Word to the Wise

Can you tell me: what is the population of the state of Arkansas? How about: when was the city of Stuttgart founded? Do you know how many Catholics live in our diocese? You may not know the answer to any of those question of the top of your head, but with a few clicks on your phone or computer, you could find out very easily.

We live in an age of extraordinary access to information. Right at our fingertips, we can discover loads of facts about any topic that interests us. Indeed, experts say that information has become so available and omnipresent that it’s becoming like a drug – not only are we becoming overloaded with information, we are becoming addicted to it.

That’s not a good thing, obviously; too much information can overwhelm us or distract us from something more important. The poet T.S. Eliot once asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.” If he could write those words nearly a hundred years ago, how much truer we know them to be today. We may have access to all kinds of data but it seems increasingly our society collectively, and even we as individuals, are losing the ability to discern what is good and true, what is meaningful and beautiful – in short, wisdom.

Our Old Testament reading today, often attributed to have been written by King Solomon, describes how wisdom is the key to a life well-lived. Unlike plain information, wisdom forms the individual, helping us to choose well, to discern, to be prudent about the situation before us. Interestingly, the writer of the reading says that just as one seeks wisdom so too one finds that wisdom also seeks to be found; to seek wisdom is not a vain pursuit but the discovery of something precious and life-changing.

Often in the Old Testament, including in today’s reading, the virtue of wisdom was personified – treated less as a thing to acquire and more as a relationship with a divine being. Early Christians saw in this a foreshadowing of the Incarnation, of God becoming Man in the person of Christ. We gain wisdom, in other words, not so much by acquiring a certain kind of knowledge or by following a set of ethical principles, but by encountering a Person – the Person of Jesus Christ. As our reading today describes, the more we seek Wisdom – Christ – the more we realize he also is seeking us, seeking relationship with us, to teach and form us about how to live. 

Peter von Cornelius, The Wise and Foolish Virgins (c. 1813)

If true wisdom is this relationship with Jesus, then we also have to be aware of what can distract us from him. Today’s Gospel might be thought of as Jesus’s word to the wise about this very thing – how not attending to what is truly important can have disastrous consequences. We hear that the parable is set at a Jewish wedding feast with ten virgins awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom. In the ancient world, it was common for the groom’s family to prepare a wedding banquet. At the appointed time, the son would arrive and the bride with her attendants would process with lighted lamps from where she had been waiting to the wedding feast, where all would join in the joyous celebration.

In Jesus’s parable, the bridegroom is delayed; he has not yet arrived, and so the bride and her attendants, the ten virgins, must wait. The attendants know what their task is: they are to light the way for the bride when it is time for her to go and meet her husband. However, as the story tells us, while they know he is coming, they do not know when. Five of them are well prepared, bringing extra oil to light their lamps; five are unprepared. When the bridegroom finally arrives, the first five can fulfill their task and the second five do not. The five prepared virgins enter the wedding feast, while the foolish five lose their place in the procession and are locked out.

The early Church saw this parable as a stark reminder of how mere knowledge about Jesus – information about him, even faith in his coming again – was not a guarantee that one would be prepared for his return. Early Christians saw that some of their brothers and sisters, like the virgins who knew their task but failed to wisely prepare, became distracted, misguided, drowsy in their vigilance of waiting and preparing for Jesus’s coming. The same can happen for us. We can become overwhelmed with the information of the present world, of the world of the here-and-now, and so forget to stay focused on where true wisdom can be found: in praying fervently each day, in reading Scripture, in studying our faith, in practicing works of charity and forgiveness. All of these build up our relationship with God and reveal to us his wisdom. 

As we move into the latter weeks of the liturgical year, our readings look ahead to the end times. This is not because the end times are necessarily coming – they might be, I don’t know – but rather because we are called to hope in the coming of Christ and not the things of this world. Christians should *always* be living as if it were the end times, as if Jesus might come back next month, next week, tomorrow, in ten minutes. Why? Because by doing so, we live wisely, because we focus on Jesus, on he who is true Wisdom, Wisdom made Flesh. It can be easy to be distracted by the loudness of the events of this world, by the daily sources of endless information. But we must make sure we do not become like the foolish virgins, who grow distracted and drowsy to what really matters, and who find out too late they are unprepared. Instead, let’s use well whatever time we have, to prepare our hearts for the Lord’s arrival: to practice virtue, to grow in faith, to do works of charity, to serve the Lord where he is present in the poor and those in need.

Friends, may this Eucharist give renewed light to the lamps of our souls, so that like the wise virgins, we may not be found unprepared when the Bridegroom arrives.