Wisdom is keeping the Lamps full
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
(Wis 6:12-16; 1The 4:13-18; Mt 25:1-13)
In October 2011, The Tablet, the Catholic Weekly published from the UK, ran a story entitled, “From Catwalk to the Convent”. In the article, Vicky Mitchell gave a personal account of her experience in producing and directing a documentary on “Young Nuns” that was shown on BBC1 in the same week. First of all, after the lull in vocations in the UK since the 1960’s there seems to be some positive signs that more and more young women are considering the possibility of a religious vocation. As the writer spoke to several novice mistresses, priests, vocation promoters, and to 15 young women who were actively discerning a vocation to religious life, she wonders: “The big question, then, is why? Why should any woman give up marriage and motherhood and the freedom to live according to her own desires?” In answering this question, the producer had to abandon her own worldly reasoning. “The best explanation I can offer is that these women feel that they are called by God to devote their lives to him. And that in following the path he has chosen, they will find a deep happiness and fulfilment that transcends all the things they have given up,” she says.
I thought the last sentence captures somehow the core theme of the parable of the ten bridesmaids: being wise is finding our fulfilment in the right place – it is having our lamps full and awaiting the coming of the bridegroom.
The same issue of The Tablet also carried in boxes some individual narratives of their own vocation story. One Mary Catherine, a 29 year old novice, says: “As a music student I was occupied by long hours of practice, auditions, rehearsals and performances. Yet, there remained a restlessness in my heart. … That yearning to be a part of something bigger than myself, that little thread in a symphonic tapestry, transfigured before me: no longer was I merely glorifying God through music, but instead becoming an actual instrument of God’s grace by giving my entire self to him and for him.”
The oil-less lamp: the emptiness of the human heart
In the stories of the women in the vocation narratives, there is a repeated expression: “Yet, there remained a restlessness in my heart. … That yearning to be a part of something bigger than myself…” Or as another young nun Sr Suzanne says: “I started to hear the cry of my soul…” And Clare puts it this way: “There came a point when I couldn’t ignore the thoughts and feelings that were stirring inside me.”
Is this not the experience of every human being? The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Q2) summarises this so succinctly:
God himself, in creating man (sic) in his own image, has written upon his heart the desire to see him. Even if this desire is often ignored, God never ceases to draw man to himself because only in God will he find and live the fullness of truth and happiness for which he never stops searching. By nature and by vocation, therefore, man is a religious being, capable of entering into communion with God.
It is so easy to mistake that desire deep within. I can go searching for fulfilment everywhere else except in God, and I can remain empty. And is this not like the oil-less lamps of the foolish bridesmaids? They went looking for oil to fill their emptiness and they missed the bridegroom.
By quoting the example of the young nuns in the UK, I am not implying that the fulfilment could be found only in religious life. But what is striking for me in these individual stories is the emptiness and the yearning in the human heart – often aggravated by modern secularism, consumerism and individualism. If we are not wise in this context we might have peripheral enjoyment of being part of the party, but when the time of reckoning comes (even in the silence of our own hearts!) we find our lamps empty. We have missed the point. We have missed the climax of the celebration. We are not there when the bridegroom arrived and we find the doors shut. Because of our conditioning, through our own previous choices, we might find ourselves at a point of no return.
Lamps full: being ready to be surprised by God
Jesus once again uses a typical cultural practice from his time to come up with a parable for his listeners.
Marriage customs are very interesting across cultures. For example, among the Chagga people who live around Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, the bride is actually “stolen” at night by the bridegroom helped by his age mates. Usually, the girls would sleep in one hut, which is often the hut of the mother with the goats and sheep not far from them. The boy has to break into the right hut in the middle of the night and take the right girl – with whom he has previously agreed. If the boy touches a wrong person, he will have to pay a fine in addition to the bride-price that he will have to pay to the father of his bride.
Similarly, the custom that Jesus is using as his base goes this way: The bride would wait with her maids for the coming of the bridegroom. Normally he would arrive accompanied by his own companions, at dusk, soon after sun set, and take the bride to his own home accompanied by her entourage of her friends and relatives and then the wedding celebration would begin. The twist to the story in the parable of Mt 25 is that the bridegroom was late in arriving; he came only at midnight (Mt 25:6). And this was what caught the bridesmaids by surprise. When overtaken by life-events it is the wise who survive! When things don’t go as planned we fall back to our default mode of functioning. It is here that our previous choices and habits come into play. In a sense, when caught unawares, our authentic self is tested.
What could this mean in the large scheme of the Gospels and the mission of Jesus?
Our God is a God of surprises. Having oil for the lamps is the human willingness to await the grace of God, to be surprised by Him. Of course individuals have to make their own choice of free will – by building appropriate virtues and strengths. Others cannot give them the oil, though they could offer an indication of where to find the oil (Mt 25:9). Expecting to receive oil from others in the last minute is like wanting others to love God instead of me. We are ultimately responsible for our own personal choices.
Again, words are not enough. “Lord, Lord, open to us” does not seem to work (Mt 25:11; also Mt 7:21-23). It is the heart that matters. Do I really want to respond meaningfully to that deep desire in my heart for God? What choices am I making towards building strengths to be open to the God of surprises, so that the thirst of my soul may be fulfilled?