Jesus is talking with disciples about wise attendants at a wedding who bring oil for their lamps. He speaks also of their counterparts, foolish attendants. The foolish attendants want the oil the wise ones have brought. The wise ones tell them, “’No.’” The wise ones have taken their needed and helpful action and the foolish ones have no right to force them otherwise.
What if the foolish attendants do not intend to abide by the ’No’ spoken to them? What if they intend to force the issue? If the situation is not life threatening, we might think them guilty of selfishness. We might ask them to be patient, to wait. We might tell them, paraphrasing Mick Jagger, ‘you can’t always get what you want.’ Teaching children this important lesson of respect for others, of patience, of unrealized wants starts young. It is part of their growth in discernment, in becoming wise – determining what can be and is best sought and attained. It is a sad child who does not learn the lesson, a troubled youth who will not learn it, an abusive adult who has rejected the lesson. If the situation is life threatening, then what? How much more selfish, troublesome, abusive is their intent in the world. What do we do with the children, the youth, the adults who intend not to abide by our ‘No’ and instead intend to take our needed and helpful things, who intend to do so forcefully? What might we call them? We might call them our chancellor, our prime minister, our president. Vladimir Putin has the title president. He is a man of insidious intent. He is a man who wants what he wants. He does not want oil for a lamp, nor does he want what a child or youth or any other adult has to offer. Vladimir Putin wants a country and he intends to have that country. To get that country he intends to force the world to live under the threat of nuclear war. What is the path he and other such heads of state take to come to this insidious intent? It is difficult to comprehend there are rulers who intend to kill other people. More difficult still to consider some, like Putin, intend to kill whole populations. The peacemakers of Russia intend to deny Putin his country and his war. Peacemakers intend that neither he nor any other head of state take other countries nor wage any wars, certainly not nuclear ones. It is difficult and they are facing persecution, but they do not intend apathy. They intend to carry on.
“Like a patient etherized upon a table… (we) go through certain half-deserted streets… Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent.” (T.S. Eliot)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, guide me in a peacemaker’s intent.
Question: How do I respond to people who demonstrate insidious intent?
November 12, 2023 Gospel Matthew 25:1-13 Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time