I Never Knew You
51,212
Publicado 2020-11-02
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...
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Todos los comentarios (21)
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God bless you and all who watch this video!
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I could listen to you all day. This is my favorite YouTube channel.
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This Gospel passage has always been a challenging one for me to “chew on.” I appreciate you breaking this open.
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Such a beautiful reminder to LOVE the Lord my God with ALL my heart, soul, may be and strength...and to LOVE others as He would. Lord, fill me with Your grace to DO Your Will! 💛🙏🙏🙏💛
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The words that we never want to hear. 😭
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Thank you..for teaching us about this parable. The importance of a relationship with Jesus Christ.
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Thank you Dr. Brant! God bless you, your family and ministry more! for teaching us about God's Kingdom and divine truths..
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This, literally, is a Great feast to the soul!!
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I am a new catholic, THANK YOU!
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Thank you. G♰BU. 🙏🏻❤✝️
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I love John 15, it is teaching that the Lord is the vine and we are the branches, as we obey the Lord He will nourish us with spiritual guidance. This is the covenant relationship with Christ, that we come follow Him and He then guides us and writes His laws on our hearts. If He does not know us, if we are not participating, because we are not obedient, then we are cut off from spiritual guidance. The more we follow the more spiritual guidance we receive, the greater are relationship is with Him, those who are not following Him, will be the ones He does not know, because they are not participating in that relationship, they do not have oil in their lamps, because they are not prepared for the coming of the Lord.
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Thank you so much Dr. Pitre for revealing the truth. Only doing the will of God we can enter the Kingdom of God. "Love God with your heart, your soul and your mind and love your neighbour like yourself". 💕
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I just got my oil from Confession yesterday. I really needed it. God bless you all my brothers and sisters. And thank you Dr. Pitre for the best channel on YT. Great vid as always my brother!
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In this parable and the other moments when Christ says, "I never knew you," I have noticed that the people who are rejected THINK that they do have a relationship.
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Our Parish priest talked about this last year during one of his homilies. This video goes into more detail. Thank you for the explanation.
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Thank You Dr Pitre, brilliant exposition as usual
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Thank you, Dr Brant.
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Dr Pitre does a good job. I would have included that the oil also symbolises grace.
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Great job again, bless you.
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Thank you so much Dr Litre.
