The Perspective of Justice

The Wedding Banquet

The Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines ... he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples ... he will destroy death forever.”
(Isaiah 25:6-8)  

The kingdom has been prepared, and it is coming. Jesus likened it to a wedding banquet to which the invited guests are summoned.

Of course, there are some who refuse to come. They prefer to remain mired in their oppressive attitudes, their discriminatory relationships with others, their violent approach to solving social problems. They prefer revenge to forgiveness. They prefer the superiority of some to the equality of all. They see victimization and blame the victims. They are the invited guests who are unfit to come.

There are those others, however, whose love for God expresses itself in eagerness to do good for others. They are the ones who “live in the house of the Lord,” preferring love, forgiveness and equality. They will welcome the coming of the kingdom with the cry: “let us rejoice and be glad that God has saved us!”

Christians cannot yearn for anything more ardently than to serve the men of the modern world ever more generously and effectively.

Therefore, holding faithfully to the gospel and benefiting from its resources, and united with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task demanding fulfillment in this world.

Concerning this task they must give a reckoning to him who will judge every [person] on the last day.

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World, 1965: paragraph 93

Gerald Darring

**From Saint Louis University