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Today’s Gospel of the wise and foolish virgins is read every day in Coptic monasteries at the Office of Midnight Prayer. It’s a reminder that wearing the habit won’t do us any good unless we prepare for the coming of the Bridegroom by devoting ourselves humbly to a life of prayer and penance. And so the monks continue by singing this Troparion: “Remember, my soul, that awesome day, awake and light your lamp with the oil of joy for you do not know when the voice will call: ‘Behold, here comes the Bridegroom’. Watch, my soul, that you do not fall asleep lest you should stay outside knocking like the five foolish virgins. But watch with prayers in order to meet the Lord, Christ, with rich oil. He will bestow upon you the joys of His true divine glory”.

“For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church”. According to St Paul – and all the Church ever since – when someone leaves his parents and joins his/ her spouse, he/she becomes another person – a collective person, a joint person, a unity with the one he/ she loves. Love binds, generates and renovates all things. And this is a great mystery, and Paul – and all the Church – applies it to Christ and the Church as well.

In the Gospel we are not told where Jesus was teaching, even if it was not on a mountain, what he said was very lofty and six times He referred to Himself not just as “bread” but “bread come down from heaven - living bread - bread which gives life forever.”His words were puzzling, disturbing and his audience had difficulties in understanding and accepting His word. So Jesus, the patient teacher, taught them how this would be: “ No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draw him.”

The story of humanity begins in a garden; and all through that story, the beauty of God’s creation has given joy to the human heart. We learn something about the love of God from the loveliness of material things, like the bread which earth has given and human hands have made. The most beautiful creatures in the original garden were two human beings, partly body and partly spirit.

The main purpose for doing lectio is not to find out what exegetes have to say about scripture. It is to find out what God has to say, and what he has to say can change our life. St Athanasius in his Life of St Anthony tells us that in the time before Anthony became a monk, he went to church thinking about the first Christians who had everything in common, and he heard the Gospel read: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell everything, and follow me". Athanasius goes on to say: "It was as if by God’s design he had been thinking about these saints, and as if the passage were read on his account. Immediately Anthony went out from the Lord’s house and gave to the townspeople the possessions he inherited from his ancestors".