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| Archbishop Averky (Tauchev) Explanation of the four Gospels IntraText CT - Text |
(Luke 14:7-15).
When the supper began, the Pharisees hurried to occupy the best places. Candidly and boldly, the Lord began to chastise their self-exaltation and in addition, narrated a “parable.” Actually, not a parable in the strict sense of the word but a tutorial, taken in a parabolic form of a wedding feast (applied because it is the largest and jubilant of all feasts) and often employed by the Lord. “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast”….These words from the Lord were not meant to just show sensible etiquette: here, the dialogue is about the inner disposition of the heart. That’s why the Lord concludes His narrative with: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” These words were leveled at the guests, while the Lord had especial guidance to the host.
Having observed that he invited only his friends, relatives and wealthy neighbors, the Lord suggested to him that it was wrong to invite only those that will reciprocate with this hospitality. Instead, he should invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, who are incapable of repaying his hospitality; it’s wrong to loathe the poor as the Pharisees did, but to look upon the feast as an event that could have a moral worth, as a good deed. For this, there will be recompense from God in the next world — “the resurrection of the righteous.” The general meaning of this directive is similar to that of the Sermon on the Mount: “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6:32). Upon hearing this, someone among the guests exclaimed: “blessed is he who shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God.”
Blessed Theophylactus interprets this as: “Apparently, this individual was not spiritually inclined as to understand this properly, i.e. he was led by human comprehension. In other words, this expression voiced the feeling that prevailed among the Pharisees, their purely sensate conception of Messiah’s kingdom. However, it could be that he, in applying the figurative narrative commenced by the Lord, simply wanted to state how blessed are those, that will be participants in the Messiah’s Kingdom.