There are some things you can borrow at the last minute.
An umbrella.
A phone charger.
A hymn book, provided somebody remembers where we put them.
Today’s Gospel tells us there is one thing you cannot borrow.
Holiness.
Ten bridesmaids are waiting for a wedding.
Five are wise.
Five are foolish.
And at first they look almost identical.
All ten are invited.
All ten have lamps.
All ten know the Bridegroom is coming.
All ten fall asleep.
So apparently the difference between wisdom and foolishness is not that the wise never nod off.
That is encouraging.
The difference appears at midnight:
“The bridegroom is here! Go out to meet him.”
Suddenly the lamps matter.
Five have oil.
Five do not.
And the foolish say: “Give us some of your oil.”
They cannot.
Not because the wise bridesmaids have developed a surprisingly strict oil-sharing policy.
Because some things cannot be transferred from one soul to another.
Nobody can repent for you.
Nobody can love God for you.
Nobody can become holy in your place.
Your grandmother may have said enough Rosaries to wear smooth several sets of beads.
Excellent.
They were her Rosaries.
Eventually every soul gives its own answer to Jesus Christ.
And now we come to the oil.
Jesus is telling a parable, so we should not turn every detail into a secret code.
But the Fathers of the Church saw something very important here.
The oil signifies charity.
Not simply being pleasant.
Charity in the Catholic sense: the supernatural love of God poured into the soul by grace, and flowing out in love of neighbour.
That helps us understand the lamps.
A lamp can look perfectly respectable.
Until somebody asks it to produce light.
So can a Catholic life.
Baptised.
Confirmed.
Knows the Creed.
On three rotas.
Can identify everything everybody else is doing incorrectly.
But does the lamp burn?
That is a much more serious question.
Catholic theology makes an important distinction here.
A person can still believe the truths of the faith and yet lose charity through mortal sin.
The faith has not necessarily vanished.
The person may still believe in God.
Still know that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Still know what the Church teaches.
But the living friendship with God has been broken.
The lamp remains.
The oil is gone.
That is why the Catholic faith has never taught that simply believing certain facts about Jesus is enough.
Faith must be living faith.
Faith formed by charity.
Saint Paul says elsewhere that if he had faith great enough to move mountains but had not charity, he would be nothing.
That is very uncomfortable.
It means Catholic identity by itself cannot save us.
Neither can religious knowledge.
Neither can having been baptised sixty years ago and then treating grace as though it came with a lifetime guarantee regardless of what we do.
Grace is real.
So is freedom.
And so is mortal sin.
The foolish bridesmaids belong with the wedding party.
That is precisely what makes the parable frightening.
Jesus is not warning people who have never heard of Him.
He is warning people who are waiting for Him.
People who possess lamps.
People who know there is a wedding.
People remarkably like us.
And then comes that terrible request:
“Give us some of your oil.”
Too late.
Why can it not be borrowed?
Because charity becomes part of the soul.
You learn to love God by loving Him.
You learn to forgive by forgiving.
You learn to pray by praying.
You learn generosity by giving.
You learn to resist temptation by resisting it.
You cannot spend forty years feeding resentment and then borrow somebody else’s merciful heart at midnight.
You cannot neglect God for a lifetime and assume that somebody nearby will lend you a ready-made friendship with Him when the trumpet sounds.
Character has consequences.
Habit has consequences.
Grace received and cooperated with gradually changes us.
And that is where the first reading about Wisdom fits.
Wisdom says she is found by those who seek her.
She is already waiting at the gate.
God is not hiding salvation behind a theological puzzle and then blaming us for failing to solve it.
He gives grace.
He teaches us.
He calls us.
He warns us.
He forgives us when we repent.
The great danger is not that God refuses to be found.
It is that we keep saying:
later.
Later I will stop living as though God were somewhere between a hobby and an emergency service.
The foolish virgins believed in later.
That was their mistake.
And human beings are remarkably confident about later considering that none of us has actually been issued very much information about it.
Jesus says: “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
Not because He wants Catholics permanently nervous.
Because He wants us living in reality.
We know we will die.
This is not classified information.
The uncertainty concerns the date.
And Saint Paul explains why that truth is not gloomy.
“The dead in Christ will rise.”
Notice how concrete the Catholic hope is.
Not: “They will live on in our thoughts.”
Not: “They have become part of the universe.”
They will rise.
Christ died bodily. Christ rose bodily. Those who belong to Him will rise bodily.
So the Bridegroom in the Gospel is not death coming to ruin the party.
He is Christ coming to begin it.
That changes everything.
The wise bridesmaids are not waiting outside an examination room.
They are waiting for a wedding feast.
The whole purpose of readiness is joy.
God wants us with Him.
He wants the lamp burning.
He wants faith alive with charity.
He wants grace to have done its work in us.
And this makes the Gospel wonderfully practical.
If you know you are in serious sin, do not admire the empty lamp.
Go to Confession.
If prayer has quietly disappeared, begin again.
If there is somebody you have decided never to forgive, start asking God for the grace to do what presently feels impossible.
If your faith has become entirely private, do some actual good for someone who cannot repay you.
Because this is where Saint John Chrysostom pressed the parable.
The oil must become mercy.
Love of God which never reaches another human being is suspiciously easy to claim.
There is still time now.
That is the good news hidden inside the warning.
The cry has not yet gone up for us.
The door is still open.
Grace is still offered.
The Bridegroom still calls.
So do not prepare for Christ by looking Catholic.
Prepare by becoming holy.
Keep the lamp. But get the oil. Faith. Grace. Charity. Repentance.
A life actually being changed by Jesus Christ.
Because at midnight nobody else can hand you the life with God which you kept postponing.
And when the Bridegroom comes, the question will not be:
“Did you own a lamp?”
It will be, when Christ appeared,
was there any light?
