A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus told his disciples this parable. This is a parable, a story with a point to it. The reign of god, Jesus said, can be likened to 10 bridesmaids who took their torches and went out to welcome the bridegroom. Five of the girls were foolish, while the other five were sensible.
The foolish girls, in taking their torches, brought no oil with them. But the sensible ones took bottles of oil as well as their torches. The groom delayed his coming so that they all began to nod and, fall asleep. At midnight, someone shouted, the groom is here. Come out and greet him.
At the at the out all the girls woke up and got their torches ready. The foolish ones then said to the sensible girls, give us some of your oil. Our torches are going out. But the sensible ones replied, no. There may not be enough for you and for us.
You'd better go to the dealers, go to the store, and buy yourself some oil. Well, while these maidens went off to buy the oil, the groom arrived. And the ones who were ready, their torches burning and oil in the torches to make them burn, went to the wedding with him. And the door was shut and barred. Later, the other bridesmaids came and shouted, master, master, open up the door for us.
But he answered, I tell you, I do not know you. Then our lord concludes, the moral is keep your eyes open for you know not the day or the hour. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Some people complain that there's not very much joy or happiness or what have you in being an honest to god Christian.
Well, I don't know whether there is or there isn't. Our blessed lord never held that up as one of the good reasons for being his follower. Is a sentence today in the first reading that may have escaped you, but the gist of it is this, that Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says, look. You've done a good job. You're doing well.
Now this is something we often forget, how well we're actually doing. All things considered, and god almighty considers all things. He knows better than anybody, including ourselves, what we have to put up with in this life to even try even try to pick up his cross and follow him. It's a most difficult proposition. It has never been easy.
It probably isn't any harder today than it ever was, but we didn't live in other times. We're living our own lives. And if we're trying to follow Jesus Christ, it is no small matter. It does not come easily. So Paul, in talking to the Thessalonians, gives them a couple good thumps on the back, and he says, look, you guys.
You're doing a good job, but keep at it. You've got to be better. That's the theme of being a Christian. That's the theme of any any anything that's worthwhile, even rowing a boat. If you've ever been in a boat and you were at the oars and there was a slight current and you kept rowing quite nicely, can you rest on your oars and not go backwards?
It is that way in everything. It's the golf pro, the man who takes his golfing seriously, who after being on the course all day, comes back and spends an hour putting. It's the professional. There's a recently I've heard of a dancer, a very famous I think his name was Kelly, I'm not sure of that. But the point is this, he was considered the absolutely peer of dancing at the time.
And he would spend hours, hours on a tiny little detail of the routine. Hours. See, that's the professional. He cannot afford to be satisfied with what he is. He's got to try to be better.
He cannot rest on the oars without going backwards, backwards. So Saint Paul tells the Thessalonians, you're doing well. You're trying to follow Jesus Christ, but you've got to keep trying to be better. And the the opposite of that is if you don't try to be better, you will inevitably become worse. You ask any businessman just this to the latest issue of the Time magazine.
There's a very informative interview there with the president of the Schaeffer Pen Company, and he's he is being interviewed on the question of international trade and and especially especially with with Japan. Japan. How is it, they ask him, you have managed to keep your head above water and to keep ahead of the Japanese competition? And he tells you, by keeping alive, by doing better what they're doing or not trying to do what they're doing at all. In other words, as successful as the company is, he can never afford to relax.
We tried that, you know, with our automobile industry, and you see where we are with it. So what Paul is telling the Thessalonians isn't something absolutely new, but we have to think of that in terms of our own spiritual life and having a right perspective of what it means to be a Christian. What does it mean to be alive in this world? What does it mean for you in your daily living? Why are you living?
What's it all about? Does it have meaning? Where are you going? Today, things will happen to you. Good things and maybe regrettable things, unfortunate things.
How do they fit into your pattern of living? Or is it just a confused mess and say, ye gods, I don't like life's a bowl of cherries. What the hell is he used? As I read in Maria Locke monastery written by a friend of mine. It's easy to take that attitude.
Attitude. It's the stalwart Christian who keeps trying. We cannot ever afford to sit quietly in the boat and relax. We cannot let our oars be still. We cannot afford it.
To be a Christian means to be a warrior. We have the idea of the mystical body of Christ that we talk you see, these are words. But do we make them operational in our daily living? And if we don't, what's a use? What does what what does it all amount to?
What does it mean to be a Christian? To be calm and tranquil, throwing around this peace and love business that we hear ad nauseam today, and nobody knows what in the heck they're talking about when they tell talk about peace and love? Ask them. Ask him. You'll find out how true it is.
When we when we give the kiss of peace en masse, you know what we're doing. We're talking about the peace of Jesus Christ. And our lord said, I have come not to bring peace but the sword. See? That's awesome.
That's even fearful, isn't it? We don't like that. Christ said it, though. And he said, my kingdom is not of this world. Now if you're in this world, how and if you're and if Christ's kingdom is not of this world, and if you're trying to belong to Christ's kingdom, you have a struggle in your hand on your hands, a real fight.
Take Erasmus in the sixteenth century, the great and wonderful intelligent friend of Saint Thomas More. He wrote probably his well, certainly among his most notable works. He called it the handbook of the Christian warrior. Of the Christian warrior. That's what he called it, the sixteenth century.
We forget this, that the church militant, the church triumphant, and the church suffering. We're the church militant. Militant comes from the word miles, which means a soldier. We are fighters. We're warriors.
Can the warrior ever relax? Can he ever turn his back on the enemy? Of course, he can, but then he's running away from them. And we can't afford to do that if we're following Christ. And so what Paul is saying today should give us mighty, mighty encouragement.
Our lives are not all going down the drain. It's so easy to be discouraged. You take people trying to pray. They'll say, I pray. I don't seem to get anything out of it.
I do not I just don't get anything out of it. I can remember when I used to pray, and I would be close to god. And I would get up from my prayers feeling encouraged and reinvigorated. Now it's nothing. You know my first question is, are you still doing it?
And the second question is not a question but a statement. Because a prayer value can be measured not by what you get out of it, but by what you put into it. Not how much you are in the prayer, but how much god is in the prayer. It's that simple. You see, but we've got to have the right scale to measure these things.
Otherwise, we're bound to get confused. Christ never told us to come and pray and would feel relaxed and better for it. As I saw a sign on a church, it said, come in, rest a while, and you'll feel better. You could have gone in the bar next door and come out feeling even better, probably, if you had a few scotches. You see, you come back to the relationship of this creature to his god.
Are we serving him or not? He doesn't ask whether we enjoy serving him. Are you serving him? That's the question. Are you trying?
And when you're trying, admit you're trying and give yourself a pat on the back and say, I am trying. I've gotta try more. I've got to try more. And every day is a new opportunity for trying. Yesterday's history.
Maybe you can learn from it. Fine. But for heaven's sakes, don't let yesterday destroy today. Whatever it was yesterday, whatever happened yesterday, don't let it be a hindrance to your today. A friend of mine who played golf once a week and yet managed to break 80, that was Bishop McCormick.
I asked him one day, how do you keep such a good score and I play so little? And he never talked about golf. He says it's very simple. I never remember my last shot. In other words, if any of you have played gay athletic games, you'll know exactly what he's talking about.
And so take Paul's word. You're doing well. You're trying. But with god's grace, keep on trying. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.