Week 32 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 63 (62); I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

Human beings seek knowledge: there is nothing strange or startling in that. Aristotle begins his most famous book of philosophy with this declaration: 'all people by nature desire to know'. It is simply natural to the animal we are that we want and need to know many things.

Our quest for knowledge takes us beyond the immediate needs we share with other animals, where to find food and how to construct dwellings, where to find company and how to understand our environment. Realities such as power and control feed our desire for knowledge. But characteristically human capacities such as art, poetry and music, also feed that desire. We see both already in the most 'primitive' humans and both continue to operate in the most developed human beings (as we like to think of ourselves). We are led by our curiosity, by our desire and hunger for knowledge, into all the realms of science and philosophy, politics and art, games and religion, poetry and music, technology and symbolism.

Today's first reading is just one of many texts in the Bible that speak of our desire for knowledge. There are many such wonderful texts, in Proverbs and Sirach, in Wisdom and in the Psalms, which list the many areas of life in which the fruits of this desire are to be seen. More than knowledge, what we desire is wisdom: once again the philosophers and the Bible agree on this. Wisdom is right understanding and good judgement. It is knowledge which is also always moral and spiritual, not just information, cold knowledge as it were, but an understanding that remains always human. It means we think about things always in their richest possible human setting, about their meaning for us and for our life, about their contribution to a common good of humanity as well as to the happiness and fulfilment of individuals.

But here is something remarkable, strange and startling, which comes to us only through God's revelation in the Bible: not only do we seek wisdom, but Wisdom seeks us. We do not find this in the Greek or in the other rich traditions of wisdom-seeking. Not only do we seek the understanding of truth that we call wisdom, since Truth, Understanding and Wisdom, all give themselves to us if we go about it in the right way. But more than that, 'she (Wisdom) makes her rounds, seeking those worthy of her'. 'She graciously appears to them in the ways and meets them with all solicitude'. She 'hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire'.

What the Gospels, and the New Testament generally, add to this is an identification of this divine Wisdom with Jesus, the eternal Word or Intelligence of God. He has come to seek and to save what was lost, to enlighten all who sit in darkness, to guide all who wander on foolish ways, to nourish the hearts and minds of all who thirst for the wine of understanding and hunger for the bread of knowledge.

There is then a strange contrast between Wisdom as she is portrayed in the first reading, Jesus as he is spoken of in the second reading, and the bridegroom in the gospel parable - arriving late, excluding those foolish enough not to have anticipated his late arrival, refusing to admit them to the wedding feast. The focus of the parable cannot be the character of the bridegroom. Rather the kingdom of heaven is like his sudden arrival, at an unexpected time, and the wisdom asked of us is that of being awake, still alert, watching for his coming.

We could perhaps re-phrase it like this: keep your desire strong; keep your search going; do not allow your curiosity or your thirst for knowledge, understanding and wisdom, to weaken. These things are on their way to you even if they are, as it seems, delayed in coming. The oil in your lamps is this natural desire for wisdom, for the presence of Jesus, and for a life that is wholesome and holy. That will be yours, because it is not only you who are seeking it, it is also seeking you. Wisdom is calling you. She is the 'hound of heaven' tracking you, and longing to sit at table with you. She wants to share her riches with you so as to fulfil at last, and beyond your wildest dreams, your desire for knowledge, your hunger to understand, your longing to see.

All you or I have to do is to stay awake. In other words attend to your desire so as to keep it strong. The bridegroom is coming. May he give us this simple gift: the wisdom to be in the right place at the right time when he appears.