Homily for Solemn Mass for 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Basilica of St Francis, Assisi, 11th October 2026
It’s quite the story (Mt 22:1-14). A rom-com with a difference. After the usual complexities of courtship, the happy couple are ready to tie the knot. They pick a date, secure a celebrant and venue, settle the guest list. So far, so good. But when they send out posh hand-delivered invitations, things go pear-shaped. Many of the invitees, even some relatives, decline to attend: perhaps they didn’t approve of the bride; or there was a football match to watch at the time; or catering at the palace wasn’t great! What’s worse, the invitation delivery boys get beaten up. The father of the groom is furious. He has his enemies rounded up and executed, then razes their town for good measure. Romantic comedy turns to horror movie!
The sequel, Marital Mayhem 2, begins as many a feel-good movie with a rag-tag group of misfits coming to save the day. They might not know the happy couple, but they’re up for a banquet. The tables are set with gaudy cloths, golden cutlery, glassware. The name cards, bomboniere almonds, and confetti bombs are all ready. The wine is poured, there’s plenty of antipasti, three pastas, a meat course and wedding cake are to follow. The band is playing the Tarantella, the speeches are soon to be delivered, a great aunt is drinking too much Prosecco. With festivities in full swing, the earlier grief and anger have turned to schmaltzy joy.
Yet Marital Mayhem 3 is in another key altogether. In this episode the host notices something jarring: one of the guests is wearing a dirty tuxedo and footy shorts! He demands an explanation and there’s an awkward silence. He calls Ben the Bouncer to cuff the culprit and throw him out. Then it’s back to party time!
It’s a wedding no one will forget—certainly not the bride and groom! Nor, I think, should we, for this is no simple rom-com, feel-good or horror flick: it’s an intimate look at the to and fro between the human and divine. It’s about invitation and response, sin and virtue, salvation and damnation.
Look again at these three episodes, this time with the eyes of faith… In our prophecy (Is 25:6-10), psalm (Ps 22/23) and Gospel, the king conducts a heavenly banquet. Crucially, He invites: God does not force Himself on anyone, doesn’t issue edicts requiring attendance. No, He offers humanity His friendship but leaves us free to accept or not. Admittedly, He’s rather insistent. In case we don’t get His invitation, He renews it, giving us lots of chances. He sends lots of messengers—prophets, apostles, missionaries—and many are martyred for their troubles. Humanity keeps rebuffing Him: some give God a flat NO, some say YES but pull out at the last minute, lots offer a fomo MAYBE. Bottom line of Part One: God gives lots of opportunities, invitations, graces; don’t squander them.
In the sequel, God extends invitations beyond the Old Israel, who were His first guest list, to the New Israel that is the Church, expanding His circle of ‘Chosen People’ to include every nation, tribe and tongue. We should harbour no illusions that we are the only ones God loves. Our invitation to the wedding feast is personal but not exclusive. If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob seemed to be essentially for Israel, He is now revealed as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and so for all humanity. Not just the high and mighty, or even the low and holy, but for the rag-tag band found at the crossroads, “the bad and good alike”. There’s comfort in this: that no-one is predestined to hell, that all are called to heaven. But if we give up our place at the heavenly banquet, Part Two of the story warns us, someone else will gladly take it, and we’ll be casting ourselves into that “outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Bottom line: the history of divine invitation and human response is also the story of salvation and damnation.
In the final instalment, God has a good look at His guests. Tradition calls this ‘the Particular Judgment’, God’s assessment of a person’s life immediately upon their death. In our story a man has said YES to the invitation and come along for the ride. But his heart is not in it; he behaves more like a gatecrasher than a wedding guest; and so he is cast out. So, to believe that all are invited to heaven, and to recognise that some accept and some decline, is not the end of the matter. For to say YES to the invitation, by assenting to the Creed or receiving Baptism, Confirmation and the rest, and then to go on living as the world lives, is to fail to change your clothes. Many people are practical atheists: though they say they believe in God, He has no real purchase on their day-to-day lives. They may go through the motions of some good works, but their heart is far from God. They do not join in the spirit of the party. Bottom line: if it’s heaven you want, live in virtue and grace here on earth.
The person without a wedding suit, says St Gregory the Great, is one who believes in Christ and His Church but lacks Christian love.[i] St Augustine goes further: only “a love that springs from a pure heart, a clean conscience, and a genuine faith” is the right gear for that banquet;[ii] so dress up in those clothes!
Eight hundred years ago this past week, the saint over whose relics this great basilica is built, was called to that heavenly banquet. He didn’t care for fine clothes: if he wore clothes at all, they were like hessian sacks with a cord. Yet he was dressed in what the divine host most wanted: simplicity, peace, goodness. Writing to all Christians, St Francis said that those who persevere in love and penance are not just wedding guests at the heavenly banquet: no, the faithful soul is the very star of the wedding, the bride of Christ![iii]And for Holy Father Francis that feast begins at the altar, where the Lord of universe humbles Himself to hide under species of bread so He might extend His invitation to all. Such love demands a response. “Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves,” Francis urged his brothers 800 years ago, so that the One who gives Himself wholly to us may receive us wholly.[iv]
Last week we celebrated the feast day of our beloved octocentenarian; tomorrow we celebrate the feast of a boy. Only last year Pope Leo XIV canonised Carlo Acutis and tomorrow will mark twenty years to the day since he died. Like Francis, Carlo was very much a son of this city. Like Francis, he was from a comfortable background but convinced some things matter more than earthly treasure. Like Francis, he treasured the Eucharist above all things on earth. Carlo called it his “highway to heaven,” a road he travelled daily. “In front of the sun, you get a tan” our first ‘millennial’ saint used to say, “but in front of the Eucharist, you become a saint.”[v]
Both the merchant’s son and the schoolboy with a computer, though 800 years apart, fed by the same spiritual food, the Holy Eucharist. Both lived a Eucharistic life of self-giving, clothing themselves in worship, virtue and charity, the finest of all wedding costumes. And both knew that the Eucharist on earth was but a foretaste of what is to come. If you wonder sometimes about the afterlife, whether it is real, what it’s like, whether we will be bored sitting on clouds and singing hymns all day. Jesus suggests we think of heaven as a banquet, an eternity of food and wine, song and dance, friendship and fulfilment. It is what we are made for! It is what we most crave! It should excite and delight us!
May St Francis and St Carlo intercede for us, that we might join them in the great party of heaven. Pax et bonum!
[i] Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia 38.9.
[ii] Augustine, Sermo 90.6.
[iii] Francis of Assisi, “Letter to All the Faithful,” in The Writings of Saint Francis of Assisi, trans. Paschal Robinson (Philadelphia: Dolphin Press, 1906), 104.
[iv] Francis of Assisi, “Letter to All the Friars,” in Robinson, Writings, 114–15.
[v] Pope Leo XIV, Homily on the occasion of the Canonisations of the blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, 7 September 2025. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/docu3*
Introduction to Mass for Solemn Mass for 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Basilica of St Francis, Assisi, 11th October 2026
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I am Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia and despite my Franciscan name, I play for a different team, the Dominicans. But we friars call both St Dominic and St Francis our “Holy Father” and the two are invoked together in the Litany of the Saints as if they were twins joined at the hip. So, it is a special joy to gather with forty Aussie pilgrims and many others from around the world for this Mass in the heartland of the little brothers of St Francis, only a week after the eighth centenary of his death and transitus to the Father.
To prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind the times we’ve failed to live as saints ourselves, and ask God for pardon and peace…