Wise and Foolish Virgins

Mass readings for this Sunday are here.

My first post on this was earlier this week and can be read here.

 Painting by Charles Haslewood Shannon 1919-20.


It looks as if that woman in the bottom left of this painting is on a mobile phone.. Is she ringing out for extra oil or for a pizza delivery ?


I have found there are many perspectives on this enigmatic parable but I was looking for a Catholic theologian  woman's view and I couldn't find any. 
(Hardly surprising they have probably all been banned or suppressed)

One of the common questions raised is why the wise virgins didn't share their oil with the foolish ones !! Good question.

So these are just a few on the parable of the wise and  foolish virgins which I have found useful thrown in with a few drops of my own reflections.

This homily seems to make some sense to me and covers a lot of points.

and this offers an alternative to an individualistic perspective:

"We, the church, are the Foolish Virgins, since the bridegroom has already  arrived - he is the poor, the homeless, the prisoner, the disenfranchised, the "least of these.' And we, in the safety and security of our homes and churches have refused to respond to the continuous knocking at our door."

- Charis Varnadore

I don't know who Charis Varnadore is but this did get me thinking a lot about how the church has taught us all to view the bridegroom as Christ and the church as the feminine. The second reading is from the book of Wisdom- again often interpreted as a feminine virtue.

So if the wise virgins are an aspect of the church then the foolish virgins are contained within the church but maybe they are aspects of the male repressed feminine anima within the church. Now that makes a lot of sense. 


The complacency and refusal to accept the feminine in their own ranks, secure in their sparce supply of feminine input, secure in their complacent patronising attitude to feminine input other than as a token to cover themselves. 

If the woman is an example of a fallen sinner with wounds so much the better- it looks good to be seen to have her within the ranks and it's relatively easy to control her.

Yes; it's fine to make a big deal of welcoming women at World Youth Day who have had an abortion back into the church, and fine to accept recovered alcoholics with memoirs and stories of downfall and redemption - they sell well. They make good press.

Don't these women see that they are being used and really are just continuing a dysfunctional unhealthy co-dependent abusive relationship within a controlling church ?

Excuse me for being cynical but there is a distinct whiff of hypocrisy here, because it seems as the only women welcome are those who passively uphold the party line and don't rock the institutional boat and also because of inconsistencies in applying the welcome back all is forgiven mantra, to men and women.


What about people who are divorced and remarried but cannot receive the eucharist or those priests who have left the church to get married because they fell in love but who cannot carry on their ministry ?

I see in the dim lights of the foolish virgins, the short-sighted tunnel -visioned and repressed anima of the male church that says it wants all the benefits of wisdom, here personified in the feminine principle but making a half - hearted bungled search for it.  

It's a long haul - women know that. We know that Mary kept all the wounds and sorrows of Christ's wounds in her heart. 

As the Psalm says, we are like parched land crying out for water and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.


I know so many women in my church who have been committed to wait in the desert and keep vigil in the hope that the church will recognise and use their wisdom.
Such wisdom has to be drawn from deep wells in this desert and takes a long time to extract.

One of the aspects of wisdom is that we should learn from our mistakes. Making the same mistake over and over and over, should tell us something is badly wrong deep within the institutional wells of our faith.

It is clear that many of our "servant leaders" are not operating from a healthy space.
There is a pathological denial and defensiveness operating at some levels of the church  where‘serving’ others has become merely a way of extracting from others an oil that the power hungry need for themselves, to massage their hungry egos.

The people of God are still being used to fulfil the hierarchies own agenda of maintaining "power over" rather than serving in collegiality. 

The best priests I know are those who are comfortable in the presence of women who raise questions about the church's teachings  without recourse to patronising or belittling statements.

They are priests who welcome honest dissent and recognise the need for collegiality and a broader ministry without ramming bland,stale and guilt laden orthodoxy down people's throats. They are compassionate and wise because they see where women's input in ministry is desperately needed alongside men at all levels.

They are priests who are comfortable with their sexuality and yet who recognise the need for change and at least wider discussion of issues relating to celibacy and homosexuality in an open non- threatening way. They are men who are unafraid of showing vulnerability.


The wise virgins represent a living church that fully integrates feminine wisdom  from the male and female anima and a large supply of oil !!

But this oil is not  from a finite man -made source that eventually dries up because this faith is renewable as it comes from God, the source of eternal life.


Now that would be a vision worth waking up to.

A few prayers:

We acknowledge Your glory, Light of the World,

and we gratefully remember Your saving deeds.

But, when the world grows dark and threatening,

We lose faith and we despair;

When our hopes are delayed,

We grow disappointed and disillusioned;

When love and truth become hard and painful,

We choose expediency and self-interest;

When You seem distant and silent,

We become faithless and lethargic.

Chase from our hearts the darkness, the cynicism and the mocking,

fill our minds with memories of bloody crosses and empty tombs,

fill our ears with echoes of forgiveness,

And fill our lives with reflections of the light of your love

from here

Image via Wikipedia

You call me to wait on You, Lord,

but I get tired of waiting.

Your answers to my prayers,

Your call for me to serve You,

the promise of Your coming Kingdom,

they all seem to take so long.

You tell me to watch for Your coming, Lord,

but I’m not sure how to prepare for…

a thief in the night,

an undisclosed time,

and Your disconcerting habit of secrecy and mystery.

Yet, something inside whispers

that You’re not all that hard to find;

That You’re always coming to me,

and that both the waiting and the watching,

are more about being open to You now,

than about trying not to be surprised in the future.

And so I will keep waiting,

and I’ll try to stay alert,

so that I can catch the glimpses of Your glory

that fill my day, every day.

 John van de Laar from here

A few thoughts

Faith may be a spark that leads us to God.  Faith alone may even start the fire, but in the wider sense the more difficult task in life is to replenish the oil as we go along;  to always continue to keep enough oil to keep the fires burning, especially when the waiting for justice seems so long and far away.

Maybe what the parable is saying is that for many of us the initial oil isn't enough  we run out of oil along the way, we burn out.

It could also be true that the oil is about relationship- it's not something that can be bought or sold or even borrowed and if so that is why the oil can't be shared.

If the foolish virgins had enough faith then maybe they wouldn't have gone out at the last minute to get oil from outside - they would have gone to the bridegroom and admitted they had nothing and trust in the bridegroom to supply what they need.

Would he have let them in then? I don't know...

But I do believe that the primary force shaping us is God's love and the overflow of that love to others is the most important part of our faith.

It's unfortunate that we often wait until the last minute before we see it and do something about it.

There are ways to see the parable as symbolic imagery of what it will be like in a second coming of Christ, the ones that the disciples wrongly thought was imminent and which most of us may dimly view today as being either a recurrent prediction of a Rapture that never quite comes off, or that will take place but in such a very distant future way too hard to comprehend , so it slips into the recesses of our minds and we carry on our lives as normal.


 It is also a parable that could refer to an everyday posture that is required every moment in our lives, not just at the midnight hour !


The “oil in my lamp” refers to the ability to always develop an awareness and attentiveness in every single moment, not just to have a vague watered down  wish but to have and to culture an expectation and hope for God to show up in life.

I know that when God shows even a glimpse it is often in the most mundane events, but with profound effects. 

 Image via Wikipedia

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour”    so we need to develop a sense of how it is important to have this expectation every moment;  not only in a belief of the second coming of Christ, but also the ways in which God is ever present and is manifested in our ordinary every day lives. 

I know that God  has often opened my eyes to surprise me. The ways in which God's presence happens has always given me a jolt, often upending me completely and , always making me realise just who is in charge of my life !!

As for the judgement of the bridegroom and the closing of the door there are many interpretations. Some people point out that the closing of the door is an anachronism and doesn't fit well with what we know of Christ's continuous giving of chances for forgiveness.

Is it that we just can't face up to the reality that God will judge us ?

Big questions.... I need more oil...