"At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of the virgins were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish ones took their lamps, they did not take extra olive oil with them. But the wise ones took flasks of olive oil with their lamps. When the bridegroom was delayed a long time, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look, the bridegroom is here! Come out to meet him.’ Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, because our lamps are going out.’ ‘No,’ they replied. ‘There won’t be enough for you and for us. Go instead to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’ But while they had gone to buy it, the bridegroom arrived, and those who were ready went inside with him to the wedding banquet. Then the door was shut. Later, the other virgins came too, saying, ‘Lord, lord! Let us in!’ But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I do not know you!’ Therefore stay alert, because you do not know the day or the hour” (Matt 25:1-13).
At our baptism, the priest gives to our Godparents a candle and asks them to make sure its flame never goes out. The priest also anoints us with the oil of chrism. Through the sacraments of initiation, we new members of the house of God are given the oil of acceptance and the light of salvation. These images justify our being called children of God. But what does it mean to be a child of God and a citizen of heaven? The first line of the parable of the ten virgins says that there were ten virgins that took their lamps to go out and meet the bridegroom. In many passages in the bible, the kingdom of God has been described as a wedding feast, for example in Matthew 22. The wedding is between Jesus the bridegroom and the church, the bride. As members of the church, we all are marriageable virgins, and we prepare to meet with the bridegroom, to whom we are betrothed. But the bible says that five of the virgins were wise, whereas the other five were foolish. What does it mean to be a wise or a foolish virgin in this context?
The wise virgins were said to have extra oil, while the foolish ones did not. Now, oil refers to anointing. Like the oil of chrism administered on the day of our initiation, it is a sign that sets us apart from other people in the world. It is a signpost that reads: special, dedicated; unique. In ancient Israel, kings were set aside for their special role by their anointing with oil. The prophet Samuel used oil to anoint Saul king in 1 Samuel 10. He subsequently anointed David to replace Saul, also with oil, in 1 Samuel 16. Oil sets us apart as royalty, as children of the greatest king of all, God, and heirs to his holy kingdom, children of a great inheritance to be obtained by our marriage to God's son Jesus Christ. As long as we possess this oil, we hold on to our uniqueness, to our being set apart; to our royalty, and our membership of God's kingdom. By this oil, we no longer belong to the world. Rather we are separate. We are "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, preserved so that we may declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Pet 2:9).
The people of the world do not belong to the kingdom of God. The people of the world are not wise. They do not have the oil of salvation. They live in the kingdom of the devil. They do not recognize God as their master and savior, and God in turn does not recognize them. Because they are unwise, they act foolishly. They do not possess understanding, and their actions show their lack of understanding. They are not prudent; they are not kind; they are not honest with other people. They are insensitive, irreligious, slothful, depraved, unholy - in short they practice every kind of evil. And this is because they do not have oil. They are not set apart. They do not have wisdom. They are unhappy, and they belong to the devil. The members of God's kingdom on the other hand have oil, because they are set apart. They live in the kingdom of God, and recognize him as their lord and savior, and God in turn recognizes them as his own. Because they are wise, they act wisely, and show in their actions that they possess understanding. They are prudent, kind, hardworking, honest, devoted, holy and just - in short they are possessed of virtue in all their deeds.
How can you identify a wise person? In other words, how can you identify a person who belongs to the kingdom of God? Still another way of asking this question is: How can you identify a person that has oil in their lamp? The first and easiest way of knowing if a lamp has oil in it is to see if it is burning brightly or fading away. If the lamp is burning brightly and you can see its light, then you know that it has oil. If on the other hand, there is not flame on the wick, then you know it has no oil. Wisdom is a mental attitude that we cannot see. The only way we know it's there is by observing the overt behavior of individuals. When we observe how a person behaves, we can tell if the person is wise or foolish. When a person is behaving irrationally, without restraint, imprudently or unkindly, we know the person is unwise. When on the other hand the person is behaving moderately, carefully and kindly, we easily conclude that the person is wise. Matthew 7:16-17 states in this regard: "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit."
When we were talking about happiness and the way to obtain it, we said that happiness consists in two things: certainty of knowing, and proper conduct consequent on such knowing. We also said it was a species of wisdom, or epistemology plus ethics. Now, certainty of knowing is a mental attitude. When we acquire understanding or knowledge or wisdom, we don't just stop there; we go on and act. Similarly, we don't just have oil for oil sake; we use it to light our lamps, so that it can inspire others. Matthew 5:14-15 says in this regard: "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house." Also, when we talked about Rhonda Byrne's Secret behind the universe, we said we did not just have a positive mental attitude by our possession of positive thoughts and feelings, we also said we needed to act on our positive thoughts and feelings to bring them about. It is always about epistemology, and ethics. Now, replace wisdom, or knowledge, or positive mental attitude, or understanding, or epistemology, with oil. Then, replace ethics or proper acting or proper behavior or proper conduct - all of which are consequent on the previous positive mental attitude - with light. Now, if we already have said that happiness is synonymous with the kingdom of heaven in a previous post, and that happiness is epistemology plus ethics, then we can logically say that (entrance into) the kingdom of heaven is having oil and light in a person's lamp.
In the parable we are dealing with, that of the ten virgins, we're told that the wise virgins brought oil with them, whereas the foolish ones did not. What this means is that in their daily lives, the wise virgins had preserved their uniqueness. They had realized that they were set apart as royalty, as heirs of God's kingdom. They had persevered in their positive mental attitude; they had persistently engaged in epistemology. They had pondered the word day and night. They had reflected on the mysteries of the kingdom. They had studied the gospels. They had acquired wisdom, understanding, knowledge, philosophy - they had not wasted their time and talents on debauchery. The foolish ones on the other hand had not spent time in the bank of the spirit. They had busied themselves with things of the world: carnal pleasures, licentiousness, greed, sex, wealth, material things - they had not sought out wisdom, knowledge or understanding. They had failed to engage in epistemology. They had not studied the gospels, or invested in a positive mental attitude.
The bridegroom is always late in coming. What this means is that there is on average about seventy or eighty years between the time we are baptized as babies and first given the oil of chrism and the candle light of good deeds and urged not to extinguish them, and the time we die. Psalm 90:10a says in this regard: "Our lives consist of seventy years, or eighty for the strong ones." In this period of living on earth, wise people seek out knowledge of God; they seek out wisdom, philosophy, understanding; they seek to have a positive mental attitude. Foolish ones on the other hand focus on material things of every kind, refusing to seek out any wisdom or knowledge or understanding at all. Wise ones set themselves apart by their interest in God, but foolish ones blend into the world of materiality. Psalm 53:2 says in this regard: "God has been looking down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone that is wise, anyone who seeks after God." So, wisdom is seeking after God's truth, or simply epistemology. And how does God know there is no wise person in some of the places he has been looking? The very next verse of Psalm 53 supplies the answer: "But every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one" (v3). So just like we've been saying, the only way to know a wise person is through their observable behavior.
The parable we are treating goes on to say that everyone grew drowsy and slept. This means that everyone eventually dies. After seventy or eighty years on average, both the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, die. And after death comes judgment (Heb 9:27). The judgment is the coming of the bridegroom. St Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4 heralds this second coming with the sound of trumpeting. It resembles the shout: "Look, here is the bridegroom, come out to meet him!" At this shout, everyone, good or evil, presents himself or herself to God. And God separates them like sheep from goats (Matt 25:31-46). The wise virgins will be judged based on their good behavior (ethics), consequent on positive mental attitudes (epistemology) while they were one earth (their possession of light to justify possession of oil); while the foolish virgins will be condemned based on their bad behavior, consequent on a lack of understanding. This all becomes obvious when the virgins get up to trim their lamps, to see if there is oil in their lamps; if there is spirit in their bodies; if they can be observed to have good souls, good track record of behavior; ethics consequent on epistemology. The wise do have light; not so much the foolish ones. In tomorrow's post, we'll discuss the rest of the parable, beginning from where the foolish virgins ask the wise ones for oil.
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