32nd Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
OLR, NOLA
Are
you wise? Or, are you foolish? What's the difference? According to
Jesus, the wise live their lives prepared to enter the Kingdom at a
moment's notice. The foolish live moment to moment gambling that the
next moment isn't the moment they will be called to judgment. We
could interpret Jesus' parable of the wise and foolish virgins as a
scare tactic, one designed to frighten us into a constant state of
paranoid readiness. You've probably seen the billboards: “If Jesus
returns right now, where will you spend eternity?” There's
certainly an element of “you had better get ready and stay ready”
in the parable, a kind of “Jesus is going to jump out of the clouds
and catch you by surprise.” However, if we can go to the foundation
of the parable, we find a slightly less paranoia-inducing truth:
every decision we make, every word we utter, every thought we
think, everything we do prepares us or does not prepare us to enter
the Kingdom of God. The wise know this and live accordingly. The
foolish choose evil and call it good. And as our Lord makes clear,
there are no fools in heaven.
Say you wanted to try being a
fool. How would you go about becoming foolish? It's really very
simple. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us a foolish man acquires his folly
by “. . .plunging his sense into earthly things, [by which] his
sense is rendered incapable of perceiving Divine things” (ST
II-II.46.2). Preoccupied with the things and thoughts and actions of
the world, an otherwise wise man can become foolish by making worldly
things, thoughts, and actions his principal occupation. IOW, when he
forgets that his primary goal in this life is to serve God and
prepare for the Kingdom, he chooses evil and calls it good. The vice
of mistaking evil for good twists the conscience over time and drops
the fool into deeper folly. In sophisticated theological circles we
refer to this process with the phrase: “Stultus
facit peccatum.”
“Sin makes you stupid.” Sin must make us stupid b/c sin results
from a deformed intellect informing the will that an evil act is in
fact a good act. The foolish virgins, knowing that the Bridegroom
could return at any moment, chose not to prepare properly for his
arrival. This is no accident. They didn't “forget.” The didn't
“fail to anticipate.” They chose not to be ready. When they plead
with the groom, “Lord, Lord, open the door for us!” He replies,
“Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.”
There
are no fools in heaven b/c the Lord knows no fools. Avoiding folly in
order to grow in wisdom is fairly straightforward. With every word,
every deed, every thought ask yourself: does
this word, this deed, this thought prepare me to live in the Kingdom
of God? Ask yourself:
does this word, this
deed, this thought bind me more tightly to the world or to Christ the
Bridegroom? Keep
foremost in your heart and mind your deepest desire to find your
perfection in the One Who created you and saved you. Keep front and
center your longing for peace, your hope for resurrection, and your
need to see the Father face-to-face. Do not grieve like those who
have no hope, believing their beloved dead are dead forever. We will
all die. But we cannot be dead in Christ. Only a fool chooses to live
his or her life as if these few years on earth are all there is to
living. Only a fool chooses to attaches himself to the passing things
of this world and call himself content. We are made for eternal life.
And while we live in the world, we live in wisdom, knowing that
Christ the Bridegroom loves his Bride and will never abandon her.
Choose wisely. Live wisely. There are no fools in heaven.
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