Homily for 20th Sunday after Trinity, 2025 A.D.

This homily takes us into the heart of the Octave of All Saints, inviting us to wrestle with a question many of us carry silently: how do we honor and remember loved ones whose lives were beautifully complex, marked by both faithfulness and struggle? Through the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22, we discover a stunning truth about God's kingdom. The King invites both good and evil people to the wedding, clothing them all with wedding garments. This garment represents our baptism, the grace that allows us into God's presence despite our unworthiness. Yet the parable shows us something crucial: receiving the garment is not enough. We must wear it, care for it, and allow it to transform us from the inside out. This message speaks directly to our grief and confusion about departed loved ones who lived with moral complexity, mental illness, addiction, or whose lives were cut tragically short. The church offers us a beautiful solution: we continue loving them through prayer. Just as we prayed for their growth and healing in life, we pray for their continued purification and maturation in eternity. Eternal life is not static but dynamic, a perpetual wedding feast where we grow infinitely in understanding God's infinite glory. When we pray for the dead each Sunday in the liturgy, we join our love to God's love, acknowledging that the same heavenly feast we taste in the Eucharist is the eternal reality where our loved ones dwell, being continually purified in joy rather than punishment.