She is resplendent and unfading

32 ^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
 
The first lesson from the Book of Wisdom is lovely. It personifies Wisdom as a beautiful lady. She is “resplendent and unfading. He shall find her sitting by his gate.” One of the things I have observed about my own journey to older age is that I have grown in wisdom. I don’t know that but now and again people have affirmed me for my wisdom. Never knew that. I guess we all grow to wisdom one way or another. The truth is we should become wiser as we get older. We all have various life experiences and surely we should have learned something from those experiences. These are the pearls of great price that we pass onto our children. Not that they will listen to us anyway. They want to learn their own wisdom. I guess fair enough. But to anyone who will listen to us, we have loads of wisdom. This time of the year as we get closer to the end of the Church’s year you will notice that the readings will talk about the end of the world, about judgment day. If you want to impress your friends you can tell them that these are Eschatological readings. The gospel reading is one of those today. We are given the parable about the kingdom of heaven that is like the wedding feast and the foolish virgins. I don’t expect a lot from foolish virgin bridesmaids. They definitely don’t have much wisdom. They are more concerned about how they look and if their hair is alright. We were all those once. We spent our days trying to look beautiful. We practiced being sophisticated and failed miserably. We tried all kinds of makeup and different looks but we could never look like the movie stars. Guys tried to be Elvis but failed. You get the idea. Foolish virgins and wisdom do not go together. The whole thing ends in disaster because the virgins should have been getting ready for the wedding instead of fussing over their hair. The bridegroom came. The bridegroom went. The virgins were left outside. Bit late to be crying now. This is a tale about us. We are given warnings to pay attention to the things that matter to God. Take care of your soul and forget about your hair. Did we listen? Not!
With love, Fr. Pat