Before Mass

Five minutes now, so there's something to talk about on the ride home.

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time · Year A · Matthew 22:1-14

The wedding feast

For Sunday, October 11, 2026

Jesus is still holding an audience with the chief priests and elders. In this week's Gospel, He tells the parable of a king who throws a wedding feast for his son. The king sends servants to call the invited guests, and they refuse. He sends more: the best meals are prepared, everything is ready, come. Some are too busy with their farms and their businesses to come. Others go further: they seize the servants carrying the invitation and kill them. The king answers with force and sends his troops to burn their city. Then he tells his servants to go out to the main roads and invite whomever they find. They bring in everyone, bad and good alike, and the banquet hall fills.

In each of these parables, Jesus is working on the hearts and minds of the leaders of the day. The stories are beautiful, and they show that the kingdom of heaven is open to all of us: a full day's wage for the workers hired at five, a son who told his father no and went anyway, and last week, in the reading set aside for the feast of St. Francis, the opportunity and the responsibility of working in the landowner's vineyard.

Then the part kids ask about. The king finds a guest with no wedding garment and has him bound hand and foot and cast into the darkness outside, for good (“where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth”). He was pulled in off the road. Where was he supposed to get a garment? Fair question. One way to read it: the invitation is free, and saying yes still asks something of you. You come dressed for a wedding. The two sons taught the same thing two weeks ago: yes is the easy part. Sunday's Gospel closes with it: many are invited, but few are chosen.

Five minutes at the table

  • Why do you think the invited guests made excuses to stay away from the feast?
  • What are the biggest distractions that get in the way of your time with God? How many minutes a day could you put them down and talk with Him?
  • “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” God invites all of us. What would a chosen life look like in your friend group?

Class discussion topics

Oct 7 — Connect Chapter 2, The New Testament Letters.

“What is hard about being Catholic today?”

The lesson is the letters of the New Testament, twenty-one of them, fourteen from Paul. It starts where the kids live: a show of hands on how they reach each other, text, Snap, FaceTime, and then the question of when they last wrote a letter on paper. Or passed a note in class, which is how most of us did it.

Then the early Church. A few thousand believers scattered across the Roman Empire, meeting in houses, no phones. The letters held it together, and most are named for where they went: Romans to Rome, Corinthians to Corinth in Greece, Galatians and Colossians to what is now Turkey. Paul wrote to encourage, to warn, to help, and to inform.

With this week's lesson on the New Testament letters, the class tie-in is Sunday's second reading, a letter from Paul to the Philippians. Before reading Paul's letter, we first go back to week one, Pentecost and the Apostles' mission. The apostolic letters were all about encouraging our early Church.

So we go back to the origin story of Saint Paul's time in Philippi, Acts of the Apostles 16, and the class acts it out. He frees an exploited girl and lands in jail for it. At midnight he and Silas are singing hymns, chained up. An earthquake throws the doors open, and the jailer, sure his prisoners are gone, draws his sword on himself. Paul calls out: we are all here. That night the jailer and his whole household are baptized. The love between Paul and the Philippians is mutual. Sunday's second reading is his thank-you letter back to them, with Holy Spirit filled encouragement, one of his richest, written from... you guessed it, yet another prison.

Each kid writes a letter in their journal, the way the Philippians wrote to Paul: what is hard about being Catholic today? It is a question about living as a Christian, the kind you bring to someone you trust. I am collecting the journals this week, and where I have an answer, or a question for them to reflect on, I will write back.

For the ride home from Mass: consider sharing with your 8th grader where you are trying to be a better Christian, and the questions, struggles, or needs for encouragement you bring to prayer. Then perhaps they will open up with the questions they journaled about.