HOMILY WEEK 08 06 – Year I
True Wisdom – Prayer, Perseverance and Gratitude:
Optional Memorial of St. Pope Paul VI
(Sirach 51:12-20; Ps19; Mk 11:27–33)
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“I sought wisdom openly in my prayer” (Sirach 51:13).
Today’s first reading especially encourages us to pray for wisdom; to persevere in seeking wisdom, and to be grateful for the wisdom God has given us.
That first reading all about wisdom. A priceless gift of the Holy Spirit, wisdom is not the same as and far transcends knowledge. Knowledge is something we accumulate and gain from teachers and books. Wisdom is gleaned from our experiences and our mistakes. They who do not learn wisdom from their mistakes, are bound to repeat them.
I remember encouraging one promising young couple to attend a marriage encounter. The wife was willing to go, but the husband resisted, with an attitude of not needing it. Sure enough, a year or so later, he had an affair with someone else that so traumatized his wife it basically ended their marriage. I could not help but think that in biblical terms, this man lacked wisdom, and suffered greatly because of it.
For its part, Psalm 19 today is all about the centrality of the word of God. Every stanza has a reference or two to the word of God. I believe only one stanza in the whole psalm does not refer to the word of God, just to remind us that nothing is perfect in this life. I especially appreciate the line, “The decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple.”
There is a message here for us. One who devotes him or herself to the Word of God is a wise person indeed. We should ponder the word; pray with the word; read the Word of God, and listen to it. That is true wisdom.
Sirach shares some good advice for us on our journey to attaining greater wisdom in life. First and foremost, we need to pray for it and ask for it from God. Having a daily time with the Lord and immersing ourselves in God’s word will reveal to us how we should conduct our lives. As we open ourselves to God, God fills our hearts with God’s love, and that love gives us the strength we need to live out what we have learned in God’s word. Remember, wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to fill us with this gift each day.
Second, we need to persevere. Sirach tell us that he sought wisdom even when he was young and innocent” and that he “persistently strove for it.” Attaining wisdom is a lifelong process, but it is truly worth the effort because our wisdom will benefit not only us but the people we share it with. Even though we may never think we are wise enough, the more we grow in wisdom, the more our lives will give glory to God.
It’s also important that we continue to acknowledge the guidance and wisdom that God has already given us, and be grateful for that gift. As Sirach expresses his gratitude to the Lord, committing our ourselves to thanksgiving will also help us grow in patience: recalling how God has already answered us can offer us comfort as we wait for God to answer our current need.
For its part, the gospel takes on a whole different and even ironic tone and meaning when experience through the lens of wisdom. We are told the chief priests, the scribes and the elders question Jesus on his authority for actions like cleansing the temple which we heard yesterday. These are the upper class, the educated ones, the ones supposed to be the wisdom figures of Israel, confronting Jesus, the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, the Word of God made flesh, the very one they should have recognized and welcomed with open arms. Their unwise sin was actually unbelief and hypocrisy.
The irony comes in when even the ordinary, uneducated simple people were amazed and astonished by the authority of his speech and his actions, and aware that Jesus taught them unlike the scribes and Pharisees, who always traced their authority finally back to Moses. Jesus went, as it were, over the head of Moses, as he did at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said . . . but I say . . .” His listeners knew they were dealing with something qualitatively different than anything else in their religious tradition or experience. They were dealing with the prophet greater than Moses.
I think the religious leaders had sold out to the false gods of possessions, prestige and power, as did their ancestors before them. They had turned the temple worship into a self-serving religious system that benefitted them, and actually oppressed rather than helped the poor – just the opposite of Jesus, who critiqued the temple worship and poured God’s compassion onto the poor, teaching and healing them who were like sheep without a shepherd.
The divine irony thickens when Jesus ingeniously turns the table on the religious leaders, asking them a question about the baptism of John the Baptist – of heavenly or earthly origin. Caught in their disbelief (although I am sure they knew it was of God) but unable to admit that as to do so would, as they admitted to themselves, call them to believe in John and in the one whose way he prepared, the Messiah, so in the end they are forced to almost chock on the words, “We don’t know.” These religious leaders who thought they knew everything and were wise, were forced to admit they were ignorant and did not know the answer to a basic theological question about baptism! To the end, their stubborn self-will and ultimately, lack of wisdom led them to resist Jesus and the truth to the end.
Today the Church invites us to honor St. Pope Paul VI, who lived in our lifetime. Committing himself to continuing the work begun by John XXIII, he continued the Council and then overcame resistance to implement reforms in the areas of liturgy, Church governance and the attitudes of Catholics toward other religions. Though controversies surrounding ideas and encyclicals, especially 1968’s Humanae Vitae, can be seen as overshadowing his pontificate, the reality is that Paul VI’s papacy and writings aimed constantly at working toward lasting justice and peace. He brought a message of human rights, human dignity and human development to the world.
Those who are wise will have a deep appreciation of the Eucharist as a powerful experience of the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform not just humble gift of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but also transform us into the Body of Christ.
So, as we celebrate today, let us pray for the gifts of wisdom, persevere in seeking wisdom, and be grateful to God for the wisdom that God has already granted us.
