Fr. Etienne Richer, Community of Beatitude, Dolany
“When I meditate on your life in the holy gospel, I dare to look at you and draw closer to you.”
These lines were written by Thérèse of Lisieux, our spiritual guide. They express the entire intention of our storytelling: to dare to contemplate the gospel while looking at Mary and drawing closer to her.
For Teresa, just as for Pope John Paul II, Mary means living and realizing the gospel. She was the first to receive the joyful message and the first to proclaim it. She is the most noble and perfect fruit of beautiful love, a love that makes souls beautiful, which is the joyful message. For Teresa, however, this personal affection, the smile of the Virgin Mary, was never the reason why she loved Mary.
For our Marian meditation, the story from the gospel will serve as a foundation. It is one of the twelve parables about the heavenly kingdom – the parable of the ten virgins. It emphasizes vigilant wisdom inspired by love:
The kingdom of heaven is 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 took their lamps, but did not take oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight a cry was heard: “Behold, the bridegroom is coming! Go out to meet him!”
Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, “No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us!” But he answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Mt 25:1–13).
1. Your word is a lamp to my feet
(Ps 119:105)
Does this parable speak of the Virgin Mary? Yes and no…! Not because it does not mention the Virgin Mary at all. Yes because in the Holy Scriptures, we must read between the lines, especially in parables. The “Marian” lectio divina of this parable will indeed be very rich in lessons about the fruits of a close friendship with Mary: let us contemplate everything with Mary.
The mentioned parable requires at least a minimum of knowledge of the Jewish tradition, which critical notes in most Bible translations do not provide. It is therefore important to know at least a little about the Jewish wedding ceremony.
First of all, it is essential to know that weddings were generally celebrated at night, hence the context of the parable. The virgins mentioned are simply twelve-year-old girls, bridesmaids of the bride, who go out to meet the groom:
The royal daughter is all glorious within,
Her clothing is woven with gold.
She shall be brought to the King in robes of many colors;
The virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to You.
With gladness and rejoicing they shall be brought;
They shall enter the King’s palace. (Ps 45:14–16)
To watch over the oil that feeds the light of the lamp is among the duties and privileges of a woman: a woman keeps the light in the home and in the man’s heart.
As the morning sun illuminates the world from on high,
So is the beauty of a good woman in a well-ordered home. (Sir 26:16)
or:
Like the sun rising in the heavens above, is the beauty of a good woman in a well-ordered home. (Sir 26:16 - ecumenical translation).
A woman is therefore naturally capable of predicting what is needed to maintain the light in the lamp, no matter how long the night: this is part of the wisdom of a Jewish woman. “The only liturgical act required of a Jewish woman is to light the lamps on the Sabbath so that the man can celebrate the family liturgy. The woman brings light when it gets dark. In the temple, in the courtyard reserved for women, women were tasked with keeping the eternal light. And they were always expected to be lamps that shine into the night of this world.”
2. To believe with Mary, the mother of light
The first message of the parable is, of course, that the love of God for people is a betrothal love, a fiery embrace, containing the experience of the night when one must remain in expectation, staying in faith, for The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes. (Ps 19:9).
The text speaks of the heavenly kingdom as a wedding, further of a king, a groom, and the maidens... Nothing is said, however, about the bride, nor that the virgins are her bridesmaids! It is just as lacking in the dispute about fasting (cf. Mt 9:14–17) and in the parable of the wedding feast (cf. Mt 22). The absence is so pronounced that the Vulgate and other versions simply added it.
Today, many exegetes admit that the bride – this is these ten virgins, or even just the wise ones. We have no objections to such an interpretation, yet we still attempt a looser one.
Since it is a parable about the heavenly kingdom, we ask the question: could the bride be the Queen, the kind and silent Virgin Mary, who found grace with God and “walks with us on the paths to eternal life,” as Marta Robin said, if we accept that our souls are her bridesmaids?
Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater says: “As the Church journeys through space and time, and even more so through the history of human souls, Mary is present as the one who is ‘blessed because she believed,’ as the one who ‘walked ahead on the way of faith,’ in which she, like any other human being, participates in the mystery of Christ” (n. 25).
When we contemplate this Marian interpretation of the parable, we see that each of us can be like those virgins from the gospel, either foolish or wise – depending on what kind of inner relationship we have with the Virgin Mary, for “Mary is not a foolish virgin; she does not lack oil in her lamp; she is abundant in this oil,” said Saint Bernard, believing that the Virgin Mary is “a locked garden, a sealed spring, a temple of the Lord, a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit” and the mediator of all graces.
Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort said that Mary is “a shining lamp that should illuminate the whole inner self and ignite divine love, a sacred altar on which we can see God in her and with her.”
Since the girls are the bride's bridesmaids, they surely know her, have seen her, spoken to her..., yet not all are able to maintain a connection, actually grow in the light of love.
For this reason, we can draw the first lesson: Jesus does not want us to be close to Mary (for she is, in any case, close to us, for she loves each one with the same love as Jesus), but to be internally united with Mary.
From whom could we learn better to grow in the light of the Holy Spirit, if not from the Virgin Mary, the most blessed among Jewish women, who is “more a mother than a queen,” as Thérèse liked to say, and who is supremely the guardian of light in the Church and in our hearts?
“When the Holy Spirit, her groom, discovers her in the soul, he flies there, enters her, and unites himself with that soul to the extent that she provides space for his bride. And one of the reasons why the Holy Spirit does not perform evident miracles in souls now is that he finds no strong enough connection with his faithful and inseparable bride.”
3. To hope through Mary, “the antechamber of the mystery of the second virtue”
While the bridegroom was delayed... (Mt 25:5)
The hope of the ten virgins is put to the test. The God of Israel knows how to be sought, but also found: Have you seen him whom my soul loves? (Song 3:3).
When the Lord wants the soul to grow in trust, he finds a means to facilitate and simplify it. The oil from the parable is such simplicity in the Holy Spirit: if your eye is clean, your whole body will be in light. “Simplicity lies in being tied by faith and hope to the eschatological victory of love.” If love is the eye of faith, hope will ensure that this eye does not become heavy in sleep.
The faith of the Virgin Mary and her friends is not passive or strained. In fact, her entire life is a union with God, who himself is simple. Saints have “liquid” hearts, said the Curé of Ars. Passivity and impatience are the two greatest temptations (forms of heart’s hardness) against fervent expectation of the bridegroom.
Mary’s faith is patient and keeps the “lamp lit” deep into the night. The Virgin Mary is faithful; throughout the long Holy Saturday, she does not doubt the resurrection. “The antechamber of the mystery of the second virtue,” as Charles Péguy called her, teaches us to persevere in hope, not to fall into rebellious impatience that earnestly demands that God act, but patiently waits for God’s hour.
Our salvation is (so far only) an object of hope. But if the object of hope is seen, it is no longer hope. For why should one hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly await it with perseverance. (Rom 8:24–25).
Impatience is a lack of trust in the infinitely merciful Father, while “patience gains everything,” as Thérèse of Avila said.
Mary also teaches that surrender does not mean giving up, but trustful vigilance, revitalized by the desire to deepen our understanding of God’s intentions every day. Beware of the passivity of the heart! We must place our hope in God, not in ourselves: true hope seeks the kingdom.
4. To love in Mary, the mediator of surrender
Your name is oil poured forth; therefore the maidens love you.
(Your oils have a pleasing fragrance, the purest oil – your name. Therefore the maidens love you. Ecumenical translation.)
This song of the bride from the Song of Songs (cf. Song 1:3b) clarifies the meaning of the parable: is not the oil referred to a biblical symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit?
As Seraphim of Sarov says:
“Oil does not symbolize our deeds, but the grace through which the Holy Spirit fills our being and transforms one into the other: the corruptible into the incorruptible, the spiritual death into spiritual life, darkness into light, the stable where our passions are bound like cattle, into God’s temple, into the wedding hall where we meet our Lord, the creator and savior, the Bridegroom of our souls.”
The meaning of Mary’s virginity is not just to be a virgin, but also to be a temple and a bride of the Holy Spirit, to become the Mother of God!
The drama of the foolish virgins consists in the fact that they could not remain steadfast in their anointing as bridesmaids, hence their envy at the decisive moment: they are not the virgins of the virginity of the Spirit; they are not prepared, awakened for the coming of the bridegroom. Proof: they try to gain the Holy Spirit as if it were merchandise, while he is a divine person. They greatly lacked what Saint Augustine called “pure fear.” Their “love” was only a possessive love, as Saint Thomas Aquinas expressed. They did not have within them that “beautiful love.” But: If someone would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly despised. (Song 8:7b)
All the virgins – foolish and wise – fell asleep. However, as we know, the quality of our sleep is judged by the quality of our awakening. We can imagine the contrast between the sleep of the foolish virgins and the sleep of the wise ones. The foolish virgins were struck not only by the sleep of the body but by the sleep of the heart: they slept, but their hearts did not stay awake. Their sleep is abandonment, a giving up of God and disinterest in his kingdom. They did not seek God’s kingdom, and thus they received nothing extra (cf. Mt 6:33). Each of the wise virgins, however, can say, as the bride from the Song of Songs, that “I sat in his shade with great delight” (cf. Song 2:3b) and further: I sleep, but my heart is awake. I hear my beloved knocking. (Song 5:2)
The virgins experience a very personal relationship with the Spirit of love; their life is a spiritual worship, a surrender to God, not a giving up of God. Their hope is faith in love, for they know that only love is worthy of faith and that “love cannot die,” as Marcel Van used to say. Their love is a friendly love, not a possessive one, and their surrender is the “delicious fruit” of this beautiful love, as the famous poem by Thérèse of Lisieux expressed so beautifully. In another poem, Thérèse wrote:
“Complete surrender is my only law.”
The bridegroom can sing:
“Open to me, my sister, my spouse, my dove, my undefiled.” (Song 5:2)
5. “The Virgin Mary is the atmosphere”
The presence of the Spirit, the unity of love of the Father and the Son, is in Mary as an anointing; hence it is important that we be her close friends. “The Virgin Mary is the atmosphere”: she mysteriously disposes us in a certain way, as Father Molinié says, and therefore true veneration of the Virgin Mary is not just “a means offered to our weakness; it is already heaven.”
Keeping our lamp lit means keeping our hearts vigilant, remembering the love that God shows me in life. “Therefore, confess your sin, thank for the present, and ask for the future.” It is not only about remembering my wretchedness, but also the wonders of God, who can easily do what we find hard to believe.
And let us not forget to keep in mind God’s miracle, which is the very person of the Virgin Mary: Father Guy Gilbert, the apostle of prisoners, criminals, and prostitutes who are victims of our society's cruelty and of our lack of love, always had in mind: “I have maintained Marian devotion since I was a child. And then, this daily encounter with Mary is the most beautiful smile of God.”
Guy Gilbert experienced this encounter specifically in the faithful prayer of the rosary, the psalter of the poor, of which Monika Timarová provided this comparison:
“The Holy Rosary rises before me like a gigantic Roman cathedral, her main nave being the Creed, surrounded by a crown of chapels of mysteries... From the antechamber, three doors lead inside: faith, hope, and love, the mysteries of which are hidden in the first three Hail Marys. We can only enter through them... The fact that each decade begins with the Our Father brings amazing teaching. They are the doors to the chapels of mysteries. And those are built of Hail Marys containing mysteries, in which the lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mother intertwine, for Mary gave birth to Jesus. Each decade ends with Glory Be to the Father, so that we bow before the Holy Trinity, which is in every chapel the altar.”
Mary, Mother of beautiful love, leads us to participate in the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of her story with God. She disposes us to participate in the joyful mysteries, for Jesus is the King of joy; in the glorious mysteries, for Jesus is a prophet of the heavenly kingdom; but we must also go through the sorrowful mysteries, for Jesus is a priest and the Virgin Mary has full participation in his priestly love.
Because through baptism we became priests, prophets, and kings, the rosary should greatly help us experience the grace of our baptism.
(This text was published in Slovak in the book “Maria, God’s Smile”
published by Serafim Publishing, Bratislava 1994.)
