The Gospel of the Mass1 tells us about a Jewish custom; the Lord uses it to teach us about the vigilance we should have over ourselves and others. Jesus tells us: The Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.... These virgins are the unmarried young women, bridesmaids of the bride, who wait at the bride's house for the bridegroom. The teaching focuses on the attitude to have at the coming of the Lord. He comes to us, and we must await him with a vigilant spirit, awake in love, for, says St. Gregory the Great commenting on this parable, "to sleep is to die.
Five of these virgins - we read in the parable - were foolish, for they did not take with them the necessary oil, in case the bridegroom was late in coming. The other five were far-sighted, prudent, and together with the lamps they took oil in their vessels. Some of them fell asleep, for the wait was long. But when at midnight the voice was heard: The bridegroom is here, only those who had brought the oil were ready and were able to participate in the wedding. The others, in spite of their efforts, were left out.
The Holy Spirit teaches us that it is not enough to have begun the journey that leads us to Christ: it is necessary to stay on it with a continuous alertness, because the tendency of every man, of every woman, is to soften the surrender that comes with the Christian vocation. Almost without realizing it, the desire to make the close following of Christ compatible with a bourgeois environment is introduced into the soul. It is necessary to be attentive because the pressure of an environment that has as a norm of life the insatiable search for comfort and convenience can be very strong. Then we would be like those virgins, initially full of good spirit, but who soon get tired and cannot go out to receive the Bridegroom, for which they had been preparing all day long. If we were not alert, the Lord would find us without the glow of good works, asleep, with the lamp extinguished. What a pity if a Christian, after years and years of struggle, would find at the end of his life that his acts lacked supernatural value because they lacked the oil of love and charity! Let us not forget that the light of charity should inform our family and social relationships, our dealings with friends, with clients, with those people we meet occasionally.
The theological virtue of charity should always enlighten our actions, in every circumstance, at every moment: when we are well and in sickness, and in tiredness, and in failure; among people who are friendly and with whom living together is rougher or more difficult; at work, in the family..., always. "In the well-disposed soul there is always a lively, firm and determined purpose to forgive, to suffer, to help, and an attitude that always moves one to perform acts of charity. If this desire to love and this ideal of loving disinterestedly have taken root in the soul, it will have the most convincing proof that its communions, confessions, meditations and its whole life of prayer are in order and are sincere and fruitful "3.
The oil that keeps charity burning is careful and loving prayer: intimacy with Jesus. It is not difficult to observe that charity is not often lived, even among many who call themselves Christians. "But, considering things with a supernatural sense, you will also discover the root of this sterility: the absence of an intense and continuous relationship, face to face, with Our Lord Jesus Christ; and the ignorance of the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, whose first fruit is precisely charity "
Hablar con Dios
Hablar con DIos