I was very good friends with a Sister of Providence, and I think of her every time this gospel is read because she hated it. And she hated it because she thought it wasn't the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins, it was the parable of the selfish and the foolish virgins.
Why wouldn't they share? Isn't that in fact what we're told to do? It seems rather selfish not to share. But this way of thinking actually reflects a danger when it comes to the Gospels and reading the Gospels. Jesus is telling a story. He's telling a story to make a point, and we always need to ask ourselves, what is the point of the story?
What is it that Jesus is helping us to understand? And in this particular gospel, it's not to teach us to share. There's something far more important going on with this gospel than learning the simple lesson of sharing. So what is it?
We need to go right to the very beginning. Jesus tells us, the kingdom of heaven will be like. When Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, rarely does he say, this is what the kingdom of heaven is. This is the kingdom of heaven. He generally uses what he uses today. The kingdom of heaven is like.
And that's because the kingdom of heaven is really kind of difficult to pin down. It's not always easy in our lives to figure out what the kingdom of heaven is. And so Jesus kind of continues to give us hints to understand something that is mysterious. Now in our Western culture, we typically are not big fans of mystery.
If we were to talk about mystery, let's say like reading a mystery, we wouldn't think of it as a very good mystery that we were reading if it wasn't ultimately solved. We don't like open, loose ends. We like things to be clear. We like things to be solved. When we're sick, we want to know exactly why and what needs to be done. If there is a problem, we would like the problem to be solved.
But there is another way of thinking that's far more prevalent in the Eastern culture, which suggests that mysteries are not something to be solved, they're something to be entered into. And in many ways, we don't understand our faith without both types of relationships with mystery.
If we see mystery only as something to be solved, then we don't have any room for the transcendent. We don't have any room for the God that is beyond us because He's infinite. And if we don't attempt to solve some problems using our gift of reason, then we would just kind of throw up our hands and live life however it came without trying to make anything better.
Jesus in today's gospel is inviting us into mystery. This is a metaphor. This is a story that has a deeper meaning than meets the eye. So we have these virgins who are awaiting the bridegroom. That would have been an image familiar to the people who heard the story. They would have known. And if they were outside waiting for the bridegroom, then it would have been quite important to be ready. Regardless of when the bridegroom came.
And being ready means having oil. But the Church Fathers have often interpreted this oil as the gift of wisdom. Those virgins who were ready were the ones who thought in their life about what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus. And they thought about how to live their life.
And without wisdom, there are some aspects of the gospel that are quite challenging indeed. Loving our enemies, praying for persecutors, those don't seem to be wise rational things. If you love your enemies, well, what if they turn around and harm you even more? If you pray for your persecutors, what if they persecute you all the more?
There's a wisdom that comes in recognizing the gift of faith. And often, the people that are singled out as the ones who get it are the ones who have found wisdom. And here's the thing about wisdom. If we don't cultivate wisdom and aren't trying to be receptive to wisdom and aren't trying to put ourselves into places where we can find wisdom, I can't give you wisdom. . .
