Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A (2026) - Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP

Have you ever fallen asleep during Mass? I must admit, my brothers and sisters, that I have done it myself, normally with a reasonable excuse, such as trying to listen to a homily in a foreign language while jet-lagged after a long flight. But whether the excuse is reasonable or not, we should not afraid to admit that, although prayer in general and the celebration of the Mass in particular should be experiences of an extraordinary encounter with God, sometimes it fails to energize us or engage us. Falling asleep is seen as almost inevitable in today’s parable, and, of course, as it is a parable, we can interpret “sleep” in a number of ways. But the important point of the parable is how to be prepared for the inevitable, how to fall asleep wisely.

First of all, there are times when falling asleep while praying is exactly what should be happening. Human beings need sleep, and it is not good when things keep us from sleep. Worry can keep us awake at night, as can stress, overthinking, anger, loneliness and fear. In these cases, spending some time in prayer, focusing on one thing rather letting the mind race, focusing on the God who loves us instead of all that threatens us, moving from a climate of agitation to one of peace - that gentle exercise of prayer can, as I say, set us free to do what is best for us at the time, to peacefully fall asleep. There are times when I lie awake at night, thinking countless thoughts, and depriving myself of the sleep I need to face the following day. So I take hold of my rosary, start letting the beads slip through my fingers as I say the Hail Marys and think of the mysteries, and in that way God gives me the sleep I need and desire. Having wisely chosen to fall asleep while listening to the Lord, we can hope to be ready to hear his voice when we awake.

The second way to think of “sleep,” and probably more in line with the parable, is in terms of spiritual dryness. There are times when we no longer feel prayer doing anything for us. There is no sense of excitement, of the beautiful, of the sublime, or even of consolation and peace. We come expecting to hear the bridegroom’s voice, but instead, Sunday after Sunday, we hear nothing. It takes wisdom to understand why Jesus is silent.

What God wants to give us in prayer, and in a special way in the Mass, is the gift of God’s own self. As God is beyond our grasp, whatever we have grasped, whatever we have already received and rejoiced in, is a gift from God and helps us approach God, but it is not God’s own self. And if we set our hearts on what we have already received, wanting only more of the same, then we have set our hearts on the gifts of God, and not on God as such. People who love their friends give gifts to them, but they want the gifts to be seen as an expression of love; they would be appalled if the ones they considered their friends loved them only for their gifts and not for themselves.

And so, to prevent us setting our hearts on the emotions we feel or the knowledge we gain or the community we share in our worship, God sometimes seems to withdraw. He is not abandoning us, but leading us, leading us to search for him in a new way. The wise virgin is prepared for this, and is ready to search. Mary is the wisest of virgins, and for three days in Jerusalem she experienced that sense of the absence of Jesus; she found him in the Temple, but her relationship with him had moved to a new stage.

In the second reading Paul gives us another way to think about sleep, the sleep of death. While in the very early days of the Church they expected Christ to come very soon, and so those who died seemed to have missed out, we all now expect to fall asleep before the second coming.

The Church’s ritual is built around it, for the last Mass that we shall be bodily present at is the Mass we silently sleep through, the Mass that asks for requiem aeternam, eternal rest. And while we all hope for a Requiem Mass, what is more important is that we make wise preparations before we fall asleep. We must live a eucharistic life, not simply by attending Mass, but by showing our eucharistia or thanksgiving to God by being generous with the gifts that he has given us.

Finally, if sleep can be a metaphor for death, it can also be a metaphor for sin. If we cease to be vigilant, if we dismiss our sinful actions as not really serious, or go to confession without any real effort to avoid repeating the sin, then we may find ourselves trapped in a pattern of behaviour that we cannot escape: a relationship that does not have the holiness of marriage, and addiction that we cannot shake off, or way of earning a living that is unjust and unjustifiable. When we wake from our sleep and realise that our lamp burned out long ago, where do we turn? The foolish thing to do is to run away from Christ, to say to ourselves that we are not holy enough to go to Mass or that we are too sinful even to pray. The wise thing is to keep praying, to keep attending Mass (after all, to abandon Mass is to add to our sin), but to do so in a spirit of penance: does not everyone begin Mass with a confession of sin and a plea for mercy? In this way we keep faith with God, who is always faithful to us. We keep alive the hope that God will grant us true repentance and a way forward. And as we see others receiving the Eucharist for which we are not yet ready, the desire within us will grow until the love of God engulfs all other desires.

As we wait for Christ to come, it is likely that in one way or another sleep will come upon us. May we have the wisdom to be ready for it, so that when we awake we may welcome Christ and enter into the wedding feast of the Lamb, to the praise of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit for ever.

Fr Joseph Vnuk, OP is the Chaplain to Monash University, assigned to St Dominic's Priory, Melbourne.