Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us this extraordinary command to consider the weakest and most vulnerable in our society: “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” This is one of his central concerns throughout the Gospels. Aliens, strangers, foreigners, widows, orphans, the poor—if these weak people are ignored, God will become angry.

God’s passion not only runs right through the biblical tradition but it comes roaring up into the social teaching of the Catholic Church: “If you have two coats in your closet, one belongs to you; the other belongs to the man who has no coat.”

Let us not forget the poor and marginalized today.