Have you ever received one of those fraudulent emails, telling you that some prince or widow halfway around the world wants to put 13 million dollars into your bank account letting you keep most of it? I got this incredible news last week and all I had to do was send my bank account number, my social security number, date of birth, and a few other highly personal bits of info and I would be rich! Of course it was a scam and I would never think about responding. But imagine for a moment that something like this was real and you were the main beneficiary of a distant relative's will. This relative was quite eccentric as well as wealthy. A great deal of money was left for you to spend, but there were certain rules. Every day for a year, your bank account would be credited with $86,400 at 9am in the morning. If you wanted to spend any of this money, you had to produce bills showing why money was being withdrawn. You could not save the money and at the end of the banking day, whatever you did not spend would be removed from your account. The next day you would start with a fresh $86,400. I am sure you and I would find really creative things to do with the money.
Now, let's return to reality. Every day we are given 86,400 seconds to make the best possible use of. Every night, God writes off as lost whatever portion of this time we have wasted or not used well. In the bank of time, there are no balances and no overdrafts. Each day a new account is opened for us. Each night, what remains is written off, closed, gone forever.
Every day's 86,400 seconds has to be invested wisely in things that will hold their value from day to day, quarter to quarter, year to year and for eternity. Lasting values need to be found, values like justice, compassion, forgiveness, and love. There were five wise virgins and five foolish ones. The five foolish virgins squandered their time. The five wise virgins made the best use of every moment. The wise virgins entered into the banquet of the Master's love. The foolish virgins were too busy wasting time to be ready for their Master's return. How much time do you and I have left? We really don't know.
The proper Christian attitude is not to deny death, but to prepare for it. This is the wisdom behind the five bridesmaids who were prepared to enter the wedding reception. They didn't know when the bridegroom was coming, but they were ready. So how do we prepare? We don't prepare for the end by doing lots of stuff. We prepare by nurturing the proper disposition, a Christ-like attitude. Over and over again, Jesus emphasizes the need for inner transformation. His complaint against the Pharisees, as we heard last week, was that they were hypocrites. They appeared righteous when people were watching but it was only for show. On the outside, they looked nice and clean. On the inside they were rotten. The tax collectors and prostitutes who turned to Jesus transformed their lives and hearts. They were genuine and their devotion to the Lord was authentic in every part of their life, whether people were watching or not.
So, how do we form and nourish the Christian attitude of life? You and I have to fight against the forces both inside and outside of us that tempt us to only worry about the things of this world, the things that can be measured, saved, and collected. To be authentic and wise Christians, we have to be in constant communication with the Lord. We need to pray daily. Each of us gets the same amount of time each day. No one is too busy to carve out some time when we are with the Lord and freed of the distractions of life. If we have a family, then we have the additional responsibility to pray as a family every day. We should focus our prayer lives on our Sundays. On Sunday we celebrate the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord and receive the Eucharist. We should work to make that the main focus of our week. The presence of Christ within us in this sacrament gives us the strength to be who we claim to be, followers of Christ. Today's first reading speaks about wisdom. Wisdom is a way of life. The wise are always ready for the Lord because they are always watching for him. The gospel lesson is simple for this Sunday. Be like the wise virgins. Be ready to celebrate the banquet of the Lord’s love. Don’t waste a single second he has given you!
One of the questions people often ask when they hear this parable of Jesus is something like: “why didn’t those selfish virgins, who had extra oil, share it with the others? Weren’t they just watching out for themselves? Well, that depends. What does the oil represent? It stands for character and virtue and we cannot take someone else’s virtue or character. They couldn’t give it to us if they wanted to! No one, no matter how rich, can purchase character or virtue from an ATM or with a credit card, it can’t be downloaded; we must develop our own. We cannot live like freeloaders on someone else's friendship with God; we must develop our own. That is what the end of the parable teaches us. We must be ready for Christ when He comes knocking at the door at the end of our life. We have to put in the time and effort and live our faith, day in and day out. Jesus warns us today, "You know not the day nor the hour." So let us live each day to the fullest, not taking a single second for granted. May we be authentic in our Christianity so the lamps of our souls may be filled with the oil of virtue and goodness and shining brightly for the coming of the Lord!
