Words on the Word
28. Sunday B
Wisdom 7.7-11: The spirit of Wisdom came to me.
Hebrews 4.12-13: The word of God is alive and active.
Mark 10.17-27: Sell everything you own.
Our first reading is a paean to wisdom. Incomparably wonderful is wisdom! The text literally praises it to the skies. If we take it seriously, it is almost shocking to see how much it considers wisdom to be worth: ‘I loved her more than health or beauty, preferred her to the light.’
Honestly, for what purpose would we risk our wellbeing, looks, and outlook?
If we look up ‘wise’ in a dictionary, the definition is ‘learned and prudent’. Biblically speaking such a definition is quite inadequate. In Scripture wisdom appears not so much as a quality as a presence. In Proverbs, chapter 8, wisdom herself offers us a poetic autobiography: ‘I was set up at the first’, she says, ‘before the beginning of the earth’. No grain of dust had yet been brought into existence. ‘I was there, when he made firm the skies above. I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.’ This rejoicing can be understood as play, and has often been translated thus. This is worth noticing. For the description is repeated: ‘I rejoiced [or played] in his inhabited world and delighted in the sons of men.’
When we hear the word ‘wisdom’ we associate it with something earnest and grave, with thick books, furrowed brows, and long white beards. There’s something geriatric about modernity’s wisdom. The wisdom of Scripture, by contrast, is playful and young. It represents God’s firstborn and is divine, a bridge between time and eternity, created matter and uncreated Light.
Wisdom is the principle allowing us to look on the world we inhabit, heaven and earth, and ask, not just ‘What?’ and ‘How?’, but ‘Why?’ – and provides an answer to that question. Wisdom corresponds to a longing rooted deep in man, yearning for more than just a discernment of patterns in things, seeking to understand and to know. Our world today anaesthetises this longing. It is content just to count and measure. It is concerned with algorithms, not metaphysics, and has largely shelved the question ‘Why?’. Yet that questions vibrates within us. It is good, therefore to be recalled to wisdom’s claim, to be bidden to follow it wholeheartedly. Only when once again we start considering the purpose and finality of things, of life, of the universe, will a renewal of our weary civilisation come about. Only then will we see our task as human beings no longer just as an anxious battle for survival against all sorts of political, ecological and digital odds, understanding it instead as a creative vocation. That vocation will resemble a high form of play. True play is serious: anyone who has eyes to see children play knows that. But at the same time play is marked by wonderful lightness and joy. Lightness and joy! These are qualities which our depressed world desperately needs. We are commissioned to impart those qualities.
I noted the connection between wisdom and prudence. It is real. Prudence is a desirable virtue. The Romans called it the mother of all virtues. To be prudent is to be capable of rational discernment; to know when it it is right to hold back, when to let go; to distinguish between good and evil; to plan responsibly. Prudence is praised in the Gospel. Think of the parable of the virgins with their lamps, or of the servants asked to invest their talents. Think of what Jesus said to the crowd who ambled after him, more or less committedly: ‘Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?’ The message is clear: one who wants to be a disciple of Jesus must gather and save resources – and for that purpose prudence is needed.
Prudence is a prerequisite for Christian living, but sooner or later it meets its limit. That limit is put before us in today’s Gospel by way of an example. The young man who comes to Jesus has since childhood lived prudently and well: he has kept the commandments, honoured his parents, and managed his inheritance well – it has made him ‘very rich’. Jesus approves of all this. He sees that the young man is an honourable person of good will. To live well is to him a matter of course: ‘But Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days!’ When Jesus hears this exclamation, something remarkable happens, something unique in the Gospel. Mark writes that ‘Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him’. From this we learn that a man’s good intentions can touch the heart of God. God rejoices, as on the seventh day, to see his image unfold in creation, to see men and women rise to their full stature.
Such women and men God wishes to lead further, beyond the boundaries of material virtue in order to know God’s love from within. To receive such a call is a wonderful grace. It is also scary. All at once I am faced with absolute choices: Do I really desire treasure in heaven, or do I prefer to live undisturbedly on earth? Do I want eternal life, where earthly luggage must be left behind on the doorstep, or would I rather snuggle down in a comfortable nest in time? By all means, not everyone is called to be a St Francis, who in the market place of Assisi put off his very tunic so as wholly poor to follow the poor Christ. But all of us are called to evaluate earthly goods, and earthly values, in the light of God’s kingdom. The empirical criteria of prudence are not, then, enough. We need wisdom’s creative, playful, audacious, confident strength. And all of us will, one day, stand face to face with eternity. ‘Pray for us’, we plead in each Hail Mary, ‘now and at the hour of our death.’ Whether that hour is near at hand or far away, none of us knows. But we know it will come. What will we be holding on to then? It is good to ask this question with serenity from time to time so that we can order our priorities. For where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.
Lift up your hearts! Amen.
The Andromeda galaxy. What does the boundless universe mean and towards which finality does it move? Wikimedia Commons.