Fr. Simon Sleeman: What’s with these virgins and this story? Stories come thick and fast at this time of the year. Agricultural stories, stories of wheat and chaff, floods and failures – today a more urban story…a wedding.
People have lost patience with stories… they are not real – they are for children…give us facts and information – hard data. Stories take too long. Cut to the chase.
But often stories are the only means to convey a deeper truth, and stories linger in a way that facts don’t and keep releasing new insights over time as we bring new experience to them.
So these stories are not just bedtime stories with Jesus. No, they are to wake us up…. Life isn’t given to us on a plate. We have to do something – we have to navigate our way. We can’t expect the branches strewn on our path to be magically removed… life doesn’t work like that…no… you need your lamps trimmed… if you don’t the door will close.
‘Life is difficult’ says Scott Peck in the opening sentence of the Road Less Travelled and we need to have our wits about us ‘if we are to live wisely and well … .we need our lamps trimmed…ready…. or the door will shut…
The authorities in New Orleans did not have their lamps trimmed when hurricane Katrina hit in late August 2005. It killed 1,392 people and caused an estimated $206 billion dollars of damage…yes billion. Oh, isn’t Mother Nature so destructive, many said, so powerful, climate change….see what happens…BUT was it Mother Nature?
The authorities in Holland build dykes too… to protect their land from flooding as much of the country is below sea level. They have a rule for building dykes…they must be built to withstand the worst storm in 10,000 years. The Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans built their dykes to withstand the worst storm in 100 years. And they knew, at the time, their dykes needed maintenance but the maintenance money had been siphoned off. And Katrina hit… their lamps were out….and people died and the heart was torn out of the city… the door closed.
The insurance companies were sure it was Mother Nature others said no, no…it human beings who failed – failed to address a problem that everyone knew was there. They were not awake and their lamps were not trimmed and the door was shut…
Week after week these biblical stories give us descriptions of what can happen, warnings rather than advice…and these stories last …because they are true…and the insurance companies paid out…