These days, the search for truth can truly be like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s not that objective truth has changed or been diminished, it’s that the haystack has grown to epic proportions. To use another metaphor, a dark cloud of our own making has obscured the brilliance of the sun to the point of almost total darkness. Despite the seemingly great odds, vigilance in the form of fortitude is essential in God’s eternal plan of salvation. The following quote from the Catechism explains our innate desire and longing for our creator:
Man is in search of God. In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence. “Crowned with glory and honor,” man is, after the angels, capable of acknowledging “how majestic is the name of the Lord in all the earth.” Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence. All religions bear witness to men’s essential search for God (CCC 2566).
Vigilance and perseverance in our “essential search for God” can be thwarted by the deadly sin of Sloth. This spiritual laziness impedes our readiness to receive God’s grace, and allows for a dullness of mind and spirit. The six other deadly sins can also obfuscate the truth of our eternal salvation. Jesus emphasizes the necessity to be vigilant in the passage below from the Gospel of Luke:
Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come (Luke 12:35-40).
The wedding feast motif, referring to the Eschatological Banquet in Heaven, is used many times in scripture to denote the ultimate celebration of love and happiness in the context of a grand feast. Waiting for the bridegroom’s coming, and subsequent entry into the banquet hall, was a practice of patience and vigilance. Days, weeks, and months would sometimes transpire before his arrival. Once everyone was in and settled, the door would be closed and locked while the proceedings began. The parable of the ten virgins is a sobering reminder of the need to “stay awake” as we await the Second Coming of Christ. We read in the Gospel of Matthew:
Then 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 (Mt 25:1-13).
Keeping our “lamps alight” is an integral process in the walk of faith. The “daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer refers to our physical, mental, and spiritual sustenance, and designed to provide everything we need for the sacrament of the present moment that is offered by God “today and today only”.
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Author: Deacon Greg Lambert
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