Wednesday of Week 7 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Sirach 4:11-19

Today’s passage deals with Wisdom, personified as an educator:

Wisdom teaches her children
and takes hold of those who seek her.

There then follows a series of comments about the qualities and effects of Wisdom in people’s lives. The precious fruits of Wisdom—life, favour, blessings and God’s love—are intended to arouse desire for her. Whoever loves her loves life, and those who wait on her early will be filled with happiness.

This will naturally happen, because it is through Wisdom that we come to a fuller understanding of what a true life is all about, and with the living out of that understanding comes happiness.

To adhere to Wisdom is to pave the way to inherit final glory:

…the Lord blesses the place she enters.

Where there is Wisdom, there is God. There is an echo here of entering the Temple, the place where God is present:

Those who serve her minister to the Holy One;
the Lord loves those who love her.

In a similar context, her disciples are like priests, who enter into the holy places of the Temple to find God. For God himself is the source of all Wisdom; there is only one Truth. As we come closer to that truth we come close to God:

Whoever obeys her will judge the nations,
and whoever listens to her will live securely.

Wisdom’s adherents are like judges. True wisdom gives one criteria by which to evaluate the world around one, and those who “listen to her” will experience a sense of security. They have a sense that they are in the right place and doing the right things.

People who remain faithful to God’s call—especially as it comes to us through the Word of God—will continually seek to open themselves to receive Wisdom and be enriched by it. Seekers of Wisdom are here seen as faithful marriage partners, who open themselves fully to each other.  And what they learn will be passed on to those who come after. Thanks to our forebears, we are indeed the recipients of centuries of Wisdom passed on to us.

However, there is another dimension to Wisdom which we should be ready for. In our search for the truth, there is no guarantee of an easy life:

For at first she will walk with them in disguise;
she will bring fear and dread upon them
and will torment them by her discipline…

Indeed, it is often through the most painful and frightening experiences of life as we come face to face with failure, disappointment, sickness and death, that we gradually grow into real wisdom about the most important things in life.

On the other hand, to go our own way and to abandon the search for Wisdom and wisdom is to give up the search for truth and the way of love. There is no future there—only self-destruction.

As we said before, the acquisition of wisdom does not just come from the piling up of knowledge and information. It does not require a high level of literacy. Even the most illiterate person can be steeped in wisdom. The greatest teacher of wisdom is our immersion in life and in finding God’s Truth, Goodness and Beauty embedded in every experience of life, even the most painful.

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Wednesday of Week 7 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Mark 9:38-40

There is another lesson for all of us in today’s brief passage.  The disciples complain to Jesus because they saw someone casting out devils in Jesus’ name.  They tried to stop him:

…because he was not following us.

Jesus tells them very clearly that they should:

…not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.

This is a principle we need to take seriously to heart. There can be a strong temptation among us to a kind of exclusivity.  Many Christian groups (both Catholic and people from other denominations) can fall into this trap.  As Paul tells us in one of his letters:

…the word of God is not chained. (2 Tim 2:9)

God can do his work through all kinds of people—Christians and people of other religions and of no religion.  He may even work at times through people who are ostensibly anti-religious.  Far from being resentful of others doing work which we feel belongs only to Christians, we should be overjoyed.  This is a clear sign of the Kingdom at work.  Wherever there is love, wherever there is service, there is God.

Membership in our group is not the test.  The test is whether what others do fits in with our goals of truth, love, justice, compassion, freedom, peace, non-violence and all that is good.   Our God is to be found in all these things.  The Church is a way to a further goal; it is not itself the end.  The Church is called to be a sign of the Kingdom, but is not the totality of the Kingdom. The goal is that people with good hearts and the Church are working for the good of one another and for the realisation of the Kingdom.

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