Wisdom 6:12–16
1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
Matthew 25:1–13
At the end of the liturgy of baptism, a candle is lit from the paschal candle and presented to the newly baptized with these words:
Your have been enlightened by Christ. Walk always as a child of light. Keep this flame of faith alive in your heart. When the Lord comes, may you go out to meet him with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.
Behind this short presentation of the baptismal candle lies the parable we hear today of the Wise and Foolish young women. Intrinsic to baptism is light and enlightenment. With baptism comes the mission to keep the light burning until the Lord comes. No sooner are we plunged into this new life in Christ then we hear of his coming again.
As we come to the end of our liturgical year, we are drawn to the Lord’s coming. We are reminded that we know not the day or the hour only that he is coming. The very first generation of Christians thought they would see that coming in their lifetime. He did not come and that delay is reflected in both Paul’s letter and in Matthew’s Gospel. Paul assures the community that it does not matter whether you are dead or alive when the Lord comes; he will come for all. Matthew shifts the focus from anxiety about the delay (they can’t be anxious because all fall asleep!) to rather how prepared are you for the coming. The stress lies on what are we to do now so that when the time comes, the bridegroom can truly be met appropriately.
The words about Jesus’ second coming don’t strike a loud cord for most of us. Only those few who make predictions about it are concerned, but then they seem to have missed the Lord’s word about not knowing day or hour. That belongs to the Father. Perhaps what is more urgent is that of our own personal end. In drifting from consciousness about Jesus’ coming and some end time, we might also drift from remembering there is the personal end of our biological life. This may have awakened somewhat in the face of covid-19 when our end can be closer than we thought. It can draw closer to us each day as we hear about the number of deaths rising. Of course, we can always say, well that is someone else surely, not me.
The parable of Jesus offers us an image of what the end will look like, or better what Jesus’ coming will look like. It is in the images of the parable that we can find some way to approach the need for preparedness.
What the ten women are about is a meeting. This is the focus in the first sentence of the parabe. The midnight cry awakening to action is: “Behold the bridegroom, come out to meet him!” And when he comes, they meet him and with him enter the wedding feast. What the women are waiting for is to meet the Lord so they can join him in the wedding banquet. The end, the goal is the wedding banquet. This is the image of our end, of our next life as some like to say. And entrance into that wedding feast is meeting the Lord. The waiting and the excitement are about a meeting with the Lord. The wedding feast provides the occasion; it is the climax to the preparation. At the heart of it all is meeting the Lord and being with him. This is our goal. And life now is living and acting in a way that exhibits the meeting that is to come.
At the beginning of his Gospel, Matthew introduces Jesus to us as Emmanuel, God with us. He is God’s commitment to us; he is God’s presence with us. God wants to be with us. Baptism puts us in the direction of transforming our longing into being with the Lord. Our discipleship is really about shaping our lives to respond to the Lord’s wanting to be with us. Our thirsting, our longing, as we sang, is to be with the Lord. In the parable Jesus affirms that longing as our real identity.…Some of us may find ourselves locked out from the great banquet. How did that happen? The bridegroom did not see his face in us. He did not see that our lives were shaped by wanting to be with him. We said the words, but our actions did not match a heart that truly mirrored him in this world. Our longing went awry.
In the parable the crisis comes just when the call to meet goes out. Some women realized they had no more oil. They were not prepared for the meeting. They appealed for help but no one could offer more oil. The oil is not just a thing; the oil is what keeps the flame going. The oil is my life of longing. I can’t give you that inner life that directs me in ways that nurture my longing. What keeps my longing, what keeps my light burning brightly is doing the Father’s will. The person doing the Father’s will is wise, Jesus says. And it is precisely keeping the Father’s word, his desire, his plan for us alive in our hearts that we pray for in the prayer Jesus taught us. And that longing and desire, you and I cannot buy and you cannot get at the last minute before the meeting. Preparation for the meeting is something you and I grow with and into until the day of meeting. We carry that wanting to be with the Lord within our very being. The words of Jesus when he came as Emmanuel awakened that longing within the human heart. The longing had died or was misdirected. Acting on the word of God is keeping oil in the lamp. That is what Jesus will see on the day he comes to meet us: someone who acted on his word. It is too late on that day to clothe him in the naked or welcome him in the stranger; it is too late at midnight to reconcile with enemy or friend; it is too late on that night to go around asking for forgiveness and going the extra mile. The parable makes it clear: the meeting at midnight really happened in the daylight over many years and in all those opportunities for a kind word or a gesture of healing and peace an admittance of wrong.
Women are central to our Word today. Notice that the ten virgins or young women are not the only women offered us today. There is God’s wisdom personified as Lady Wisdom. She is looking for us, desiring to be with us, sitting outside our door, right there in the morning. She is there in our daily rounds and flow of life. She is God’s gift to us to help us in our seeking, or desiring and longing. She is there so that we stay focused. In a real way, she prepares us for our great meeting. But even here, we must want her, be looking for her. She is always there. Even in these times of uncertainty and confusion, a time of seeming lack of focus on what is basically human, she has not left us. She is ready when we are. And her presence too is imagined as one of meeting. She wants to meet with us “in all solicitude.” Hers is a way of caring, of reminding us of the word that gives life. She is present graciously; she is a gift. She is the gift the wise virgins accepted and so had oil till the end of their days. She is the gift that provides entry to be with the Lord forever.
Our Eucharist, too, is preparation for the wedding feast of the Kingdom. From it we take the oil of the Word and sacrament. These will help us to keep that baptismal candle burning so that whether awake or asleep, when the cry comes, we will be with the Lord at last. We are waiting now for that final meeting, one that is gracious, filled with solicitude and with the joy that comes with a wedding. Let us accept the gift of wisdom’s oil so that we will be ready to meet him when He comes. For he will come.
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB