Friday, August 30, 2019

St Ambrose: Luke 14: 1, 7-14




A lesson of humility, when in this wedding feast is repressed the desire for a higher place: with gentleness however, so that the goodness of persuasion removes all severity from the prohibition, that reason makes effective the persuasion, and the warning corrects the desire. In his immediate neighborhood comes goodness: the word of the Lord defines it and distinguishes it as to be exercised towards the poor and the weak; because to be hospitable to be paid back, it is calculation of greed. Finally, as to a veteran who has finished his service, this bonus is offered, the contempt of riches. For whoever, absorbed by the lower worries, obtains terrestrial domains, cannot obtain the kingdom of heaven, since the Lord says: "Sell all your goods, and follow me" (Matt., XIX, 21). 

This is why the Apostle tells us to flee from greed (Rom., I, 29), lest they be hindered, in the manner of the Gentiles, by injustice, malice, impurity, avarice we cannot reach the Kingdom of Christ: for "every miser, every unclean person - he is a slave to idols - cannot be heir to the kingdom of Christ and to God" (Ephesians 5: 5). (The guests) therefore apologize, because the Kingdom is not closed to anyone who has not excluded himself by the testimony of his word; the Lord in his clemency invites everyone, but it is our cowardice or our misguidance that separates us.

So, after the proud disdain of the rich, He turned to the Gentiles; He made good and bad come in, to make the good grow, to change the dispositions of the wicked well, to realize what was read today: "Then wolves and lambs will have common pasture" (Is., LXV, 25 ). He invites the poor, the infirm, the blind: which shows us that bodily infirmity excludes no one from the Kingdom, and that sins are rarer when there is no invitation to sin; or that the infirmity of sins is forgiven by the mercy of the Lord, so that being redeemed from his fault not by works, but by faith, if one glorifies oneself it will be in the Lord (Rom. IX, 32, I Cor., 1,31).

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