The readings today speak of faith, of watchfulness, and of trust in God’s promises.  We are all called to keep our lamps burning, to nourish our lives constantly with the sacraments and with our private prayers, to be ready to see Christ when he comes to us.  Sometimes our world and our life can seem very dark.  Sad things happen that we can’t understand.  That’s why we have to keeps our lamps lit and full of the oil of God’s grace.  Our relationship with God that we develop in the ordinary, routine moments of life, will keep us on the right road when the world around us seems to be dark.  It’s a kind of spiritual savings account: by having a rich, consistent relationship with God first, putting aside a little bit of grace every week, we’re prepared when the spiritual recession arrives.  And just like the economy, our life on this earth has seasons, ups and downs, times of comfort and times of suffering. And we all have the tendency to turn to the Lord in those times of sadness and loss and uncertainty.  And that’s good; we should.  But, to continue the financial analogy, wise people try to keep aside a little emergency fund so that if your water heater blows up or a tree falls on your roof, you’ve got some emergency savings ready to deal with it.  And that’s much better than putting it on your credit card.  So, similarly, when suffering arrives in your life, you can put it on your credit card, so to speak, and spend years dealing with it, paying off the spiritual trauma.  Or, you can have your spiritual savings account well-funded; you can have your lamp filled with oil and lit.  This is why simple, everyday faithfulness is so important for us.  Mass every week, no matter what.  Confession regularly, no matter what.  Prayer every day, no matter what.  Those are the things that make us ready for whatever might befall us.  Now, it’s not a magic trick: having a regular life of prayer and worship doesn’t magically make sufferings go away, or even make them easy: life is still painful and hard and frustrating at times.  But our storehouse of grace will give us what we need to weep as a Christian does: with a sorrow that is always infused with hope: knowing that the cross is real, but so is the Resurrection, and Resurrection always get the last word. 

The apostles ask the Lord whether this parable of the lamp applies just to them or to everyone.  I like that question.  Before I was ordained, I would catch myself thinking things like, “all that prayer business, that’s just for priests. They’ll take care of that.”  Occasionally even now that I’ve been a priest for several years, I catch myself wanting to think things like “all that prayer business, well that’s for nuns.”  No matter what our state in life, we can all be really slick at convincing ourselves that we don’t have to be holy, don’t have to pray, don’t have to work on our relationship with God.  Wrong.  We do.  Each one of us.  We are all called to pursue holiness.  And actually, because of the spiritual economics I was talking about, we’re actually better off: there’s a healthy self-interest in trying to pursue holiness regularly, because we need our lamps filled with the oil of grace, so that there is light for us, even when the world and life are wrapped in darkness.  We should continue to keep our lamps burning, in the hope that God’s love is our greatest treasure and brightest light: it will guide us through the dark times of our life, direct the decisions we make, and prepare us for eternal life with him in heaven.  And his love will also be our motivation to make a difference in the world.  The Lord ends this scene with that famous injunction: to whom much has been given, much will be required.  Our light is not just for us.  It’s also for those we know, those we meet.  Christ desires his light to shine forth for all.  And it is my lamp and yours that he wants to use to do it.  Let us fill our lamps with his grace and keep them lit, watching for Christ and banishing darkness from our lives and from our world.