Homilies & Thoughts

Some people are surprised, if not outright offended, by the actions of the wise virgins. When the bridegroom is finally announced and the foolish virgins ask for oil for their lamps, the wise refuse to give them any. Instead, they tell them to go to the market and buy some for themselves.

To understand that response, we have to enter the world of the parable. The virgins, the lamps, and the oil are symbols. The oil that burns, that gives light and warmth, represents charity: authentic love.

I’m sure you have all played Monopoly at some point, or at least are familiar with it. It’s one of those games where most homes have house rules, right? We don’t always play the way the game actually tells us to play. We play the way we were taught, the way our parents played, or the way somebody showed us. And if we ever go back and read the rules, we often discover that it isn’t actually how the game is supposed to be played.

People often struggle with this parable for various reasons, but I think that word, prudent, is a big part of what’s going on here. To hear it in the context of Jesus’ time, we have to remember that the Jewish people were living under Roman oppression. There was a lot of agitation. People wanted to be rid of the Romans and return to governing themselves, without someone else looking over them and taking taxes from them.

Who, having a hundred sheep and losing one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one? And the answer is: no one would.

Think of the scene itself. You don’t have a hundred sheep safely behind a fence. You don’t have thirty helpers to watch them while you chase the lost one. You’re in the desert, surrounded by the elements. It’s just you, and one sheep goes astray. If you go after it, you know that by the time you get back, you will have only one sheep left: the one on your shoulders. The rest will be gone.

People struggle with the line in today’s Gospel about hating father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even our own life. Without that, Jesus says, we cannot be his disciples. And he does use the word for hate. This is not a translation issue. He uses the proper term.

But I think the key lies in that phrase, “hate his own life.” If we take “hate” in its ordinary sense, then his commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” becomes incoherent. If I hate myself, then I get to hate my neighbor. That undermines the point of what he is saying.

I read a story about our patron saint the other day, Saint Alphonsus. There was a religious sister whom everyone thought was holy. When she died, Saint Alphonsus received a vision of her and saw that she was in hell. And so he asked, “How could this be?”

Through the grace of that vision, he was shown her history. Yes, she did many of the things that make one look holy. She spent time in prayer and engaged in service. She did all the things one would expect, and so everyone thought she was a very holy woman.

Our lives are determined by our choices. The same situation can turn out very differently simply because of how we choose to respond.

Notice what happens in the Gospel. Both groups, the sheep and the goats, were placed in the same situations. They encountered the hungry, the stranger, the imprisoned—people in need. But one group chose to respond in charity. They didn’t recognize that Christ was present. They were just as surprised by the outcome as the goats were. Yet they chose to act in charity, and it changed everything. The other group did not. So one goes off to the reward of life, and the other to punishment. The difference lies in the choices they made.

We all know that certain saints are patrons of particular professions or situations. If you lose your keys, you pray to Saint Anthony of Padua. He helps us find lost things. We may have other saints we turn to as well, whose patronage comes to us through tradition or an official decree. But some of the things our saints are patrons of may surprise us.

According to tradition, Saint Lawrence was martyred on a large iron grill. His torturers placed it over a fire and laid him upon it. At some point, the story goes, Lawrence said, “I think you can turn me over. I’m done on this side.” So, of course, the Church makes him the patron saint of chefs.

Our translator here writes, “They were observing him carefully.” But the word used here really means that they were observing him with suspicion. They watched closely to see whether he would make a mistake or do something wrong.

It is important that we hear it that way because, fundamentally, this Gospel contrasts two different gazes. There is the gaze of the crowd, which is one of suspicion. And then there is the gaze of Christ, which seems to be the gaze of a father looking at his son. That is, in a sense, how he speaks of this man with dropsy: who of you would not rescue your child if he fell into a pit, even on the Sabbath? Christ looks at him like a son. And these ways of gazing affect the outcome.

We are to love God and love our neighbor. Yet we use this word love in so many different ways. If we are to understand what the Lord commands, then we have to understand what real love looks like. And our truest teacher is God himself. So let us look at how God loves.

He created us in paradise and gave us a single command. We broke it. Yet even when he cast us out of that earthly paradise, he did not abandon our first parents. He gave them a promise: he would restore us and raise us up.

The Lord criticizes the crowds because they know how to read the signs in the weather, but they do not understand the moment in which they are standing. God himself, the Messiah they claim to have longed for, is now in their midst, and they do not recognize him. Their minds are consumed by natural things that matter to them. Whether it will rain or be hot determines how their day will go, how their crops will fare, and how their animals will be. These are the things that occupy their attention.

The Lord says he has come to set the earth on fire. He has come to bring about change in the world through the fire of the Holy Spirit, who should be remaking the world. As Christians, we should have some influence on the world, bringing about the changes Christ asks of us.

And yet, in day-to-day life, it often seems that the world has more influence on us. Think about your own speech throughout the day. Are you more likely to quote a politician, a commentator on the news, someone from the secular world, or Christ himself?