The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary near the end of the liturgical year urge us to be awake and contemplate the meaning of the end time to our lives today.
Becoming awake
The reading from the Book of Wisdom is a description of the relationship between people and Wisdom.
* [6:1–21] The first part of the book closes with an exhortation comparable to 1:1–15, and it leads into “Solomon’s” personal comments on wisdom in chaps. 7–9.1
Psalm 63 prays for comfort and assurance in God’s Presence.
* [Psalm 63] A Psalm expressing the intimate relationship between God and the worshiper. Separated from God (Ps 63:2), the psalmist longs for the divine life given in the Temple (Ps 63:3–6), which is based on a close relationship with God (Ps 63:7–9).2
The reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians describes the coming of the Lord.
* [4:17] Will be caught up together: literally, snatched up, carried off; cf. 2 Cor 12:2; Rev 12:5. From the Latin verb here used, rapiemur, has come the idea of “the rapture,” when believers will be transported away from the woes of the world; this construction combines this verse with Mt 24:40–41 (see note there) // Lk 17:34–35 and passages from Revelation in a scheme of millennial dispensationalism.3
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus uses the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids to implore us to stay awake.
* [25:13] Stay awake: some scholars see this command as an addition to the original parable of Matthew’s traditional material, since in Mt 25:5 all the virgins, wise and foolish, fall asleep. But the wise virgins are adequately equipped for their task, and stay awake may mean no more than to be prepared; cf. Mt 24:42, 44.4
Amy Hoover understands perhaps an invitation to awaken to ourselves, not just our sins and woundedness, but our gifts and calls. Bring those into the light as well. To be awake, in her mind and heart, is to live from that truest part of ourselves, from our hearts. From that place, we will necessarily grow in wisdom and meet Wisdom, meet Christ. So how do we do that?
For me, it begins by trying to be present to each moment, not looking to the past or the future. All we have is the present moment. Next, I try to be aware (awake?) to what I see in other people that really strikes me, maybe to the extreme. This is important because what we notice in others, is generally present in ourselves somewhere. Sometimes it is talked about as when we get “triggered” and respond by either flying off the handle or putting someone on a pedestal. When I notice this happening, it is a clue for me to pause and ask, what is going on inside or me, how am I feeling? What does this feeling remind me of? When I can do this, I am freer to respond from a place of Love and Wisdom instead of fear or hurt. I also learn a bit more about myself and God’s love for me at those moments.5
Don Schwager quotes “The Kingdom of God compared with ten maidens,” by Hilary of Poitiers (315-367 AD).
"The whole story is about the great day of the Lord, when those things concealed from the human mind will be revealed through our understanding of divine judgment. Then the faith true to the Lord's coming will win the just reward for unwavering hope. For in the five wise and five foolish virgins (Matthew 25:2), a complete separation between the faithful and unfaithful is established... The wise virgins are those who, embracing the time available to them, were prepared at the first onset of the coming of the Lord. But the foolish were those who were lax and unmindful. They troubled themselves only over present matters and, forgetting what God said, did not direct their efforts toward hope for resurrection." (excerpt from the commentary ON MATTHEW 27.3,5)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 asks can God really give us and our loved ones glorified bodies that are never subject to sickness, decay, or death (1 Corinthians 15:52-53)? Yes, he can, but we won’t know what this looks like until we ourselves pass through death to life everlasting.
That’s where faith comes in. Paul was asking the Thessalonians, as he is asking us, to believe that Jesus’ resurrection really does have consequences for us. Christ is “the firstfruits,” the first to be raised; “then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:23). We don’t know the details, the “how” or the “when.” But as we put our faith in Jesus and what he has done for us, he will move us from doubt to hope.7
Friar Jude Winkler shares connections to Greek philosophy and Eqyptian spirituality in the work of the Wisdom author. The “millennium” has already begun with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Friar Jude reminds us to concentrate on the point of this parable to be alert.
Peter Edmonds SJ comments that If you mention the Letters to the Thessalonians to anyone with even a slight acquaintance with Paul’s letters, they will almost certainly think immediately of the Second Coming of Christ and the Day of the Lord. This is a good reason why extracts from these letters are read as Second Readings at the close of two of our liturgical years.
If the beginning and end of Paul’s paragraph are easy to assimilate, the same is not true of its centre, because here Paul uses the language of apocalyptic, a way of speaking familiar in his time but not in ours. This is a poetic way of speaking which is not to be taken literally, as it often is by biblical fundamentalists. If we are to meet Christ after being taken up in the clouds, it means that we will share with Christ the same sort of heavenly journey which the apostles saw Jesus take on Ascension Day (Acts 1:9). In a modern scientific age, we do not take such language at its face value, but look for the theological truth that it expresses.8
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that Love is perhaps the last thing anyone wants to be reminded of in these days following the election in the United States. Yet our resistance to love is precisely why we need to talk about it! We have strayed so far from love; and yet, love is the essence of who we are, and how we are called to treat one another.
When most of us hear the word “commandment,” we likely think of the Ten Commandments; that is not what Jesus is referring to here. He speaks of a “new” commandment surpassing and summing up the “ten” of the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21): “This is my commandment: Love one another” (John 15:17). He also says that the entire law and the prophets are summed up in the two great commandments: to love God and to love one another (see Matthew 22:36–40). Perhaps we don’t want to hear these commandments because we can never live up to them through our own efforts. We’d like to whittle this down to a little commandment, like “Come to church on Sunday,” so that we could feel we have obeyed the commandment and accomplished love. But who of us can say that we have fully loved yet? We are all beginners. We are all starting anew every day, in utter reliance on the mercy, grace, and compassion of God. This is a good example of “the tragic gap” that faith always allows and fills.9
The wisdom and alertness called for in the texts today opens our lives to the Spirit of Love for all Creation.
References
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