Then said he also to him that bade him,
When you give a dinner or a supper, call not your friends, nor your brethren, neither your kinsmen, nor your rich neighbors; lest they also bid you again, and a recompense be made you.
All Commentaries on Luke 14:12 Go To Luke 14
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Then said He also unto him that bade Him, i.e. to the chief Pharisee mentioned in the first verse, whose hospitality Christ recompensed by the spiritual banquet of ghostly counsel and advice. This Prayer of Manasseh , says the Gloss, seems to have invited his guests in order that he in turn might be entertained by them.
"Call not thy friends." Christ counselled this as the more perfect way. He did not command it as of necessity. For it is lawful, nay, meritorious, for us to invite our friends, if it be done out of friendship and kindness. Whence Bede says, "Brethren then, and friends, and the rich are not forbidden, as though it were a crime, to entertain one another, but this, like all the other necessary intercourse among men, is shown to fail in meriting the reward of ever lasting life," unless, as I have said, such entertainment springs from a higher motive of brotherly love or charity.
"Lest they also bid thee again." Like worldly men are wont to do from gratitude or else avarice, for "to be hospitable to those who will make a return, Isaiah ," says S. Ambrose, "but a form of avarice."
"And a recompence be made thee" by Prayer of Manasseh , and this prove worthless and transient. If you regard this alone, you exclude the spiritual recompense from God and deprive yourself of it; if you look for both you will receive both, but both lessened, for the one lessens and as it were interferes with the other; but if you regard the divine alone, and only admit or rather bear with the human recompence because it is offered you, you will receive the divine whole and undiminished.
