“Are you alive”? When Wisdom means Living the Life of God!
Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
If there is anything like WISDOM, it is high time we heard its voice or opinion! As far as I am concerned, our world has run amok, there is no more consensus opinion about anything. Human beings perish as refugees, and we say they are not our country men and women, so they may die. We kill our children in the womb, and we call it the right of the woman over her body. Wars rage on freely in different parts of the world but one country decides that nothing should be done about it because that country has a veto power at the United Nations. Some countries rob, kill and under-develop others, but it is normal because “might is right!” WISDOM, who are you or what are you? A story may be helpful.
A woman was sitting next to her husband in church, when the pastor asked all widows to stand up for a special prayer and blessing. This woman stood up. Her husband gently said to her, “Darling, the pastor said widows should stand up, not married women.” The woman remained standing! A second time, the man repeated himself to his wife: “widows are those requested to stand up by the pastor, not married women.” The woman turned to her husband and said to him: “are you alive?” And she remained standing.
The question of this woman “are you alive” is relevant to our readings today. According to our first reading, only the wise person is alive! The statement, “Forsake foolishness that you may live” (Proverb 9:6), says it all. This simply means that “wisdom” is life, and “foolishness” is death. Our second reading offers a similar piece of advise to our first reading, “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise”. We move from two-ways – wisdom and foolishness, in our first reading, to two kinds of persons, wise and foolish, in our second reading. The task, therefore, is how do we move from the virtue of Wisdom to the concrete reality of being wise persons? Our gospel reading suggests that eating the bread of life is the solution: “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48). Our readings seem to have come full circle – the importance of life: the possession of wisdom makes us wise, and when we are wise, we have the life of God in us! But if only the wise person is alive, what happens to the foolish person who is implied to be dead? What happens to our civilization that has run amok, killing its own without qualms?
The good news is that the foolish person can come back to life. It is precisely in order to bring the foolish person back to life that “wisdom” comes calling: “She has sent out her maidens; she calls from the heights out over the city”. She teaches the knowledge of God to those she calls out to. Our second reading gives a moral tone to this teaching: “try to understand what is the will of the Lord. And do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit”. The voice of Wisdom is the voice of God calling out to humanity to listen to him and be wise! The “Spirit” of God in us is the presence of Wisdom in us. If the voice of wisdom appears abstract, Jesus comes along to teach what wisdom teaches – come and eat the bread of life! Whether it be the voice of “wisdom” calling us to banquet, the teachings of Paul towards a moral revolution or Christ himself offering his flesh as food, the “will of God” is what must be done as a proof of Wisdom.
We learn a lot in our schools about invented sciences, but little about life and living. We spend years in the search of the wherewithal to make money; money becomes the end result of schooling, little wonder the world is upside down! But “wisdom” makes her plea to the “simple”, those who are malleable, in order to turn them into vessels and houses of wisdom: “Let whoever is simple turn in here; to the one who lacks understanding,” says our first reading. It is the understanding of wisdom that is at stake, and not the understanding of the sciences of this world. Science without God leads to disaster, the effects of which we already experience today in the wars and discriminations in the world. On the contrary, “Wisdom” comes from God and it is Life itself. Whatever that doesn’t sustain human life is foolishness and death. The food of life is that which wisdom prepares, they are the “columns” that support wisdom.
How theologically wrong our axiomatic expression, “life begins at 40!” For life to begin at 40 years-of-age, it presupposes that human beings necessarily need to make mistakes and correct them along the line, and at 40 they become wise. The truth is that human experiences, no matter the number of years over which they are accumulated, do not amount to Wisdom! The question today is not about age and experiences, but about the choice to be made for wisdom or foolishness, life or death, because we are free creatures of God. Life does not begin at 40, it begins right now with the choices that you and I make!
The choice is yours to make either for wisdom or foolishness, life or death; you are either the house built by wisdom or a display of foolishness; you are either a seeker of life or an admirer of death, you can’t be indifferent; refusing to choose means choosing! Yes, “Wisdom has built her house,” says our first reading, and “she has set up her seven columns” (Proverbs 9:1). “Wisdom” builds on columns, the supporting structures of wisdom’s house. Every human person is a building block of Wisdom. The choices we make daily determine what structure we are building, life or death; the choices of our actions either make us wise or foolish persons.
After years of teaching and preparing human beings for everlasting life with God, today Jesus offers himself as the food of eternal life. The moral pillars set out in the ministry of Jesus are the columns that sustain the food of everlasting life he provides today. The gift of every human life is the beginning of wisdom, for wisdom is life: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6:51). The life that Jesus gives is not just for here and now, but life at the resurrection from the dead! He says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day”. So, wisdom builds an eternal dwelling for God, and not a temporal one. “Life,” for a Christian and every wise person, is eternal life.
To be alive is to have God dwelling in oneself: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me”. Our logic is simple: I am alive because I am wise, and I am wise because God dwells in me; my life is no longer mine, but God who lives in me. Perhaps the life of a woman gives us a good illustration of the meaning of our readings today because the first and gospel readings talk about food and eating. A child eats of the flesh of the mother and clothes itself from the same flesh, while a fetus! The food a woman eats is what the baby she carries in the womb eats. And, outside the womb, it is the breast of the woman that nourishes her suckling baby. Invariably, there are many ways of being a cannibal and androphagous than a direct eating of human flesh. A woman gives herself for the sustenance of the other, her baby; she lives her life for the other in sacrifice. Not even Jesus who promised to give his flesh as food and his blood as drink gave raw flesh and blood to people to consume! Some level of wisdom is required to understand the language of Jesus in our gospel and the food offered by Wisdom in the first reading!
“Are you alive”? You are and will be when you are living the life of God! “Wisdom” is not something abstract, a nameless and faceless figure, it is concrete acts of kindness, love and compassion. When you live your life for the other, when others smile because of you and what you do then the house of wisdom becomes visible, then the bread of life is shared, and human moral compass properly aligned towards eternal life. Yes, you and I become other Christs by eating the bread of life, and by becoming other Christs we too possess the guarantee of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Assignment for the Week:
Do not give of what you possess to the other, but give of yourself to the other this week: spend quality time with someone who needs your presence, not excluding Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.