Before the altars of his holy church, therefore, he spreads the holy table for his "great supper," and he invites many to the banquet. Such an invitation, we would think, does not need much urging to bring in the guests—all the guests—as quickly and as frequently as he desires. And yet, as he tells us in the parables, and as we see and hear ourselves, there are many who make little of his invitation, and either do not come at all or come with such reluctance or so seldom that it is plain they are acting more from fear of punishment than from a motive of love.
It is true that those who do not come when he calls are far from daring to say that it is not worth coming to, but they act very much as if they thought so. They have other friends who invite them to their feasts, and as they think more of these friends than they do of Jesus Christ, and relish their food more than they do his, they send in their excuses to him. These excuses are paltry enough. One has bought a farm and must go and see it; another has purchased five yoke of oxen—this is just the time he must go and try them; a third has just got married, and so on. Any excuse for not coming to Communion seems good enough for some Catholics, who want to keep friends and company with the world, the flesh, and the devil, and eat their dishes of avarice, lust, and pride. I don't wonder they stay away; for let a man get his heart full of avarice, or burning with lust, or puffed up with pride, the very idea of Holy Communion is wearisome and distasteful to him.
But there is a dreadful warning in the parable. The excuses are not taken; and he who sets forth the banquet declares that none of such men shall eat of his supper; and he makes that threat in anger. Woe, then, to those Easter-duty breakers who heard the invitation and came not! They have incurred the anger of the Lord. To pass by the Easter duty out of contempt for it, or because one is unwilling to give up the sins that he knows make him unfit to make it, is to commit a mortal sin. And when I see some persons who know their duty, and have every opportunity, neglecting their Easter Communion for years, and appearing to be perfectly hardened against every appeal and argument made to them, I am always fearful lest the Lord is not only angry with them, but that he is carrying out his threat that he will never invite them again, and that they will die some day without absolution and without Communion. Oh! if there be any such here let them hasten to beg pardon with deep contrition for their past neglect, and earnestly seek for admission to the heavenly banquet. Perhaps it may not be yet too late even for them. I know it is the eleventh hour, but the Lord invites some to come even at the eleventh hour. But they must not wait longer! At midnight the door will be shut, and the only answer they will get then is; "It is too late; I know you not!" God grant that such a curse of banishment from the eternal Communion of heaven shall never be addressed to one of us!
Sermon LXXXVI.
And they began all at once to make excuse.
—St. Luke xiv. 18.
Notice the words, my brethren. Our Lord does not say that these men whom the master of the house invited to supper all happened to have an excuse, but that they began all at once to make one. They gave various flimsy reasons why they could not come— reasons that anybody could see would not have prevented them from coming if they had wanted to, but were merely given in order to avoid telling the plain truth, which was that they did not care a straw for the one who had invited them or for the supper that he proposed to give.
Well, now, what did our Saviour mean by this story which I have read you in the Gospel?—for he certainly did not tell it simply for the amusement of his disciples. It was a parable, and had a spiritual signification, or more than one. I think there cannot be much doubt in our minds about one of them, at least. We cannot help seeing that the supper means the rich banquet to which all of us are invited, and which has been commemorated in the great solemnity of Corpus Christi, through which we have just passed. God himself is the master of the house, and he has invited all of as his friends—that is, all of us who have come by holy baptism into the fold of his church—to come to this great feast, the feast of his own Body and Blood. Not once only but many times he has invited, nay, commanded, you all to come and taste of this supper, which is himself—to receive him in Holy Communion.