A wedding and a funeral

I had to go that very afternoon. I could not find any other time to pay my last respects to a friend who had died of a heart attack. When I passed in front of a church on my way to the mortuary, I met my sister who was with two lady companions. I was surprised to see them wearing gowns and asked her what the occasion was. “Why, are you not attending it? Were you not invited?” she asked. And then I remembered that a relative and his wife were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary and were to renew their vows during a Holy Mass that afternoon, and that indeed they had requested my and the wife’s presence. Which invitation I had completely forgotten. “Why are you not dressed for it?” my sister added, seeing that I was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

Without a word, I left her and her companions and rushed to the mortuary, afraid that the celebrants might soon arrive and see me.

I remembered a passage in the Gospel of Luke about Jesus attending a dinner at the house of a leading Pharisee. Jesus noticed that the guests were jostling for the best places at the table and so gave this admonition. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor. A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest place so that when the host comes to you he may say, ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’ Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Next, Jesus gave an unusual advice: “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Of course, human wisdom is averse to the idea. When we throw a party, we usually ask family and friends to come and are honored by the attendance of prominent people. Parties occasion the display of status and often highlight the disparities in social classes. But the mission of Christ seeks to include everyone, especially “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind” — the wretched of the earth — and particularly to them we should offer our hospitality because they cannot return the favor, and in this way, we will merit God’s reward at the Resurrection. This, I think, is what Jesus means.

Although I was not dressed for the affair, I really should have attended the celebration. I know that it is de rigueur for those invited to a wedding and the like to be costumed for the event in the formal wear required. I once stood as sponsor at a wedding and decided to have on a black suit — and not a barong, which was prescribed — a choice that set me apart from the rest of the sponsors, and to my dismay discovered at the reception when a guest asked me for water that like me, the waiters were in black suits.

I know that I would have embarrassed both myself and the hosts, as well as the other guests who had come correctly dressed. I would have appeared not unlike the lady in Manet’s “Lunch on the Grass.”

But I would slip quietly inside the banquet hall and take a seat in an inconspicuous corner near the restroom. Who knows if the hosts might answer a need and notice me and, if only for their privacy, bid me move to a more worthy table?

And — here I am being whimsical — my jeans might be so ripped, in line with the distressed style now in fashion, as to make me appear miserable and evangelically deserving of priority in the welcome.

Somehow, I saw the relevance of the friend’s death. In a way, death suggests the end times, at which will take place the Wedding Supper of the Lamb — Jesus — whose bride is His Church, of which union or communion the Eucharistic liturgy is a mirror.

And, as to this, we should not forget that, as Aaron Chambers puts it, “All gain access to the heavenly banquet only through the death of the host.”