A friend and I intended to go to a play last night. We bought our tickets online, planned the trip to Lexington, including a late afternoon mass at a favorite church, and what needed to be a quick dinner. Well, it needed to be a quick dinner, but it wasn’t quick enough. We got to talking and then got a bit lost on a campus that has changed a lot since we were students there decades ago. The long and the short of it was that when we got to the theater, the doors were shut. We were locked out! Because of the nature of the play, we couldn’t come even a few minutes late.
I woke up this morning and realized that we lived this Sunday’s Gospel last night! While we took our adventure with a sense of humor, today it provides food for thought as I connect it to this week’s readings.
We come now to the last three Sundays of the church year for Cycle A. Today we get the first of three parables Jesus told to his disciples during Holy Week. We think of Jesus’ beautiful words in John 13-17 as his “Farewell Discourse.” We read those chapters each Christmas and Easter season as wonderful reminders of Jesus’ life-giving sacrifice and omnipresent love described at the First Eucharist.
Yet Chapter 25 of Matthew is no less a Farewell Discourse. Matthew is a different disciple, and he remembers different words and a different message. These three parables on a practical level are admonitions to the disciples to expect the unexpected and to be true to what Jesus has taught them as their world is ripped apart by His Passion. On an allegorical level, they are about the mission of the Church as we prepare for Jesus’ return at the end of time, on the “last day.”
In between, they can be a message for us to be serious about our own personal calls to be disciples alert and active in the world. Today’s focus on Catholic Social Teaching will not be on particular teachings, but rather on the more general call to stay awake, trim the lamps of our faith, and prepare for the Kingdom of God when it comes in a way different from what we expect.
Matthew 25:1-13
Let’s look at the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens in detail.
Who are the maidens?
We are. Sometimes we can be wise—by planning to see a serious play with mass, friend, and dinner. Sometimes we can be foolish, as when we think that parking and paths that were on a college campus 30 years ago will be sufficiently the same that we don’t need to check a map.
What are the lamps and the light?
The light of Christ in the world today. Gaudium et Spes, the Vatican II document on “The Church in the Modern World,” says:
“The Church believes that Christ, who died and was raised for the sake of all, can show man the way and strengthen him through the Spirit in order to be worthy of his destiny: nor is there any other name under heaven given among men by which they can be saved. The Church likewise believes that the key, the center and the purpose of the whole of man’s history, is to be found in its Lord and Master.” (paragraph 10)
We believe that. I believe that. But am I careless with that belief, assuming I know enough about an issue without checking out what the Church and Scripture actually say? Do I read and listen only to information that supports what I want to believe–or do I check out the catechism to find out what is true, then compare it to what I believe and what others of a different perspective say? Today I am reminded that what I thought was true about an alma mater’s campus was generally correct—but not correct enough to get me in the theater on time.
Christ is our light. But he lives in OUR LAMPS. We must care for our lamps so the Christ-light we carry is READY when Jesus needs it with this person or that situation.
What does it take to trim and fill our lamps?
Again, from Gaudium et Spes:
“Today there is an inescapable duty to make ourselves the neighbor of every man, no matter who he is, and if we meet him, to come to his aid in a positive way, whether he is an aged person abandoned by all, a foreign worker despised without reason, a refugee, an illegitimate child wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a starving human being who awakens our conscience by call to mind the words of Christ, ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ (paragraph 27)
“Let everyone consider it his sacred duty to count social obligations among man’s chief duties today and observe them as such…This will be realized only if individuals and groups practice moral and social virtues and foster them in social living.” (paragraph 30)
My social obligations are my lamp. The teaching of the Church and Scripture is the oil. My “yes” to God, situation by situation, lights the Fire of God’s Love in my corner of the world–be that family, parish, work, or community.
Each of us has a lamp. Each of us is called to be God’s light burning in that lamp.
And each of us MAY be called to welcome Jesus when he comes in unexpected turns of Providence this week.
Wisdom 6:12-16
The book of Wisdom was written originally in Greek, probably only about 200 years before Jesus. Its audience was Hellenized Jews living in Egypt. It is a transition book, because it begins the mental move from “we are God’s chosen people” to “God’s salvation is meant for all, beginning with us.”
“Us” then were the Jews up until Jesus. Then “us” became us Christians. “We are the Light of the World,” as the song says.
Today’s selection from Wisdom ties wisdom and prudence. Thomas Aquinas saw prudence as a practical human virtue. It is the ability to examine options and choose the best one. As a human virtue, it chooses a good means to accomplish a good end. (Ah, yes, last night we chose a good end, the play, but the means to the end was “a stick short of a pound of butter,” as my friend said. It wasn’t good enough.
Wisdom is a supernatural virtue; it is human prudence enlightened by the Spirit of God. We can develop mental habits of prudence, but in wisdom, “the light of Christ” gives us ideas and logic that are wiser than we are.
It might be a simple thing, like pay attention to the sheet with the ticket printed on it. That sheet said that the doors would be closed when the play began. Late comers would not be admitted. That is a very interesting point to me from my adventure last night: I had seen that, but I didn’t include it in my time management. I guess, in my heart, I didn’t believe it was really true.
It was true. Really true! The lady was nice, but she didn’t budge. We were locked out.
I Thessalonians 4:13-18
When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, the emerging churches thought that Jesus would return to end the world SOON. So, Christians in Thessalonica were worried about people who died before the Second Coming. Were they lost because they could not “meet Jesus in the air?” Paul assures the Thessalonians that those who have died already will be raised from the dead when Jesus returns.
Twenty centuries and billions of people later, it is easy to see the fallacy of first century Christian understanding of life after death, the end of time, and the eternal Kingdom of God. But what of our misunderstandings today? Do we know what the Church teaches?
I frequently hear people who are not active Christians talk about someone who was also not an active Christian who has died. “He is in a better place,” they say. While we cannot know the judgment or wisdom of God, the assumption that every soul automatically graduates from earthly life to heavenly life is not the teaching of Bible or Church. The Church and Scripture teach that active, lived faith is part of the necessary ticket to heaven.
I was mistaken about “the doors will be shut” to the theater. I was mistaken about how well I knew the campus. I was mistaken about how we used our dinner moments. All those mistakes are just a learning curve that can make an entertaining story. But, what do I need to be doing today, in light of my faith, church teaching, and the Great Commissioning of the Laity which is Vatican II? Is my lamp full, trimmed and ready when I need to be God’s Love to someone?
The twelve disciples did not heed this parable. Two days after they heard it their world radically changed. The Messiah they loved did not come in glory or apparent power. He came in the unexpected–on a cross, seemingly powerless. Only one of them, John, had his lamp trimmed and ready. He was with Mary and the other women at the foot of the cross.
How is Jesus coming to me today? Where is he in social obligations around me? The crisis of a friend? The serious illness of another? Among the lonely in the coming holidays? In a troublesome relative?
Prayer:
Lord, again and again through the years, you give me an image of myself as walking in the dark with a candle. Sometimes, I am alone. Usually, I am one of multitudes. Last night, there were lights enough for us to see, but, my lamp was not trimmed and ready when the unexpected came. I was using my own memory and mind to get us where we needed to go. I got us there–but too late. The door was shut. What if I’d prayed while we walked? Was that your message in this parable you had me live? Do I still trust (or doubt) myself too much? Do I ignore your quiet signs that reality is different from what I expect? Lead me from my human prudence which can be “a stick short of a pound of butter” into your Wisdom. Lead me, guide me, Lord, to be AVAILABLE light when needed.
