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The readings today invite us to imagine salvation not as a prize handed out to a few, but as a wedding banquet God longs to share with his faithful. The insightful prophet Isaiah sees the Lord preparing a banquet for his people, a feast whose where death is destroyed and every tear is wiped away. Sounds like heaven. In the gospel, Jesus in the parable tells of a king who prepares a wedding feast for his son, and sends servants to invite the guests, but the first guests refuse. They have other things to do, like field to tend with a business matter. These are not evil things in themselves, but the danger is that good things can quite take the place of the best thing, or the greatest good. So the king sends his servants out again, this time to the crossroads to invite everyone they find, good and bad alike. The hall is filled with people who might never have expected to be invited. Now this is actual grace of work. You see, God wants all to be saved, but not all want to be saved. God calls us in our needs, our confusion, even our sins, for nobody is a hopeless case. The church being apostolic, which means being sent, meets people with compassion, empathy, and then proclaims the gospel of mercy that revolts, that results in their conversion, which we call metanoia, a change in directional thinking, a change in our lives. Then in coming to Mother Church in receiving baptism or the other sacraments, as his penance, we are clothed with sanctifying grace, which is our wedding garment. Note that the story ends with the king who sees one guest without a wedding garment, who is quickly dispatched. A stark reminder that although God is easy to please, he is hard to satisfy. We cannot be saved without divine grace, and grace must be freely sought. This person sought not the grace, thus the absence of the garment. Now with only ten percent of Catholics attending Sunday Mass, we can say that today most people, though invited, fail in their obligation to attend a sacrifice, which if willful results in mortal sin and the loss of sanctifying grace, our wedding garment. Most people have become like those invited in the parable, lazy and indifferent. They're just too busy to come to Sunday Mass. In our secular culture, we need to make God a priority, and it's only one hour out of a hundred and sixty-eight hours in the week. You know, everyone is filled with busyness in their life, and we all have our priorities, but sport, entertainment, and work should not take the place of our highest good who is God. Overall, or often, this is the most ordinary way people drift from God. Now, one way we can prevent this from happening is to insert a daily prayer buffer in our life. You see, if we pray daily, the Mass on Sunday becomes a focal point for the week, a priority of desire. During October we give priority to the rosary, which is a stable prayer for our spiritual well being that embraces the three elements of head, heart and hands. Words said, thoughts gathered, while hands finger the beads. Also this week the Church's liturgy presents us with some heavy weights in prayer. Saint Theresa of Avala and Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who were the giant figures of the sixteenth century Counter Reformation, and who revolutionized how we pray and our interior life. While they approached spiritually through different lenses, Theresa through Carmelite contemplation, and Ignatius through structured discernment both agreed that prayer is an intimate and transformative friendship with Jesus Christ. When we pray at the Rosary, we are invited to move past the rote saying of words and enter into deep mental meditation, using the wisdom of these two masters of mental prayer. Saint Teresa famously defined prayer as nothing more than spending a long time alone with the one I know loves me. She argued that the rosary is meant to be a vehicle for mental prayer, which she broke down into three simple steps read, reflect, resolve. Read about the mystery, lock it into scripture or look at an icon. Reflect. Dig deep into this mystery and ask yourself, what does this reveal about Jesus? How does this fit into my life? Resolve. Every meditation should end with a practical, concrete decision for the day. For example, the scourging at the pillar in the Sorrowful Mysteries helps us to think about being more patient with the sick and putting up with physical discomfort when it comes our way. Saint Ignatius, on the other hand, took meditation further in his book Spiritual Exercises. When applied to the rosary, Ignatian prayer asks you to place yourself in the scene, the mystery. Smell the dust of the road to Calvary. Hear the whispers of the shepherds at the crib, at the nativity of the Lord. Engage with this mystery at a personal level. Speak to Jesus from the heart. See Mary face to face as a friend, as a mother. And you'll draw from those experiences, from those insights, practical ideas and hints to encourage you to practice virtue in clear resolutions. So they're both experts in their fields, and they inspire us to help us have a buffer of daily prayer in our life to prevent us from slipping away. So in the year in the month of October, this month of the rosary, let us be compliant with the requests of our mother in heaven and pray the rosary each day in some way, walking or kneeling, so that we keep focused on God's plan for us and obtain those graces that we need. Remember, the family that prays together stays together.