Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 7, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
November 7, 2020

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. We are preparing for the feast of Christ the King in two weeks and Jesus today is teaching us about his kingdom.
• He does so using an image that might seem a little strange to us but the details would have been very well understood by his contemporaries in Palestine. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, they were married, but they would continue to live apart for a while, even up to a year, while the husband prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home. The second stage was when the husband would come to the bride’s house to pick her up and take her to their new home. He would send out some of his groomsmen with word that the Bridegroom is coming, meaning that he could arrive within hours, days, or up to a week. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side and meet his wife with all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving everyone behind for a honeymoon.

• In order to decrease on the amount of guests one would need to feed for eight days, the bridegroom sometimes would come in the middle of the night. Those who weren’t ready lost their spots. As soon as the Bridegroom took his Bride into his house, the doors would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.
• Jesus used that image as the background to communicate to us how we should be living in his kingdom, preparing for his return as Bridegroom at the end of our life or at the end of the world, whichever comes first. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. November is the month in which the whole Church reflects on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — and Jesus by this image tries to help us prepare well for the first two, so that we may experience the third and avoid the fourth. But for this to happen, we need to learn three crucial lessons from the wise virgins.
• The first lesson is vigilancefor the Bridegroom’s coming. The heralds have already gone out to announce that Jesus is coming. We need to be ready to go with him whenever he arrives. Death, for a Christian, is not meant to be a scary thing. It’s the time when Jesus the Bridegroom comes for us to take us to His home when we will celebrate with him forever. We’re called to await him with eager longing, with great expectation. He wants the lamps of our hearts burning for him, full of the oil of love. The best way for us to stay alert for the return of the Bridegroom is for us to be ready, with hearts burning with love, for the presence of the Bridegroom now. The more we long for Jesus in the Eucharist, the more we attentively listen to his Word in Sacred Scripture, the more we seek to recognize him in the persons and events of each day, and love and embrace them as we would love and embrace Christ, the more ready we will be ready to embrace Christ when he appears without disguise.
• The second thing Jesus teaches us in the image of the ten bridesmaids is that there are certain things we cannot borrow. Just as the unwise virgins didn’t have enough oil for their own lamps — and oil stands for expectant love for the Lord — so we can’t borrow anyone else’s faith, hope or love. We need to have our own, otherwise we’ll be caught unready and be left outside. I can’t count how many times people who aren’t faithful to the practice of the faith tell me that their mother or grandmother is an active parishioner or an great uncle a priest. I explain that we can’t borrow another’s relationship with the Lord, another’s faith or hope, another’s soul or spiritual life. For those who are faithful to Christ, there’s a lesson here, too, that there are certain things we cannot lend or give even to those we love. They must take responsibility for developing an eager, expectant, vigilant faithful love for God on their own. Those who think that they can borrow others’ relationships with the Lord when the Lord comes are indeed foolish, as Jesus says about the unwise bridesmaids.
• The third lesson is that there is a time that can be too late.Certain things cannot be obtained at the last minute. The unwise virgins were caught off guard. They couldn’t borrow oil, so they had to try to obtain some on their own, but they missed the bridegroom and were locked out. They knocked on the door saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But then he replied with the words that I think are the saddest and most frightening in all of Sacred Scripture: “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” For the Lord to know us, for us to be on time for the wedding banquet, we have to spend our time here getting to know him intimately, as a friend, as a savior, as God. Many of us often put off the most important thing in the life, which is to make God first in our life. We allow the devil to deceive us by saying, “There’s always time,” to insinuate that we can live like the Good Thief, commit our sins, do our own thing, presuming that the Lord will give us the chance at the end to say one prayer so that everything we will work out. Jesus tells those who would imitate the foolish bridesmaids in this way, however, that there will be a time when there will be no time left, when the door will be shut. Now is the time for us to get to know the Lord so that he will never say, “I don’t know you.” Now is the time for us to prepare for his return. All of us have known people who have died unexpectedly, even young people. The moral he gives at the end of today’s parable is crystal clear: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” To be awake means never to be asleep to God, but always to be alert, full of love, waiting for his return.
• Three lessons: an eager, expectant waiting for the Lord’s coming in all his ways; a recognition that we can’t borrow what we’re going to need to meet the Lord when we comes; and a loving admonition from the Lord not to procrastinate on our preparations until it’s too late. Every Mass is meant to help us with each of the three. If we’re truly ready to meet the Lord each week at Mass, with our souls clean from serious sins, with our hearts hungering for Him, with the Lord himself, the Light of the World, burning inside of us fueled by the oil of love, we’ll never be caught off guard, whether he comes today, tomorrow, or decades years from now. Every Catholic Church proclaims, “The Bridegroom is here. Let us go out to meet Christ the Lord!” And the wise are those who do.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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