WISDOM AND FOOLISHNESS.
November 8, 2020
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time - A.
A French proverb says, “Hope is the dream of a soul awake.”
A Sicilian proverb adds, “Who stays vigilant, will win.”
“Let my prayer come into your presence. Incline your ear to
my cry for help, O Lord” (Cf. Ps 88: 3). Here is the entrance antiphon that
plunges us in the Eucharistic celebration of this 32nd Sunday in the Ordinary
Time A. Prayer is a time of encounter and intimate communication with the one
we wait for. In prayer, the orant pours his heart and his soul before God. He
turns to him for help, knowing that, away from him, human life is a loss.
About prayer, the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes
St. Therese of Lisieux, saying, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is
a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love,
embracing both trial and joy” (CCC.2558). Entering the Teresian vocabulary,
prayer is a nuptial encounter between the beloved and the one who loves. It is
a heart to heart relationship expressed in patient expectation and love.
Today’s liturgy opens us into that expectation and prayer.
In the first reading, the author of the book of Wisdom tells us that “Wisdom is
found by those who seek her.” The greatest expression of wisdom or the
personified wisdom being God himself, we can conclude that God is found only by
those who seek and thirst for him. To pray is to seek for the Lord until we
find him; to cry out to him, and implore his help. As says the wise man,
whoever, filled with love, seeks and cry to God for help shall not be
disappointed. The Lord, like sing the Psalmist, hears those whose soul thirst
for him. What is however needed in our thirst for God’s help is to keep vigil,
just like a bride keeps vigil waiting for the coming of the bridegroom. He who
is not vigilant and patient in prayer never gets what he prays for.
Through the parable of the ten virgins, the Lord Jesus, in
Gospel, emphasizes that dimension of expectation in prayer: to be always ready
and awake. The Lord ends the parable with these words: “Therefore, stay awake,
for you know neither the day nor the hour.” When we pray, we are like those ten
ladies who went out to encounter their beloved one. The ten, apparently went
out willing and somehow prepared for the encounter. However, there was a lack
in the preparation of five of them. The Lord speaks of five wise and five
foolish. Wisdom and foolishness are two main attitudes that describe the life
of many Christians. Some are Christians for a time in life while others try their
best to be Christians for a lifetime. Many are the circumstantial or seasonal
Christians who pray only occasionally. When the season or the circumstances
that made them Christians is over, their faith and spiritual life also fade and
to some extend vanish. Those people are Christians who live only for a static
‘today’, forgetting that there will be a ‘tomorrow’.
On the other hand, there are also some who deny to
themselves any connection to the present and postpone everything to a utopic
and hypothetic future. I heard someone speak of ‘procrastinated Christians’,
that is Christians who postpone everything they could do or should do today in
a ‘tomorrow’. Those people live in procrastination concerning conversion. “I
will be good church-goer tomorrow… I must enjoy life fully today. When I will
grow old, I will get enough time to prepare for heaven…” With that philosophy
of procrastination, heaven passes by them without them being prepared for it.
The attitude of procrastination is well incarnated by the
five foolish virgins and it resulted in their unpreparedness to encounter the
groom. Some people, sadly, forget that tomorrow will never come the way they
expect it. In that sense, the best way and time to get ready for the Lord’s
coming is a ‘continual today’, a today that never ends. Here is the attitude of
the five wise virgins, the preparedness’ attitude.
Spiritual life or prayer is an express road to wisdom, a way
to get always ready. As Christians, it is imperative for us to be always ready
for the coming of the Lord. We should, therefore, keep alive the lamp of our
faith with oil of good works in reserve. This parable puts expressly in game
the three theological virtues that are faith, hope, and love, the remarkable
identity of a genuine Christian. For, faith is the lamp that illuminates our
life. Hope is our awaiting attitude, the awakeness. And love or charity, the
oil that we keep in reserve when faith and hope wane.
Many are the Christians who, from the first approach, have
faith, a lamp brightly burning. But sadly, in front of the events of life,
their faith grows drowsy and they lose hope and fall in despair. Many of them
easily lack hope in a better future, consequently, they lose faith and abandon
the Christian life. We have so many nominal or numeral Christians whose faith
is “à fleur de peau” superficial without consistency. Just as faith is
nourished by hope in order to keep burning, so too, is hope fed by love. A
follower of Christ without love is like someone holding a lamp with
insufficient oil and uncertain of the future. Christian’s love is seen and
expressed through charity, tangible actions towards the needy.
The Apostle Paul, in the second reading, speaks of the
reward of genuine Christianity: eternal life. “God, through Jesus, will bring
with him those who have fallen asleep.” The salvation of Christ, from the
Paulinian words, is as well for the living and the dead. What is required from
us is a firm hope, that is, to live not as hopeless people.
Deplorably, many people live in chronic hopelessness today. Reading the social, political, sanitary, economic, and even natural or environmental events, they question God and question their faith in him. The call for us today is that of firmness of faith, hope, and love. No matter the happenings, never give up, never lose hope. Keep your lamp alive and ignited, brightly burning. Never stop crying to God for help. He will end up inclining his ears to your prayers and answer you on his time. For, tomorrow will always come for him who knows how to wait for it patiently in his today.
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