Commentary on the Gospel of
Friday, August 26th
Mt 25: 1-13 / 1Cor 1:17-25
The first of all in the Christian experience is God. The first is that God loves us. Pope Francis likes to say that God “nos primerea” (he invented this verb in Spanish too), it is, God always comes early, compared to us, with His love and mercy.
We are second. Our task with respect to God’s love is just receiving, welcoming and not hindering. But how can we concretize that? Let us focus on how we can receive God’s love. This way in spirituality is called ascetism, which is preparing oneself so that nothing comes between God and oneself.
In today’s gospel the sensible bridesmaids represent people who are preparing to receive God’s love. A sensible and prudent Christian is fully conscious that God “nos primerea”, and because of this, he tries to practise ascetism: habit of prayer, reading God’s word, silence, thanksgivings, self-knowledge, fixing the needs of the others, etc.
Psalm 33 prays: “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord”. So, another way to be like bridesmaids is to be aware daily how many events,- details of our ordinary life, acts of people, the beauty of nature and many things which carry us to be infected with the fire of God’s goodness which fills the earth.
