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Dear Parish Family,
This Sunday’s Gospel give us the opportunity to explore one of the intriguing parables found in Chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel. The major theme in this chapter is judgement. The parable of separation of sheep and goats (good and evil) holds a spell on the whole chapter. This complementary parable of the Ten Virgins has many characteristics of ‘sheep and goats’ as separation of two groups, element of surprise and finally as a Johnny Cash song puts it, “everyone won’t be treated just the same.” Matthew presumes that Jesus’ audience both then and now are longing for a kingdom in which the communion found in and through the person of Christ might be made universal, in which the sovereignty of divine love would be definitively and irrevocably manifested.
This longing is present in all of us; we all desire the kingdom of heaven, not matter how we imagine the manner and quality of its coming. The ten virgins beautifully portray this deep human desire: they take their lamps and go out to meet the bridegroom. Even amidst the growing darkness, their hope impels them to venture out and meet the object of their desire. The darkness would have been deep indeed in this context, as the street were not lit up, but so would have been the desire bound up with meeting the bridegroom. Marriage in first century Judaism was not a lifestyle choice or even a matter of human friendship; it was (and remains) a mitzvah: an act of obedience to God by which the human person is blessed with divine favor and fullness of life. Marriage brings with it status, protection, stability, new life, obedience to law, wholeness. The coming of the kingdom of heaven is like the beginning of a marriage, in which we discover and embrace the missing part of ourselves, in which another breathes upon us and introduces us into a new life truly worthy of the name.
Yet these virgins, these seekers, are divided into two groups from the very beginning. “Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.” We all desire and seek the kingdom of heaven, but we do not all desire and seek it wisely. What then differentiates the two groups? In his homily on the parable St. Hilary of Poitiers writes, “The wise virgins are those who, embracing the time available to them, were prepared at the first onset of the coming of the Lord. But the foolish were those who were lax and unmindful. They troubled themselves only over present matters and, forgetting what God said, did not direct their efforts toward hope and resurrection.”
The ‘foolish’ and the ‘wise’ terms should not be confused with being stupid and smart, as the differentiating element is ‘oil’. What is this oil that makes all the difference? St. Augustine suggests that the oil signifies charity. St. Epiphanius suggests compassion. It seems plausible to say that the oil refers to some inward reality insofar as the external actions of both groups of virgins are all but indistinguishable. They both go out to meet the bridegroom; they both take their lamps; they both wait; they both fall asleep; they both hear the cry of the bridegroom’s approach; and they both wake up and trim their wicks. They do the exact same things, but again the difference lies in what they have.
In order to defend his view that the oil represents charity, St. Augustine fruitfully appeals to St. Paul’s famous hymn to charity in his First Letter to the Corinthians we hear at many wedding ceremonies. St. Paul opens his encomium to love by proclaiming the uselessness of outward actions unaccompanied by charity. Likewise, says Augustine, the oil is “the superior part” which floats above the “water” of our outward actions. What profit are tongues, prophecy, knowledge or faith without love? “Even if I give all I have to the poor, and give over my body to the flames, I gain nothing without love.” This parable is a direct challenge to our ‘motivating factor’ of our following of Christ. How much love is there in our daily life full of activity?
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.