Our Response to the Greatest of Invitations

Last month, my two wonderful friends Erin and Jake got married, an event I was so blessed to attend. That being said, I wanted to share a little story with you regarding their wedding. Early last year, I received in the mail a 'save the date' card for their wedding. With much excitement, I grabbed my planner and immediately put it into my schedule. And a few months later, in a envelope marked with my name came the fashionably and perfectly designed invitation to their wedding and reception. As before, with much excitement, I quickly put the invitation on my refrigerator so as not to forget to respond with my RSVP.

But days turned into weeks and weeks into a month and the invitation had yet to leave its placement on my refrigerator. But one morning, I decided to take a stand against my laziness, grabbed a pen, filled out the card and put it in my car so I would remember to take it to the post office....and there in my car it lay. For several weeks. Past the due date. And my ever-patient friend Erin texted me and then Facebook messaged me to ask about my response. And eventually I turned it in.

I tell you this long story because I think that it is quite relevant to our faith. Just as Erin and Jake sat and made their guest list and CHOSE to invite me to their wedding, we have a God who invites us individually and specifically and purposefully to enter into a relationship with him. He wants us there. He wants us to share his love. He wants our presence.

But that invitation requires a response.

So often I think that, even if we are excited about our faith or are ready to enter into this relationship with God, we fail to respond with urgency to the Father's daily invitation to go a little bit deeper, to be loved a little bit more, to share in his goodness. We get busy. We get tired. We miss prayer time. We become stagnant. We get caught up in things and people and drama and worry and stress. And maybe for many of us, these things cause us to forget that there is even an invitation to respond to. .

But the humbling and striking fact about our ever-patient God is that he pursues us when we fail to respond. He yearns for us so intensely that even when we forget to respond or put off our response, he continues to extend the invitation. In today's Gospel, Jesus approaches St. Matthew, a man deemed by society as the last to deserve an invitation, and our Lord simply says, "Follow me". May we, on this feast of St. Matthew, respond as he did and accept, with urgency and excitement and abandonment, the invitation presented to us.