Homily for November 12

Homily for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Scriptures for today's Mass

Audio for homily

A dad in the parish emailed me this past week and wrote:

It's been a really tough couple of weeks of tragedy

witnessed by all of us and especially our kids. 

 I've found my own teens far more agitated than normal,

more argumentative and, given all the bad news,

questioning the whole “God thing."

I know that talking about it with them is the best thing to do

but I have no great eloquence or answers or solutions...

I pray God help us all find the words to say...

Well, I don’t think you have to be the parent of teenagers

to understand what this dad is writing about.

And I don’t think you have to be a teenager

for the daily headlines to cause you to wonder,

 “So where’s God in all this mess?”

Like the dad who wrote to me,

I don’t claim any particular eloquence,

much less do I pretend to have answers and solutions

for the problems of the day.

Like you, perhaps,

I would love to have more wisdom about these things.

I’d love to have the wisdom - if not to solve today’s problems -

then to understand them in a way that would deepen my faith

and not weaken it or cause me to question it.

Would that Lady Wisdom in today’s first reading

would pay us all a visit.

Seems to me it’s time she came calling on us.

I certainly see no traces of her in the headlines or in social media.

If anything,

it’s the absence of wisdom in our midst that’s most striking.

And I’m not talking about the kind of “wisdom”

that folks on one side of an issue claim to have

over their opponents on the other side.

I’m talking about a wisdom deeper than the partisan divide,

a wisdom beyond the terms of our debates,

a wisdom that takes us by surprise

in its simplicity, its selflessness and its truth.

I don’t claim to be a very wise person but I’m sure of this:

the wisdom we need, the wisdom we long for,

is not something we ourselves will ever devise or invent.

Rather, the wisdom our world needs is a gift

and its source, though not beyond our reach, is eternal.

If we put all our faith and trust and hope

in our fellow human beings

I’m confident we can expect to be disappointed.

As it is sometimes is with love,

we often look for wisdom “in all the wrong places.”

But if we hope to critically understand the times in which we live

and find a way to move beyond tragedy to triumph,

we need a wisdom far greater than our native human discernment

will ever, on its own, be able to offer us.

We need that “resplendent and unfading wisdom”

promised in today’s first scripture.

And she is closer to hand than we might imagine.

We read that “she is readily perceived by those who love her,

and found by those who seek her.”

So, before we dismiss all this as pious prattle,

let’s ask ourselves, each of us,

“Do I indeed seek wisdom? 

Do I want, do I desire, do I look for a wisdom greater than my own,

greater than the thinking of all those who think like me,

who agree with me?

“Do I look for a wisdom that might surprise me when I find it,

when I discover that wisdom has been seeking me,

and seeking me more earnestly than I have been seeking her?”

 If I’m not looking for wisdom, seeking her out,

might I miss her when she comes calling at my door?

in my heart? in my thoughts?”

What if wisdom comes - and I miss her arrival?

And that brings us to the wedding scene in today’s gospel

where there are ten bridesmaids,

only five of whom were wise enough to be ready

to receive the bridegroom when he came calling for his bride.

The other five, in their foolishness, were caught unprepared.

If we’re waiting for human ingenuity to resolve the world’s problems,

if we believe that holding out for our side in the debate

is the pathway to truth,

if we believe we have in ourselves all the wisdom we need

then we mock the whole of recorded history in which, to date,

humanity has yet to find what it needs to make all things right.

The wisdom we seek is a wisdom deeper than our partisan divisions.

Lady Wisdom is beyond the paltry terms of our debates.

and she offers us a wisdom that will take us by surprise

in its simplicity, its selflessness and its truth.

The foolish and unprepared often dismiss true wisdom

because in their estimation, it is too simple, too naïve.

The foolish and the unprepared often reject genuine wisdom

because it asks of them more than they’re prepared to give..

And the foolish and the unprepared shy away from raw wisdom

because it often confronts them with uncomfortable truth.

In which group of bridesmaids, then, do you and I find each other?

As I said , I don’t consider myself a particularly wise man,

much less do I pretend to have solutions for our times problems.

But I hope and pray I have enough wisdom to know

that any wisdom worthy of that name

comes not from me - and not from us - but from God

and that we would be wise, like those five bridesmaids,

to wait for the Lord and be prepared

for when he shines the light of wisdom upon us.

I hope these reflections might help the dad who emailed me

talk with his teens about the mess the world is in,

the “God-thing”

- and our need for a wisdom greater than our own.

On the other hand, I’m 70 years old

and I’m still learning to be prepared to answer

when the gift of wisdom knocks on the door of my heart

and shines on my mind and its thoughts.

Perhaps the best we can do is to acknowledge

how foolish we can be and how foolish we have been.

Acknowledging our foolish ways

may be the beginning of wisdom -

whether we’re 70 or 17 years old.

The scriptures also tell us that Lady Wisdom has

 “…built herself a house

She has set her table, prepared her food, and mixed her wine;

To those who lack understanding she says,

 ‘Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Forsake your foolishness and live,
and walk in the way of understanding.’”

Wisdom’s table, the Lord’s Table, stands in our midst.

In our foolishness and with whatever wisdom is already ours,

we gather at this altar and pray to be nourished with wisdom,

with the gift of Christ Jesus who, in his wisdom,

gave his life for us that we might walk in his ways.

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