for themselves if they made any open attempt upon Him in the presence of the people.
We may suppose, then, that He was left by them in comparative peace for the rest of the time which could be given to teaching on that day, and that He employed it, as was His wont, in instructing the people in the Temple. His teaching would thus fall back on to its usual lines, though it would to some extent be modified in character by the circumstances of the time and occasion on which He was teaching. It must be remembered, then, in studying the parable now before us, how momentous that time and that occasion were.
The parable which had just been delivered had conveyed to the priests with very little ambiguity indeed, the truth that the Jewish Synagogue was now rejected by God; that the Kingdom of God, that the system in which the true religion, the promises, the hopes of the human race, were all bound up, and through which the special means of grace belonging to that religion had been opened to the faithful was now to be transferred to another people, who were to become the true children of Abraham and heirs of the blessings allotted to his race.
And this solemn sentence had been pronounced in the Temple itself, by the King who had lately entered it in triumph in the name of the Lord, amid the Hosannas of the multitudes. It had been communicated to the Chief Priests, as the representatives of the holy nation, and had been understood by them almost in its full significance. Moreover, the solemnity which had taken place in the Temple had been an offering to God on the part of our Lord of Himself as the Victim for the Redemption of the world, in the sacrifice which was so speedily to be consummated on the Cross.
Under such circumstances, the teaching of our Lord in the Temple assumed a new character. He had not simply to declare the annulling of the former and figurative system, but to lay down the principles and conditions of the new order of things which was to succeed in its fulfilment to the Old Law.
That system was to be wide, and large, indulgent, full of mercy and grace, of life and spirit, it was not to be exclusive or severe, or hard in its requirements and obligations, its yoke was to be light, and its burden sweet, and yet, with all these elements of condescension, it was a Kingdom, the system of a King, and, as the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen had set forth the chastisement of those who had been disobedient under the former system, so there was to be in the new system a royal way of dealing with the presumptuous and disobedient.
Our Lord continues his teaching
The teaching of the parable which immediately follows in the first Evangelist seems exactly to correspond to these conditions under which our Lord was now speaking.
It is not one of those which were directly addressed to the Chief Priests, as distinct from the people. At the same time, it seems to refer to the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen which had just been delivered, in a manner which shows that the particular lesson of the former was still before our Lord’s mind as important to all. The people seem to have been present as well as the Chief Priests when the former was spoken. But the reference to the chastisement of the Wicked Husbandmen is here only introduced in a parenthetic manner.
The more important part of the parable is probably the concluding section, for the sake of which it was perhaps spoken on this occasion, and this section requires the former portion as its foundation. It is also remarkable that the parable before us is in some degree a repetition of that of the Great Supper, which St. Luke places at an earlier stage of our Lord’s teaching. That is, the substance is the same in both parables, though there are many important changes, as might be expected from the circumstances of the time.
The Parable of the Great Supper had not, as far as we know, been delivered in public. It was spoken by our Lord when He was in the house of the friendly Pharisee, and therefore to a comparatively limited audience.1 Above all, it was not spoken after our Lord had assumed, what we may call the character of judge. We shall point out the variations which our Lord introduced, now that He was speaking to the people collected in the Temple, after the beginning of the Week of His Passion, and then give a short commentary on this its second version, as it may be called.
Parable of the Wedding Feast
‘And Jesus answering, spoke again in parables to them, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a King, who made a marriage for his son.’ In the former parable, it is only, ‘A certain man made a great supper and invited many.’ The circumstances are therefore raised in dignity—the man becomes a king, and the feast is not merely a great supper, but a wedding feast for the son of the king.
‘And he sent his servants to call them that were invited to the marriage, and they would not come.’ This summoning of the guests who had been invited at the time of the feast itself, seems to belong to the customs of the Oriental nations. In this parable, it is merely said that the guests would not come. In the former parable, we are told that ‘they began at once to make excuse’—and the excuses are given in detail.
‘The first said, I have bought a farm, and must needs go out and see it, and another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to try them, and another said, I have married a wife.’ This last says, ‘Therefore I cannot come,’ and the others each begged to be excused. In the present parable, although it is a king who invites them on so special an occasion, there are no excuses made, but there is a simple refusal to come.
Another very significant difference is that in this later version of the same narrative, the King, notwithstanding his dignity, condescends to send again to pray the guests to come, whereas in the former it is never open to those who have once refused to regain their opportunity.
‘Again he sent other servants, saying, Tell them that were invited, Behold, my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready, come ye to the wedding. But they neglected, and went their ways, the one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.’ Nor is it simply a case of neglect.
‘And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having contumeliously treated them, put them to death.’ This then is something entirely new, as far as the comparison between the two parables is concerned, and it appears, as we have said, to be a reminiscence of what has been lately said by our Lord in the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.
And it is followed by another entirely new feature, in keeping with it, for our Lord adds, ‘But when the King had heard of it he was angry, and sending his armies he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city.’ These details would have been out of place in the former parable, where the host, whose invitation had been slighted, is a simple individual without authority or power.
It is only said there that the master of the house was told of these things, that is, of the excuses of the invited guests, and was angry at it—so much as to declare that none of those who were invited should taste of his supper. The vengeance in the later parable is quite in keeping with the kingly character of the host, in consequence of which the rudeness of the guests in the former parable becomes an insult to authority and a disloyalty in the parable now before us.
The sequel to the refusal of the guests is more fully drawn out in the parable in St. Luke than in that before us. There the master of the house says to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said to the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. But I say unto you, that none of those men that were invited shall taste of my supper.
In the present parable, there is one sending out into the highways and no more. ‘Then saith he to his servants, The marriage is ready, but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, call to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good, and the marriage was filled with guests.’
A new part added
We now come to the last portion of the parable before us, which is entirely new and has no counterpart in the former. ‘And the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he said to him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters, Bind his hands and feet and cast him into the exterior darkness—there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
‘For,’ our Lord adds, ‘many are called, but few are chosen.’ This then is what we gather from a comparison between the two parables, and we have now to explain the several truths which may be found set forth in them.
We need make but little question that the banquet to which the guests are here invited is the feast on the Gospel blessings, which is set forth by God in the Church. This involves, for those who enjoy it lawfully and profitably, the further banquet on the ineffable blessings of the Heavenly Kingdom.
But it is something present, which is to be accepted and entered upon here and now, as is evident, if from nothing else, from the exclusion of the unworthy guest, and the declaration with which our Lord concludes His teaching, that the called are many, but the chosen or elect few. In the former parable our Lord had spoken to the guests at an entertainment to which He was Himself invited, and when one of those present had been apparently so moved by His gracious conversation that He could not refrain from exclaiming, ‘Blessed are they that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God!’
Here there was no such invitation to speak. But our Lord seems to have desired to teach the privileges of the Gospel banquet, and He does so in language which goes beyond what He had before used, both, as has been pointed out, in the matter of the magnificence of the occasion, for it is the wedding of the king’s son of which He now speaks in which all the guests seem to have been provided, or to have provided themselves with fitting robes, and in the obligatory character of the invitation on those who had received it.
Comparison with the former parable
Thus, then, in the earlier parable there is no punishment beyond the exclusion from the banquet for those who were so foolish as to despise it, and when they did so it seems to have been with a certain air of liberty and equality between themselves and their inviter which is altogether wanting in the later parable. There would be something rude in saying to a king, ‘I pray thee hold me excused,’ on account of ordinary employments.
Our Lord then adds this further line to the teaching which He had already delivered, by making it the command of a sovereign which is neglected or despised. This teaching implies the truth that the acceptance of the Gospel privileges is obligatory, although it is left within the power of the human will to turn away from them when they are brought home to it, for we are responsible to our Maker and Judge for the choice which we make, although He does not now force us to make the choice that is right.
For we are His creatures and belong to Him by an absolute dominion, which has no parallel in creation, and we have no right, though we have the power, being free, to disobey His commands, even if they were hard and unprofitable to ourselves. On the other hand, we see in the comparative magnificence of the banquet in this last parable some allusion to the truth that now, after the Day of Palms, on which the great Sacrifice of our Lord was practically and formally begun, He speaks of the wedding feast of the King’s Son, and seems to invite our thoughts to dwell on all the riches and splendours of grace that are laid before us in the Church, all of them flowing from and being applications of the fruits of that Sacrifice.
Advance in doctrine
We seem to see a further advance in the doctrine of this parable over that of the former, in the measure that is dealt out by the great justice of God to those who decline His invitation, and thus put themselves in the position of rebels against Him.
It seems a strange thing that persons invited in the way here mentioned, and to so great an honour and blessing as the sharing in the wedding supper of the son of a king, should not only neglect the invitation and treat it with indifference, but should go on further to heaping insult and contumely on the messengers, and even still further, to the putting them to death. There is nothing of this kind in the former parable.
There the neglectful guests allege the excuses that have been mentioned, and these are so framed by our Lord as to embrace the three great concupiscences, which are the springs in human nature of everything that debases and degrades it, and turns away the mind, which is given to man to feed on the things of God, down to the lower pleasures and the interests and ambitions of this world.
A feature from the Wicked Husbandment
In the second parable our Lord takes a feature from the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, and adds it to the picture as drawn before. The great work of Redemption has been begun, the time is come for the Passion of the Son of Man by which that Redemption is to be wrought. The message which invites mankind to share in the Gospel feast necessarily includes the acceptance of the Gospel revelation of the great mercies of God through Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.
It involves the obligation of obedience to His Law and the following of His example, as well as the enjoyment of the privileges won by the Precious Blood. It involves, therefore, faith, submission, obedience, humility, mortification, penitence, a life above the world, a trampling on all that the world and the flesh hold dear. It is a message, therefore, which the natural man hates, which the world abhors and makes war upon, because its own fallacies and impostures are exposed thereby.
So it is true, in the actual history of which this parable is the figure, that the messengers of the great King are not only disregarded and neglected, but insulted, ill-treated, or even slain. And now that our Lord has just spoken of the execution of the terrible sentence upon the Jewish nation for the guilt which it was to incur by His own murder, it is natural that He should no longer hold back this truth, even though, under other circumstances, it might have seemed out of place in this parable.
He adds, therefore, both the circumstance of the ill-treatment and murder of the messengers of God, deputed to bring to men the glad tidings of their salvation, and also the judgment that would fall on those who so dealt with them, in their temporal punishment even in this world. This seems to be the explanation of the King sending his armies, destroying the murderers, and burning up their cities.
Warning conveyed
The direct course of the parable is interrupted by our Lord for the purpose of introducing the outrages inflicted on the messengers of the King as well as the punishment of the offenders. It looks at first sight as if this might be merely a reminiscence of the Parable of the Husbandmen, inserted by our Lord for the sake of connecting the two in the minds of the hearers.
But we can see that it is not merely a reminiscence. It is also a warning. And it will surely be wisdom not to pass over this lesson in considering this parable, not to forget to call to mind the truth that the good message of the Gospel, with all its graciousness and beauty, its fair promises of ineffable happiness and strength and recompense, must always find in us, as long as we are in the flesh, something which is stirred up by it to hostility and rebellion.
For it is not only a message which nature does not care for, as something spiritual and too high for us, but also which speaks with authority and enjoins obedience, and implies mortification of all that is natural in submitting to it, and threatens, moreover, chastisement if we do not yield it obedience. To strive against the stream of the world while we are in it, and to fix our gaze on the things which are heavenly and eternal while we are beset by the things of sense, which pass away—this requires an effort and a continuance of exertion by which our natural feebleness and inconsistency, our need of novelty and variety, are overtasked.
And if our Lord seems to go out of His way to introduce this feature in His teaching, still it is in truth a necessary feature in any accurate picture of our present condition. Our Lord is preparing us beforehand for the feature of the ‘man without a wedding garment.’ There is therefore something more than a history of the past in the chastisement of these first offenders against the King, who refused his invitation.
The bidden guests
Our Lord proceeds with the parable on the lines on which it had first been delivered. In His former teaching He had seemed to draw the distinction between the first and second sending of the servants to bring in guests, first into the streets and lanes, and then into the highways and hedges, and something has been said in the proper place as to the truths which may be illustrated by the distinction.
There is in the first parable more stress laid on the desire of the lord that his house may be filled at any cost, save that of bringing in those who had been in the first instance invited. In the present parable there is less on this head. The first bidden guests are declared to be unworthy, and the servants are sent out to the highways to bring in all that they find. They gather together all, ‘good and bad,’ it is especially said, ‘and the marriage is filled with guests.’
Here the great truth is set forth once again, that the law of substitution characterizes the Kingdom of God. That law is always being enforced, but it was never to be more signally enforced than in the first age of the Church, in the rejection of the Jews and the vocation of the Gentiles, for which our Lord seems at this time to have been anxious to prepare the minds of the disciples.
The truth had, indeed, been enunciated at the very beginning of the Gospel preaching, when St. John Baptist had warned the Jews against the danger of trusting their ancestors alone as sufficient to secure for them the benefits of the Kingdom, ‘for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.’ But the more immediate point of doctrine which forms the principal feature in this parable, is the truth that not even admission to all the Gospel privileges is enough unless they are received and used with the required dispositions, and on the conditions laid down by God. This is set forth in the concluding section of the parable.
The King going in
‘And the King went in to see the guests. And he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he said to him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the King said to the waiters, Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
The action of the King going in to see or look upon the guests seems to imply that the banquet was not possibly to begin without it, as if there was a certain examination to be made of the guests, or as if the King was to have the satisfaction of gazing upon them and welcoming them.
This Greek word,2 used for ‘seeing,’ often seems to be used in the sense of considering and enjoying the sight as something rare or at least pleasurable. There can be no doubt that in this context it signifies something of the same kind—the scrutinizing look under which all the guests in the Gospel Kingdom will have passed before they begin to enjoy it, as well as the delight which God will vouchsafe to take in the saints when they are at last assembled together for the happiness of Heaven.
But there are many intimations in this passage that the parable describes, not the ultimate enjoyment of the Heavenly Feast so much as the banquet of good things, blessings, and graces almost without end, that are the inheritance of the children of the Church here below.
The ‘wedding garment’
We are bid to remember that the enjoyment of the earthly privileges of the Church has its own certain conditions. The admittance into the Church is entrusted to men, who cannot know the heart, and may therefore be deceived, and even deceive themselves. And our Lord does not extend this parable so as to make it a picture of that judgment of God on each human soul, on all human souls collectively, which is to take place at the Particular or General Judgment.
But there are certain conditions of admission to the Church which are not simply interior, and which may therefore be noticed by all, as this man was conspicuously different from the other guests. The Jews knew well enough who was and who was not formally admitted to the privileges of the Synagogue. There must be something corresponding to this in the new kingdom, unless—which is contrary to the truth—we consider it as an entirely interior and spiritual kingdom.
But such a kingdom could not contain both ‘bad and good,’ as our Lord says, nor could any one be in it without a ‘wedding garment.’ We have therefore to consider what this necessary condition may be, without which, as our Lord here teaches us, we are to have no right to the privileges of His Kingdom.
Meaning of the parable
The ‘wedding garment,’ which this one of the guests did not wear, must be the necessary qualification to the banquet which, as has been said, represents the feast of good things which is set before us in the Church now, which good things are to ensure us hereafter the possession of God in Heaven.
It is said that in Eastern countries it is the custom for the guests of a sovereign on solemn occasions to have precious robes given them to wear, and these robes may be presented to them as their own, or placed on them when they enter the presence of the King, to be worn as long as they are there. Those who are without them must therefore have refused to wear them, and be guilty in consequence of some disrespect. We should think it disrespectful, in a similar case, not to put on our best clothes for the entertainment given us by a prince, and if there were any uniform dress or decoration required by custom at such times, we should consider it an offence not to wear it.
This seems to be the offence attributed to the presumptuous guest. He answers to men who think, because the doors of the Christian Church are opened so wide that all may come in, because the faithful servants of the King are, by His order, so eager to bring in all, whosoever they may be, that therefore the treasures which she offers so freely to all are to be enjoyed without loyal submission to her rules as a society and a kingdom. In the earthly feasts given by sovereigns, no one ever ventures to disregard the laws and rules by which such banquets are governed.
Our Lord would have us, in using the blessings He has given us in the Church, remember that we are in the Presence of the King of kings, Who, indeed, gives Himself to us with ineffable love and tenderness, but Whose majesty must never be forgotten, nor Whose least prescription, or what seems such, be trifled with.
Conditions of membership of the Church
Thus our Lord Himself has said, ‘He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved, and he that believeth not, shall be condemned,’3 and that, ‘Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.’4 Here are conditions laid down by our Lord Himself for citizenship in the New Kingdom. St. Paul adds, explaining the precept of faith, ‘This is the word of faith, which we preach. For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart, we believe unto justice, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.’5
These are some of the laws of the Kingdom, and simple as they seem, they involve the obligation of complete obedience to all that the Church teaches us as necessary for belief and practice, an obedience which is treasonably and rebelliously violated by the slightest wilful dereliction against what may seem the least article of doctrine or the least precept of government.
It is not necessary to draw out in this place the whole doctrine in detail of what are the essential conditions for acquiring and maintaining membership in the Catholic Church. It is enough to say that there are such conditions, and that they seem to be here signified by our Lord under the image of the ‘wedding garment.’ There seems to be some apparent harshness in the exclusion of the guest before us, for it is imagined that his want of the wedding garment was no fault of his own, and the like. The supposition would probably be seen to be wrong by any one acquainted with the customs to which our Lord refers.
But in the truth which is depicted by the parable, there is no question at all. The conditions on which the privileges of the Church are received, are open to all, and no one can forfeit these privileges except by presumptuous and contemptuous disobedience to her, such as is seen in the sin of heresy, which consists in departing from her faith, or in the sin of schism, which consists in rebellion against her law of unity and authority.
In this matter, as in others, which are touched on by our Lord, especially in this last period of His teaching, He seems to have contented Himself with putting forth a great principle in a few words. He leaves to His children this warning of the ‘wedding garment.’ Later in the New Testament we find this doctrine expanded, like many others, by St. Paul, and the other Apostles, whose teaching about external offences against the Church is founded upon the truth here set forth.
Passage of St. Jude
We may trace, perhaps, the very language of this parable in the passage of St. Jude in which he speaks so strongly of the heresies of his own day, where he seems to refer to the agape, or Christian feasts, and to the persons whom he denounces as defiling those feasts by their presence. ‘They are spots on your banquets, feasting together without fear,’ as this presumptuous guest is said by our Lord to have presented himself at the marriage supper.
As was natural for the purpose of his Epistle, St. Jude speaks principally of heretics and rebels against Church authority. Heresy in those days was usually accompanied by immorality. ‘They defile the flesh, despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty… These men blaspheme whatever things they have not, and what things soever they naturally have, like dumb beasts, in them they are corrupted.’ He compares them to Cain, Balaam, and the companions of Core. ‘They are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouths speaking proud things.’
The Apostles had already warned Christians against them. ‘Be mindful, my dearly beloved, of the words which have been spoken before by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who told you that in the last’ time men should come mocking, walking according to their own desires in ungodliness. These are they who separate themselves, sensual men, not having the Spirit.’6
He warns the faithful against them, and bids them carefully distinguish between them, for all are not so extremely bad. Some are to be treated with indulgence, in order that it may win them back. St. Jude’s Epistle is largely founded on passages in the Second Epistle of St. Peter, who speaks of the same class of offenders, who are also denounced in the Epistles of St. John and St. Paul. There can be no doubt that these Apostles are speaking of external offenders against Church authority, and not of men whose sins were solely internal.
Other meanings
But there are so many beautiful interpretations of this parable, that, although the one just given seems on many grounds to be directly intended by our Lord, it may be well to add some considerations which may illustrate other meanings. If the Wedding Supper is considered as the Heavenly Banquet to which Christians hope to come after death, it is of course natural to ask what is meant by the wedding garment which, as we are here taught, is so indispensable.
On this point there may be numberless opinions. It is certain, however, that he who enters, or thinks of entering Heaven with one sin on his conscience unrepented, is thereby unfit for the presence of God. There are many things indeed which, as our faith teaches us, are essential qualifications for the enjoyment of that presence. ‘Without faith no man can please God. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.’
But it would be contrary to Scripture and the Church to think that a man might be saved by faith if he is a breaker of the law in one single point, unless he has duly repented of the sin according to that law. Alas! in how many thousand ways may that law be violated, and so men make themselves guilty of violating the whole! The trials and temptations of men are various, and just as various are the ways in which they may present themselves at the Judgment Day without the wedding garment here spoken of—some for rejecting articles of the faith, some for breaking Unity, some for offences against the natural law, some for breaches of the Commandments of the Church.
The malice of mortal sin may be found wherever there is a precept knowingly violated. There are sins of thought, sins of word, sins of deed, sins of omission, sins occasioned in others, or the sins of others participated in. Any one of these various classes may cause the stain on the soul which presents it to the eye of the Judge without its wedding garment. Nay, even where there is no mortal sin unrepented, there may be venial sins, or sins unexpiated, and the like, which must be atoned for in Purgatory, and till the soul is entirely freed from all these it cannot have on its wedding garment.
The ‘wedding garment’ not always the same
Again, it may fairly be supposed that the wedding garment would not always be the same, it might be of one kind and of one splendour in the case of the great courtiers or officials, and of another in that of private guests. But in all it would mean something that was quite in keeping with the occasion and the majesty of the Sovereign.
It would be in all cases something festive, joyous, gay, representing the ineffable happiness of a soul at peace with God, and on this account we might almost interpret it of Christian joyousness, which cannot co-exist in the soul which has any hidden sin, any discontent, any want of charity, and lack of filial love towards God, any gnawing anxiety, or gloom, or secret aversion from its circumstances or its surroundings.
Such a happy, joyous disposition in life is truly a grace by itself, and the result of a combination of graces and virtues, and the presence in the soul of any conscious fault, unretracted, would kill it. Such is notably the temper of the innocent, happy, pure souls who give themselves to the service of God in those austere religious orders which do so much for His glory and the good of the Church by silent lives of prayer and good works, and the opposite tempers of gloom and constraint, so unlike the ‘wedding garment,’ is often a sign that there is some mischief working, as St. Teresa said she was more afraid of a melancholy nun than of a hundred devils.
‘Putting on Christ’
Nor must we ever forget in our thoughts on this part of the parable how fond the writers of the New Testament are, and especially St. Paul, of the image of putting on our Lord, putting on the new man and putting off the old, and which is sometimes modified as when we are told to put on the whole armour, or panoply, of God, and which is carried out by St. Paul in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, in his famous passage about the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in Heaven, with which we are to be ‘clothed upon’ hereafter, ‘that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life.’7
The Apostles do not quote the actual words of our Lord in their Epistles, but their minds are full of the things He has spoken, and we can trace in their language and their thoughts the influence of the sayings which they remembered. Perhaps the ‘wedding garment’ may have been a favourite thought of theirs, for it would represent in a simple image the whole array of the graces in which Christians must be apparelled, as well as the perfect character of their Master, Whom they were to strive to imitate so perfectly that their lives might represent Him, and reproduce Him, as it were, before the eyes of those whom they were to teach.
The virtues that form the character of our Lord are so much linked one with the other, that it is not easy to imagine that one can exist perfectly in a soul without at least the rudiments and elements of others. And any one great and obstinate fault in the soul, consciously entertained and clung to, is enough to impair other virtues besides that one to which it is directly contrary.
Still, it is true that different men, from their character, their antecedents, and the circumstances and the position in which they find themselves, find it less easy to practice one virtue than another, and in this way there may come to be grave faults against one virtue, while at the same time the soul may be even conspicuous for some others. Sensuality is essentially cruel, yet sensual men are often capable of acts of kindness and generosity. Angry men may be mortified in various ways, and temperate men may be selfish in their demeanour to others.
The one virtue which is called the ‘bond of perfection’ by St. Paul, which seems to keep all the other virtues together, and to be inconsistent with any great fault, is charity.
Temper of schism
But by this must be meant the supernatural charity, the love of God and of man for His sake, not mere humanity, kindness, generosity, sympathy for suffering, and the like. It must be the charity of which St. Augustine speaks when he says, ‘No man can have the charity of God, who does not love the unity of the Church,’ for as the same Saint says elsewhere, ‘Men can have everything else outside the pale of unity, but they cannot have salvation.’
This is often the test which distinguishes false virtue from true. Some men appear to have every kind of grace, till a sour cloud almost of malignity comes over them, when they are reminded of the duty of unity, and the sin of schism. Certainly, there are thousands of schismatics who think themselves members of the one Church, the living, actual existence is as much an article of the Christian Creed as is the unity of God or the Divinity of our Lord, and there can be nothing sour or malignant about such souls while they remain in their ignorance.
But when anything touches a half-hidden fault of which the soul is not unconscious, the angry discomfort which it feels is meant by the mercy of God to arouse it to a sense of its position, to make it look around, and nerve itself up to the sacrifice which charity may entail on it, and in many such souls the words of the Apostle come true, ‘If in anything ye be otherwise minded, this also will God reveal unto you.’8
‘How camest thou in hither?’
We may now turn from the consideration of the various ways in which this expression of our Lord about the wedding garment may be understood to that of the gracious though severe manner in which the King is said to have dealt with his unworthy guest. ‘And the King went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment.’
The man was a ‘spot on the feast,’ as St. Jude speaks, conspicuous among the happy company by something incongruous and unseemly, as one who might go among ourselves into a wedding feast in robes of deepest mourning, or enter a great Court ceremonial in the clothes he may wear while ploughing in the fields or sweeping a chimney.
This may be one of the reasons why our Lord speaks only of one, without meaning us to understand that there will be but one or few unworthy among those who are called to the banquet and obey the invitation. The doctrine which our Lord intends to convey is sufficiently and even more pointedly taught by the one instance, and, as some of the commentators tell us, this manner of setting forth the truth brings it home most closely to each soul, for it is seen that men are not called and admitted and tested in a multitude, but each single soul by itself.
Our Lord speaks as if the King used no sharp rebuke to the offender. ‘Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?’ The poor man had his opportunity given to him of making his excuse and explanation—if there were any to be made. But he is ‘judged out of his own mouth,’ for he has no reply to make to the question.
The great truth which lies behind this is that there will be no question at all when the judgment of God is to be given. The light of the next world reveals all secrets, exposes all subterfuges and evasions, pulverizes all pretences, dissipates all clouds, unravels all webs. There is in the next world hatred of God as well as love, there is aversion from good as well as aversion from evil, misery as well as happiness, despair as well as security. But there is no delusion, no single wicked soul among all God’s enemies who has not seen that he has wilfully rejected his own happiness, and that the measure which God metes out to him is somewhat less than he deserves.
A soul in the condition which is here represented to us parts with all its self-delusions when it passes through death. The false theories about the Church, and about the obligation of faith, and the conditions of salvation, and the rights of conscience, and the like, which seemed full of a miserable comfort, have all vanished as ‘a dream when one awaketh’ there. And so this soul might have said to itself a hundred things to excuse the fault, whatever it may have been, which is represented by the want of the wedding garment, but when it is there to place them before God, they are already gone.
The sentence
All is over now. ‘But he was silent.’ The majesty of the King may have been great, and the show of power and pomp in his attendants may have been impressive, and the presence of the multitude of guests among whom this man was the one exception found, may have been overpowering. But what circumstances of this kind can be compared to the truth of the parable, when God the Judge of all in His Majesty is the questioner, and the whole world of angels and men form the assembly before whom the poor sinner stands?
‘Then the King said to the waiters, Bind his hands and his feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness.’ The punishment implies that the time is past when the sinner can help himself. He is bound hand and foot. He has no longer the power of moving or working, because the time of grace is past when this rejection takes place, and no works done without grace are of any value spiritually. And he is cast into the darkness which reigns everywhere outside the kingdom of light, which is lit up by the presence of God, and of which our Lord is the light.
The twofold punishment which our Lord adds may be considered either as spoken by Him as a commentary on the parable or as belonging to the parable itself. The two may be used to express mourning, remorse, horror at the state in which men will find themselves, and above all despair and self-reproach. There is no express word about physical torments, for those belong to another part of the sentence. They correspond exactly to the evil works of which men have been guilty, not precisely to their sins of omission and neglect of God’s blessed offers, and misuse or contempt of grace.
‘Many called, few chosen’
The clause added at the end, ‘For many are called, but few chosen,’ seems to be meant to teach us that the danger of forfeiting God’s blessings lasts up to the very closing of the doors of the heavenly banquet. This guest is represented as one among many, one lost among many saved.
This at least might be concluded from the language of the parable. We have already explained why, as it may be thought, only one is spoken of. But he relied upon his having been called, and had not taken the pains to make himself fit to be chosen. He had not understood the responsibilities and essential obligations of his calling.
It was but just, therefore, that the sentence of exclusion should fall upon him, and our Lord means us to take to heart the lesson of his case, and to tell us also that there will be many indeed, at the last day, who will have the same sentence as he.
From Fr Coleridge, Passiontide, Part I.
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St. Luke xiv. 15–24; Story of the Gospels, § 112.
θεάσασθαι
St. Mark xvi. 16.
St. John iii. 5.
Rom. xi. 9, 10.
St. Jude vv. 12, 16, 17-19
2 Cor. v.
Philipp. iii, 15.