Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19;Luke 12:32-48
Prepare for Heaven while on Earth: Faith makes Heaven Real
Knowledge and intelligence are generally associated with the human ability to conquer and dominate nature; they are mediums for the survival of the human specie on earth. But if our first reading comes from the book of wisdom, there is a stark distinction to be underscored between knowledge and wisdom. “Wisdom” is the secret of life, how life is to be lived, the meaning of life. This is the reason for the association of wisdom with experience, lived experience. So, what is wisdom and how do we acquire? Of course, Solomon prayed for it and God gave it to him; yet, there is another way of acquiring it, through human efforts and the power of the Holy Spirit. This is out lesson today.
The specificity of Jewish wisdom is its anchor on the Law (Torah – Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the past. The book of Wisdom, one of the textbooks of Jewish lessons on its conception of Wisdom, is out to teach how life is to be lived on earth, in order to gain immortality or eternal life. A little regression is in order here, going back to the early portions of the book of Wisdom. At the beginning of the book of Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon, two issues are debated: 1) the end of the unwise/unrighteous person, and 2) the end of the wise/righteous person. The conclusion to that debate, according to the book of Wisdom, is that the unwise/unrighteous will perish on two counts: i) their deeds are evil, judging by what the Torah prescribes, and ii) because they do not believe in the immortality of the soul.
Our first reading today makes two arguments, in order to buttress the reasons the wise/righteous will inherit immortality. These are the reasons: a) they keep the prescriptions or commandments of the Torah, and b) they believe in the immortality of the soul because of God’s teachings. Consequently, the example of holy people or ancestors of the Jewish people in the faith, and the way they lived their lives becomes a lesson on how to live life on earth, so to attain the same end as the righteous. When it comes to the topic of faith, the figure of Abraham remains the Jewish paragon and model. The concentration today is the paramount importance of faith in the life of a believer, and Abraham’s faith is proposed for our imitation. The measurement for a Jewish faith is obedience to the Law of God. This faith, according to our first reading, is displayed in the faithful carrying out of the command to celebrate the Passover, a foundational event in the lives of the Jews. Passover is like the independence celebration of today, an event which defines a people and its destiny in a fundamental way.
If the Jewish person keeps faithfully the celebration of the Passover, the same celebration recalls to his mind the events of the past, as an impetus for his life here and now as well as his future life. The past becomes the establishment of how the future is to be lived. Every celebration of the past, in this case, the Passover, is a moratorium to measure fidelity to the covenants of the past. More so, the celebration of the past makes the past to be present to and contemporaneous with the celebrants of today. An African proverb captures this reality well: “to draw back in order to jump better.” The ordinary idea of “drawing back” is abandonment or surrender, but those of us who grew up in villages or on the farm, we know that when a bull, goat, ram, etc. backs up or draws back, it meant a preparation for an attack. This is what happens, when one recalls the Pass, especially the Jews, it meant a preparation to confront the present and the future from the strength gathered from the past.
Our second reading adds a Christian perspective to the Jewish understanding of “faith.” For a Christian, “faith” renders visible, that which is invisible: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). In other words, the power of the past is captured and made both present and relevant for today through faith. Every sacrament, like Jewish covenants of old, are moments that “draw us backwards,” to furnish us with the momentum to confront the vicissitudes and vagaries of life. This shows that “faithlessness” is the first sign of atheism and denial of God. Our gospel reading makes this argument succinctly.
Every Christian or believer invests in the future, in the rainy day. The refusal to invest is tantamount to the denial that there will be a future or a sign of abnegation of the future. When Jesus says, in today’s gospel, “Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” For the gospel to use the the language of commerce and finance is to be practical and pragmatic. In the real world, hard work is indispensable and money is essential. The human cravings for wealth and economic independence come right after our instinct of self-preservation, because economics undergirds every fight for self-preservation. This is a simple lesson on how we should fight to invest in heaven also. As the going goes, “he who fails to plan, plans to fail.”
The recipe not to “plan to fail” is to take our cue from our past Judeo-Christian heroes, patriarchs, saints and martyrs. Their faith was the light which brightened their paths through life, especially the dark days of their lives. For Abraham and Sarah, barrenness and childlessness were no hindrances to fidelity and faithfulness. For St. John-Paul II, Parkinson’s disease was not a reason to complain; to blessed Michael Iwene Tansi, his Igbo-accented spoken English, which the English disliked, was not a deterrent to faith in God. For you, what excuses do you have not to have faith? We learn wisdom from these lived experiences.
Mark this, Christian wisdom is fidelity to God’s commandments, and unfaithfulness to those same commandments is unwise/unrighteousness and a guarantee for mortality and death. Whether we like it or not, there is going to be consequences either way: planning to succeed or planning to fail, our lifestyle always shows either of them. “That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly,” says Jesus. Remember this: if death is inevitable, judgment is unavoidable!
Assignment for the Week:
For this week, can you read a life of a saint and try to imitate his or her life?