Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 434​

Let no one deceive himself.

If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age,

let him become a fool, so as to become wise.

Was it Abraham Lincoln who said, "It is better to be silent and considered a fool, than to open one's mouth and prove it?"

If he did say it he was simply recalling the Wisdom of Proverbs 17: 28 : "Even fools, keeping silent, are considered wise; and if they keep their lips closed, intelligent."

I have met fellows who consider me pretty clever when I listened to them and did not disagree. They supposed I regarded them as very intelligent; and I let them believe that, too!

Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians, addresses the problem of the newly vested members of the Church who, in a rush of enthusiasm, agog with the Christian revelation, think the Spirit of Wisdom has spawned in them a miraculous fount of wisdom. However, despite their admirable enthusiasm, their experience of a lifetime has not yet been reexamined and revised in the light of Christ.

The better course is to regard oneself as a fool and a learner. Socrates famously insisted he knew nothing. He went about Athens asking the clever and the influential to explain themselves, only to discover they were more ignorant than him. He won many admirers that way, but not many friends.

Shunryu Suzuki, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, urged his disciples always to regard themselves as beginners. Experts, he said, are so sure of their learning they cannot learn anything new; and are especially reluctant to listen to persons who are not experts. But, given the fractured state of information today, these specialists often know next to nothing beyond their own narrow field of expertise. Those who have made great breakthroughs in science often spend the rest of their lives defending their insight against better ideas.

To paraphrase Saint Paul, anyone who considers himself wise in this age is a fool.

"...For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God,"

Saint Paul here refers to the cross which, as we heard yesterday, is foolishness to the wise and scandalous to the pious.

Since the dawn of time the human race has been building an astonishing "infrastructure" of knowledge, beginning with language. Along with all the symbols, words and phrases of language we have erected proverbs, songs and laws. And then literature when we developed writing, (although relatively few languages have ever been written.) Carefully and intentionally we pass this lore from adults to children for thousands of years.

But we could never have discovered the wisdom of the cross unless the Lord had revealed it to us. That wisdom is so unexpected and outrageous, few people can accept it.

It makes sense only to those who have been given the Spirit of God. We have seen the Lord crucified and raised up; and in the brilliant light of Easter we have seen our own bitter disappointments resurrected as blessings.

Saint Francis, that wonderfully impetuous saint who let the Spirit direct his heart and actions before his mind knew what to make of it, once kissed a man with leprosy, and then forced a bag of coins in his hand. Years later he would understand what had happened. He wrote:

This is how God inspired me, Brother Francis, to embark upon a life of penance. When I was in sin, the sight of lepers nauseated me beyond measure; but then God himself led me into their company, and I had pity on them. When I had once become acquainted with them, what had previously nauseated me became a source of spiritual and physical consolation for me. After that I did not wait long before leaving the world.

Like Saint Francis, disciples of Jesus learn to love the repugnant and scorn the attractive. They cannot be bothered with the pursuit of wealth, ease or luxury. We have more important concerns than popularity, fame or influence. The beautiful is not necessarily shapely; the hideous is usually not old, poor or sick. Like Balaam, the Old Testament prophet, we learn to see as God sees.