November 9, 2020
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A) on November 8, 2020 at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish in Pflugerville, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 63; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; and Matthew 25:1-13.
I don’t know how closely you’ve been watching the election results these past five days, but our readings seem to be ironically appropriate: they are about considering our choice, waiting, and falling asleep while we wait.
But more seriously, the themes today revolve around seeking God’s wisdom and being prepared for the kingdom of God. Our first reading is from the Book of Wisdom, which takes it model from similar Egyptian literature instructing young men. The Book Wisdom tells young Jewish men to search for God’s wisdom, and to befriend God’s wisdom as a wife. Our gospel passage tells a story that distinguishes wise people from foolish ones.
Let’s take a moment to pause, and to ask God to continue to shower us with wisdom and mercy.
Today’s gospel passage can drive us batty if we focus too much on the details. We don’t know enough about 1st-century Judean wedding customs to understand why bridesmaids would be greeting a bridegroom with lamps and torches, nor to understand why the bridegroom would be delayed for many hours. It seems rather unbelievable that there would be lamp oil stores open at midnight. Why would the bridegroom deny entrance to members of the wedding party? Why does Jesus say that the moral is to stay awake, when even the wise bridesmaids fell asleep?
Those questions are distractions from a fairly clear point made by the gospel passage: if we befriend God’s wisdom, we will be prepared for the coming of the Lord.
But in the year 2020, the whole idea of preparation can be complicated. As one popular internet meme says: “Can we all agree that in 2015, not a single person got the answer correct to the question, ‘Where do you see yourself five years from now?’” How can we prepare for an unexpected pandemic? How can we prepare for business/transportation/school/entertainment shutdowns? For the exposure of our erroneous assumptions about racial justice? For the unexpected deaths of loved ones, and for the accompanying grief?
My father instilled me with a duty – even an obsession – to be fully prepared for everything expected of me. And I chose a career field and an avocation that required lots of preparation. I became an optical engineer – where my job was to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, and then to stop it from happening. In my spare time, I was a classical musician, where I would spend many, many hours at practices with other people, planning exactly how we would make beautiful sounds in perfect harmony and timing at some point down the road.
But over the past 15 years between the seminary and priesthood, I learned a hard reality: all that planning made me an overly anxious person. In the past few years, I’ve learned that often, it is healthier for me to prepare less, not more. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.”
- What does it mean to be prepared, and what does it mean to be wise, in regard to anticipating a pandemic?
- What does it mean to be prepared and to be wise, in regard to living through a pandemic?
- What does it mean to be prepared and to be wise, in regard to preparing for the kingdom of God that is both already here and not yet among us?
Clearly, if we are wise, there are certain preparations we can and should make, and there are others that depend on our temperament and personality. Before the pandemic, most of us probably didn’t have the luxury of space, finances, and bandwidth to have 6 months’ supplies on hand and to conduct simultaneous videoconference calls for every family member on a different device in a different room. But now that we’re 8 months into this pandemic, most of us probably have the ability to accept some of the altered realities. We have the wisdom to accept that many endeavors are now more complicated and exhausting to do than they were before the pandemic began. At this point, we probably recognize some of the emotional toll this year has taken on us, and we can strategize what we can do to alleviate the stress.
When it comes to preparing for the kingdom of heaven, there is a simple answer. We need to make it a priority to prayerfully and continually seek God’s wisdom. As our first reading so beautifully proclaims, God’s wisdom is easy to obtain:
She is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed
Spending quality time with God is very different that worrying about everything that could go wrong. As it has been said, “Worrying is praying for what you don’t want to happen.” All we need to do is spend time with God in prayer on a regular basis. Then, when the unexpected happens, we’ll be sufficiently in tune with God’s wisdom that it will be easy to sense the Holy Spirit’s promptings when we don’t know what to think, what to say, or what to do.
But most of all, for those of us who have felt unprepared to grieve the loss of a loved one this year – this year when so many of us have lost someone unexpectedly and have not been able to grieve in the usual way due to restrictions around funerals – Paul assures us in his letter to the Thessalonians. Our loved ones are prepared for the kingdom of God. They spent time befriending God’s wisdom, and Jesus the bridegroom will take them up with him on the last day.