Reflection for Feria II infra Hebdomadam II post Octavam Pentecostes ~ IV. classis
Epistle: 1 John 3:13–18 · Gospel: St. Luke 14:16–24
On this green feria of the IV class, the Church repeats the propers of the preceding Dominica II post Pentecosten, for the ferial days within this week carry no proper of their own and are clothed in the vesture of their Sunday. We do well, then, to dwell once more upon these two readings, for the liturgy does not give us the Sunday’s Mass a second time by accident; it presses the same lesson upon us through repetition, quia repetitio mater studiorum est. The Apostle of charity and the parable of the great supper are set side by side, and between them runs a single thread: the nature of the love that admits a man to the eternal banquet, and the refusals that shut him out.
The Epistle: Love in Deed and in Truth
St. John writes to the fratres: Nolite mirari, fratres, si odit vos mundus — “Wonder not, brethren, if the world hate you” (1 John 3:13). The Apostle does not soften the antagonism between the Church and the mundus; he presents it as a settled condition of the Christian life. The hatred of the world is not a sign that something has gone wrong, but rather a confirmation of the disciple’s transfer from one kingdom to another. The sign by which we know this transfer has occurred is itself charity: Nos scimus quoniam translati sumus de morte ad vitam, quoniam diligimus fratres — “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (3:14).
Here the Apostle establishes the diagnostic of the spiritual life. The proof of life is not feeling, nor profession, but fraternal love. And he states the converse with a severity that the modern ear flinches from: Omnis qui odit fratrem suum, homicida est — “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (3:15).
St. Augustine treats this verse with characteristic exactness in his Tractatus in Epistolam Ioannis. He observes that the Apostle does not say the murderer has taken life, but that he abides in death — for hatred is itself an interior slaying, the will to the brother’s non-existence, and the man who hates has already, in the secret of his heart, done the deed that the hand has not yet performed. (St. Augustine, In Epist. Ioan. ad Parthos, Tract. V–VI; substance secured, PL 35. The precise locus and any direct citation should be verified against the critical text before being quoted in print.)
The Apostle then gives the pattern and measure of true charity: In hoc cognovimus caritatem Dei, quoniam ille animam suam pro nobis posuit: et nos debemus pro fratribus animas ponere — “In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (3:16). The Cross is the definition of love. Whatever does not bend toward self-gift is not the charity of which St. John speaks.
And lest any man content himself with a charity of grand gestures while neglecting the daily occasions before him, the Apostle descends to the concrete: Qui habuerit substantiam huius mundi, et viderit fratrem suum necessitatem habere, et clauserit viscera sua ab eo: quomodo caritas Dei manet in eo? — “He that hath the substance of this world, and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him?” (3:17). St. Bede the Venerable, in his commentary on the Catholic Epistles, draws the plain conclusion: the man who will not open his purse to his neighbour’s visible want gives the lie to any claim of laying down his life, for he who withholds the lesser will never render the greater. (Bede, In Epist. VII Catholicas; substance attested in CCSL 121. Verify the exact wording before quotation.)
The Epistle closes with the famous exhortation that the liturgy sets as the week’s refrain: Filioli mei, non diligamus verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate — “My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth” (3:18). Love is not a word spoken but a work performed; not a sentiment but a veritas enacted.
The Gospel: The Great Supper
The Gospel gives us the parable spoken at the table of a Pharisee: Homo quidam fecit coenam magnam, et vocavit multos — “A certain man made a great supper, and invited many” (Luke 14:16). At the hour of the supper the servant is sent to summon the invited, quia iam parata sunt omnia — “for now all things are ready” (14:17). And then comes the strange and terrible verse: Et coeperunt simul omnes excusare — “And they began all at once to make excuse” (14:18).
The patristic tradition reads this parable on two levels at once, and the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas gathers the Fathers into a single synthesis. St. Gregory the Great, in his Homiliae in Evangelia, identifies the great supper with the eternal refreshment of the heavenly banquet, prepared from the foundation of the world and now proclaimed ready by the preaching of the Gospel. (Gregory the Great, Hom. in Evang. 36; PL 76. The attribution to Hom. 36 should be confirmed against the critical edition.)
The three excuses are read by the Fathers as the threefold concupiscence that turns men from God. The first has bought a farm and must go to see it (14:18); the second has bought five yoke of oxen and must prove them (14:19); the third has married a wife and therefore cannot come (14:20). St. Augustine discerns in these the concupiscentia oculorum (the desire of possession in the field), the superbia vitae (the ambition of works and labour in the oxen), and the concupiscentia carnis (the bondage of the flesh in the wife) — the very triad named by St. John in the same epistle from which today’s lesson is drawn (cf. 1 John 2:16). (St. Augustine, Sermo 112 on this Gospel; PL 38. Substance secured; verify the sermon number and exact phrasing.)
It is worth weighing the third excuse with care. The first two men say rogo te, habe me excusatum — “I pray thee, hold me excused” — retaining at least the form of courtesy. The third does not even ask: uxorem duxi, et ideo non possum venire — “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come” (14:20). St. Gregory notes the descent: where possession and ambition still leave a man free to repent, the disordered bondage of the flesh declares, with a kind of blunt finality, that it cannot. The Fathers do not condemn marriage, which is honourable and a sacrament; they condemn the disordered attachment that makes any lawful good into an excuse against the highest Good.
The householder, hearing the excuses, is moved to anger (iratus, 14:21) and sends his servant into the streets and lanes to bring in the poor, the feeble, the blind, and the lame — and then, the house still not filled, out into the highways and hedges, ut impleatur domus mea — “that my house may be filled” (14:23). The Fathers read the first sending as the call of the poor of Israel and the second as the calling of the Gentiles from the wide ways of the world. And the parable ends with the severe word that gives the whole its weight: nemo virorum illorum qui vocati sunt, gustabit coenam meam — “none of those men that were invited, shall taste of my supper” (14:24).
The Thomistic Synthesis: The Banquet of Charity
The two readings illumine one another by the very structure of exitus et reditus. The supper proceeds from God — ille animam suam pro nobis posuit — the great supper is, before all else, the laying down of the Lord’s life, the Cross become the banquet of the altar; this is the exitus, the going-forth of divine charity into the world. The return, the reditus, is the soul’s coming to the table, and the manner of that coming is precisely the opere et veritate of which St. John speaks. The men who excuse themselves are those who will not love in deed; they prefer the field, the oxen, the lesser goods of the mundus — and so the world’s preference, which is the world’s hatred of the supper, shuts them out.
St. Thomas teaches that charity is the form of all the virtues (caritas est forma virtutum, S.Th. II-II, q. 23, a. 8), and that it is by charity that man is united to his last end. The great supper is the consummation of that union, the fruitio Dei. But charity, being a friendship, requires not only that God incline toward man but that man freely incline toward God in return. The excuses of the parable are refusals of friendship; and a man cannot at once love the field more than the Giver and claim a place at the Giver’s table. Thus the Gospel’s invited who will not taste and the Epistle’s love not in word but in deed are one teaching: the banquet is offered to all, but it is entered only by the charity that lays down its own preferences for the love of God and neighbour.
For the Soul
Examine, on this feria, the excuses. Each of us has a field, a yoke of oxen, a lawful attachment that, when the servant comes at the hour of supper, we are tempted to set before the call of God. The Epistle gives the test: not do I say I love, but do I love in deed. Is there a brother in visible need from whom I have shut up my heart? Then I have begun to make my excuse, and the parable is spoken to me.
The remedy is the opus caritatis — a concrete work of mercy, however small, performed today and not deferred. Love made flesh in a single deed of charity is worth more than a thousand interior resolutions, for it is by works that the world is overcome and the heart is loosed from the field and the oxen, and made ready for the supper that is already prepared.
The Collect
The Collect of the Second Sunday after Pentecost, repeated on this feria, gathers the lesson into prayer:
Sancti nominis tui, Dómine, timórem páriter et amórem fac nos habére perpétuum: quia numquam tua gubernatióne destítuis, quos in soliditáte tuæ dilectiónis instítuis. Per Dóminum.
“Make us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name: for Thou never failest to govern those whom Thou dost solidly establish in Thy love. Through our Lord.”
The collect is exact to the readings: the amor it begs is the very charity of the Epistle, and the soliditas dilectionis — the firm establishment in love — is what holds a soul fast at the supper while others wander off to their fields.
Further Study
- St. Augustine, In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos, Tractates V–VI, on hatred as interior homicide and the measure of fraternal charity (PL 35).
- St. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, Hom. 36, on the great supper as the heavenly banquet and the threefold excuse (PL 76).
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Luke 14, gathering the patristic reading of the parable; and Summa Theologiae II-II, qq. 23–27, on charity as friendship and the form of the virtues.
- St. Bede, In Epistolas VII Catholicas, on 1 John 3 (CCSL 121).
A note on the apparatus: the substance and loci of the patristic citations above are secured, but the precise sermon and homily numbers — particularly Gregory’s Hom. 36 and Augustine’s Sermo 112 — should be verified against the critical editions (PL, CCSL) before any of this material is quoted directly in a published piece. Direct quotation has been avoided in favour of paraphrase throughout, in keeping with editorial caution.
If you wish to go deeper, the Sacred Liturgy path treats the Mass itself as the great supper made present — the Cross become banquet — while the Theology and Doctrine path will lead you through St. Thomas’s treatise on charity (II-II, qq. 23–27) step by step, that the forma virtutum may become not only understood but lived in deed and in truth.