Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Matthew (22: 1-14) in which the Jesus speaks to the Chief Priests and Elders in parables, saying, ‘The kingdom of God may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding and sends his servants to call those who had been invited but they would not come’. A wedding is, as we know, a time of joy and completion after long preparation, it is also especially a time of love. In Judaism, at the time of Jesus, the coming of the Messiah is often compared to a wedding-feast. The very first act that Jesus did was at the marriage-feast at Cana and it must have been some party because, at Mary’s request, Jesus produced 200 gallons of wine. Fr Paul notes, the Letter to the Ephesians teaches us that the love in a human wedding pales into insignificance compared to Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. In this parable, though, of the royal wedding, two things go drastically wrong. First, the original wedding-guests refuse to come. Not only do they refuse, but they brutally maltreat the innocent messengers, and the king (who must stand for God in this parable) relentlessly burns down their city. Secondly, Fr Paul says, we hear of the man who has no wedding-garment and is thrown out. A wedding-garment is a standard Jewish image for works of generosity, expected of every faithful Jew. Therefore, the man thrown out had not done any works of generosity. In closing Fr Paul says, this double warning reminds us that we can never be too busy to accept God’s invitation and we can never be too busy to be generous to others.