Journey's Weekly Homilies

Journey Catholic Community                                                                   Tom Kinzie
Mathew 25: 1-13                                                                                        November 13, 2002

I want to begin with a question.  How will we find light in the midst of darkness?  That there is today darkness and rumors of darkness there can be little doubt.  But that there is the possibility of light and that we ourselves already are a source of that light, well, that may press us harder.  Doubt and discouragement abound, but they are not the last word.  We believe even when we cannot believe that there is still a light that shines in the night.

Last year I read an autobiography, or rather I heard it on a cassette recording, that absolutely floored me.  It was by Jacques Lusseyran and it was entitled, “And there was Light.”  Sometimes I would be walking along, listening to the tapes  (yes, I can multi-task, though I never risk Herculean feats like I saw recently of a person driving a car, talking on a cell phone, peeling an orange, and passing me on the freeway going at least 70 mph)….  Anyway, while listening to the tapes sometimes the beauty and joy of the narrative was just stunning.  I would discover that I had stopped walking and would find myself standing in the middle of sidewalk as in a little private revelry.   

Jacques Lusseyran was a young boy when by a freak accident he became completely blind.  I don’t know if it was because of the totally accepting environment of his family, or if it had to do with his own considerable interior gifts, but the blindness transformed him totally and in a way he would have called wonderful.  He described it as becoming wholly open to the light inside himself.  He trusted this light and he could, in this interior way, “see” through the light.  He followed the light completely.  As a young man he was part of the resistance movement when the Nazi’s occupied France and he led a large organized group of people who printed and distributed an underground newspaper.  The group was betrayed and most were sent to one of the Nazi concentration camps. Though blind, he held on to life there and was one of just a handful of those who survived.  The light was inside him and he knew it and through it he saw into the meaning of things and people by that light.  In his darkness he found the light within. 

I find that sometimes I am neither a very strong person nor a very courageous person.  This is not how I would like to see myself, but it is the truth.  As I get older I have more and more trouble with heights.  Climbing a ladder to get to the roof of our house becomes for me a feat comparable to the conquering of Mt. Everest.  Not just the heights, but also the depths.  I mean, those places down inside where the chaotic and inchoate fears and emotions reside, waiting, so I fear, for the dreaded eruption into consciousness and visibility, coming to where they must be experienced and dealt with, in one way or another. 

So it is with the threatened war on Iraq.  I realized, many days ago, that this threat hangs over the world not only as a terrible danger to the world and particularly to the people of Iraq.  This danger also cuts into us, into our interiors, our guts, our hearts, our spirits and murks around down there and creates its own havoc.  Depending upon who we are and what we are already carrying around, this can turn into feverish, manic needs of control, or, it can turn into despair, resignation, and a calculated indifference.  All of these feelings are pressures down there, inside of us.  If we repress this stuff with enough force, it can turn into little volcanoes.  As we all know, it will all come out eventually, one way or another. 

Speaking only for myself, I often take the despair path.  I grow afraid of the despair itself and all the dark feelings it engenders.  I try not to acknowledge that it is already there and I try to hide from it.  I am afraid that it will overtake me.  The fear of the coming despair, and the despair already present, feed on each other and in some weird way are mutually parasitic and grow.  This is what I fear, almost as much as the war itself, that sense of depression and despair that will surely follow in the wake of the fiery explosion of the first dropped bomb and the report of the first causalities -- that cruel euphemism for human beings hurt or killed. 

All of the wisdom traditions teach us that to the extent we begin to hide from one thing we will become less open to other things as well.  The wisdom traditions tell us there is another way.  This is where the story of the wise and foolish young women comes in.  The difference between the wise and the unwise young women is not in the desire to be present at the arrival of the bridegroom.  Everyone wants to be there.  It is their job and a joy to be present and lighting the bridegroom’s way.  The difference between the wise and the foolish consists solely In having oil in the lamps, in being prepared, and being ready for the expected and yet an unknown time of the wedding party’s arrival. 

Keeping the lamps filled with oil is what spiritual traditions would call finding the sacred in the ordinary, even the dark ordinary.  Perhaps, especially in the dark ordinary.  In keeping our lamps full of oil we are saying that any moment can be the moment of surprise, of wonder, of grace.  Indeed, we are saying something more.  We are saying that every moment is the moment of surprise, wonder, and grace.  The last moment, this moment, the next moment, they all hold within them a potential of light that can help us see clearly into a reality that is from God.  When we see clearly, when we are able to see, in other words, with lamps that are well lit, we may discover a reality that is not only from God, but a reality that is full of God.  This reality is waiting for us in times of joy and sorrow, in the places of fear and the places of comfort, in our security and in our insecurity, in our anxiety and in our rest.   

How do we do this?  How do we stay true to this source of light even when we don’t know where it is?  We practice.  We practice, for example, acknowledging the interconnectedness of all of life.  We practice.  When we are with our mother and sense her growing vulnerability as she ages, we remember that in Iraq there is just such a mother.  When we worry about the safety of a brother or sister, a son or daughter in uniform, we remember that the soldier in Iraq is also a brother, sister, son, daughter.  When we sit with a lonely person here, we can become aware of loneliness everywhere.  When we are able to stop telling ourselves that we are failures and no accounts just because something did not go right, we can remember not to judge another person as a failure and no account.  When walk into the forest and say this is beautiful, we can remember to honor the beauty of this earth half a globe away.  We practice.  We live this light everywhere and every way that we can.  We reverence this whole wonderful crazy thing that is life.  In ways large and small.  In every moment.  We can resist the temptation to darkness.  We practice. 

I know only too well that welcoming this reality is not always easy and that the way is not obvious.  Sometimes we can only hold our lamps, full of oil, trusting that the time of light and clarity is not far away.  But if we are able to do this, if we are able to trust that God is present even in a dangerous time, such a time as this time, we are prepared to become a people ready for a great thing.  Are we not told that this great thing is the presence of Love itself?  The Bridegroom comes. 

Pema Chodron tells this story.  There is a war and a young man, as young men often do, goes off to fight in the war.  Sometime later, word is received in the village that the young man has died.  The young man’s father is heart broken and grieves so deeply that he shuts himself in his house.  For three weeks the father stays in the house, refusing to see any one.  Then one day the young man walks into the village.  There is surprise and great joy.  There has been a mistake.  The young man is not dead and off the joyful young man and the villagers go to the father’s house.  They call out, “Your son is alive!  He has returned!  He is alive!.”  Still, the father doesn’t open the door.  The villagers and the son keep calling out and still the door is not opened.  Eventually, the father cries out, “Leave me alone.  Why are you trying to deceive me?  Can’t you see how much grief I have?  Go away.”