I Never Knew You

Excerpt:
So what Jesus is describing here in this parable is the entourage of virgins who would be, in a sense, the first century...equivalent of bridesmaids today. So if you think about a wedding today, you have the groomsmen (those were called sons of the bride chamber), the friends and the family, the men who were close to the bridegroom; and then you would also have the maids, the virgins, the bridesmaids, who would be part of the wedding procession. That was the role that they played. Just like today in a wedding, even the term bridesmaids — why do we call them that? — comes from the English word maiden, which means a virgin. It means an unmarried woman. And so the same thing here is true of parthénos in the Greek. These ten virgins are ten maidens, ten maids, ten bridesmaids, who were supposed to be ready for the procession of the bridegroom into the home, and into in this case it would appear to be an indoor wedding feast that would be celebrated on the night of the wedding. Frequently the procession would take place at night and they'd have torches, which are called lamps here, to light the way. It would be a kind of festive occasion.

So what Jesus is saying is we have a situation where on that night of the great feast and of the wedding procession, you have these ten bridesmaids, five of whom were foolish and five are wise. And the difference between the two is that the foolish ones didn't have any oil for their lamps, or in this case it might be their torches. You would take a torch and wrap it around with a cloth drenched in oil in order burn it. So five have oil and five of them don’t. And what happens is the procession is delayed. The bridegroom is supposed to come in procession into the house but he's delayed. So while they're waiting for the bridegroom to come they fall asleep and he doesn't get there until midnight. In other words, in the middle of the night he finally shows up, which is pretty late for a wedding procession, and everyone says “Behold, the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.” So all the bridesmaids get up, but the problem is the five foolish ones are worried about their lamps going out so they ask the wise ones to give them some of the oil.

And as I have told you before here, whenever you encounter a parable of Jesus, there's almost always a twist, and this one has a couple of twists. By twists I mean an unexpected element where the characters in the story do something that you wouldn’t ordinarily expect them to do. So in this case, the first twist is that the five wise bridesmaids, virgins, refuse to give any oil. This is kind of weird because these processions wouldn’t go on for miles. You get the sense actually that they are not very far from the wedding feast, and so the bridesmaids say no, we are not going to give you any of our oil, go and buy some for yourself.

Okay, well that just doesn't make any sense, because there are not going to be shops open at midnight. This isn’t like the 21st century where you have a 24-hour Walmart that you can just go in at anytime of the day and purchase something. The bridesmaids would not be able to go and purchase oil in the middle of the night, so that is your first clue here that this is not an ordinary wedding and this is not an ordinary bridegroom, and it's not really about oil and lamps...
To learn more about this video series, The Mass Readings Explained, and the Gospel reading, Responsorial Psalm, and the Old Testament reading for this Sunday's Mass, subscribe today to The Mass Readings Explained:

https://catholicproductions.com/pages/shogun-mass-readings-explained-subscription

For more Bible studies by Dr. Pitre, visit:
https://catholicproductions.com/collections/brant-pitre
Images used:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isra%C3%ABls-A_Jewish_Wedding-1903.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blake_Wise_And_Foolish_Virgins_1826.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schadow,FW-Die_klugen_und_t%C3%B6richten_Jungfrauen-2.JPG

Видео I Never Knew You канала Catholic Productions