Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor

August 28, 2020

1 Cor 1:17-25, Ps 33, Mt 25:1-13

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s readings there is a huge contrast between wisdom and foolishness. In the Gospel, Jesus focuses on the wise and foolish virgins, with the hope that we will learn to imitate the wise and learn from the mistakes of the foolish. In the first reading, St. Paul speaks about how God will destroy the “wisdom of the wise and the learning of the learned,” how he has “made the wisdom of the world foolish” and established the Cross, which is a “scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” as the “power and the wisdom of God,” establishing this “foolishness of God” as “wiser than human wisdom.” And in the Opening Prayer of the Mass, we asked God that “filled with the same spirit” as St. Augustine, whom the Church celebrates today, “we may thirst for you, the sole fount of true wisdom.” So today we learn three different things about true wisdom.

* To understand the message about wisdom from the Gospel, we first need to understand the ancient practice of a Jewish wedding. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, they were married, but they would continue to live apart for a while, even up to a year, while the husband prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home. It was during this time, for example, that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary; she was already wedded to Joseph but they had not started to live under the same roof. The second stage was when the bridegroom, the husband, would come to the house of the bride to pick her up and take her to his home. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side as he went to her home. There he would meet her and all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others, who would be waiting for him along the way. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving all of them behind for a honeymoon. The bridegroom could come at any time to pick up his bride and so people needed to be ready. Before he would come, he would send out a herald who would announce along the path, “Behold the Bridegroom is coming,” but the Husband himself could come within hours, days, up to a week. He could come in the middle of the night. There was a law that said that if one were out at night, one had to have a lamp, which was not only common sense but prevented any ambushes, etc. People could either wait with the bride or accompany the bridegroom — but most would prefer the former because it was less walking! As soon as the Bridegroom took his Bride into his house, the doors really would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.

* Jesus used that image as the background to communicate to us how we should be living our life in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, at the end of our life or at the end of the world, whichever comes first. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. We can focus on three lessons.

* The first is vigilance for the Bridegroom’s coming. The heralds have already gone out to announce that Jesus is coming.