Luke, XIV, 1-24. Supper with the Pharisee.

This is why, first of all, follows the healing of the hydropic, in which the invading swelling of the flesh impedes the functions of the soul, extinguishes the flame of the spirit. Then a lesson of humility, when in this wedding feast is repressed the desire for a higher place: with gentleness however, so that the goodness of persuasion removes all severity from the prohibition, that reason makes effective the persuasion, and the warning corrects the desire. In his immediate neighborhood comes goodness: the word of the Lord defines it and distinguishes it as to be exercised towards the poor and the weak; because to be hospitable to be paid back, it is calculation of greed. Finally, as to a veteran who has finished his service, this bonus is offered, the contempt of riches. For whoever, absorbed by the lower worries, obtains terrestrial domains, can not obtain the kingdom of heaven, since the Lord says: "Sell all your goods, and follow me" (Matt., XIX, 21); no more he who buys oxen, since Elisha killed those he had and shared them with the people (I Kings, XIX, 21); as for the one who takes a wife, he thinks of the things of the world, not of God. This is not to condemn marriage, but because virginity is called to a greater honor; for "the unmarried woman and the widow think of the things of the Lord, so that she is holy in body and spirit; for she who is married thinks of the things of the world, and how to please her husband "(I Cor. VII, 34). But to return to grace, as we have done above for widows, with wives, we do not reject the opinion followed by many, in the thought of which three kinds of people are excluded from the society of this great feast : Gentiles, Jews, heretics. This is why the Apostle tells us to flee from greed (Rom., I, 29), lest they be hindered, in the manner of the Gentiles, by injustice, malice, impurity, avarice we can not reach the Kingdom of Christ: for "every miser, every unclean person - he is a slave to idols - can not be heir to the kingdom of Christ and to God" (Ephesians 5: 5). As for the Jews, by their material service they impose the yokes of the Law; also, as the Prophet says, "break their bonds and shake off their yoke from us" (Psalm 2: 3); for we have received Christ, who has placed on our heads the lovable yoke of his goodness. As for the five yokes, 36 these are the ten commandments, or the five books of the Law, about which it seems, in the Gospel, to say to the Samaritan woman: "You have had five husbands" (Jn, IV, 18). For heresy, in the manner of Eve, she tempts the rectitude of faith by a feminine sensibility, and, letting herself slide down the slope, she resorts to the makeup of a false adornment, disdaining the beauty without spot of the truth. (The guests) therefore apologize, because the Kingdom is not closed to anyone who has not excluded himself by the testimony of his word; the Lord in his clemency invites everyone, but it is our cowardice or our misguidance that separates us. So whoever buys a farm is a stranger to the Kingdom: for in Noah's day you have read it, buyer and seller have been swallowed up by the flood (Matt., XXI, 21); likewise he who prefers the yoke of the Law to the benefit of grace, and the one who apologizes because he takes a wife: for it is written, "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and his mother, his wife, or can not be my disciple "(Lk, XVII, 27). So indeed that the Lord because of us gives up his Mother when He says, "Who are my mother, or who are my brothers? (Matt. Xii. 48) Why would you prefer them to your Master? But the Lord commands neither to misunderstand nature nor to be a slave to it: simply to condescend to nature while venerating its Author, and without failing God for the sake of the parents.

 So, after the proud disdain of the rich, He turned to the Gentiles; He made good and bad come in, to make the good grow, to change the dispositions of the wicked well, to realize what was read today: "Then wolves and lambs will have common pasture" (Is., LXV, 25 ). He invites the poor, the infirm, the blind: which shows us that bodily infirmity excludes no one from the Kingdom, and that sins are rarer when there is no invitation to sin; or that the infirmity of sins is forgiven by the mercy of the Lord, so that being redeemed from his fault not by works, but by faith, if one glorifies oneself it will be in the Lord (Rom. IX, 32, I Cor., 1,31).

He therefore sends out paths, because "prudence cries at crossroads" (Prov., I, 20). He sends to the places, because He sent to tell the sinners to come from wide ways to the narrow which leads to life (Matth., VII, 13 ssq.). He sends on the roads and along the hedges: for these are fit for the Kingdom of heaven which, far from being held back by the lusts of the goods present, hasten towards those to come, as committed to the path of the good. will, and, just as the hedge separates the crops from the wastelands and prevents the irruption of animals, they distinguish between good and evil and oppose to the temptations of the evil spirit the rampart of faith. As well the Lord, to show that his vineyard was protected:

"I have surrounded him," said he, with a hedge and a ditch "(Matt. Xxi. 33); and the Apostle says that the wall was removed in the middle of the hedge, which interrupted the continuity of the fence (Ephes., II, 4). So faith and reason seek each other, and seek each other in places, that is, in the recesses of intimate thoughts; for it is written, "Let your waters be poured out on your places" (Prov., V, 16). It is not enough, however, to come if one is invited: one must have the wedding dress, that is to say have faith and charity. Whoever therefore does not bring peace and charity to the altars of Christ will be seized by the feet and the hands, and thrown into the darkness from without. "There will be tears and gnashing of teeth. What are the darkness of the outside? Will there also be prisons and latomias? In no way; but whoever is excluded from the promises of the heavenly commandments is in outer darkness, because the commandments of God are light (Jn, xii, 35); and whoever is without Christ is in darkness, because the inner light is Christ. So it is not a question of the creaking of the material teeth, nor of some eternal fire of material flames, nor of a material worm. But this is to note that, as excess food causes fevers and worms, so too, if one does not somehow cook one's sins by using sobriety and abstinence, but if, piling up sins on sins, one contracts as indigestion old and new faults, one will be burned by his own fire and devoured by his verses. So Isaiah says, "Walk in the light of your fire and the flame that you have lit" (Is., L, 11).

 The fire is the one engendered by the sadness of faults; the worm comes from the fact that the insane sins of the soul attack the mind and the senses of the guilty, and gnaw at the entrails of his conscience (Sag., XII, 5); as the worms are born of each, so to speak of the body of the sinner. So the Lord said it through Isaiah, saying, "And they shall see the members of men who have averred against me; and their worm will not die, and their fire will not be extinguished "(Is., LXVI, 24). The grinding of teeth also expresses a feeling of indignation, because too late we repent, too late we moan, too late we take it upon ourselves to have sinned with a perversity so tenacious.