This weekend’s Gospel reading is of the foolish virgins who run out of oil for their lamps as they await the bridegroom’s coming. Of course, it is also about the wise virgins who have prepared themselves for the wait and enter the wedding feast at the opportune hour.
So, do you have enough oil for your life?
Most of us in our sixth or seventh decade of life begin to worry whether we have enough money in the bank or in the 401k to sustain us after retirement as we await the unforeseen hour of our death. We wonder whether we are being wise enough in our financial planning to meet the need of the wait, so we don’t end up on the public dole, or out in the cold in late life. If only we knew the day and the hour, we think, then I would know how much reserve to build up.
But as the Lord is so clear in telling us, we don’t know when. We really don’t know how much money we will need.
What about our spiritual lives? Do we have enough oil? Do we anticipate and prepare? In this realm of human existence, we have to take ourselves out of our usual awareness of time as a sequence of events… days leading to years and years leading to decades…. and place ourselves into God’s time. God’s time is now, an eternal now, kairos as the ancient Greeks would say. With this kind of time, we need to ask the question, “Am I prepared, now, to hear what God is saying and how he is coming into life at this moment? Do I have enough oil to see clearly by the light of faith God’s beckoning, God’s invitation to enter into his joy?”
Am I prepared to be filled with joy in his presence, now, at this moment, a moment that is in God’s time, kairos time, for he will surprise us when we probably least expect him. God’s coming is always accompanied by joy.
God is never stingy in his giving of his grace and his gifts to all who are open to them and seek his presence, his coming into life.
Thanks be to God.
