Gospel: Luke 14:12-14

The invitation to share at table is the theme of the teaching of today’s Gospel. There are different types of invitations: the interested invitations for the benefit of oneself and disinterested invitations for the benefit of others. Jesus says: "When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers…”. That was the normal custom of the people: to invite friends, brothers and relatives to eat. Nobody would sit at table with unknown persons. They would sit around the table only with people who were their friends. That was the custom of the Jews. Even now we also act in the same way. 

 

Jesus thinks differently and orders us to invite unknown people. These were invitations which nobody used to make: the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you.

 

Jesus orders them and us to break the closed circle and asks us to invite the excluded. This was not the custom then and it is not today either. But Jesus insists: “Invite these persons”. Why? Because in the disinterested invitation, addressed to excluded and marginalized persons, there is a source of happiness: “And then you will be blessed for they have no means to repay you”. 

 

This is a strange type of happiness, a diverse happiness! Jesus says that this is the happiness which God will give us in the resurrection; the happiness of the Resurrection which He will give us not only at the end of history, but even now. To act in this way is to glimpse the happiness in the resurrection!