Well, our first reading this morning is from the Book of Revelation, and there's so much going on in this reading that I would love to comment on.
I'd be tempted to maybe go on for an hour or so, and I know you're accustomed to maybe longer daily homilies here than a parish, but I'll try and keep it a little bit shorter, and maybe just look briefly at the 144,000 virgins and the name of God written on their foreheads and what these things mean.
And of course, even in that, there's whole layers of meaning behind that, different things that it stands for, but just for the sake of time, I'll focus on really just kind of one interpretation of that.
First thinking about the number 144,000, well, Jewish people are very into numbers, and John doubtlessly writing this was thinking of the significance of the number 12 and how it signifies perfection.
But more than 12, there's 144,000 virgins, which would be 12 times 1,200, which signifies like the height of perfection, like complete completeness.
And these virgins are said to be on Mount Zion, which is a type of heaven with the Lamb who is Christ.
Accordingly, these virgins represent the full number of those who are to be saved, not in the sense that some would interpret it that there's only going to be 144,000 people out of all of mankind over all the ages who are going to be saved and make it to heaven, but more symbolically that it's a very large number of people, a complete and perfect number of the elect.
And we also read that they have the name of God like inscribed on their foreheads.
Now God's name, which was revealed to Moses in the burning bush in the Hebrew, it's kind of hard to translate it, but roughly it means like pure existence, like constant being pure being or full actuality.
And because God's essence is his existence, God's name means not just who he is, but also what he is.
Hence the name of God written on their foreheads of the virgins means that they share not just his name, but they even share in God's nature, what he is, what God is.
And this is called divinization.
Divinization is a word used by the church fathers, which roughly is equivalent to theosis or becoming God.
If you haven't heard this word before, maybe more likely you've heard people refer to being in a state of grace and divinization means essentially the same thing.
Divinization means being in a particular sort of relationship with God.
Divinization means an actual sharing in God's divine life.
As St. Paul says, the life I live now is not my own, but Christ lives within me.
And writing this homily, I didn't realize, but reading the office of readings this morning in the first reading from the letter of St. Peter, he refers to being partakers in God's divine nature.
And really this concept is all over scripture, although over all the years of reading the Bible for a long time, I kind of missed this idea.
But it's really central to scripture and to the relationship God wants to have with us.
In Psalm 82 verse six, it says rather bluntly, you are God's children of the most high.
And this is the goal of all human existence.
There is no other purpose or goal in our life or in our death than to share in God's divine life.
At Christmas, Jesus came to share in our human nature.
But even more amazingly, he came so that we might share in his divine life.
That is how close God wants to be to his creatures, so close that we share the same life.
But what does that even mean to say we share life with God?
What example could we think of to help us imagine this mystery?
It is kind of like a married couple.
You know, the two become one flesh and they share a life together.
The difference is that marriage is a symbol, a mere symbol of the relationship that God wants to have with each of us.
Divinization is in fact a much closer sharing of life than what exists between a husband and a wife.
Of course, there's no analogy in created things that can really make us fathom this mystery of divinization.
We can wait for heaven where we will see the mystery with greater clarity.
But another analogy that could be helpful would be to think of Siamese twins or conjoined twins.
This sort of twins, they have actually the same blood flowing through their veins.
They even share DNA.
They look identical, but they still remain separate persons.
You might say that God wants, spiritually speaking, to be a conjoined twin with each one of us, to have the blood of his divinity, so to speak, flowing through the veins of our soul.
He wants for us to share his divine DNA, to share life with him.
Maybe it sounds kind of crazy, but this is the relationship God wants with each of us.
In fact, this is what it means to live the life of heaven.
It is really the only way to get to heaven.
This is the most important question we can know the answer to.
How can we get to heaven?
How can we live the life of heaven?
The answer is by sharing life with Christ.
How can we be happiest in this life and live our fullest potential?
By sharing life with Christ.
The devil would want to distract us with so many other things, maybe material things.
But if he can't get us distracted with things of this world, he would even be satisfied with he could distract us with at least the lesser things in the spiritual life.
Maybe arguing about this or that point of theology or matters pertaining to the liturgy and so on.
Not to say that these things aren't important, but the devil would do anything and everything to distract us from the heart and center of the Christian life, divinization, our relationship with Christ, getting to heaven.
There is only one way to get to heaven, by sharing in the divinity of Christ, to share in his godness, which is pure life, eternal life.
If you think about it, there's nothing in our fallen human nature by which we could get to heaven and live forever.
Death is now a part of our reality as humans.
Only a share in Christ's life can bring that about for each of us.
How do we get this share in the divine life of God?
That's kind of an important question.
Well, baptism is the ordinary means and really the only guaranteed means of receiving a share in God's divine life.
Negatively speaking, you've probably heard baptism washes away original sin.
The positive way of putting that is that baptism gives us a created share in God's uncreated divine nature.
To be baptized means to enter into a covenant relationship with God.
A covenant is a sharing of life.
This is what God has wanted with his people throughout the entirety of the Bible.
But after we receive shared life with Christ in baptism, it's possible to lose it while on this earth through mortal sin.
Serious sin is a violation of the covenant we made with God in our baptism, and it brings about death in the soul.
It despoils us of our shared divine life with Christ.
Grave sin, when done with full knowledge and full consent of the will, renders our soul incapable of getting to heaven or of living the life of heaven.
To die in the state of mortal sin means certain and immediate descent to hell.
The remedy for mortal sin committed after baptism is, well, first to immediately make an act of contrition that consists of sorrow for our sin out of love for God for whom we have offended, and also a firm resolve to make a good confession as soon as possible.
By making a good confession, we restore our relationship with Christ.
That is basically the same thing as saying our share in his divine life, which we can then continue to nourish with the sacrament of the Eucharist.
We call receiving the Eucharist communion because it reflects what must already be a reality in our souls, communion with Christ, that is shared life with Christ.
Sharing life with Christ, in some sense, is kind of like a light switch.
It's either on or it's off.
We either share life with Christ or we don't.
And being habitually in a state of grace, habitually in a relationship of shared life with Christ should be our highest priority in life.
And maybe you have seen a particular type of light that can like be adjusted.
When it's on, it can either be dimmed or brightened.
It has an on and off switch, but also while it's on, you can adjust the brightness.
Similarly, our share in Christ's divine life can be made brighter or dimmer.
Our focus in life then as Christians is to make our share in Christ's divine life shine as brightly as possible.
We do this through reception of the Eucharist, prayer, practicing virtue, and so forth.
Once we have a share, once we share life with Christ, we are alive spiritually and capable of going to heaven.
That is what is most important.
But then once we turn on that light, so to speak, we want to increase its brightness as much as possible.
The virgins in Revelation that we hear about today are kind of like the wise virgins with lighted lamps from a parable in another part of scripture.
You lit your lamp at your baptism.
Never let it go out.
And if it does, seek out confession as quickly as possible to reignite it.
Let your heart be consumed with the desire to ever brighten the flame of your lamp, which is shared divine life with Christ.
Then and only then, with a share in Christ's divine life, will we be able to be among the number of those in heaven with God's name written on their foreheads, forever singing a new hymn to the Lamb in endless relationship with our Creator for whom we were created and in whom alone we can truly be happy.