HOMILY FOR THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. On 17^th October last, a priest from Ecuador named Fr. Patricio Molinari, was standing behind an altar at Mass when a large crucifix that was on the wall behind him, tipped forward and fell on him, killing him instantly. It was a terrible tragedy that has been seen by millions, as the Mass was livestreamed.

Just a few minutes before he was killed, he gave his last homily. Without knowing he was about to die, he said:

"One day, all of us here will also die, and sometimes the time we have spent on certain things does not hold as much meaning as the time we have spent with God. In our lives, sometimes we fail to give that time, that space, to God. ... God should come first".

This extraordinary incident came to my mind as I prepared this homily, based on the Scriptures this Sunday and particularly the Gospel of the Ten Bridesmaids.

The first message of the Gospel story is our need to be vigilant and focused as believers, and not to become complacent. In the Scriptures, sleep is a symbol of laziness, complacency, drifting and living a life uncommitted to anything or anyone. That is why Jesus asks us in today’s Gospel to ‘Stay awake, for you know not the day nor the hour’ (Matt. 25:13). He said this having told the parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, all of whom feel asleep waiting for the Bridegroom. The Bridegroom in the story is Jesus himself and we, the Christian community, are the brides who await him. So, what Jesus is asking us to do, is to keep our eyes and hearts fixed on Him and his Gospel, to practise our faith and to intentionally put it into action. It is giving our complete ‘Yes’ to being his witnesses in the Ireland of today.

In the Ireland of old, practicing our faith was something that was supported by the culture. It was what most people did. We went with the flow. This is no longer the case. To be a Christian today requires a response to God’s call deep within the soul, to live the Christian way of life. It is about becoming an intentional disciple and our lives having a different look about them, compared to if we weren’t Catholic Christians. It is a call to move away from complacency, half-living the faith or being luke-warm about it all. It is an invitation from the Lord to become fully alive and not to stay half-asleep.

From now until the end of Advent, this call to ‘stay awake’ will be heard many times. We need to be ready to meet the Lord face to face at the moment of our death and deliberately think of that moment that will one day come. This is not to scare us but alert us to what is true. One day we will die. Will we be ready when that time comes? And if not, why not? Just before he was killed, Fr. Molinari said: “One day, all of us here will also die”. Little did he know he was about to die and how prophetic his words would be.

The second important detail from today’s Gospel is the oil in the lamps of the Ten Bridesmaids. What does it symbolise? The life of God’s Spirit within us. At our baptism, God shared his divine life with us in a wonderful way. Through Christ becoming human, we have become divine. Yet, this gift of divine life within us is a gift that needs constant nurturing, renewal and care. For if we neglect the life of the Spirit within us, then we inevitably begin to drift, to fall asleep and to take our eye off the ball. We inevitably weaken in our Christian commitment, or in the words of today’s Gospel, we run out of fuel.

This need for constant attentiveness is similar to our physical needs. We need to eat, drink and sleep every day to stay healthy. If we neglect any of these, we get weak and lose our strength. The same is true for the life of the Christian.

The life of God that we have received at baptism is nurtured and renewed by the sacraments of the Eucharist, Confession and the other sacraments too. It is also nurtured and kept alive by a life of disciplined prayer and the practise of charity. These are the moments when we refill our oil lamps or rather have them refilled by God’s abundant goodness, who waits for us to come to Him and to give us what we need.

To stay awake, to intentionally believe and deliberately practise the faith: to know that one day we will die and to be ready; to daily nurture God’s life within us with prayer, charity and the sacraments. All of these things came together in the final minutes of the life of Fr Patrico Molinari, by what he said and how he died. May he rest in peace.