|
“For many are called, but few chosen” Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) |
Then
He said unto him: a certain man made a great supper and bade many; and
sent His servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden: Come
for all things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to
make excuses. The first said unto him: “I have bought a piece of
ground and I must needs go and see it; I pray thee have me excused.”
And another said: “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove
them; I pray thee have me excused.” And another said: "I have
married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” So
that servant came and showed his lord these things. Then the master of
the house being angry said to his servant: Go out quickly into the
streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor, and the
maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, lord, it is
done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said
unto the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them
to come in, that my house may be filled. For
I say unto you, that none of those men which were bidden shall taste of
my supper, for many are called, but few chosen. This
Gospel reading ends with words that are indeed terrible: "For many
are called, but few chosen." The Lord, who created the world in
order to share with it His Eternal Divine Joy, is faced, instead, with
cold rejection by that very same world. He calls upon all, but being
chosen depends on us. With love, He created all things for joy and life
eternal, but it is necessary for us to respond to Love with love and to
enter into the joy offered to us by God. The picture we are shown in
this Gospel story is simple. It describes with such accuracy all the
states of the soul, all the reasons why we have no time for God and no
interest at all in eternal life.
The Lord has prepared a feast - a feast of faith, a feast of
eternity, a feast of Love. He is sending for those whom He had long ago
warned that such a feast will take place and had bidden them to be
prepared. One of them answers: "I have bought a piece of land and I
need to go and see it and claim it. This land is my homeland. I was born
on the land. I live on it, my bones shall rest in it. How can I not go
and make sure that at least a part of it will belong to me? The heavens
are God's, let the land be mine…" Do we not act in very much the
same way? Do we not put our efforts into planting our roots so deeply
that nothing may shake us? Do we not try to secure our lives by all that
is of the earth, while we are on the earth? And we think: we will gather
the goods of the earth and there will come a time when all the work is
done and then we will have time to think of God!…
In this story we are given another example. The Lord sent His
servants to call yet others to His feast, and they answered: “We have
bought oxen and we must go and try them. We have a job to do. We cannot
be idle. It is not sufficient to be of the earth - one must work for the
fruits of the land. We have no time for feasts in the Kingdom of God. It
comes too early with its calls for eternal life, the contemplation of
God, the joy of Divine love - we need to finish our work on the land.
And when all the work is done, and we are left with only pitiful
remnants of the human mind, body, strength and ability, then let Him
take what is left. But at this moment, our land is at stake. We must
leave something behind for posterity, as if something will remain of us
a decade or two after our death.”
And the Lord calls yet others to Him and they answer:
"Earthly love has come into our life. I have taken a wife, how can
I tear myself away from this love in order to enter a kingdom of a
different kind of Love? Yes, heavenly Love is greater, it reaches much
more deeply, but I do not want this all-encompassing Love. My desire is
for personal tenderness. I wish to love one person so much that nothing
and no one in the world can mean as much to me. I have no time now to
enter the chambers of eternity. The Love that dwells there is the
limitless, all-enveloping, eternal Divine Love, but the love of this
earth is according to the moulds of my own heart. Leave me Lord, let me
revel in my earthly love and when nothing of it is left, receive me then
into the chambers of Your love!"
We act likewise. In this world we always have matters so urgent
to attend to, that there is no time for God's work or for a life with
God. We too find love in this world, a love that excludes the love of
God. "Death will come and then we shall rise." This is our
answer to God's love. The Lord calls us: "Come to me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden and I shall give you rest, you will know love!
You will meet one another face to face, O people of God, and not as on
earth, seeing each other as through a fog, falling into
misunderstandings, hurting and wounding one another. You will rise in
the kingdom of God and everything will be transparent; the understanding
of the mind, the knowledge of the heart, the aspirations of the will,
Love, everything will be as clear as crystal…" And we answer:
"No, Lord! All this will come in Your time. Let us exploit the
earth that we live on. " And we exploit it and live on it until the
time the earth, having given us all that she can, takes back what she
and the Lord had given: "For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou
return." Then the land that we bought will become a graveyard. All
of our labor, that which had separated us from a true relationship with
both God and man, all will
disappear even from human memory. When we enter into eternity, the
earthly love that had seemed so great, will appear as narrow as a dark
dungeon cell. But because of it we had answered God's call with:
"No! We do not want you Lord! It is the land we desire, our own
toil, our earthly love that we wish to live with until the end of our
lives!" Few are chosen, not because God finds few men worthy of Himself, but because few of us find God worthy of replacing a piece of land, an hour of our daily business, a moment of our intimacy. There are many called - all are called, but how many of us will answer? In order to enter the feast of faith, the feast of eternity and into Life, it is enough to answer Love with love. Shall we not answer to God's Love: "I love You Lord"?
|