A Wedding Garment (Matt. 22:11)

In the Gospel of Matthew, we read about a guest who is not wearing “a wedding garment,” (22:11) and how the guest is bound hand and foot and expelled from the ceremony.  What is this all about?  This parable points to the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders and much more.  

We receive our wedding garment when we are “baptized into Christ [and] clothed with Christ,” (Gal. 3:27) or as the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “Having become a child of God clothed with the wedding garment.” (1244)

One may ask how God clothes us with Christ, and Pope Benedict XVI explains, “He gives us His garments and these are not something external. It means that we enter into an existential communion with Him, that His being and our being merge, penetrate one another. ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal.2:20). Christ has put on our clothes: the pain and joy of being a man, hunger, thirst, weariness, our hopes and disappointments, our fear of death, all our apprehensions until death. And He has given to us His ‘garments’.  Baptism an ‘exchange of clothing’ is given, an exchanged destination, a new existential communion with Christ.” (2007 Chrism Mass)

God, like any good father or mother, further clothes us with a second tunic as the catechism explains, “Confirmation is …clothing him with power from on high so that he may be a witness.”(1304)  Also, referred to as a “clothing with light, [and] a cloak of salvation.” (CCC 1297) The prophet Isaiah mentions these double garments, “He has clothed me with the robe of salvation, and wrapped me in the mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.” [61:10]   All this occurs that we may be, “admitted into to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (CCC 1244)     

Furthermore, in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, God clothes some with a third garment.  The Basic Norms for the Formation of Deacons states that the deacon is, “invested with a sacred power” (1) so as “to serve as a vested minister in the sanctification of the Christian community.” (28)  In other words the vestments worn at mass outwardly express the new inner condition of the soul being further clothed and configured to Christ, or as Pope Benedict XVI explains, “Interpreting the liturgical vestments themselves, which are precisely intended to illustrate what ‘putting on Christ,’ (Rom. 13:14)…mean[s],” (2007 Chrism Mass) while in the Spirit of the Liturgy he states, “Liturgical vestments are a direct reminder…of being clothed with Christ.”

In essence in our souls, we have “put on the armor of light,” (Rom. 13:12) “a bright, clean linen garment,” (Rev. 19:8) and “the finest robe” (Lk.15:22) for the King’s wedding.  At the level of grace, we have “a coat of many colors,” (Gen. 37:3) to be able to love and serve the poor, the rich, the sick, the imprisoned, the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner.

Nevertheless, our wedding garments get stained with sin, but He has left us confession where we, “have washed [our] robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev 7:14)  Jesus explains this miracle to St. Faustina, “When you go to confession…the Blood and Water which came forth from My Heart always flows down upon your soul, [cleanses it], and ennobles it.” [1602]   Moreover, at mass we receive His Blood that we may wear, “a cloak that has been dipped in Blood.” (Rev 19:13) so as to, “conquer [the devil] by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of [our] testimony.” (Rev 12:11)

Finally, concerning the guest who was not wearing the proper wedding garments, St. Gregory the Great explains, “But what kind of clothes ought he to have been wearing? All those who are gathered in the Church have received the new garment of baptism and the faith; otherwise, they would not be in the Church. So what was it that was still lacking? What wedding clothes must there be in addition?” St Gregory answers, “the clothes of love.”

In other words, it is not sufficient that “the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal has been clothed with immortality,” (1 Cor.15:54) but one must also be, “clothed with double garments.” (Prov. 31:21) These double garments are the love of God and neighbor which is what also makes us stunning and attractive, “as a bride adorned for her husband,” (Rev. 21:2) or as St. Gregory explains, “In what condition do we want to come to the feast in Heaven, if we are not wearing wedding clothes – that is, love, which alone can make us beautiful?”