THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A

THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – A
(Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 62; 1 Thess 4:13-18; Math 25:1—13)

Theme: We shall present ourselves awake and ready to be With Him

Reflection:

- With the readings of today, the Church, asks us to keep ourselves ‘awake’ and ‘ready’ always in order to meet the Bridegroom who comes in the day and in the time that we do not know and because the meeting of the Lord and being with Him is the destiny of our Christian life and faith;
- Jesus’ intention to tell this that unlike Scribes and Pharisees who were acting/living for the vainglory we should live and act for the glory of the Lord; this was the summary of the last week’s readings: ‘we are called to be coherent and integral in our life and testimony’. Those, Scribes and Pharisees, who were given the law and who were supposed to be living it and transmitting it through their testimony have not done it; it was their task and responsibility as the people called and chosen by God; but they have not done it; instead, they were doing it for their own name and fame and specially to be seen by the people; they were masking their life with hypocrisy and this was that made Jesus angry with them and thus he has denounced them from the kingdom of God;
- Unlike them, we are called to live with the coherence and with integrity between what we say and what we do and thus between our words and our actions; we have remind ourselves often and always that it is our Christian vocation and mission to live for the Lord and not for our selfish motive and auto-glory;
- In the continuation of this Jesus asks us to be awake and to be ready in every moment of our life:
o First of all, for the reason that we are in the final pages of the Gospel in which Jesus asks us make a real choice to accept and embrace his will; we are also in the final days of the conclusion of the Liturgical Year A and therefore, by offering these pages of the Gospel the Church demands us that we should ‘prepare ourselves with the light of faith and oil of love to meet Jesus whenever he comes;
o Secondly, for the reason that we should not be floated away with the negligence of the law of Jesus, the love and we should not live for the public applause but for the crown of joy which will be given to us for the life we live with the balance and commitment;
o Thirdly and finally, for the simple reason that we are in the grade of knowing the day and the hour in which Jesus will come; the day of his coming is unknown and the hour of his return is uncertain; therefore, the Church calls us today with the inspiration and the force of the readings to ‘know’ and ‘choose’ the path of Him with the wisdom which is always at our disposal;

First Reading

- Wisdom is always accessible:
o First of all, we should know the difference between wisdom and knowledge; very often both look alike but in reality and in concreteness they are different and they signify quite a different reality:
 Knowledge: to know a thing which is not known to us earlier; it is wonderful moment and movement to get the knowledge of the new elements or aspects; it is the work of the mind which studies deeper into the reality of a thing and finally know its nature and its being;
 Wisdom: wisdom on the other hand is not just knowing; it presupposes the knowledge and at the same time goes beyond it; its process does not stop with knowing the nature and the being of a new thing; since it goes beyond the knowledge it is not the work of the mind alone; it is the work of the heart/the spirit which decides to follow thoroughly and ultimately what is found;
 From the above definitions it is clear that: the knowledge is the work of the mind and the wisdom is the work of the heart; the mind thinks but the heart does; the mind starts but the heart completes; the mind knows and the heart follows;
o This wisdom is always at our disposition: it is we who have to see it and take it to ourselves; the first reading makes it clear to us:
 The wisdom is available and it makes itself at the reach: but only to the one who knows it as radiant and flawless and more than that who is in the journey of research: vv. 12-13:
• To the one who loves it;
• To the one who searches for it;
• And to the one who desire it;
 It has to be the important and prior reality that we should search for: vv. 14-15:
• We should wake up early in the morning only with the thought and will of searching for the wisdom; we may have hundred and one things to do in the day but the first thing, as the Christian faith demands, to do is to search for it: wisdom in none other than the Will of God;
• It is there always at the door of our life: we need only to open the door and see it sitting at the door-step making itself closer to us; the one who opens the door of faith finds it and asks it to enter in; in other words: ‘to open the door and making it to enter in’ means that the wisdom always provides us a possibility of life and the possibility of faith; we only need to invite it inside and thus we are invited to make use of the given opportunity and the possibility so that we are enlightened to be with it and it is with us: wisdom is none other than the presence of Jesus who said: ‘I abide in him and he abides in Me’ (John 6:56);
 The wisdom makes us to see the presence and the action of God in every instant of our life; it makes us see his will in every place we are in and in every interior activity that we intend to do; it makes us to distinguish between the life of superficiality and indifference and the life of great values and authentic living: therefore, wisdom is none other than the power of the Holy Spirit who makes us know the reality and one who ‘leads us to the Truth’ (John 16:13);
 Therefore, wisdom is the ‘presence and the work’ of the Trinity: the will of the Father, the acceptance of the Son and the power of the Spirit. Once we search for it and find it and finally, invite it into our life then, we become children of God the Trinity;

The Responsorial Psalm: my soul is thirsty of the Lord

- Christian Soul thirsts for the Lord:
o the Psalmist is very eager and enthusiastic to experience the presence of the Lord in him and thus to have the joy and life; that’s the reason why he composes and sings this song of his soul; his soul is waiting for the Lord; his soul is thirsting for the Lord; his soul is full of hunger for the Lord;
o therefore, what he does early in the morning is quite interesting to note; what is his first thing of the day is very inspiring for all those who want to be in the Lord and for the Lord; he sings: “O God, you are my God, at the dawn I search for you”: we may note two things here: one is that of ‘accepting God as his God’ and second is that of ‘searching for him from the dawn’. Finally, this ‘acceptance and the constant search’ becomes the ‘food’ and ‘drink’ of the day for the Psalmist;
o and, every Christian soul, every one of us, has to take the example of this Psalmist and search for the Lord every day and that should be our ‘food and drink’ and that should be ‘our will and action’ and that should be ‘our life’ itself; even Jesus confirms that ‘doing the will of His Father is his food and drink’.
- God is greater and valuable than our life itself:
o Our life, be human or spiritual, values more than anything else in the world; it is more than food and drink; it is more than the daily struggles; it is more than the desires of the world; it is more than anything – be it power, possessions and prestige; such a significance and value has our life;
o The Psalmist says that even our life is not valuable than the grace of God for he says, ‘your grace values more than life’; that’s what even the Lord assures St. Paul: ‘my grace is enough for you’. With this grace we can do anything in life and we can conquer life from the bondages of sin and worldly attractions; therefore, once we seek the grace we have everything in life; psalmist knows it well and therefore he seeks for the grace (wisdom) of God;
o We are asked today to do the same; to listen and to follow Psalmist and thus become the ‘searchers of the Wisdom’, and of the Lord our God;

Second Reading

- We are not the people of ignorance but of hope:
o The Gospel stands between ‘the wisdom’ and ‘the hope’ and it is Gospel that shows us the path towards choosing the wisdom and to be firm in the hope; the second reading teaches the same;
o St. Paul exclaims this in today’s passage from the first letter to the Thessalonians: ‘we do not want to leave you in ignorance’ (v.13);
o The wisdom is to see the reality and accept it and the Hope is to consistently wait for its realization in our life;
o ‘we believe indeed that Jesus is died and risen again’: this expression of faith is a wisdom which makes us to see and accept the reality that the death is only a door-step to the life just because we believe that Jesus, our Master, himself has passed from the earthly reality of death to the eternal reality of life; therefore, this is the work of the wisdom;
o ‘we believe also that those who have died, God will gather them through and with Jesus’: this expression of faith is a hope which makes us to live the reality of our life so that one day we will be able to participate in the life that God restores for us; therefore, this is the work of the hope;
o There is no place for ignorance because we know the reality in wisdom and live it in hope;

Gospel

- Biblical interpretation: ‘Here comes the Bridegroom and go out and meet him’
o With the wonderful nuptial parable of the ten virgins wise and imprudent comes out immediately a pair of antithesis of symbols: the awake and the sleep:
 The sleep alludes to the spiritual torpor, to the coldness and to the inactivity;
 The status of being waken is an index of readiness, tension, operating love and intelligence;
 Even Paul exhorts that we have to be the children of light: “we do not sleep like others, but we shall be awake and vigilant” (1Thess 5:6);
 When the voice of the bridegroom is heard, we need to be anxious and attentive;
o The antithesis of ‘awake’ and ‘sleep’ have as their effects in the symbolism of ‘darkness’ and ‘light’:
 The night or darkness is a moment of the trial and of obscurity of the hope that at the dawn God appears again as light;
 The light of the lantern which extinguishes the night or darkness is a sign of life, of joy, of interact with the bridegroom;
o The door which closed is again a symbolism of the word of the bridegroom ‘I do not know you’:
 Behind the closed door the nuptial banquet is celebrated: that is the sharing of joy, of intimacy and of communion; this is the sign of messianic salvation that is offered to the faithful, to the poor and to the just ones (Math 25:21,23; Math 8:11-12); being kept out from this life of joy is the symbolism of the closed door;
 Behind the closed door, the face of the bridegroom is changed into the face of the judge who will open the door not to invite the outsiders but only to judge them because their ignorance and rejection of wisdom and moreover because of their lack of proper preparation to meet him.
- Exegetical interpretation: keep your light always enkindled with the oil of love
o From the beginning of the chapter 24, Mathew develops a teaching on the end of the times. In this line he re-reads the parable of Jesus and utilizes it in the sense of ‘await for the return of Christ’; the Greek text starts with ‘in that time’ which connects the parable that is precedent (24:45-51). Also the phrase of verse 13 is in the direct echo of 24:42;
o Therefore, we can consider the text in two levels: as happening many times in the parables (chapter 13) and that is of Jesus which teaches ‘to be ready to the appeal of God’ and that is of Mathew which teaches ‘to be vigilant’ in the awaiting of the return of the Lord which is still distant: let us consider little more:
 The parable in the time of Jesus: Jesus wanted to pose a question to his listeners on a fact of everyday life: that is the celebration of matrimony in a village. All the invited girls have to wait, until the night passes that they finish of speaking of the family of the husband; when it is signaled they participate to be in their proper post; for this reason they have to prepare well everything; what can we think of those imprudent virgins who were not there – ready – to meet the bridegroom? What happens then? The whole village would laugh at them: when one is invited he has to arrive at the stabilized hour; from the context Jesus wanted to tell his audience: apply the same principle to your life and situation; you are also called for a great event; see that you don’t miss it; therefore, there is here an urgent invitation for the conversion as in the many gospel parables;
 The parable in the time of Mathew: when Mathew receives this parable from the oral tradition, he gives it a meaning by placing it with the relation to Jesus and to the Church: Christ is the Bridegroom of the New Alliance. We wait for his return but his return is late; Mathew writes his gospel in the time of the second generation Christians and thus he has to create a space for the people to think that the return of Jesus will not come tomorrow; in the problem of the question: when will he come again? What is the time of his return? Mathew answers them to wait and not to sleep and there is still to be done as it was taught by the parable of the faithful servant (24:45-51) and as will be developed by the parable of the talents (25:14-30), the two parables between which is placed this parable;
 V.3: the lantern: is the classical image to indicate the vigilance, the perseverance and the fidelity and we can find this also in Luke 12:35;
 V.5: All the virgins: the reference is made to all the virgins be it wise or imprudent; and all of them were sleeping and therefore this indicates that the teaching on the vigilance is not here;
 V.9: the wise virgins: many say that they are little selfish because they were not ready to share their oil with them; but here we need not pose the false problems saying that they are charitable in their dealing with the imprudent ones because the moral teaching of the parable is not here still; each has to be vigilant in the waiting for the Lord; no one is to be in the place of the other; each has his play and each has his role; no one should interfere with the other because each one is called to prepare and to participate in the banquet of the Bridegroom; the wise virgins have attentively directed their life toward the return of Christ and thus they are ready to greet him.
 V.11: the rebuke made to the imprudent virgins is not that they are vigilant; but more than that they failed to have with them the proper and necessary dispositions to be ready at the right time; the opposition between those who entered and those remained outside is to be compared to 24:41 – “one will be taken away and the other is left behind”;
 V.12: I do not know you: the same sense of 7:23; go away from me: the citation of Ps 6:9; doing the evil (operators of iniquity), here and in 13:41, are equivalent to ‘not doing the will of the Father’ (7:21). We can see also Luke 13:25-27.
 V.13: keep awake: is retaken from 24:42; Mathew, writing to community of his time, makes its proper use to the conclusion of his discourse on the coming of the Son of Man. He insists on the perseverance “because you do not know either the day or the hour”.
- Spiritual meaning: be ready to enter before the door is closed
o The door at the entrance of which was sitting the wisdom (first reading) is the possibility of knowing and accepting the plan of God that each Christian soul has to search for it every morning (second reading);
o Once the door is closed, that is, once the possibility of life, the opportunity of grace or the hour of meeting is closed, (or lost or missed), there is nothing of us to do than crying out ‘outside’;
o Once the door is closed we are left outside in the darkness and in the night and thus in the possibility of destruction;
o We should be ready, therefore, to enter in when the door is opened; indeed, we have to keep ourselves, as the Gospel passage demands, awake and vigilant so that whatever moment the coming of the bridegroom be, we have all the chances of going in along with him and to be with him sharing the joy of the wedding;
o There is no use of crying from out ‘Lord, open to us the door’ or ‘Lord, give us another chance’ or ‘Lord, bear with us this time out of your mercy’; no cries will reach into the wedding hall because there is a ‘sound of joy and shouts of happiness’ inside and our cries remain unheard and unnoticed;
o Therefore, finally, the only possible way for us is ‘to keep awake, to be vigilant, to be perseverant’ (the Gospel) and ‘to search for the wisdom that guides us to see the hand and the will of God in every action of our life’ (the first reading) and finally, ‘to dispel our ignorance and to live in hope’ of meeting the Lord one day (the second reading).

Conclusion

- We have to present ourselves to Jesus:
o With all the required dispositions such as: to keep ourselves at the door of faith (wisdom), with the lamp of hope (vigilance) and with the oil of love (awake);
o Like a wise virgins who have prepared themselves well and who, though asleep, when the sound of the Lord has reached them, have been awake; ‘blessed is the servant who is found awake when the master returns’ and he will be given a share in his possessions.
- We have to prepare ourselves well to meet Him:
o It is not enough to come to the church - because even the imprudent virgins have come - to meet the Lord, but it is more important to come prepared and with good disposition – like that of the wise virgins who have finally – met the Lord; therefore, coming to the house of the Lord is not all but coming with prepared heart to listen to him and to receive him so that we are in him and he is in us and that is the actual and true meaning of ‘meeting him’.
o Because we are not aware of the day or the hour in which he comes but ‘blessed are we if we are found prepared’.
o Because we have to keep ourselves ‘awake’ from the desires of darkness, which world would offer us in good quantity, so that we do not fall into their sleep and so we have the possibility of ‘keeping our faith’ (with vigilance) in the ‘good actions’ (with love) of everyday life.
o Therefore, we have to be present ‘with preparedness and perfection’ to meet the Lord who comes.