There’s a billionaire named Peter Thiel who’s been making some pretty unusual headlines recently. If you don’t recognize the name, he’s one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley. He co-founded PayPal, was an early investor in Facebook, and has been involved in some of the biggest developments in technology and artificial intelligence. But lately he’s been making headlines for something you might not expect from a tech billionaire. He’s been giving lectures about the Antichrist.

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Yes, the Antichrist. The end times. Biblical prophecy. And one of the things he’s apparently concerned about is that efforts to regulate artificial intelligence could lead to the creation of some kind of global authority resembling what Scripture warns us about.

What caught my attention, though, was that he recently made headlines for criticizing Pope Leo XIV over the Pope’s concerns about artificial intelligence and its implications for human dignity.  Now, let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with a Catholic disagreeing with a Pope about the best policies to address a particular problem. And Christianity certainly teaches us to take evil seriously.

But I find it fascinating – and to be frank really troubling – when people with enormous wealth, power, and influence start invoking Christianity and biblical prophecy in ways that seem remarkably compatible with their own interests. And it raises a question that’s been on my mind a lot lately: Are we allowing Christianity to challenge our beliefs? Or are we using Christianity to justify the beliefs we already have? Because there’s a big difference.

And I don’t think this is just a problem for billionaires, politicians, or people with huge social media followings. I think it’s something we’re all increasingly struggling with.  Let me give you two examples from my own experience, just in the last week.

Pope Leo had also recently sent a message to the Catholic parish priest in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike killed five people, including two Christian women—a mother and daughter. The Pope was expressing his sorrow, offering prayers, and standing in solidarity with people who had experienced a horrific tragedy. I shared that story online. That’s it. I shared a story about the Pope offering condolences after innocent people had been killed. And suddenly, I found myself in the middle of this incredibly contentious debate, with accusations of antisemitism being thrown around. And I remember thinking: How did we get here? How did acknowledging the suffering of innocent people become something controversial? How did expressing solidarity with grieving Christians somehow become interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people?

It shouldn’t need to be said, but just in case: antisemitism is a grave evil. The Church condemns it unequivocally. And concern for Palestinian civilians should never be used to excuse hatred of Jewish people.

But the reverse is equally important. Condemning antisemitism cannot mean that we’re forbidden from mourning innocent Palestinians or raising moral questions about military actions or criticizing the government(s) responsible for it.

Our Catholic faith requires us to recognize the dignity of every human life — Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, believer and nonbeliever. Human dignity doesn’t depend on nationality, religion, or whose side someone is on.

This episode came soon after another highly contentious story that has caught people’s attention. A woman named Christa Pike was scheduled to be executed in Tennessee. She had been convicted of a truly horrific crime — the brutal murder of a young woman named Colleen Slemmer in 1995. And nothing about what I’m about to say diminishes the abhorrent evil of that crime, the unimaginable suffering of her victim, or the grief her family has endured.

But what happened during the attempted execution was itself horrific. The state administered two doses of lethal-injection drugs. The execution failed. Pike survived, suffering serious medical complications that required hospitalization.

Whatever someone’s position on capital punishment, the details of what happened should disturb us. And when I expressed my horror at this development in what St. John Paul II called the culture of death over 30 years ago, suddenly I was being called a liberal. I was being accused of disagreeing with St. Thomas Aquinas or supporting changes to Church teaching. Which is rather extraordinary.

Because what I was defending wasn’t some new political ideology.  It’s literally what the Catholic Church teaches. Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the dignity of the human person. That teaching was incorporated into the Catechism in 2018, reflecting a development rooted in the Gospel and the Church’s growing recognition that even someone guilty of a terrible crime does not lose their human dignity.

You can believe that someone deserves to spend the rest of their life in prison. You can insist that society needs protection and that justice must be served. But you cannot simply erase someone’s human dignity because they’ve committed a horrible crime. And I found myself wondering again: When did those convictions become political statements? When did concern for innocent victims of war become a partisan position? When did defending human dignity – even the dignity of someone guilty of terrible evil – become evidence that someone isn’t sufficiently Catholic? And maybe the most troubling question: When did our political loyalties become the standard by which we judge whether something is authentically Christian?

Because it seems to me that we’ve gotten things dangerously backward.

Instead of allowing Jesus Christ to challenge our politics, our opinions, our prejudices, and our priorities, too often we demand that Jesus fit neatly into them. And if He doesn’t?

Well, we find a Scripture passage that seems to support us, quote somebody we agree with, or dismiss the person challenging us as a liberal, a conservative, a radical, a heretic—whatever label makes it easier not to listen.

But here’s the problem: Jesus Christ didn’t come to endorse our agendas. He came to save us from our sins.

And that’s where today’s Gospel comes in.

Jesus tells this incredibly strange parable about a king who prepares a wedding banquet for his son. And this is no ordinary reception. This is a royal wedding. The finest food, the best wine, everything imaginable has been prepared. The invitations go out. And the people invited refuse to come. Some are too busy. One goes off to his farm, another to his business. Others respond with outright hostility, even killing the servants who deliver the invitation. It’s an absurd response to an incredibly generous offer.

But Jesus is making a point: God has prepared something extraordinary for His people. And yet, instead of welcoming His invitation, they reject it. Some because they’re distracted by their own priorities. Some because they don’t want to be inconvenienced. And some because God’s invitation threatens the lives they’ve already decided they want to live.

Think about that. Sometimes we don’t reject God because we don’t believe in Him. We reject Him because we don’t want Him interfering with the things we’ve already made more important than Him. Our success. Our comfort. Our politics. Our resentments. Our sense that we’re right and everybody else is wrong.

So what does the king do? He sends his servants into the streets and invites everyone they can find. And Matthew makes a point of telling us they gathered the bad and the good alike.

Not just the people who had earned an invitation.

Not just the powerful, the respectable, the successful, the religiously accomplished.

Everybody.

That’s the extraordinary generosity of God. It’s exactly what the prophet Isaiah foresaw centuries before Jesus Christ’s coming in our first reading.

The prophet envisions God preparing a feast for all peoples. Not just the Jewish People of Israel…. Not one nation. Not just one political party. Not just the wealthy, the influential, the respectable, or the people who think exactly like us.

All peoples.

And what does God promise at this banquet? He will destroy death forever. He will wipe away the tears from every face. He will save His people. That’s God’s vision for humanity. A vision in which the dignity of every person matters. A vision where our hope is not in domination, power, or defeating our enemies, but in God’s victory over sin and death.

Which makes the ending of today’s Gospel especially challenging.

Because just when we think we’ve understood it—that God’s invitation is for everyone—Jesus adds this unsettling detail. The king enters the banquet hall and discovers a man who isn’t wearing a wedding garment. And the man is thrown out.

Now, at first glance, that seems incredibly unfair. After all, didn’t the king just invite people in from the streets? Why would he suddenly care about what someone was wearing?

But Jesus isn’t teaching etiquette or imposing some royal dress code. He’s teaching us something about discipleship. Because accepting the invitation is only the beginning.

In the Book of Revelation, we hear about another wedding feast—the wedding feast of the Lamb. And the bride is dressed in fine linen, bright and clean. And Scripture explains what that linen represents: “The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.”

There it is.

The wedding garment represents a life transformed by God’s grace. A life in which faith becomes visible through our actions. And we have to be careful here. Jesus isn’t saying we earn a place in Heaven by accumulating enough good deeds. The invitation is pure gift. God’s grace always comes first. But grace is meant to change us.

So yes – God invites us exactly as we are. But He loves us too much to leave us as we are.

The man without the wedding garment represents the danger of accepting the invitation while refusing the transformation. Wanting the benefits of belonging to God without accepting the demands of belonging to Him. And that, I think, is where this Gospel becomes incredibly relevant to the world we’re living in.

Because we can become very good at identifying ourselves as Christians without necessarily allowing Christ to change the way we live. We can quote Scripture. We can talk endlessly about defending Christianity. We can invoke God in political arguments. We can give speeches about the Antichrist. We can share religious content, attend Mass, defend Catholic institutions, and declare ourselves faithful Catholics. And all of those things might have their place.

But none of them, by themselves, constitutes the wedding garment. Because the wedding garment is revealed in how we actually live. In whether we tell the truth, even when it’s inconvenient. In whether we defend human dignity, even when the person whose dignity is threatened is someone we don’t particularly like. In whether we can recognize the suffering of innocent people without first checking whether they’re on our side. In whether we’re willing to forgive. In whether we’re willing to admit we’re wrong. In whether we allow Jesus Christ to challenge us instead of constantly recruiting Him to justify us.

And this is where I think we need to reclaim something we’ve confused in our culture. Christian charity does not mean we have to agree with everything.  Being civil doesn’t mean pretending that truth doesn’t matter. Being tolerant doesn’t mean accepting every interpretation of Christianity as equally legitimate.

Jesus Himself was incredibly compassionate toward sinners, but He was hardly indifferent to sin. He welcomed people others rejected. He offered mercy to those who had been condemned. He forgave those who betrayed Him.

But He also confronted hypocrisy. He challenged the powerful. He told uncomfortable truths. And He never suggested that loving someone meant affirming everything they said or did.

But here’s the other half of that lesson. We cannot defend the truth by abandoning charity. We cannot defend the dignity of unborn children while dismissing the dignity of people on death row. We cannot condemn antisemitism while ignoring the suffering of Palestinian civilians—or defend Palestinians while excusing hatred of Jews. We cannot claim that Jesus Christ is Lord while treating people who disagree with us as though they’re beneath our contempt.

Because then we aren’t allowing Christianity to shape our lives. We’re allowing our divisions to reshape Christianity.

And it’s tempting to hear all of this and immediately think of somebody else. That politician. That billionaire. That commentator. That person on social media who drives us crazy. But Jesus doesn’t give us today’s parable so that we can inspect everybody else’s wedding garments.

He gives it to us so that we examine our own. That’s the real challenge. Do I allow the Gospel to change my opinions, or do I only accept the parts that agree with me? Am I willing to defend the dignity of someone I dislike as passionately as someone I love? Can I hear a challenging truth without immediately deciding that the person speaking it must be my enemy? Am I actually becoming more patient, more merciful, more courageous, more honest?

Or am I simply becoming more convinced that I’m right?

There’s a reason St. Paul’s words in our second reading are so important. Paul says he knows what it means to have plenty and what it means to have very little. He knows success and struggle, abundance and hardship.

And then he gives us the secret of his freedom: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

Notice where his confidence comes from. Not wealth. Not influence. Not political power. Not winning every argument. Christ. Because Paul knows something we desperately need to rediscover. Our hope isn’t in getting the world to conform to our preferences. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who has already conquered sin and death.

And here at this Mass, we encounter that hope in the most extraordinary way.

We’re not merely hearing about a banquet that God will prepare someday.

We’re being invited to a foretaste of it right here, in the Eucharist. Jesus invites us to His table. Not because we’re perfect. Not because we’ve gotten every political question right. Not because we’ve never sinned or failed or compromised our convictions.

He invites us because He loves us. But His invitation isn’t permission to remain unchanged. It’s an invitation to let His grace transform us. To put on the wedding garment. To become people whose lives reflect the love, mercy, justice, and truth of Jesus Christ.

So maybe as we approach the altar today, we should ask ourselves something that goes far beyond politics, far beyond arguments on social media, far beyond whatever controversy is dominating the headlines. Am I asking Jesus to bless the life I’ve already chosen—or am I willing to let Him change my life into the one He’s calling me to live?

Because Christianity was never meant to be a label we wear to announce which side we’re on. It’s meant to be a life we live that shows Who we belong to.

And in the end, the King isn’t going to ask us whether we were liberal or conservative. He’s going to ask whether we accepted His invitation. And whether we allowed His love to change us.

The invitation is for everyone.

The wedding garment is what happens when we finally take that invitation seriously.