WORD FOR MISSION
Missionary reflection  on Sunday Liturgy

Mission means to share

THE JOY OF MEETING AND OF THE FEAST

XXXII Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year “A” - Sunday 6.11.2005

Wisdom  6:12-16

Psalm  62

1Thessalonians  4:13-18

Matthew  25:1-13

Reflections
“Experience is a comb that nature gives to bald people”. This Chinese proverb, which sounds like a warning to human superficiality, or mockery of the arrogant, is one of the countless messages that the age-old wisdom of the nations, in all times and places, leaves to future generations in the form of proverbs and sayings. Even the Bible, especially in the so-called "wisdom" books, is full of messages of human wisdom and spiritual values. We have an example in today's first Reading. We are approaching the end of the Liturgical Year and have just celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. The reading presents a "wisdom" topic, that appears to be the fruit of human experience, but is above all a freely-given gift from God, pointing to the truth about persons and things. Wisdom is often personified: "She herself walks about looking for those who are worthy of her" (v.16), and sits at the gates of those who get up early to find her (v.14). Those who love truth and wisdom would be advised to pay attention to the testimony of a wise man: "Truth is like a great tree that, the more it is tended, the more fruit it gives" (Mahatma Gandhi).

Wisdom and Truth, in the highest degree, are God himself. He is the treasure for which the soul of the psalmist thirsts, like a dry, weary land without water. The Responsorial Psalm, using both pronouns and adjectives, calls 15 times on a "You" who is very concrete, loved and desired. This love of one's heart is Jesus himself, the bridegroom who speaks to the Bride, his Church, in the Gospel Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (virgins). Some people in the Church are foolish and some wise. The parable is rich in symbols and messages that have to be read in a biblical sense: the wedding symbolism refers to the man/woman-God relationship, and we can perceive, among others,  the symbols of being alert or asleep, of darkness and light, of oil, of wisdom and foolishness, the tarrying of the bridegroom, the closed door and the wedding banquet.

Waiting for and being ready to welcome the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus, who can turn up at any time, is a personal commitment that cannot be handed to anyone else. It is symbolised in the matter of the oil (requested by some, refused by the others) which each individual has to procure in their life. Wisdom is like the oil that is not easy to share: "it is oil that we produce ourselves, from our own internal striving, from our sufferings, from our love... We must take steps to ensure that it never decreases" (E. Balducci). Certainly, we cannot take anyone else's place in the personal response to God who calls and who saves. But we can - and we must - share the gift of Faith with others: that Faith that sustains us in our journey towards Christ, and can give light to other persons who seek the truth with sincere hearts.

It is by Faith that we know that the Bridegroom we await, and who turns up in the night is Christ, who invites us to go in to the banquet of life, to "stay with the Lord forever" (2nd. Reading, v.17). We who are strengthened by this hope (vv.13-14,18) feel the missionary responsibility to want the door to the banquet to be opened to others - to everyone! Aware that the door is Christ (Jn.10:9), we proclaim him as Teacher and Saviour, focussing the missionary message on the Person of Christ, first and foremost. *  This is the wisdom also of one of the recently-canonised Saints: "Christianity is not an abstract doctrine: a complex of dogmas to believe and of precepts and commandments. He is Christianity! Christ in Christianity is not a devotion. Not the first devotion, not even the greatest devotion. The fundamental truth is that Christianity is Christ!" (St. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, a Chilean Jesuit, canonised on 23rd October 2005). The Kingdom, that Jesus proclaims and personifies, is first of all a personal encounter with Him. The central point of missionary proclamation is this: the invitation to the banquet of Life. In Christ. For everyone!


The Pope's words
*  “The Risen Jesus accompanies us on our way and enables us to recognise him, as the disciples of Emmaus did, «in the breaking of the bread» (Lk 24:35). May he find us watchful, ready to recognise his face and run to our brothers and sisters with the good news: «We have seen the Lord!» (Jn. 20:25).

John Paul II
Novo Millennio Ineunte (2001), n. 59

In the footsteps of Missionaries
- 7/11: S. Prosdocimus (Third century), held to be the founder of the Christian community around Padua, and its first Bishop.
- 9/11: Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the Pope's cathedral (cathedral) as Bishop of Rome. So it is the 'Mother church' and first of all churches, both in Rome and around the world ("Urbi et Orbi").
- 10/11: St Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church (+461). He saved Rome from the invasion of the Huns and the Vandals.
- 11/11: St. Martin of Tours (+397), founder of monasteries and evangeliser of villages in central Gaul. He was famed as a miracle-worker, and is the first Saint not a martyr to be venerated in the Latin Church.
- 12/11: St. Josaphat Kuncewicz (1580-1623), Bishop of Vitebsk and of Polock in  Poland-Bielorussia. He is the first Martyr of the union of the Greco-Russian Christians with the Roman Church.

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Editor: Fr. Romeo Ballan, mcci - Former Director of CIAM, Rome

Website:    www.ciam.org http://www.ciam.org/ “Word for Mission”

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