Memorial of Saint Augustine, bishop and doctor of the Church

Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise,
and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,
and God chose the lowly and despised of the world,
those who count for nothing,
to reduce to nothing those who are something,
so that no human being might boast before God.

Christians and Jews share with Muslims a vision of God as supreme beyond all measure. God is Holy, Powerful, Wise, Compassionate, Generous and Gentle beyond anything any human being can begin to understand.

If the reader of Genesis hasn’t seen it yet, after the stories of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, there is that sparkling little detail in the story of Babel.

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built.

Then the Lord said: "If now, while they are one people, all speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says."

Notice that the Lord goes down twice to inspect the highest tower the Babelites could build, first to get a look at it. And then he goes farther down to confuse their language. The point being: God is far above our human plane, and from that perspective -- up there -- all human beings are the same height, and very, very small.

On our own plane we might think of some people as better than others. Worse, we might see ourselves as better than some, but not as good as others. But Genesis assures us, “God is so far above, he cannot see the difference!”

When he does come down, in the person of Jesus, he chooses to be the weakest and the meekest; and to associate with the lowly and the foolish. By his life and death he undoes the powerful, the proud and the wise. The wise in the Lord will know enough to avoid the pinnacles of vanity, pride and arrogance. If the Lord places anyone in a powerful position among the sons and daughters of earth, that one must remember the dirt from which we come and avoid the catastrophe of Babel.