A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast

You have just heard, beloved, the touching hymn: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight,” which is sung at Matins during the first three days of Passion Week. That it may be understood by all and bring to all the benefit desired, allow me to offer to your love an explanation of it. The hymn “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight” reminds us of the Savior’s parable in which He likens the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who, according to the ancient custom, took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. The composer of the hymn had precisely this parable in mind. Let us set it forth here and explain it briefly. “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins”, says the Savior, “who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five foolish. The foolish, taking their lamps, took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels along with their lamps. And as the bridegroom delayed, they all dozed and fell asleep. But at midnight a cry rang out: behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying: lest there not be enough for us and for you, go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the doors were shut. Afterward the other virgins also came, and said: Lord! Lord! open to us. But he answered them: truly I say to you, I do not know you. Therefore keep watch; for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come” (Mt 25:1-13).

The explanation of the parable: the ten virgins—five wise and five foolish—signify us Christians; some of us are wise by our faith, our virtuous life, and our readiness for death; others are foolish through their little faith or cold indifference to faith, through their vicious, carnal life, through their unpreparedness for death and for the judgment that immediately follows it. For “it is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment” (Hebr 9:27). The foolish, it is said, taking their lamps, took no oil with them. What, then, are these lamps, and what does the oil for these lamps mean? The lamps are our souls, according to the word of the Savior: “the lamp of the body is the eye” (Mt 6:22); by the eye He means the human heart, or the soul; the oil is almsgiving, according to the explanation of Saint Chrysostom, or good works in general. And so the foolish Christians, having gone out to meet the bridegroom, did not prepare for their souls the good works that might sustain their spiritual life. But the wise, it is said, took oil in their vessels along with their lamps—that is, they laid up a store of good works, in order to meet the bridegroom worthily. And who is the bridegroom? Jesus Christ. And when and how do we go out to meet Him? Our whole life must be a preparation, first for our private meeting with Him, because every soul after its death must appear before Him to give account, as before the Author of life; and therefore throughout our whole life we must take care to acquire and preserve in our hearts a living faith and fervent love for the Lord, so that after our death we may stand without shame and without condemnation before the dread throne of the Lord of glory; but for our common meeting with Him we shall go out after our resurrection from the dead, “when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and will come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:28-29). The bridegroom tarries—that is, Jesus Christ delays to cut short our life by death, “not willing that anyone should perish” in sins, “but that all should come to repentance” (2Pet 3:9), and He likewise delays His second, glorious, and dread coming, so that the sons of the kingdom of heaven may be multiplied more and more; meanwhile people, seduced by the temporary sweetness of sin and its going unpunished, and seeing that the world stands firm, thinking that it will go on standing so endlessly, and themselves enjoying sound health and other material goods, sink into a drowsiness of soul, take no care for their amendment, and sleep the sleep of sin. But behold, at the very midnight of the sleep of sin, when none of the sinners so much as thinks of his terrible danger, a loud voice rings out: behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him. Then all start up and light their lamps—that is, they strain the attention of their souls. At that time it will be well for the wise Christians: their souls will burn with the fire of the sweetest love for the Lord; but ill for the foolish: the souls of these last, like lamps without oil, will go out—that is, they will grow dark and cold from the lack of love for God, the source of love, and will begin to taste beforehand the torments of hell. They will ask for oil—that is, for good works—from the wise Christians, but these will not give it, lest they too fall short; they will go to buy from those who sell—that is, they will suddenly bethink themselves to do good works, and will go seeking an occasion for it; but at that very moment the bridegroom will come—that is, at the very time when they want to do good works, death will overtake them and set them before the heavenly Judge without any virtues, stinking with their own iniquities. They will want to enter the bridal chamber of the heavenly kingdom, for which we are all destined from our very birth, and for which we live—but the Lord will not let them in, and will say to them: I do not know you. And so “keep watch”, the Lord concludes the parable, “for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come”. Now the church hymn will be understandable to us all: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant”—that is, every Christian—“whom He finds watching; but unworthy again is the one whom He finds in despondency (sleeping the sleep of sin); watch, then, O my soul: be not weighed down with sleep” (that is, do not let yourself be weighed down with the soul’s sleep of sin), “lest you be given over to (eternal) death, and be shut out from the kingdom; but rouse yourself, crying: Holy, Holy, Holy are You, O God, through the Theotokos have mercy on us.” Amen.