When there is a rather serious lack in your world within, dreams will often come to help. They do so by using material from daily life to make up a scene or two which add up to an effective message. If that does not get through, later another try will be made with the same meaning, but using fresh material from yesterday or the day before, spinning some incident with the message said again, in a new way.

So Jesus. So Jesus today. The story is that of the ten virgins with lamps attending the wedding rite. Some provident. Some not. And with disastrous results for the improvident.

The message is foresight. A beautiful word with a host of partners: forebode, forecast, foreclose,forefather, forego, foreman, forenoon –all dealing with some view of the future in relation to the present.

It is a theme Jesus often returns to: don’t build a house unless you have money enough to finish it. Foresight.

And when you build the house, take care that the foundation is good, lest it collapse in a crisis.  Foresight.

Make peace with your enemy on the way to court, lest the court deal severely with you.  Foresight.

Don’t go into battle unless you are sure your forces are capable of meeting those of your enemy. Foresight.

Don’t agree to go along with the Lord unless you are willing to pay the price of discipleship.  Foresight.

Jesus uses the matter of the day, today’s experience to point out the need to have always an eye on the future.

Having an eye on the future may seem to take attention from the matter at hand unless you realize that the matter at hand can only be dealt with realistically when you have an eye on the future.

Thoughtless plunge into the current situation can be a disastrous ploy.

We are immortal and to deal with life as if we were not will lead to unhappiness.

Nothing gives luster to living as much as an immortal connection. You cannot deny reality and succeed at it.

I believe we could understand foresight as quite similar to prudence: first of the cardinal virtues. Foresight has a local ring, while prudence is from the Latin and hence has a special tone. But we understand prudence: what it means to be a prudent man, a prudent woman. An insurance company is not named Prudential without point.

Since I brought up the cardinal virtues –the pivotal virtues: they are the four “hinges” on which the doors swing. For cardo is hinge. They are the familiar four: prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude.

Temperance is our familiar Benedictine ne quid nimis –nothing to excess. A sound principle in monastic life and in all life . The happy medium of neither too much nor too little.

Justice is giving to God and to man what is their due:

The just man is neither partial to the poor nor to the rich, but in righteousness judges his neighbor. –Lev19:15

Failure, lack of success, obvious weakness, evil forces at work, Godly forces at bay –these must call us to hope in God, trust in His Mercy, to the will to live and to love while there be a heart still in us.

But the beginning is foresight: to scan the sea and the sky before we launch into the deep. Foresight in daily life is common sense. It is also common sense in the spiritual life. Where did you come from? What are you here for? Where are you going?

Or in simple terms: What’s it all about?  To have answer to such a question is gift indeed. And response to that gift is a gift to the world. To witness not by talk, not by word, not even by deed, but by being.

Foresight is not only to have oil in your lamps. It is to have light in your heart because your sights are set on Heaven and eternal Glory.  Amen.

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