In the parable of the ten virgins we have a clear picture of Christendom, consisting of two kinds of people: the foolish and the wise. The foolish are those who profess the faith and call themselves Christians but their actions, thoughts, feelings, words, and interactions contradict the principles of our faith. They are Christians only outwardly; they talk the talk but do not walk the walk; their hearts are almost empty, there is no love, no kindness, no humility, no respect and no mercy. Anyone can claim to be a Christian but it is what you do, who you are and what you have in your heart what determines if you are a Christian or not. One is not a Christian just because one says so or just because one wants to. Jesus met people who wanted to follow him but were not strong enough to do so; a good example of this is the young man who had many possessions but didn’t want to renounce them to follow Jesus (cf. Mt. 19:22). That’s why Jesus openly said that not everyone can be his disciple (Lk. 14:26-27) that not all who call him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven (Cf. Mt. 7:21) Knowing that Jesus Christ is the son of God is not enough: even the devil knows that; the demons Jesus encountered knew who he was but that didn’t do them any good, that didn’t free them from their condition. Saint Paul says that there are many people who claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. (Cf. Titus 1:16); that they have a form of godliness but deny its power (2 Timothy 3:5)
The gospels show without any doubt that for Jesus one of the worst vices was hypocrisy. Among the things Jesus detested hypocrisy was the most evident one. He gave the Pharisees and the Scribes a hard time. He called them “hypocrites” not only once but seven times (Cf. Lk. 11:37–54; 20:45–47; Mt. 23:1–39; Mk. 12:35–40) He confronted them several times. But why did Jesus do that? Pharisees and Scribes were very pious, and religious and scrupulous about everything; they said all the prayers a good Jew had to say, they followed all the rules but they didn’t have any love in their hearts (Cf. Mt. 23:23); what they loved was to be praised, to be noticed by others as they prayed on the street corners in order to be seen, to be assigned places of honor at banquets and in the synagogue; they had a strong desire for prestige and recognition; their religious practice was not a genuine one; for them, being a Pharisee or a Scribe wasn’t about serving their people but about being served, admired, and praised, by them. Scribes and Pharisees were like lamps without oil. Many of the parables were told because of the hypocritical behavior of the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus even told them that prostitutes and tax collectors were going to get into heaven before them (Cf. Mathew 21:31) Scribes and Pharisees appeared before others to be good Jews but Jesus uncovered and exposed their hypocrisy. "Woe to you, he said, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of iniquity. (Cf. Mt. 23:27)
A heart without love is as worthless as a lamp without oil. Now, as long as we have a lamp we can do something to get the oil; as long as our heart beats we can do something to fill it with love, kindness, compassion, humility and all those virtues we need to be wise Christians, to be like the five wise virgins in today’s parable who had enough oil for their lamps and who represent the real Christians, the true disciples, the ones without duplicity in them. (Cf. Jn. 1:45-47)
Let us look for the oil our lamps need to give light (Cf. Mt. 5:14) Let us ask our heavenly Father to give us the Holy Spirit (Cf. Lk. 11:13), to give us the oil of gladness (Cf. Is. 61) and to kindle in us what we need the most right now: the fire of his love.