Throughout the Gospels, we see a sense of urgency. As Jesus calls us to repentance, he lets us know that we have only a finite amount of time to turn our lives around. Many aspects of our lives come with deadlines. For example, as we develop, we have a limited number of years to absorb languages. After a certain point, language learning becomes far more difficult. Also, changes happen to the human body during the teen years, the thwarting of which can lead to the life-long stunting of physical development. Childbearing years too have a definite window. Moreover, we have a limited number of years to ward off diseases triggered by lifestyle choices. In school and at work, we have only so much time to complete projects. In terms of finance, we have only a certain number of years when we can save for retirement. The clock keeps ticking whether we are ready or not.
The same is true for our spiritual lives. Christ offers us his infinite love, the only reality that truly fulfills us on an existential level. Our task is to repent of our sins, to turn away from all those things that take us away from God and to accept Christ's offer of love, reciprocating his love with our entire being. To do so is our salvation and our eternal joy and blessedness. To refuse the love Christ offers us is to plunge ourselves into self-destruction. That is the monumental choice that faces all of us - and we are given a limited amount of time to make our choice. We have until the moment of our death.
The Gospels counsel readiness and vigilance so that we are prepared whenever Christ might return. The early Christians believed that Christ would return very soon, within the lifetime of some of the first disciples. But as time went on and Christ had not yet returned, some became complacent and lax. The Gospels warned them not to let their guard down.
The Gospels warn us also. We do not know when the end of the world is going to come. Christ might return tomorrow or thousands of years from now. Whatever the case, we need to be ready. Moreover, even if the end of the world doesn't happen for a very long time, the end of our personal world can come any time. No day, no hour is guaranteed. We could die in the very near future or even before the day ends today.
We should ask ourselves every day: If I died today, or if the world were to end right now, what would be the state of my soul? Would my soul be filled with the grace of Christ? Or would my soul be in darkness, having locked out Christ? That is the most important question for each of us, every day.
In the Gospel passage for today, ten virgins are awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom, who is delayed. The virgins symbolize the Christian faithful, and the bridegroom symbolizes Christ. Traditionally, Christians have interpreted the lamp to refer to baptism and the oil to the good works that we are able to produce due to our spiritual transformation brought about by baptism.
Baptism is the beginning of the Christian life. When we are baptized, we are cleansed of original sin and of our personal sins. We enter into the mystical body of Christ and are invited into the most intimate union possible between God and his creation. That is the beginning. We then need to live out our baptismal transformation through our day-to-day actions. We need to put into practice the change that has transpired within us.
One analogy is marriage. When a couple gets married, their lives are transformed by both the sacrament and the legal recognition by the state. On the one hand, the wedding is an ending, the end of single life and of all that being single entails. On the other hand, the wedding is a new beginning, the start of a united identity and shared life. But what if the husband or the wife said: "Now that our wedding is done and we are married for life, I will never actually do anything to show that we are married." How healthy would such a marriage be? How long would it last?
Married couples need to live out their union year after year, day after day, every hour and every minute of every hour, with acts of love, including acts of self-sacrifice. Likewise, we need to be living out our baptism constantly, if it is to be meaningful. In the parable for this Sunday, the five foolish virgins have their lamps, that is to say, they are baptized. But they have no oil, meaning that they have not lived out their baptism. When the bridegroom, who represents Christ, returns, the foolish virgins have no more time. The window of opportunity has closed.
The parable is a cautionary tale not to take things for granted, not to be presumptuous. Let us be like the wise virgins, who have their oil - who live out their baptism every day. We do so by living our lives according to the precepts of the Church that Christ has established, by immersing ourselves in the sacramental and prayer life of the Church, and by allowing the sacrificial love of Christ to flow through us to everyone in our lives.
A key principle of our spiritual growth is that we can do nothing good on our own. We always need the grace of God to work through us. This principle is illustrated by the Book of Wisdom, from which the First Reading is taken this Sunday. (As a historical note, Wisdom is one of the seven books that are in the Catholic biblical canon but which were excluded from the Protestant Bible.) Throughout the Book of Wisdom, we see that the righteous person relies at all times on the Wisdom of God showing the way. Like the wise virgins of the Gospel parable, let us invite the Wisdom of God into our hearts to prepare us for the time, near or far, when we will meet the Lord face to face.
The Second Reading, taken from St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, depicts the return of Christ. This passage in particular has been used by many outside of the Catholic Church to promote the idea of rapture theology, the theory that, before the end of the world, the righteous will be taken into Heaven, leaving the sinners and unbelievers here below for a prolonged time of tribulation. However, rapture theology is a historical innovation that was developed in the 19th century, one which the Catholic Church has strongly rejected. Instead, the Church holds the traditional understanding that when Christ returns, the world we live in will come to an end. Both the living and the dead will be resurrected. Christ will judge all people and will then remake the world to create the New Jerusalem, the heavenly realm where all the blessed will live for all eternity. Like the wise virgins, let us be ready - whether Christ returns while we are still alive upon this earth or we meet him at the end of our individual lives. Let us be ready at all times to meet the Lord.
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The readings for Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A are:
Wisdom 6:12-16
Psalm 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 or 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Matthew 24:42a, 44
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Image Credit: The wise virgins, sculptures (ca. 1460-1481) by Erhart Kueng (1420-1507), main portal, Minster, Berne, Switzerland, from Wikimedia Commons.
