Memorial of Saint Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church

I think most of us, if we were to hold a great party—a big banquet of some sort—and send out all the invitations only to have everyone say no, would simply cancel it. Yet that is not the image of God Jesus presents here. God sends out the invitation; everyone says no, and he continues to hold the party. He simply begins inviting new people. He keeps inviting until he finds someone who says yes.

This parable reveals something about the very nature of God: he seeks relationship, and he does not give up. We see that throughout the Scriptures. God never quite gives up on humanity, even in those moments when he comes close. Think of Noah’s flood. We focus on its destruction, forgetting that God preserved a remnant—someone set aside so that he could try again, keep offering, and keep building that relationship. He does this again and again throughout the Scriptures. No matter how many times humanity says no, or how many people reject him, God keeps offering the invitation.

If a human being behaved that way, we might call that person tenacious—someone who simply keeps at it. But in God, it reveals his love and his very nature. God, in his nature, is personal. He is three Persons, eternally existing in relationship with one another. Because relationship belongs to his very nature, he desires it more than anything else, and in particular, he desires relationship with his own creation.

And so he loves us and keeps showing us mercy. He continually reaches out and tries to draw us back in because that relationship is his greatest desire. It would be much easier for him simply to destroy us all and try again with a different design, hoping it would work out. But he does not do that. He keeps trying to love us. Once he has made us, he does not take away that gift or withdraw his invitation. Instead, he keeps reaching out again and again. That is the authentic nature of love itself and what love is meant to look like.

This parable, then, not only shows us God’s nature and how much he loves us—how much he loves all humanity—but also gives us an example of how we are to love one another. We are not to love with a love that gives up, cancels the party, moves on, and finds something else to do. We are to love with an infinite love: to keep trying, to keep inviting again and again, no matter how many noes we receive or how many rejections we experience; to keep offering love time and again, knowing that this is what love does.

The outcome is not the important part. What truly matters is the very act of loving. That is how God keeps loving us. Even when some of us reject his love—when we say no—he continues to love us anyway. And that is what we are called to do for one another.

So, in our own lives, let us turn to the Lord not only to marvel that he would love us this way despite our many failings, but also to ask him for the grace to love in that same way: to keep inviting no matter how many noes we receive, and to keep loving regardless of the outcome, because love itself—the very act—is truly worth it. Every time we love in this way, we are drawn closer to our God.