The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
The life of a Christian then should be nothing but one looking for the coming of Christ, that He may deliver him from this life, which is so vile and miserable and subject to so many fears and perils, and bring him to His own kingdom in the heavens and to eternal life. And hence the prophets and Paul teach everywhere that the faithful ought to live in such holiness and contempt of the things of this world, as to look eagerly and with avidity to the coming of Christ. So the patriarch Jacob when dying and longing for the coming of Christ, “ I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord,” Gen. xlix. 18; and Job, “All the days of my appointed time I will wait till my change come,” xiv. 14; and the Psalms, “I have waited patiently for the Lord,” xl. 1, and “ Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart, wait, I say, on the Lord,” xxvii. 14 (Bib. version). Isa. viii. 17, “I will wait upon the Lord ; ” and xxv. 9, “ We have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” Jeremiah, Lam. iii. 24, “ The Lord is my portion , therefore will I wait for Him;” Micah vii. 7, “I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation.” So Joseph of Arimathaea, despising all fear of the Jews, buried Christ because “he was looking for the kingdom of God,” Luke xxiii. 51. S. Paul to the Romans, “The earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God,” viii. 19 ; and 23, “ Ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our redemption, to wit, the redemption of our body ; ” Gal. v. 5, “ We wait for the hope of righteousness ; ” Phil iii. 20, “We wait for a Saviour ;” Titus ii. 12, 13, “We should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God;” 2 S. Peter iii. 11, “Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God ?” and ver. 13, 14, “ But according to His promise we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness . Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace without spot and blameless in His sight.” Climacus ( de gradu ) says, “ He is righteous who fears not death; he is holy and perfect who daily expects it.” So S. Francis expected the Lord when he recited, as he was dying, the words of the Psalm, “The righteous shall compass me about, for Thou shalt deal righteously with me” (Ps. cxlii. 7), and so died. And S. Bernard rejoiced —
Desidero te millies, A thousand fold I long for Thee,
Mi Jesu quando venies, When, Jesu, wilt Thou come to me ?
Me laetum quando facies ? When shall I be, O Lord, set free ?
Me de te quando saties ? And with Thyself full sated be ?
Memorable and dreadful is the description of S. Bridget, in her Fourth Book of Revelations, chap. vii. : “ In Purgatory there is a third and higher place where is no other punishment than the desire of coming to God and of His beatific vision. They are there tormented who, in this life, had not a perfect desire of coming to the presence of God and of enjoying the vision of Him.” Bede mentions a like place in Purgatory (Hist. v. 13), and S. Gregory (Dialogues iv. 36), and Dionysius the Carthusian in his (Dialogue de Judicio partic. artic. xxxi.), and Bellarmine (De Purg., ii. 6). For there is a sort of unworthy idea and undervaluing of the great vision and glory of God because it is not desired by the faithful and the saints with ardour. This is a sign that they did not sufficiently consider His riches and joys and weigh and ponder them ; as is to be expected.
Live then, O Christian, to thy Christ, not to the world ; live to the Spirit, not to the flesh — live not to time but to eternity.
When He shall return from the marriage feast. This appears to be an addition to the parable, and not to be applied of necessity to what is signified by it. It may be applied thus : Christ in His Incarnation celebrated His espousals with the Church and all the faithful. When He went up into heaven He there consummated His marriage with the same Church, because by the glory of the beatific vision He is intimately and indivisibly united to all the Blessed through all eternity. When, then, He returns from the heavens to judgment, He appears to return from His heavenly marriage that He may introduce His new bride to it. His marriage then is the highest union and the highest joy that Christ has with the beatified in heaven. So S. Gregory, Bede, Theophylact, Euthymius , Toletus, and others.
That when He cometh and knocketh they may straightway open unto Him. Christ here shows us that we ought to make our virtues ready in this life, that adorned by them in our death, we may go out with joy and rejoicing to meet Him, for there will be no time then for working, scarcely even for repentance ; for the senses will be dulled and the mind oppressed by disease and scarcely able to think of its sins and its salvation. They, then, act with the utmost recklessness who, in this life, indulge in pleasures and say that they will repent on their deathbeds — for their repentance will then be forced and too late, and therefore will seldom be true, sincere, and earnest. “The Lord cometh,’ ” says S. Gregory (Hom. xiii.) “when He hastens to judgment ; but He knocks (at the door) when by the ills of disease He designs death to be near, and we open to Him at once if we receive Him with love. Whoever dreads his departure from the body is unwilling to open to the Judge, and fears to see Him as his Judge whom he knows that he has despised. But he who is secure as to his hope and works, immediately opens, for he receives the Judge with joy, and when his death is at hand he grows glad in the glory of his reward.”
Ver. 37. — Blessed are those servants , whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. That is, with their loins girt and their lamps in their hands and expecting Him as He goes before, for He will give them their due reward, eternal blessedness, that they may enjoy the vision of God and all glory and joy for ever and ever. Hence the following explanation.
Verily, I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself, and make them sit down to meat, and shall come and serve them. Christ renders like for like — to those of His who are girt in heaven, He will gird Himself in heaven — He will serve His own servants. Those who have laboured in His service He will make to rest, and be at ease, and sup, and to those who minister to Him, He Himself, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will minister with wonderful condescension.
Shall come. The attendants and sponsi used to go round the tables to see if any one needed anything, that he might be supplied. The above words, it is plain, are to be taken as parables not in the letter. For in heaven there are no girdles, nor persons girded, nor tables, nor sittings at meat, nor any who come or minister : Christ only intends to say, Firstly, that he who is pre-eminent before all other good masters, and immeasurably greater, will show honour to His faithful servants in heaven, so as to make them, from slaves, become as lords with whom He may share His marriage feast, that is, the happiness and glory of heaven. Secondly, That He will do it with an endless number of dishes, that is, pleasure and delights both of soul and body. Thirdly, He will see that no one wants anything : not necessaries merely, but even luxuries, and whatever he wants and wishes for. Everything wished for, nay, that can possibly be wished for, shall be supplied in superabundance according to the words “ I shall be satisfied when I wake up with Thy likeness,” Ps. xvii. 15 ; and “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house,” Ps. xxxvi. 8. Fourthly, That He will give to each according to his merits this delicacy and that, for the words “ He shall come ” signify that there shall be a supper varied and most abundant according to the merits of each ; and (those) “ shall serve ” (show) that it shall be most honourable, and the words “ shall make them sit down,” says Toletus, “ shows that it shall be eternal.”
He shall gird Himself. “ God is girded,” says Theophylact, “ not as giving us the outpouring of all good things, for He moderates them. For who is able to contain all that God is ? ” This is seen from the seraphim who cover their eyes because of the brightness of the Divine light.
And make them sit down to meat. S. Dionysius the Areopagite,
Epistle 9 to Titus, says, “The sitting at meat we consider to be rest from many labours, a life of safety and a divine kind of existence in the light and country of the living, full of all kinds of holy pleasure, with an abundant supply of all kinds of good things by which we are supplied, with Jesus rejoicing over them and placing them at His table and ministering to them and giving them eternal life, fully bestowing upon them and pouring into them all things good.”
Symbolically , S. Gregory ( Hom. 13) says, “He will gird Himself, that is, He will prepare for the recompense and make them sit down — or, be refreshed by everlasting rest. For to sit down is to rest in the kingdom. The Lord again says, “ They shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” The Lord will come and minister, for He satiates us with the brightness of His light. “Come” is said of Him when He returns to His kingdom for the Judgment ; for the Lord has certainly returned to us since the judgment, because from the form of His Humanity He has raised us to the contemplation of His Divinity, and He comes to lead us to the contemplation of His brightness, when Him whom we see in the judgment in His Humanity, we shall behold, after the judgment, in His Divinity.