XXXII Sunday in Ordinary Time – Readings: Wis 6:12-16; 1 Thess 4:13-18; Mt 25:1-13

Awaiting your coming

The early Christian community awaited the return of the Lord as imminent: Jesus, in fact, had announced: “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom” (Mt 16:28; cf. 23:36). Paul writes to the Thessalonians around 50 AD: “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord…, we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up… in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (first Reading: 1 Thess 4:15,17; cf. 1 Cor 7:24,29-31; Jas 5:7-8). But time passes… and the Lord does not come! The early Christian community enters into a dramatic crisis: the “saints of God”, the “elect” experience sin, indeed death itself, without having seen the coming of the Lord. “Scoffing mockers” begin to say: “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Pet 3:3-4). And various answers are attempted: the Lord delays because we eat the Eucharist without recognizing the body of Christ in the poor (1 Cor 11:29-30), because the final apostasy must first be revealed (2 Thess 2:1-8), because in his mercy God awaits our conversion (2 Pet 3:9).

It begins to be said, however, that “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mt 24:36). At the moment of the Ascension, Jesus affirms: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:6-7).

A certain laxity then begins to take hold in the Church. Matthew, as a caring pastor attentive to ethics, insists on the necessity of persevering vigilance (the three parables of Mt 24:45–25:30). In today’s Gospel parable (Mt 25:1-13), there are numerous improbable elements: the virgins accompany the bridegroom and not the bride, the bride is never mentioned, the girls’ falling asleep, buying oil at night, the harshness of the bridegroom, the closing of the banquet hall. But the theme is symbolic: the ten virgins (“parthenoi”) represent the Church, made up of the wise and the foolish, but which in its entirety is the Bride of the Lord (2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:23-27), who is the Bridegroom (“ho nymphios”) par excellence (Mt 4:19; 5:48; 9:15; 22:11; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:23-27…); the evangelical invitation is to live always in faithful and prudent expectation (Mt 24:45) of the Bridegroom’s coming.

The message is one of immense trust: to a world that no longer believes in the afterlife, it is forcefully reaffirmed that life does not end on this earth, but God continues it for us in his Kingdom. Christians indeed proclaim that “Christ… rose again, and so also God will bring with him those who have died”; therefore they must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (first Reading: 1 Thess 4:13-14). In this revelation, believers find joy even in suffering, optimism in tribulation, the strength of total self-giving, the meaning of their commitment among humanity, the drive to struggle for a more just world, and serenity in the face of martyrdom.

“The acclamation which the people pronounce after the consecration appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological projection that marks the Eucharistic Celebration (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): «as we await your coming». The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); in some sense, it is an anticipation of Paradise, the «pledge of future glory» (Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Antiphon to the Magnificat of Second Vespers). In the Eucharist, everything expresses the confident expectation that «the blessed hope will be fulfilled and our Savior Jesus Christ will come» (Roman Missal, Embolism after the Lord’s Prayer)” (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 2003, no. 18).