During a community retreat, it’s nice to be told how wonderful we are, how edifying and inspiring our life is, how much God loves us, and how heavenly joy lies just around the corner for us all. Sr. Anna Christi has done that for us, bless her, and much more besides of course, and we are truly grateful to her.
On the other hand, it’s also most useful, during a community retreat, to have administered a sharp kick in the rear; to be brought up short; to be rebuked for personal and even communal negligence, or lukewarmness; to have our eyes opened to our little self indulgences, and infidelities; our failures in generosity; our less than adequate response to our vocation; to the poverty of our love, and of our prayer. Even, let us say, it’s useful in a retreat to be confronted with the possibility that we could land up, after all, and through our own fault, in hell. All this the Lord himself does for us, in today’s Gospel parable.
The parable of the Ten Virgins is aimed very directly at us. It has nothing whatever to say about non-Christians; about atheists or idolaters; about murderers, or rapists or thieves. Clearly we have here an allegory, and the wedding at issue is between Christ and his Church. The ten Virgins then are baptised Christians who have an invitation to this wedding, and whose presence is expected, and relied upon. To press the point a bit: since they are named as Virgins, we can think of them as figures in particular of Christian ascetics, of consecrated Religious, of monks and nuns. All of them, without any ambiguity, want to enter Christ’s Kingdom. But at the end of the story, on fully half of their number the doors are closed, and they hear the terrible words: I do not know you.
This parable is placed in St. Matthew’s Gospel, together with several others, at the very end of the public ministry, right on the eve of the Passion. Jesus here looks ahead to the time of the Church, and to the consummation of all things, and he speaks very sternly. Of the unfaithful steward in the first of these parables he says: The Master will cut him off, and send him to the same fate as the hypocrites, (24:51). Of the servant who buried his talent Jesus says: Throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth (25:30). As for those who in their life time failed to assist Jesus in his little ones, he says to them: Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (25:41).
These are strong words, dire warnings, delivered with urgency, designed to jerk us out of any possible complacency. Jesus says these things out of love for us, for our good, and because he wants us to know the truth. He wants us to be clear that our Christian life is a serious business, and we have to take it very seriously. He himself purchased our salvation at cost of bitter pain, and his life’s blood poured out, to the end. Do we then want to drift easily into heaven, into eternal fellowship with him, without effort or inconvenience, without personal cost, without taking any trouble in preparing ourselves to meet him at last, face to face?
The wise virgins took flasks of oil. All the fathers of the Church interpreted the lamps of the parable as faith. The oil they variously interpreted as good works, or simply charity, or mercy, or holy doctrine. In the context of our community retreat, I’d like to interpret this oil as personal prayer, or a living relationship with the Lord, or a burning desire, ever nourished and kept alight, for God, for holiness, for heaven, for eternal life.
The five Virgins who arrived late were rejected not for being evil, but for their spiritual indolence, laziness, neglect. And this is folly. They had got so far already, and already given up so much! They were nearly there! All they needed now was perseverance, and determination, and sheer dogged fidelity. No: also they needed conversion; new conversion; a re-kindled love; a new sense of urgency. But they had taken their eye off the goal. God’s presence had ceased to mean much to them. The truths of our faith had turned rather stale for them, and become a bit boring. So they were content now to go through the forms, without bothering too much about the substance. Perhaps without them even noticing, their focus has switched from God to other things; to their attachments; to their interests; to their achievements; to their worries and concerns.
Give us some of your oil. Catholic doctrine holds that there is a communion of grace, whereby all of us help one another, even supernaturally, to get to heaven. Jesus does not deny that here. But he does insist that some things, like love, and prayer, and conversion, if they are lacking, cannot be supplied by someone else on our behalf. Each of us is called, very personally, to be a Saint. If we have understood that, we will be fools to excuse ourselves, in favour of deliberate, freely chosen selfishness and mediocrity.
At midnight a cry went forth: Ecce Sponsus! The Lord is here!! St. Benedict begins his Chapter on humility with such a cry, echoing constantly from Holy Scripture. For those who have ears to hear, this cry never ceases. It proclaims that Jesus is here, even now, present with us, and in us. It cries also that he wants union with us. Jesus invites us to what the mystics call spiritual marriage. He offers perfect love, and he asks for perfect love in return. That is, Jesus gives all he has, all he is, and he asks for nothing less than our all, without any reserve whatever. Today he proclaims that to accept this invitation is the height of all possible wisdom.
Now at Mass all of this comes to a focus, and is made a present reality. Here, now, we have the self offering of Jesus; the pouring out of his blood; his pressing invitation to intimate communion; his real presence. And here, even now, the gates of heaven swing open, and choirs of angels call us, from their side, not to hesitate, but to join them in eternal joy.