A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus told this parable, to his disciples. The reign of God can be likened to 10 bridesmaids who took their torches and went out to welcome the bridegroom. Five of these virgins were foolish, while the other five were sensible. The foolish ones, in taking their torches, brought no oil along.
On the other hand, the sensible ones took flasks of oil as well as their torches. They had an extra battery in their pockets. The groom delayed his coming. So they all began to nod, and then they fell asleep. At midnight, someone shouted, the groom is here.
Come out and greet him. At the outcry, all the virgins woke up and got their torches ready to welcome the groom. The foolish ones said to the sensible young ladies, give us some of your oil. Our torches are going out. But the sensible ones replied, oh, no.
There may not be enough for you and for us. You had better go to the dealers and buy yourself some. Of course, you know this is midnight. Well, while the foolish young women went off to try to buy some oil, the groom arrived. And the ones who were ready with their torches burning brightly went in to the wedding with him, and then the door was barred.
Later, the other bridesmaids came along and cried out, master, master, open up the door for us. But he answered, I tell you, I don't know you. The moral is, keep your eyes open for you know not the day or the hour. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. This is one of the least confusing parables of our blessed lord. It's very simple. The message is straightforward, and you get it, especially if you take it. Remember, remember, this is the continuation of yesterday's reading.
What we've been reading, it seems odd infinitum, is all part of a very short book called The Gospel, The Good News According to Saint Matthew. So once again, I would earnestly recommend that you take fifteen or twenty minutes. It's all it'll take to read what has been taking us months to read. And all we get is a little bit today and a little bit tomorrow, and what sense do you make out of all of it? So take up your New Testament.
It'll only take you at the most twenty minutes, and you will get a tremendously different impression than you get from these little bits that we take up. You wouldn't do this with anything else in literature. I want to go back to this first reading this morning. Now remember, the Corinthians were Greeks, and even if they were Jews, they were they were Greek Jews. Corinthians, you know where Corinth is.
It's a fantastic place. Even today, it's very dramatic place, and a very commercial place, and a and a place something like Hamburg today in Germany. It was a very narrow part of the isthmus so that there was tremendous commerce. It didn't have a canal through there then, and it it was a a pretty mean low grade city, very wealthy, very luxurious, very commercial, very active. In other words, it was a synthesis of the Mediterranean world.
So that's the congregation that Paul is talking to. Now I remember Paul's from Tarsus. Paul has some kind of a Greek philosophical background. We don't know exactly what it was, but he had it. We know that for sure from his writings.
Now what does he say to these good people up in Corinth? First of all, he says, Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not the wordy wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be rendered void. Then he goes on. The message of the cross is complete, what? Listen to this.
The message of the cross that I have come to preach, Paul says to the Corinthians, is complete absurdity in the eyes of the world. Complete absurdity. Do we ever think about that? You see, we don't. This is what amuses me and makes me profoundly sad.
When you see this great emphasis today, I call it liberation theology or what you want. This great emphasis that that we have to secure the salvation of men and women by making this life more comfortable for them. Now I'm not against all the good things that we can put into this life. The holy father's made this perfectly clear. It's a matter of priorities.
Do we have to establish everybody in middle class affluence in order to begin giving them the good news of salvation? Is that what the the gospel of Jesus Christ is about? Is that the message that his his his official formal messengers, is that the message they are supposed to give or what? Well, just listen to this as what Saint Paul said. I bring you the the I bring you the wisdom not of this world, and he's talking to Greeks, you know, who were famous as we you know this, for their intellectual and very sincerely intellectual pursuits.
After all, it was from them that we had Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. From them we have Sophocles, Euripides. We have this huge then there's nothing like it in the whole world. Of course, people don't read these things naturally. What?
They're there for people did you see Time Magazine late last issue? The the books you're supposed to have read if you're an educated person, how many have you read? Anyway, here's Paul talking to these Greeks or to Jewish men and women, but with a Greek background. And he's telling them, I come to you not with your wisdom, not with the wisdom of your world. Notice he doesn't condemn that, but he says, I'm not bringing that to you.
You already have that. I don't have to add to that. I bring you the cross of Jesus Christ. Then he says, it's complete absurdity. I never will forget.
It's a good many years ago and the names escape me as per usual, but there was a a woman artist who brought out a batch of Christmas cards. And many good, honest Christians were scandalized because it showed a most repulsive crucified Christ. What do you think Calvary was? A banquet? A joyride?
It was the cruelest kind of an execution. And that's what she tried to bring out, that the cross of Jesus Christ is absurd in the eyes of the world. Do we do we actually, you know, realize this? No. We don't.
And that's again, I say, don't blame yourselves for this. This is the this is the message that is coming to us from God himself, that I'm bringing you a message not of this world. I'm bringing you a message which the world will consider absurd. Now notice, if that statement is true, then when the world this so called world in quotation marks, when that agrees with you, you know where you are. You're not on the side of Jesus Christ if what he said is true.
Take your pick. When the world agrees with you, one of two things have happened. The world has changed radically or you've radically left Jesus Christ one of the other because the two cannot go together. How do I know it? I've tried it.
How do I know it? Christ told me that. You can't serve two masters, he said. And he told us that his message is the message of the cross. It's not a message of fun and games.
It's not a message of tranquility. It's not a message of satisfaction. It's not a message of self fulfillment. It's not a message that's gonna make this world a heaven on earth. Christ said nothing along these lines, and I mean nothing.
You cannot point to a single thing in the New Testament which says anything to foster this idea. And that's the reason Dostoevsky, I think it's in his Crime and Punishment says and remember, Dostoevsky was was was put up against a wall to be shocked when at the very last minute he was repeated along with some of his fellow anarchists. So he started out by being very much opposed to the regime and being leaning towards what then was called socialism in Russia. But he condemned all socialism. Why?
Because he said all socialism is a change and a reversal of emphasis. Instead of heading men towards God, it faces us towards this world, and you cannot deny that. I don't care what form of socialism you come up with. That doesn't mean it's all wrong now. Don't get me.
But the point is what that statement is certainly true. Any form of socialism does not consider God first. It considers man and his place in this world first. And that is a contradiction of Christ's message. You can't escape this.
I love to I some of you may have been to Corinth and stood where they tell us Saint Paul's and I that's pretty realistic. You can that's for sure. It's not like looking at the the the blessed mother's house of Loretta down in Italy. And you see the sea there, you see all these broken pillars all around you, and you can easily imagine Paul standing up there and talking to these Corinthian Greeks. You can easily imagine that.
And giving those those worldly people, those people who were all immersed in the world just as we are. Because, you know, one of the greatest criticisms of this day is that we're we're we're secular materialists. Secular means world, materialist means material. And you just see him addressing them and telling notice, telling those Greeks who had aspirations for the good life, who had back of them Plato, Socrates, and of course, my dear friend Aristotle. He had Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, back of them, they they had this.
Remember the plays of the the the great tragedians were well known to the to the commonplace Greek, and and their whole idea was the good life. And Paul stands up there and tells them, you're nuts. You are absurd because I bring you the message of the cross of Jesus Christ, not your wisdom. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.