Sunday 32 (A-2005): Readiness for the Bridegroom (Mt. 25:1-15)

The main point of the parable of the ten virgins is whether or not they are ready for the arrival of the groom. It is an allegory about the main point of human life itself.

Human life is not a closed circle, focused in on itself. Although we live on a planet which is circular, although the seasons come round and round again, and the cycle of life and death seems eternal, each human life has, in fact, a beginning and an end. It is not a circle but a line.

We do not reincarnate, but live on a line which begins at conception and ends at natural death. Death itself, however, is not a cut off point, a dead end. It is a pivot point.

What we have made of ourselves during our lives will determine whether our death pivots us into eternal life (immediate [heaven] or mediate [purgatory]) or into eternal damnation.

What happens beyond death, then, depends on what we make happen before it. In other words, how we live now has consequences, eternal consequences.

And how should we live now if the door to eternal life is not to be shut also in our faces?

The parable puts it very concisely: we should be like virgins ready for the arrival of the Bridegroom. Virginity symbolizes integrity. To be a wise virgin means to keep our integrity ready for the Bridegroom.

Whatever our status in life, married, ordained or just simply baptized, the parable warns us that we must live it completely in a way that makes us ready for the return of Jesus Christ.

We must live conscious that we are going somewhere and that Jesus is that someone who will come and take us there.

That somewhere can be described as heaven, the Kingdom of God, the eternal wedding feast. These terms are only symbolic. We are simply not able to know before death in what exactly heaven consists: we can only believe in it, love it and hope for it by believing in, hoping in and loving Christ.

He is our focus, the magnet which draws us, the mystery who fascinates us, the God who longs to take possession of us and to raise us from the grave to the throne of grace.

All of the virgins fell asleep. Falling asleep is not the same as not being ready. The wise virgins brought enough oil to get them through the night with lamps alight. The foolish ones did not.

What is the oil? It is good works, faith working through love, practical obedience to the will of Christ. These good works are proof that we love Christ, and because we love Him, he knows us, he recognizes us as sharers in his own life.

The refusal of the wise virgins to give this “oil” to the foolish ones is not a lack of charity. Good works, you see, are not transferable from one person to another. They are the fruit of personal responsibility in putting grace into action.

If you have no good works, that is, if you have not lived your life with concern for being ready for Christ’s coming, he will see that you have not loved him by not loving your neighbor or by doing the will of God.

When he comes, he will, therefore, not know you: he cannot know you because, if there is no love in you, there is nothing in you to be known.

That is why he will not open the door to you once it has been shut and he will say those terrible words, “Amen, I tell you, I do not know you.”

To go and buy oil once he has arrived is too late. Good works take time, and when he comes, there will be no more time. A time will come when it is too late to love, not only with words but even with deeds.

To which arrival of the bridegroom does our parable refer? Certainly, to his arrival at the end of time, a time known only to God the Father, as Jesus himself says.

The parable is disconcerting in this regard. First, it suggests 50% of people (5 out of 10 virgins) are not ready for Jesus and are, therefore, shut out by him. We can only hope that Jesus used such a high percentage as a way of shocking his listeners into a change of life.

Even more troubling for the regular Christian is the attitude of the Bridegroom.

Common Christian parlance depicts Jesus as ever-forgiving, ever-understanding and compassionate, ever-ready to give the sinner a chance. But in our parable Jesus does not depict himself in this way.

Rather he suggests that, for him, the time for forgiveness, understanding and the rest, will come to an end.

In other words, Jesus expects us in this life to come to a decision, a resolution about our attitude towards Him and about the practical implications of that attitude in charity and justice.

Just imagine the slamming shut of that door into the wedding feast! It is an eloquent symbol of the truth that our trial period has an end. We cannot bluff or bargain our way into intimacy with Christ. We cannot while away our lives doing no good and claiming his mercy!

And if Jesus closes the door, who would dare open it?

But our parable does not just refer to the coming of Jesus at the end of time. It can also be taken to refer to his coming to each one of us at the end of our lives.

He may come sooner or later, more suddenly or more predictably. We may indeed have fallen asleep, as all human beings are inclined to do. But the question is not about sleep: it is about readiness.

And if we are wise, we will understand that readiness is not, as the foolish virgins thought, something that can be bought at the last minute, at midnight.

The only way I can really be ready is to be ready now. It is to do now what the love of God asks of me; it is to listen and act now on the basis of the precepts and principles of the Gospel and the teaching of the Church. It is to rid myself now of all that distracts me from focusing on the impending arrival of the bridegroom.

And I say “impending” because, no matter how many our years on earth might be, they are short of nothing. Only the fool will think that he can short-circuit or short-cut his way into eternal life.

Some of us might worry about whether or not those we have known and loved, and who have died, were ready for the Bridegroom when he came.

We cannot know and we cannot judge. But we can take comfort even from this rather stark parable.

Between human death which takes place in the course of history and the last day at the end of history, the Lord has revealed through the teaching Church a most comforting truth, a truth which reflects the extremity of Christ’s love and the greatness of our human fragility.

It is the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory lies between the door that shuts out those who were not ready and the wedding hall itself.

Purgatory is like the vestibule or the waiting room into the hall. Jesus places there those souls who may just have had a very little oil at his coming and, from through his own generous Spirit, he gradually fills their “flasks” until they are completely ready to sit down at table.

The Lord will not reject us if he can see in our hearts at the moment of death at least a bare minimum of love for him. From, let us say, 0.1% of love in our hearts, he will, as in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, eventually fill our hearts 100%+ with his grace.

Purgatory speaks, then, of the utmost extent to which the Lord will go to save us; but it also speaks of the dangerous risk we run when we do not live in true readiness for his coming, when we allow ourselves to be content with the bare minimum.

May he grant us his wisdom, his strength and his mercy to go buy an oil-field or an olive grove now!

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, November 6^th, 2005

Annunciation Parish, DC: 5.30 pm Vigil & 7.00 am