Getting The Oil Ready

I began this week's posting here with two contrasting graphics on how we spend time : one depicted the hectic programmed grind of work and business and the other the laid back restfulness of sleep : two different aspects of time. 

Then followed on another post here on "Life in A Day", a global film on how people spend one day of their life, across various parts of the world.

Last weekend the clocks went back one hour in the UK.

Halloween and All Saints and All Souls Day are celebrated this week, three events that break through the thin space between this world and "the other side of time."
My posts on this are here.

In large parts of North East America life has been disrupted to sudden and unexpected unseasonal heavy snowfalls. 

So perhaps serendipity has a way of bringing seemingly disparate events together for us if we stretch ourselves to look ahead  to this Sunday's Mass and the scripture readings which intriguingly follow up on the theme of time and readiness and also remind us that Advent is not that far away either.

There are two basic Greek words for time. Chronos time : the actual time of day, and kairos time; the time of opportunity, or the right time, or a season, or the time when things are brought to a crisis. 

I have posted on these themes before here.

Scripture readings for this Sunday, 32nd in Ordinary Time, 6th November are here

and various commentaries can be found  here including this extract below taken from Fr. John Kavanaugh's reflection on the Gospel :

 

Glass Virgins by Gerald Laing from here

"We have a gospel. It portrays ten bridesmaids, five of them foolish, five wise. The foolish ones have brought no oil reserve for their lamps, in case the first allotment runs out. The groom is late.

Finally, he appears at midnight. The unprepared call out to the others, “Give us some oil.” But the provident tell the foolish to get their own. 

And so the chance is missed, the door barred, even as those left behind cry for opening. It is too late. 

The moral of the story: “Keep your eyes open, for you know not the day or the hour.”

There’s the wisdom. We never know the hour or the day. All ten bridesmaids, recall, were asleep. 

The difference was that five of them were prepared. The point is not that we should calculate when destiny might arrive.

It is that we should be ready for it every moment of our lives." 

So I'm going to attempt to start getting ready early this week by spending some "kairos time " reflecting on the scriptures ...... better get busy... now where is that oil for my lamp ?

Image by James Tissot - Foolish Virgins. Source.

                                                    Get Ready, Come Go With Me

Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning