The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
How often do we bring our lamps with us, but without oil? What good do we think they will do us without oil? Perhaps the oil is extra weight to carry and we'll acquire it at the last minute when we need it. But the difference between us when we are foolish like this and the wise virgins, is that the wise were ready.
While they went off to buy it,
the bridegroom came
and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him.
The Spirit helps us respond to the opportunities that our daily encounters with the bridegroom afford. If we don't have our oil ready we won't be able to greet him, to welcome him, to cooperate with what he wants to do in us.
Very early, the better to signify the gift of the Holy Spirit, an anointing with perfumed oil (chrism) was added to the laying on of hands
(see Catechism of the Catholic Church 1289).
The Spirit himself is the oil we need to keep with us. We have been entrusted with the gift, but to have the oil ready for our lamps we need to let the fruit of the gift manifest in our lives. We need love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23). We need wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of the LORD (see Isaiah 11:2). If these fruit are not consistent realities in our lives we won't be ready to draw on them in times of need, times when Jesus is inviting us to respond to him dynamically when he meets us in specific circumstances of our lives.
How do we produce the fruit of the LORD? How do we do his work? It begins with believing in the one sent by the Father (see John 6:28-29). It is a belief that is even willing to look foolish to others, to seem naive, or too hopefully to be trustworthy. It may seem to others to be an opiate or a danger.
The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Faith in Jesus in the sine qua non without which we cannot be ready to meet him. And it should be obvious, but this can't be a one time decision to which we can simply point back. It must mark our lives. It must be something in which we grow from day to day as it is challenged by appearance and circumstance and is vindicated, whether or not that victory is apparent outside of our own spirits as believers. We grow in the certainty of the day that is coming when it will be vindicated to all.
At midnight, there was a cry,
‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
By faith, even in 2020, we can say, "[t]he earth is full of the goodness of the Lord."
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