With October and the last Sundays of Ordinary Time comes a turn in the liturgy toward the end of days, when Christ will return to gather the faithful into the heavenly harvest. Isaiah is the great prophet of the fullness of God’s reign, and his vision in the First Reading invites our hope, for it tells of a day when “the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines.” Isaiah’s final lines, “Behold our God to whom we looked to save us!” are echoed in the second Communion antiphon, which speaks of that final day when “we shall see him as he is.”

The trouble of the world remind us, however, that Isaiah’s vision is yet unfulfilled, much road lies between us and God’s holy mountain. Acknowledging this, we pray in the Collect that God would “go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.” Always we are confident in God’s loving kindness, which guides us without fail.

Still the theme of judgment remains in our vision of God’s future, as Jesus words in the Gospel remind us: “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” His cryptic parable of the wedding banquet, which seems to promise entrance to all, but ends with one guest cast out for lack of a “wedding garment,” leaves us puzzled. As if to comfort us in our doubt, Paul proclaims in the Second Reading, “My God will fully supply whatever you need.”