The Parable of the Foolish Virgins

 

Jesus told his disciples this parable:
"The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish and five were wise.
The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.
Since the bridegroom was long delayed,
they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
At midnight, there was a cry,
'Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!'
Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps.
The foolish ones said to the wise,
'Give us some of your oil,
for our lamps are going out.'
But the wise ones replied,
'No, for there may not be enough for us and you.
Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.'
While they went off to buy it,
the bridegroom came
and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him.
Then the door was locked.
Afterwards the other virgins came and said,
'Lord, Lord, open the door for us!'
But he said in reply,
'Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.'
Therefore, stay awake,
for you know neither the day nor the hour."

As always, this parable, the Mass reading for last Sunday, includes a detail preventing it from being read literally. The bridegroom came at midnight. Where exactly were the foolish virgins going to buy oil for their lamps at midnight? Where did they think they were going?

And does it sound like charity for the wise virgins to refuse to share their oil? Yet they get the seal of approval, being immediately admitted to the “kingdom of heaven.”

Anything well written should alert the reader with such inconsistencies that a passage cannot be read literally, but must be symbolic. Clearly the thing being discussed here is not oil, but something like oil that cannot be shared, or not shared easily.

It is wisdom: “five of them were foolish, and five of them were wise.” Wisdom cannot be passed on, but must be achieved by each as individual—unlike, for example, knowledge. Wisdom is the oil that produces, as needed, the flame of understanding. And one needs wisdom to enter the kingdom of heaven.

That the problem is lack of wisdom is made plainer by the readiness of the foolish virgins to run off in search of oil in the middle of the night. And they were actually barred from the wedding feast not because they had no flame in their lamps, but because they were not there when the doors opened. By folly straight up, not oil.

This might seem unjust. Can one be blamed for being stupid? Yet it is not stupidity that makes a fool, but a lack of common sense. The first reading for the mass, from the Book of Wisdom, makes clear that wisdom is available to all:

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

So why are half of us, by the parable’s estimation fools? 

Because most of us would rather embrace the nearest pleasant fiction than wisdom. Most of us are actively engaged in various self-delusions. We believe what is convenient to believe, what requires the least of us.

This makes us easier, in turn, to fool. We will go for any get-rick-quick scheme, or any sort of snake oil. Notably including false claims about Christianity or what the Bible actually says. We will choose the wrong path, because it is bordered with primroses.

In the parable, the bridegroom says, “I do not know you.” If the bridegroom is God, this too is not literally right. He is omniscient, after all. But “know” means more than this in the Bible, often means the full relationship between man and wife. Rather, the fool and God have never established a personal relationship. There is no marriage, therefore no marriage feast.

The Wisdom of the Nursery

 

"Those who do not laugh have bad consciences."

- Brothers Grimm, "The Twelve Brothers."

Wise words from the nursery. Fairy tales and fables are the source of accumulated wisdom over the centuries—that is why they exist and persist. It is parental malpractice not to teach them to our children. They are the furniture of a healthy mind.

This one sentence is of tremendous value as a life lesson. It is invaluable for judging character, and it is a valuable lesson not to go down the path of dishonesty yourself—you will never laugh freely again.

Other essential lessons, too easily never learned, hard to convey otherwise, are told by Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Aesop’s “The Frogs Who Wanted a King,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Longer fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, have been obscured because too easily adapted by those with no interest in the original moral. Disney had a tendency in its animated versions to make them all about finding romantic love. “One Day My Prince Will Come.” Not in the mind of the original Snow White. 

Everyone thinks that the story of the princess and the frog is that the princess overcomes some initial revulsion to kiss the frog, and this turns the frog into a handsome prince. So don’t judge by appearances in seeking a life partner, right? But that is not in the original: the princess never kisses the frog. She throws him against the wall. Don’t judge by appearances, yes, but there are other things also going on. This is not about romantic love.

The first failure of our education system is that fairy tales and fables, in the original, are rarely any longer taught.

Wisdom

 

Wisdom with her daughters Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom, 

and she is readily perceived by those who love her,

and found by those who seek her.

She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;

Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,

for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence,

and whoever for her sake keeps vigil

shall quickly be free from care;

because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her,

and graciously appears to them in the ways,

and meets them with all solicitude.

 

When I was in graduate school, I wanted to study Wisdom. For an obvious reason: I had no idea what it was. I understood what intelligence was; I understood what knowledge was. But what was this mysterious third thing?

I was not able to, because there were no courses offered on the subject, and no faculty member would agree to supervise a reading course on it. Which is perhaps telling, perhaps not. I suspect that Wisdom has few friends in grad school.

Athena

Yet it was clearly something of importance. The Greeks revered it as the goddess Athena, and named their principal city after her. Bulgaria named their capital after her: Sofia. The principal church of the East was named for her: Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom. In India she is revered as Sarasvati, the active principle of Brahma, the supreme godhead.  Philosophy itself was named after her: “the love of Wisdom.” So why was no one talking about her? Why did nobody seem to know who she was?

Sarasvati

I assumed, of course, that Wisdom was something deeply mysterious, which for some dark reason one only acquired towards the end of one’s life.

So the striking thing about the reading is that it suggests that wisdom is not mysterious at all; that she is “readily perceived by those who love her.” That is the whole point, repeated, of the passage.

It is not that she is hard to find, or difficult to understand. It is that we fail to love her. We do not want her.

Thomas Aquinas, citing Aristotle, defines Wisdom clearly: “it belongs to wisdom to consider the highest cause. By means of that cause we are able to form a most certain judgment about other causes, and according thereto all things should be set in order.”

If that is not perfectly clear to you, to anyone, it is because you do not want it to be. For some reason, most of us would rather be chasing squirrels and barking up trees. Perhaps it comes to some of us late in life out of no more than sheer exhaustion—to turn to the loving hand that was there in every dawn all along. And to many of us, clearly, it never comes at all.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

- St. Augustine