Psalm 44:16

come one come all

They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing: they shall be brought into the temple of the king. (Psalm 44:16 DR)

In one of Jesus’ most remarkable parables he gives the figure of a wedding feast wherein a king prepares a banquet and invites the guests to come now that all is ready. Those originally invited make excuses and refuse to come; some even mistreat his servants who bring the news, and they all meet with a terrible end.

But since the feast is ready, the king has his servants invite anyone they can find until the hall is filled with guests. What is fascinating is that the king is not exactly discriminating about who is invited; his servants gather both the good and the bad.

The twist occurs when the king makes his appearance to meet the guests:

And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith to him: “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:11-14 DR)

This ending can seem odd, for on the one hand the king invites all without discrimination, but then seems (at least to modern ears) to make an unfair discrimination against this man simply because he isn’t wearing wedding garments. The exegetical gymnastics to explain this are sometimes amusing; I have heard it conjectured that in the ancient world wedding garments were provided for guests upon their entry. Perhaps this is so, but the meaning is actually not hard to gather: this man was invited to a wedding and made no effort whatsoever to dress up for it.

To put it more plainly, he knew he was being invited to a wedding celebrated by a king, and couldn’t be bothered to dress appropriately. In our crass times this can seem unfair or overly harsh, but that is only because we hold nothing sacred whatsoever except for what is actually profane.

But what are these wedding garments? After all, Jesus isn’t telling this parable merely to give lessons on etiquette, which his hearers would have already understood (hence the parable being used at all).

The Church Fathers tended to see the wedding clothes not as faith simpliciter but rather as charity; that is, love for God as lived out in practice. Within the import of the parable faith is the act of entering into the wedding feast; one is invited and one responds. Pope St. Gregory the Great remarks:

For if we say [the wedding garment] is baptism or faith, is there anyone who has entered this marriage feats without them? A person is outside because he has not yet come to believe. What then must we understand by the wedding garment but love? That person enters the marriage feast, but without wearing a wedding garment, who is present in the holy church. He may have faith, but he does not have love. We are correct when we say that love is the wedding garment because this is what our Creator himself possessed when he came to the marriage feast to join the church to himself. Only God’s love brought it about that his only begotten Son united the hearts of his chosen to himself. (Pope St. Gregory the Great)

We are then all called to wedding feast, as the parable describes: both the bad and the good. God in his calling us to repentance do not distinguish or discriminate based on what we have done, who we are or any other human measurement. He calls all alike to share in the wedding feast, to respond in faith to the invitation. However, it is not enough to be called; one must enter in and clothe oneself appropriately with charity:

The entry into the wedding takes place without distinction of persons, for by grace alone we have all been called, good and bad alike; but the life thereafter of those who enter shall not be without examination, for indeed the king makes an exceedingly careful examination of those found to be sullied after entering into the faith. Let us tremble, then, when we understand that if one does not lead a pure life, faith alone benefits him not at all. (Theophylact of Ochrid.)

Theophylact’s words that without charity faith alone does not benefit us at all is sobering, but fits the reality of Jesus’ words in the parable. The man without wedding garments has entered into the Church by faith; he has thus been baptized and brought into the family of God. Yet if he does not clothe himself in charity and thus in purity of life, he meets the same fate as those who rejected the invitation outright. St. Paul reminds us that without charity we are nothing:

And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3 DR)

Our Lord also reminds the church in Laodicea that they require pure garments:

I counsel thee to buy of me gold fire tried, that thou mayest be made rich; and mayest be clothed in white garments, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear; and anoint thy eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. (Apocalypse 3:18)

This thus calls for diligence, that we keep the wedding garments unsoiled by sin and brightened by charity. There is a sense in which the wedding garments are received in baptism; after all, it is traditional for those who are baptized to receive a white garment and to be charged to keep it unsoiled.

In this view the man in the parable actually had a wedding garment on; it was just so stained that it was if he had none at all. This agrees with St. James words:

What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? …So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself. (James 2:14; 17 DR)

St. John Chrysostom concurs:

Then in order that not even these should put confidence in their faith alone, He discourses unto them also concerning the judgment to be passed upon wicked actions; to them that have not yet believed, of coming unto Him by faith, and to them that have believed, of care with respect to their life. For the garment is life and practice. And yet the calling was of grace; wherefore then does He take a strict account? Because although to be called and to be cleansed was of grace, yet, when called and clothed in clean garments, to continue keeping them so, this is of the diligence of them that are called. (St. John Chrysostom.)

In this Psalm verse to be brought into the temple of the king is to be brought into the Church, to be incorporated by faith and baptism into Christ’s mystical body, his bride. We are brought into the courts of the King for a wedding feast, and must dress appropriately. The gladness and rejoicing is that of the celebration of the wedding feast of the Lamb, in which the Bride is clothed in white, which is the charity which dwells in the hearts of the saints:

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself. And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen are the justifications of saints. (Apocalypse 19:7-8 DR)

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I wanted this animation to reflect some of the themes above, although when I originally created it they were not as fleshed out, but sometimes it works out nevertheless. I had been reading a commentary by St. Augustine on this verse about how the temple of the King is

the Church itself: it is the Church itself that enters into the “Temple of the King.” Whereof is that Temple constructed? Of the men who enter the Temple? Who but God's “faithful” ones are its “living stones”? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 44, 28.)

I was struck by that image and found some imagery from some various medieval apocalypses that I thought would work nicely. There is of course the church building in the center, but then there are people of various classes and states entering into it.

I cut out all the images and figures in Photoshop and brought them into After Effects. I then set up some mattes on either side of the doorway in the lower center. Next I created the animation of the figures walking (ish) into the church and precomped them so that I could then use the mattes on those precomps instead of trying to matte every single figure, which would have been a tedious job. Finally I played around with the timing until I found something that felt good and it was complete.

Enjoy.

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View a higher quality version of this gif here: