17th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Cycle A
1 Kgs 3:5, 7-12
Rm 8: 28-30
Mt 13:44-52
Wisdom
I was in a conversation
with someone last week, I can’t remember who it was or what exactly we were
talking about, but she said that I was wise. I was taken aback a bit, because
wisdom is not a virtue I usually think about or even think I have. Wiseguy maybe,
but I’m not how I would imagine a wise man to be. I have the image of the guru
sitting on top of the hill dispensing pearls of wisdom. Someone who is gentle
and compassionate, who seems to always say the right things, profound things.
Someone who people go to for advice. That’s not how I see myself. I feel that
more often than not I play the fool. Maybe it’s my age or my position or
ministry that give people that impression. Maybe it’s the white hair.
We seem to equate wisdom
with age. I joke that wisdom is knowing the right way to act or the right thing
to do, and the way to gain wisdom is to choose the wrong way and do the wrong
thing. Wisdom comes from learning from your mistakes. I’m sure that is a large
part of it, if we truly learn from our mistakes and work to avoid making the
same mistakes again. That’s the hard part.
But now I see that wisdom
is an example of God’s grace working in our lives. It is an attribute of God
himself. It doesn’t necessarily come with age. There are lots of foolish old
people. And how many times have we taken advice from someone we trust and have
found it wanting? Solomon was young, he hadn’t made a lot of mistakes to learn
from yet. Interestingly, when he got older, he made a lot of mistakes, and he
actually lost his wisdom. But he asked for the gift, and God gave it to him.
And as usual, God went overboard with the gift. When we act humbly God blesses
us more abundantly.
Wisdom can come from many
places. As a gift from God, through our own experiences, from study, and from
observing and learning from others’ experiences. You can work at being wise,
and like faith, wisdom is a gift that can increase and like grace, it builds
upon itself, so that we can become wiser and wiser if we choose. Or not. Just
because we know how we should act and think doesn’t mean that we always choose
to do so. What’s that saying that common wisdom is not necessarily common
sense, and common sense is not necessarily common practice?
Maybe part of being wise
is realizing your limitations. Wisdom begins with self-awareness. Wise people
say and do things that make us stop and think. They give us those aha moments
of self-awareness and self-reflection. And those moments should lead to a
change of heart and commitment to action. True wisdom is not kept to ourselves,
it only works if it’s given away, both by what we say and how we live our
lives. Mostly it shows itself in the way we treat other people. And doesn’t
that make sense, because it’s the same with love, and if God is love then God’s
wisdom would be a sign and effect of love.
If God is wisdom, then
the best way to develop wisdom in us is to image God, to be holy. And the best
way to do that is to learn from Him through His revelation to us. We are so
fortunate that we have such a long and rich deposit of faith in the Catholic
Church to draw from. Not just sacred scripture but the teaching tradition of
the Church. Jesus ends his parables today by saying that every scribe who has
been instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like the head of the household who
brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.
Ours is a living God and
ours is a living Church. There is such an unfathomable storehouse of wisdom
that has been handed on to us, beginning with the apostles and built on by so
many amazingly wise, capable, thoughtful and holy teachers. I think that the
strongest evidence of the Holy Spirit alive and working in the Church is that
there has never been deviation in the core traditions of the Church. All church
teachings that are true all build on what has gone before.
However, we truly bring
from that storeroom both the new and the old. The old are those immutable
truths in sacred tradition. Those are the “big T” traditions, the ones that we
must believe and adhere to if we are to be faithful Christians. We
continue to declare those core traditions whenever we recite the creed. Things
like Jesus is the Son of God and rose from the dead. That sort of stuff. The
new are the ways we hand down and live those truths throughout the ages. Those
are the “small T” traditions. That kind of tradition is simply how we adapt the
big T traditions to the contemporary world. For example, celebrating the Mass
in a particular language.
Both the old and the new
are good and necessary. There should be no living in the past or discarding it
for something completely different. For the Church it’s never either/or, it’s
both. It’s not the past was better than today, nor vice versa.
It’s like with the study
of history. If you don’t understand what happened in the past you will
misunderstand what is happening today. Nothing happens suddenly in a vacuum.
Current events are always influenced by past events and beliefs. And it is a
great mistake to judge past actions by today’s standards. You need to understand
so much about each era’s thoughts, culture, and influences in order to weigh
the pros and cons of each. St. Paul tells us to question everything through the
eyes of faith, weigh what is right from wrong and discard what is wrong. Isn’t
that wisdom?
And one of the greatest
dangers is to let a misunderstanding of sacred tradition cause divisions in the
Church. The Church has the authority and responsibility to organize itself and
the sacraments. That is a “big T” tradition. Personal interpretation of Church
teachings and practices to the point of declaring that this practice or that
council is true and this or that one isn’t is to put yourself outside the
Church, especially if you condemn those who don’t think as you do.
As I grow older, I feel
myself softening. When I was young things were more black and white, and I was
more of an absolutist and a legalist, which led to being judgmental. Everything
had to be done a certain way, typically my way. I tend to let things go more
now, probably because I can more easily determine what is important and what
isn’t. The parables today tell us that the ultimate wisdom is desiring the
Kingdom of Heaven. As there are more years behind me than before, my desire for
heaven has increased. If part of wisdom is knowing one’s limitations, the
awareness of our mortality focuses us on our greatest limitation here on earth.
That understanding should cause us to show more grace to one another, to cut
each other some slack, be less judgmental. To realize that everyone has some
wisdom to offer me. That I need to be more flexible. I know I’ve been trying.
“In essentials, unity;
in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” This is so
important, especially the charity part. True wisdom is always loving and
welcoming. It is gentle and kind. It understands that while there are some
immutable truths that are black and white, people are always gray. True wisdom
is always exhibited as mercy. Yes, we are called to instruct and admonish each
other, but always out of concern for the soul of the other. The flipside is
that we are also called to be instructed and admonished ourselves. We don’t
know what we don’t know.
Wisdom is not a concept.
It is not an idea. It is not a value. It is a person. True wisdom is entering
into relationship with God. Not just the idea of God but God himself and his
Son, Jesus Christ, in unity with the Holy Spirit. Wisdom is recognizing what is
ultimately valuable in this life, and then doing everything in our power to
obtain it, even if it takes letting go of everything else we value.
Is that relationship that
valuable to you?
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