We have a Gospel this week that portrays ten bridesmaids—five of them foolish, five wise. The groom is late, midnight strikes, and the foolish ones realize their lamps are running dry. The moral of the story seems simple: “Keep your eyes open, for you know not the day or the hour.” But let's look closer. All ten bridesmaids fell asleep. The real difference was that five of them were prepared with a reserve of oil. With this parable, Jesus wants to tell us that we must be prepared for the encounter with him. Not only for the final encounter, but also for the everyday great and small encounters. The lamp of faith is not enough; we also need the oil of charity and good works.
Look around our fast-paced society today. We rush through time just to get things done. When we aren’t producing, fixing, or achieving, we think we are wasting time. But the real waste of time is the frantic way we rush through it. We think we are active, but we are really just inattentive. When we make the present absolute, we look only to the present, losing the sense of expectation, which is so beautiful and so necessary. We do everything as if we will never depart for the other life. In hurrying to prepare ourselves for things not yet upon us, we run ourselves ragged, and sooner or later, our gas runs out.
The world tells us that being vigilant means being stressed, always on the clock, and calculating our next metric of success. But Christ’s radical wisdom flips this entirely. To be wise is not to calculate the time of departure or guess the end of the world. True wisdom means spending the present moment—the waiting—well. It means trading our earthly anxiety for a present full of hope. The Lord will be able to come even while we are sleeping, and this will not worry us, because we have the reserve of oil accumulated through our daily good works.
Almost 16 years ago, I was invited by Bishop Pep to serve as the shepherd of Holy Family Parish in North Java. Driving out there, I didn't even know it was in Wyoming County, deep in farm country. Before that, I had imagined myself vigilant and alert, so busy about the things of God that I could barely keep up. A feeling of being “always rushed” had beset me.
I suppose God had to send me all the way out to the cornfields to get me to slow down! That's where I met Ed. Ed taught me how to turn wood bowls. Once a month, he’d invited me into his garage to turn a rough, knotted burl bowl into a genuine work of art. Ed was always fiercely concerned about my safety. He took the time to teach me exactly how to use the tools that shave the wood correctly. He used to tell me he didn't want me losing any fingers—mostly because I needed them to celebrate Mass! I miss Ed, and I miss learning how to turn wood. Standing at that lathe, watching the wood shavings fly, it did more to slow me down from my frantic pace as a priest than any seminar ever could. You can't rush a wood lathe, and you certainly can't rush when you're trying to keep all your fingers.
Are you so busy working for God that you are completely missing the presence of God right in front of you? What is one frantic anxiety you need to drop today so you can actually look the person in front of you in the eye?
Lord, i pray for all my Sonshine Friends, remind us that the last things are the lasting things: this moment of gratitude, this one gift of another breath, this particular person before us, this chance to hope, this hour to believe.. At life’s end, no matter what the hour or day, may we joyfully welcome the presence to whom we have learned to be attentive.
