Today, 14 December 2014, the Orthodox Church is on the 28th Sunday after Pentecost. The evangelical parable of the great dinner (Luke 14:16-21) was read at the Divine Liturgy in all the Orthodox Churches.
His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of Romania delivered a sermon in the chapel of the Patriarchal Residence dedicated to Saint Hierarch Gregory the Enlightener, in which he explained the teaching of the Gospel of the day: “The parable of those invited to dinner has two major meanings. The former refers to the history of the salvation of the humankind, namely the work of Jesus Christ, our Saviour, as son and servant of God who calls to salvation the Jewish people first, and then all the other peoples. The latter refers to our life, of every one’s of us, more exactly to the way we answer to the call of God to salvation or refuse His call under various pretexts”.
“The servant of the master of today’s Gospel is the Messiah predicted by the prophets. The anonymous or someone is God Himself, the One with many names or beyond any name, as Saint Dyonisus the Areopagite teaches us (…). The dinner mysteriously represents the Kingdom of God of which foretaste here, on the earth, is the Church of Christ where the Last Supper of the Holy Eucharist is celebrated, which Jesus Christ, our Lord, instituted on the Holy Thursday, in the evening, before His passions, crucifixion and Resurrection from the dead”, His Beatitude explained.
“The parable of today’s Gospel speaks about the mystery of the salvation of the world in Jesus Christ who calls the people to salvation through the annunciation of the Gospel of the kingdom of God and through the Last Supper or of the Eucharist as foretaste of the dinner in the Kingdom of God, as banquet which prepares the joy of the eternal communion of the humans with God, after they have cleansed away their sins through Baptism and Confession. In spiritual sense, the dinner of the master of the house represents the love of God given to the humans and the life of the humans lived in communion with God in the Church”.
