The 22nd Sunday of the Year: 2014

Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.

“It’s mine: you can’t have it”. We tell our children: “Be nice: share.” This works pretty well until the thing that the other child wants is your child’s hair, nose, eyes or ears. There are things which can be shared and things which cannot. So the Gospel this tells us: there are things which can be shared and things which cannot.

Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves. It doesn’t seem very nice unless of course the foolish virgins are asking the wise for something that they cannot give.

The parable of the ten virgins in the Gospel this Sunday is a difficult because there are at least three theories of interpretation all of them backed by the names of great Fathers and Doctors of the Church. This Gospel is often read on the feasts of holy virgins as an exhortation to the religious life. St. Thomas Aquinas held that the ten virgins represented all of humanity, the wise virgins being the faithful and the unwise those outside the Church. But the most useful interpretation, I think, is that of St. Gregory the Great, who said “holy Church is said to be like ten virgins.”

For one thing we should notice that all ten virgins for the most part share the very same advantages: they are all virgins, they all have lamps, they are all waiting for the bridegroom, they all fall asleep on the job. The one and only difference between the wise and unwise is the oil supply.

This Gospel comes to us on the heels of the Church’s annual celebration of the great and wonderful mystery of the communion of saints, All Saints and All Souls. We share in the prayers and love of the Church Militant, the Church Expectant, and the Church Triumphant.

O Savior Jesu, not alone

We plead for help before thy throne

So runs the hymn for Matins on All Saints Day. ‘Not alone’. We are the beneficiaries of the prayers of the living and the departed, of  Saints beyond numbering. We are surrounded by ‘a great cloud of witnesses’. Not only that for the communion of saints is not only a sharing of holy persons but also a sharing of ‘holy goods.’  The Sacraments, the Liturgy, the preaching and teaching of the Church, the experience of God’s mercy and love and grace. We are privileged.

What can go wrong? Quite simply what the wise virgins tell the foolish: we have not bought oil enough for ourselves. There are things which can be shared and things which cannot and one thing which cannot be shared is the personal responsibility of faith. For all our privileges and advantages we still have to buy into the whole thing with personal faith. That is what ignites our lamps and keeps them burning.

I have to confess that when I hear people going on and on about a personal relation with Jesus I wince because usually what that means is an emotional experience according to someone else s definition of a personal relationship with Jesus. There are all sorts of ways in which folks come to personal faith besides emotional meltdown, through the intellect and through an act of the will. I have made myself unpopular in some Evangelism or Renewal programs because I object to manipulating people to get them to believe. The motive is no doubt good but the Gospel says ‘buy for ourselves’. We have to appropriate faith for ourselves.

Catholic Christians believe that as surely as Evangelical Christians. But it is not something that you do just once. It is something that you have to keep on doing again and again. Our Lady had to say “be it unto me according to thy word” not once but over and over again: on the road to Bethlehem, fleeing into Egypt, at Cana of Galilee, at the foot of the Cross.     

Again and again we have to decide that Jesus is the One, that it is all true, not just some attractive possibility but the Truth, the Way and the Life.

That is the only way for me to become we. Personal responsibility, personal faith in Jesus Christ, the one whom the Father has sent, the one who died and rose for me and will come again in glory is not the end of the story but the beginning, the opening of the door to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.

Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.