NOTES for Mat 25:1-13

The meaning of this parable is expressed in the final words: "Watch." But all ten virgins became drowsy! So the point is not simply to avoid drowsiness. Each of us has periods of spiritual relaxation and lack of gatheredness, for not everyone is able to burn in spirit all the time. Rather, the point is that, besides the burning lamp of faith, a person needs to have a certain "reserve of strength," a kind of spiritual resource that will help him, if needed, get up from his knees and trim the fading lamp.

This is not about some special strength, genius, or vigor. All these are gifts that only God can give. But there is something that depends chiefly on us: faithfulness, honesty before ourselves and God, and the desire to be with Him no matter what.

Today's reading offers us Jesus' parable about His coming return. In it Jesus again turns to the theme of His followers' readiness (more precisely, their unreadiness) for this event. At first glance, it was impossible not to be ready for it, because Jesus' disciples really did await meeting Him, as a bride awaits meeting her bridegroom. Only a person born and raised in the East can understand this expectation, where the traditional way of life is still preserved and where a bride cannot meet her bridegroom until the very day of the wedding.

Today, one has to admit, even among Christians few wait for the Savior's return as the main event of their life, but for the first Christian generation such expectation was the norm. Yet the long-awaited meeting falls apart over what, at first glance, is a mere trifle: the young women waiting for the bridegroom did not think to stock up on oil for their lamps (v. 3). And no one had extra oil (vv. 8-9). Meanwhile, the doors to the wedding chamber close quickly; the slightest delay can prove fatal, and for some it truly does (vv. 10-12).

This story recalls the Savior's parable of the withered fig tree: Jesus came up to the tree unexpectedly; there were no figs on the tree and there could not have been any, but the Kingdom comes not when you expect it, and Jesus also appears unexpectedly and not as, by human ideas, He should appear. In such a situation, spiritual collectedness means above all readiness for the unexpected. Of course, while waiting for so significant an event, it is not hard to forget such a small thing as a supply of oil for a lamp. But it was noticed long ago that in spiritual life there are no small things. For a spiritual condition is, first of all, a certain level of awareness of reality, when everything that is done becomes significant, when unconscious, barely noticed, flashing thoughts disappear, along with equally unconscious actions performed automatically. Then every small thing becomes significant: the depth of understanding of this small thing in such a case is no less than the depth of understanding of any "great" deed.

In God's work there are no small things; small things become small things when we stop perceiving the reality around us as the reality of the coming Kingdom. In our world that has not yet been transformed, there are important matters and there are minor matters unworthy of attention; in the Kingdom everything has significance. And if we have not learned to see reality in this way, then we still do not know what the Kingdom is.

Both the wise and the foolish virgins had identical lamps, so at first there was no difference between them. But the wise understood that they had to remain ready, and they kept the necessary supply. Hearing their refusal, the foolish virgins must have thought them greedy, and one can imagine how they may have spoken about the wise after finding themselves outside the gate.

Nevertheless, let us not apply to them those norms of relationships that are perfectly acceptable in our daily life but do not belong to the parable, which reveals what the Lord wants from us. After all, He loves each of us personally and uniquely, and if we hope to slip Him someone else's fire instead of the one we kindled and kept in our own heart, what should that be called?

And so those whose lamps were not filled with love proved unworthy to enter the feast.

Speaking about His purpose, the Lord recalls the episode described in chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers, when the people of God suffered an invasion of serpents as a consequence of their disobedience. Many died from their bites. Then the Lord commanded Moses to lift up a bronze serpent, and whoever looked at it remained alive. In general, the serpent is a symbol of disobedience and departure from the will of God, as we remember from the account of the fall of Adam and Eve. It is a symbol of broken relations with God. Something must therefore restore these relations. Heaven and earth must somehow be joined again. Do you remember Jacob’s ladder? And the angels descending from Heaven and ascending by it to Heaven? It is an astonishing image of communion between earth and Heaven: that for which humanity strives, but which proves impossible because of humanity’s original falling away from God. “No one has yet ascended into Heaven except the Son of Man who descended from Heaven.” Christ is called to accomplish this descent and ascent.

And how will He ascend? He will be lifted up. Lifted up on the Cross. Just as Moses’ lifting up of the bronze serpent saved people from a terrible death by snakebite, the lifting up of Jesus delivers us from the work of the serpent that tempted the first human being and, in him, each of us. “For God so loved the world...”

The vigilance to which Christ calls His disciples is constant readiness to meet the One who comes in the name of the Lord. The "wise virgins," whom the Lord sets before us as an example, prepared for a long wait and so could remain in the appointed place as long as the Bridegroom pleased. That is why they are ready for this meeting at any moment, even if the Bridegroom "was delayed." The "foolish" virgins, however, at the hour when the Bridegroom's arrival caught them, turned out to be occupied not with waiting to meet Him, but with getting ready.

The Lord is saying, then, that we do not have the option of being occupied with ourselves and with our own affairs and problems. The coming of the Kingdom is possible at any moment. From the beginning this thought inspired Christ's disciples to live in righteousness "already today," without putting off the cleansing of the heart until "later." At the same time, it is curious that when the Lord speaks about waiting for the coming of the Kingdom, He still hints to us that the Bridegroom "was delayed," thereby warning us against an excessive fascination with eschatology.

Man gets used to everything. He gets used to danger, to expectation, to inconveniences, to comfort. We can get used to pain (ours and others), to blood at the television screen. Feelings become dull, the conscience keeps silent, the heart beats evenly… breath is deep and rhythmic, dormition. Why not? The Second Advent of Christ, the end of the world? Already two thousand years as we wait, and there is still nothing. It means that even today nothing will be, and we can sleep therefore.

Can we oversleep and miss the Second Advent? It seems so; because Jesus went nowhere. Ascending to the Father He remains with us and He can enter in our life at any time, just as He entered the life of Apostle Paul. But if at that moment our heart will be closed with “another sleep ", then the meeting will not take place and this will be “the second death " before the " first death " – from the spiritual death to the physical death.

That's why Jesus speaks to us, so that we should keep on alert, so that we prepare our hearts for the meeting, in order to hear the voice of our conscience, so that we don’t become stale, for us to wait.

The parables of the Lord Jesus Christ that we read today give us an incredible hope, one we have in no way deserved. Two days before Passover, when the Son of Man was handed over to be crucified, He shows His disciples from different perspectives what the Kingdom of Heaven is, the Kingdom to which He has called us.

The Lord tells His disciples that they must keep watch and be ready to meet the Day of the Lord. In the parable of the ten virgins, He says that the Kingdom of Heaven itself is like people awaiting an encounter with God. The central point of this parable is the call to wait for that encounter and desire it with all one’s heart.

The parable of the talents speaks of the gift of God given to each of us. This gift is likened to immense wealth: one talent amounted to more than twenty-five kilograms of silver! And the Lord calls us to put this priceless treasure to work. Judging by the text that follows, the talents mean not so much natural abilities and inclinations (that sense belongs to much later usage, which developed under the influence of the New Testament). The parable of the Last Judgment clearly shows us that people’s principal treasure is the ability to show mercy to one another as God Himself shows mercy to us. This is His silver, entrusted to us to make it grow.

And, of course, the central place in the passage we read is occupied by the parable of the Last Judgment. We read it before Lent, and today this text once again reveals what matters most in our life, what the Lord expects from us and, above all, where He has arranged to meet us.