32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) | 12 November 2017 (English)





32nd Sunday A

November 12, 2017



WAITING PRUDENTLY; WATCHING PROVIDENTLY







Prudent and provident watching in hope characterize the tenor of today's liturgy, as we approach the end of the Church year. Endings sometimes lead us to be less careful, less prudent, less attentive to details, and less concerned with the finer elements of procedures

and processes. Endings somehow make us a bit lackadaisical. At times, the thought that something will soon end can lead us to cut corners and throw all caution to the winds. "Let's just get it over and done with," is a phrase that is often heard from people who have

loosened their grip on things when the vitality of the beginning has worn off.



But the dying moments of a game, as every athlete knows, are a critical time. These ending moments are a make or break situation. One simply cannot discount the last waning seconds. Anybody doing anything worthwhile as competing - and waiting for something of momentous importance, as expecting and hoping for a favor from

the Lord - needs a lot of wisdom, (prudence) and tireless, provident (forward-looking) watching. Endings really are disguised beginnings that need to be prepared for wisely and well.



It is good for us to be reminded of the need for wisdom as we navigate through these muddled times of ours. Immersed as we all are in a culture that prizes highly - almost exclusively - the here and now, the currently productive, the materially rewarding, and the

personally fulfilling object of our strivings, we find it difficult to engage in hopeful waiting.



Postmodern women and men do not automatically set their sights on what is not palpable, what is not within easy reach, whatever needs a whole lot of mental stretching and abstracting from a world of concrete rewards and consolations. Hopeful waiting is not a

popular virtue in this world of instant noodles, instant digital pictures, and instant text messages anywhere around the globe. How often have we postponed writing that postcard - let alone a letter - all because we can get in touch with someone anyway by phone and chat in real time! How often have we put off doing anything because the modern means of information and communication technology anyway will come to our rescue anytime of day and night!



Funny, but the five foolish virgins who did not bring extra oil, who acted thus so improvident and imprudent, remind me of people who go for an out-of-town trip to an out-of-the-way forsaken place, and who carry no cash, because they have their ATM cards (orcredit/debit

cards) with them! Those five foolish girls were not called foolish for nothing. They thought they could always go to an equivalent of a 7-11 convenience store and procure oil in the middle of the night! They acted unwisely by not being forward-looking in their simple,

basically uncomplicated task of waiting for the bridegroom's coming. They lacked a prudent and provident heart - both unmistakable signs of one who wisely understands what he or she is watching and waiting for.



Perhaps a modern equivalent of these now unpopular concepts as prudent and provident watchfulness is mindfulness. It means being alert and awake, aware of what is going on at any given time. It means being properly conscienticised, fully in touch with goings-on, with what transpires in all aspects of life. It refers to being fully alive, fully kept abreast of reality as it is, not as one thinks it is. Today, ironically, in the age of NICT (New Information and Communication Technology), people may know a lot, but they are not necessarily fully aware. We are witnessing daily cases of information overload. People are well informed about isolated facets of human living, but are not aware of the bigger picture of what the world is undergoing. There are those of us who know all the details about Basketball and

Football matches of our favorite players, but are not in the least conscious about the glaring situations of injustice close to where we live, let alone the whole world. Well informed people are really living in utter ignorance of so many things in life. The demon of

overspecialization has taken so many of us as virtual prisoners of highly focused and highly specialized knowledge. For many of us, we miss the forest for a few trees. Some even raise a hue and a cry at the perceived injustice suffered by their favorite sports teams, but nary a

cry or a whimper is heard from the same people at the sight of the deaths of innocent, but poor insignificant and nameless people. Years ago, people worried that Scotty Pippen was getting a raw deal, because he was receiving far less than the most popular member of a

particular team, but these same people never questioned the unjust and unfair wages received by children who worked and were exploited  at sweat shops in the third world.



What a pitiful lack of mindfulness and awareness! This situation is no different from that state of utter lack of prudent and provident watchfulness of the five foolish virgins that the Gospel speaks about.



We all could use a little more wisdom - the kind that the first reading talks about. The writer of the book of the same title makes it clear to us that the Lord gives that gift of wisdom to

those who "keep vigil for her sake." "Taking thought of wisdom," it goes on, "is the perfection of prudence." Possession of it leads us to that state of mindfulness that is bound to characterize a heart on watch. This mindfulness and watchfulness of the heart would

then produce in us, not fear, nor anxiety; not carelessness, nor laziness vis-à-vis the fact that "[we] know neither the day nor the hour," but hopeful, expectant vigilance. This is the vigilance not of a tired sentry who would readily fire his gun because of fright, but that of a

trustful child who waits patiently, prudently and providently for something he or she is sure to get, sooner or later, from an equally wise and provident father or mother.



Together with the five wise virgins, we, as Church, are ever waiting in the spirit of mindfulness and watchfulness, ready with trimmed lamps in hand, to meet the bridegroom. This Mass, here and now, is one such activity of patient waiting, prudent watching, and

mindful hoping for the fulfillment of the messianic vision of the heavenly wedding banquet to which all of us are invited.




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