Readings: Wisdom 6:12-6; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 24:42, 44.
Blessed Sunday to everyone. Our readings today are continuations of 1st Thessalonians and the Gospel of Matthew,as well as from the Wisdom of Solomon. We will focus primarily on the bookends of the readings.
In our reading of the Gospel today, Jesus presents another parable to the masses as to the true nature of the kingdom of God. He describes it as a group of virgins, and this is intentional, who travel to meet a delayed bridegroom. Some are more prepared than others, with well filled lamps and the others with not enough to keep them lit for the night. Those lacking then depart from the group and are left behind as they search for the oil. They are shut out of the gates as the wedding party makes it to the feast.
The easiest part of this parable to understand is abundantly clear: Christ is the bridegroom. Christ makes this comparisonnumerous times, in John 3:29 and Mark 2:19 especially. Christ is the bridegroom, and the bride is the church. Paul tells us so in Ephesians 5:22-33. So, what more can we draw from these readings?
Well, there is more to the parable than this simple analysis. Christ is the word made flesh, surely, he offers this parable with more depth; and indeed, he does! The virgins, or bridesmaids depending on translation, of the story are meant to represent the faithful of the church. We are those maids sent out to await the coming of the bridegroom, the second coming of Christ.
A study of the eschatology is a topic far beyond the credentials of a writer like myself, but we can take this parable and apply it also to our temporal lives with the inevitability of death.
Like no one knows the time of the Lord’s second coming, none of us knows when our death shall be. We all hope for a death at a nice elderly age of natural causes, but not all are granted that. Diseases, accidents, acts of violence, natural disasters, these all may come out of nowhere to take us and our loved ones from this world. But we know as Christians that this is not the end. So long as we have followed Christ, we are reunited with him in heaven. At our deaths we are judged immediately and sent to heaven—perhaps through the purification of purgatory—or hell. Our souls may be separated, but our bodies will return in the second coming. None of us knows when that will be though.
We are not omnipotent, as Christ says: “For you know not the neither the day nor the hour.” The maids of our story certainly did not know. They knew that the bridegroom was coming at some point but not of his exact arrival. Regardless they were sent out to meet the bridegroom. Of course, meeting the bridegroom is clearly an allegory to the second coming, but it need not be only that. Many of us will pass from this world before the second coming, we must surely meet the bridegroom, no? For many of us, our meeting the bridegroom is the day of our bodily deaths. We will surely rise to Heaven or be eternally separated from God in Hell. We meet the bridegroom not only on the second coming but also at the time of our deaths. But what else might we take from this?
Well, it is clear that some are shut out of the wedding, of the union between the bride and bridegroom, because of lack of preparation. They didn’t think about how much oil they would need for their lamps, so when the bridegroom came, they fell behind as they scrambled to be properly prepared.
Any one of us could be the prepared or unprepared. Rather than prepare for the mission, to meet Christ, these maids found themselves locked out of lack of preparation. We know that we know nothing of when our time will come, just like the maidsdid not know when the bridegroom would arrive. So, what should we do? We should be prepared! We should live life like we might meet the Lord today.
I’m sure each and every one of us has put something off out of simple ease or comfort.
“I’ll go to confession another day.”
“I can attend mass later; I just don’t feel like it.”
“I know this is the right thing to do, but it doesn’t help me.”
It is easy to make excuses out of our own self-interested delusions. We shrug off doing the right thing with the mentality that we will make amends for it later. It is always kicking the can down the road. Eventually, that can reaches a cliff and we cannot pick it up. When your time comes, will you be prepared to face God?
No, I don’t say this as some tempest and fire, “You will know judgment” call like some protestant pastors are oft to do. Rather it is a call to stop delaying a life in Christ.
Stop delaying! Follow the Lord! Aristotle, with an albeit crude understanding, believed the universe moved with an eternal pulland a final cause. What is the final cause except to come close to the Lord in salvation? That is ultimately in our nature, while we can be drawn to sin, we are completed in meeting the Lord. Saint Augustine wrote in the beginnings of his Confessions that,“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
So, when the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon writes of wisdom that: “She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;” the same is true of the Lord! The Lord calls us ever closer to him in Christ. He called us close to him by giving us his only begotten son to die on the cross for us. He wasn’tsimply killed. The Lord offered up his son as a sacrifice for our sake.
What can we do to match that kind of love? Aquinas famously described love as willing the good of the other. God loved us so that he himself came to suffer with us, that we might come closer to us. How does one respond to that love?
We act as the prepared maids. We live everyday as if we will meet the Lord. We do as he has asked of us. We attend mass. We pray. We go to confession so that our sins might be forgiven. We follow where he has led us so that we might be closer to him. We must be prepared. Our Lord gave up so much for us. The least we can do is follow where he leads us, and follow quickly, lest we be left behind.
Have a blessed Sunday
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