28th Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Wis 7: 7-11
Mark 10: 17-30
Oct. 14, 2012
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.
“I preferred wisdom to scepter and throne, and
deemed riches nothing in comparison with her” (Wis 7: 8).
The Book of Wisdom, probably the last book of the
OT to be composed, dates from about 100 B.C.
We don’t know who wrote it, but in a style fairly common at the time,
the author put much of its contents into the mouth of King Solomon, famous for
his wisdom and, at least in the 1st part of his reign, for his piety.
In the teaching of the OT prophets and wisdom
literature—the wisdom literature includes Job, the Psalms, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and Sirach in addition to Wisdom—in most of
this teaching, piety and wisdom go together.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is a theme in the
Psalms (Ps 111:10) and the Book of Proverbs (Prov 1:7; 9:10), for
instance. Here fear means a healthy respect and reverence for the Lord, rather
than being afraid of him.
So in today’s short passage from the Book of
Wisdom, “Solomon,” i.e., the anonymous author, teaches us that wisdom is to be
preferred to power, wealth, prestige, or anything else.
While that’s offered as a religious teaching,
ordinary human wisdom agrees with it.
How many times have you heard, “Money can’t buy happiness”? I’m sure you’ve all seen the MasterCard ads that
go like this: “Object
1 costs $X. Object 2 costs $X. Object 3 costs $X.” Some
intangible, valuable experience like “a day spent with your son” of “an evening
with your wife” is “Priceless. There are some things money can’t buy.
For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
Every year the Salesians of St. John
Bosco—like a good number of other religious orders—send out as missionaries a
good number of generous young lay men and women (more women than men, by the
way), most of them fresh out of college.
When these volunteers get to their Third World
destinations, they find out what’s really valuable. For example, Stephanie blogged from Bolivia on
Sept.30 a reflection called “Beauty is everywhere I look!” that began this way:
Last Sunday we went to
pick up Lorena [a newly arriving volunteer] from the airport with Sister
Nora. Well on the way home from picking
her up, we stopped at a festival and then after that, Sister Nora needed to
stop at a house of a family that she helps out.
While she went in to talk with the family, we stayed out in the truck.
This family was a family of ten who was struggling financially. While we were
waiting in the truck all of a sudden a few of their children came out to the
truck with some Coca-Cola for us. Even
though they hardly had anything, they still made sure to give their guests
something. This was not the first time I
have seen this. This has happened to me
while I was in Peru
on a mission trip as well. There are
some people who have everything but will refuse to give anything. I was truly touched by this act of kindness.[1]
 |
| Some of the children whom Stephanie is teaching in Bolivia |
And Caitlin wrote from South
Sudan a week before that, in a posting she titled “Late Night
Musings of an SLM [Salesian Lay Missioner]”:
Exhausted after chasing
the kids around outside, I found myself desperately in need of water. Not
thinking ahead, I filled up my water bottle and brought it outside.
10 kids ran over and fought for the “moya”, and in seconds the bottle was
drained. Afterwards, I remembered:
I am in the middle of a community considered impoverished even by South
Sudanese standards. That bottle might be the only filtered water those
kids get in God knows how long. I am spoiled.[2]
In the same posting, Caitlin—a fair-skinned, red-headed
Irish-American lass from New Jersey—also
writes:
People appreciate simplicity...
Looking at pictures we’ve taken so far, I realized how terribly washed
out I look, and how young. At home, this
would encourage me to wear more makeup.
But here, the fact that I live just as I am (without modifying my
appearance), is so much more beautiful a thing than looking a little better in
a photograph. It’s not worth losing that
feeling for the sake of a little mascara.
I think I’ll stay washed-out.
 |
| St. John Bosco Church in Maridi, South Sudan, where Caitlin and another SLM are serving |
Without a doubt, our bonds of family and home and hospitality and
belonging are priceless. Without a
doubt, no price can be put on the blessings of fresh air and clean water and
the beauty of nature—sunrises and sunsets, woods and oceans, “purple mountain
majesties and amber waves of grain.”
Without a doubt, it’s a privilege to be able to worship God freely, to
be loved and forgiven by him, to be invited into his family as his children and
heirs. That we’d call priceless, except that, as St. Paul says, twice (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23), it
did come at a great price—our being ransomed by the Son of God.
It’s wisdom—human wisdom on one level, divine wisdom on another—to
recognize all that, and then to make decisions that correspond to that
wisdom—to live wisely. We’re easily
tempted by transient things like the “riches, health, comeliness” that
“Solomon” lists (Wis 7:8,10)—things like fine clothes, nice vacations,
cosmetics, jewelry, pleasure and entertainment, concern about what people will
think—all of which the Bible tells us is foolishness; none of which leads us to
God or keeps us in touch with God or satisfies the longings of our hearts. St.
Augustine 1,600 years ago wrote in his Confessions, “You have made us for
yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
The gospel reading today tells us of a restless young man who came to
Christ seeking the solution for his restlessness. But he wanted an easy solution, and Christ
doesn’t offer one. In the end, money
separated him from Christ: “he went away
sad, for he had many possessions” (Mark 10:22).
The pursuit of power and prestige separated the scribes and the
Sadducees from Christ and induced Pontius Pilate to crucify him.
And us? When we look into our
hearts, do we find any foolishness separating us from him? If so, we don’t have to imitate the young man
of the gospel, or the scribes, or Pilate.
We can renounce whatever it is we’re chasing that’s not God, such as an over-concern
for money or self-importance that shows little concern for other people or
finding pleasure and comfort in the wrong places (addictive behaviors).
We can, instead, choose to embrace wisdom. And what might that mean for us? The liturgy today gives us hints. In the Collect (or opening prayer), we prayed
that God would “make us always determined to carry out good works,” and in the
gospel Jesus advised the man who came to him to “give to the poor” from his
wealth and “follow me” (10:21). In this
context, wisdom consists in doing good to other people, especially by sharing
what we have with the poor—or the weak or the vulnerable. If we don’t have money, we might have time to
spend with someone in need of company and compassion, or time to give to a
charitable or community-service organization that needs volunteers; we might
have talent and expertise to offer, like teaching a child to read, teaching
someone to cook, to knit, to operate tools, to do CPR; next month we’ll vote
for our political leaders, and our vote will include an approach to the most
vulnerable members of our society, namely, children in the womb. And while any of that—donating time or talent
and voting—is good in itself, if we do it in Jesus’ name, if we do it because
that what Jesus would do if he were in our shoes (allowing, obviously, that
Jesus might work miracles but you and I don’t!), then we’re “following
Jesus”—which is the wisest thing we can do, because Jesus satisfies the deepest
longings of our restless hearts; Jesus leads us to eternal happiness.
[1] http://stephschaubbolivia.blogspot.com/
from Montero, Bolivia.
[2] http://www.forherpieceofmind.blogspot.com/
from Maridi, South Sudan, Sept. 23.
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