Archbishop of Sydney

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Patrick’s Church, Soho, London
Wis 6:12-16; 1 Thess 4:13-18; Mt 25:1-13

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
6 November 2005

It is not surprising that the Church brackets together today readings on wisdom and the last things, death and judgement, heaven and hell.  During the past week we have celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls and so we should have reminded ourselves that we have here no lasting city, that we are bound for eternity.

It has been part of the Christian and Catholic tradition from the beginning to remember the dead; as St. Paul reminded the Thessalonians, we should not mourn the dead like pagans who have no hope in the after-life.  Neither do we believe simply in the survival of our life principle, of our soul; but we believe that we shall follow Christ and rise again with both body and soul.  The trumpet of God and the voice of the archangel will call us to this great resurrection, whether we are dead or still alive and then we shall stay with God forever.

Yesterday I was at Downside and attended a seminar on Pope Gregory the Great, pope at the turn of the sixth and seventh century, and Ullathorne, the 19th century Benedictine missionary in Australia, later Archbishop of Birmingham.  One of the monks asked the lecturer whether Pope Gregory wrote that monks on earth do the work of the angels in heaven by their contemplation and praise of God in singing each day the prayer of the Church, the Divine Office.

I must confess to a passing irreligious thought because the notion of singing the office forever is not entirely attractive.  But then, in heaven we shall be seeing and experiencing God as He is, an inexhaustible font of love for us and of Beauty and Truth.  We shall be endlessly satisfied.

The lecturer was not sure that Gregory had made that remark and also explained that while every horse is four legged, not every four legged being is a horse.  Not only the monks are anticipating life in heaven by their prayer and service here.

The first commandment is to love God above all things and while our every day life has its own integrity, our daily round also prepares us for eternal life with the one true God.  Christianity is about worship, before we follow Christian moral teachings in our personal and public lives.

I suspect the awareness of God, our reverence towards the Transcendent, our acknowledgement that God our Father is pouring out torrents of love towards us – I suspect that all this is weaker today than it has been in some or many other ages.

How many of us could say that our body pines for God like a dry weary land without water?  Most of Australia is very dry, like Israel, so I understand the imagery of the psalmist and I pray for myself and for all of you that increasingly, over the years, we shall thirst more and more for our God of Love.

Where do the wise and foolish virgins enter this scenario?  Why do we have the beautiful passage from the Old Testament book of Wisdom, urging us to seek wisdom, who will make herself known to those who seek her.  In fact if we start out early, we shall find her sitting at our gate, so that anxiety is dispelled and trouble avoided.

In Australia at least, many Christians who have not entered deeply into the Christian mysteries want to believe in the after-life, but are inclined to regard it as yet another right; like the right to life, liberty, free speech.  They often have also an unfocused, washed-out image of God as a rich and benevolent great uncle, who would not hurt a fly, who would tolerate any sort of behaviour, at least at a distance and who will give a present to all his distant relatives, deserving and undeserving.

Such people, if they exist, would have to rank among the foolish bridesmaids.

It is interesting that Jesus’ parable does not distinguish the good from the evil, nor the clever from the stupid, nor the educated from the uneducated.  The distinction is between the wise and the foolish.

A wise person need not be clever because sometimes the very clever can be very foolish.  Neither is education necessary for wisdom, although it can be helpful.  Nor is wisdom the same as cunning, which can be used for evil purposes.

An honestly irreligious person can be wise, but they are at a disadvantage, for the truly wise know that the one true God loves each of us, knows the difference between right and wrong and can distinguish what is important from the less important.

Like the wise bridesmaids the wise person realises that we do not know when God will come to call us (like the arrival of the bridegroom), that we must be prepared for this meeting and that God will discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy, so that the unworthy are punished as the foolish and unprepared bridesmaids were punished and refused entry into the wedding feast.

So we must stay awake and stand ready and repentant, because we do not know the hour when the Son of Man is coming to call us.

One final point.  All this teaching on life after death explains our belief in the communion of saints; that we are united in a real way in the praise of God with all the good people who have gone before us and with those yet to come.  It explains our devotion to the saints, our request to them to pray for us.  It also helps explain our love of the Catholic tradition, which, as G. K. Chesterton explained, is the democracy of the dead.

All our sacraments follow ancient rituals.  The Roman rite we follow at Mass, especially the first Eucharistic prayer, originated more than 1500 years ago.

And so today I wear a chasuble which came from the chapel of Catherine of Aragon, that Catholic queen set aside by that dreadful man Henry VIII who split the Church here in England.

We reverence her memory today and the memory of all those who struggled for the old faith. We also pray for all those who thought differently, either from religious idealism or from opportunism.

We certainly are unable to distinguish the wise from the foolish in the light of eternity.  We thank the good God for all the wise who are already with Him, we pray that not too many of the unwise have been excluded permanently and we pray for all those, especially our loved ones, who still need purification, a better vision and deeper wisdom so that they can come into the full enjoyment of God’s loving presence.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.