Divine Wisdom

In the readings for Sunday 13th Sept 2015 (see below) we are encouraged to seek wisdom. In the New Testament, the suffering of the cross is presented as a new kind of wisdom, which centuries of Christians and theologians have tried to understand. Some time ago, St Francis for example, said that he felt called to be ‘a new kind of fool in the world’ and that ‘God does not want to lead us by any other knowledge than that’. St Paul similarly talks of Christ crucified: ‘a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength’ (1 Corinthians 1 23-25).

How do we interpret the suffering of the cross as wisdom for today? If we are to take Jesus’ teaching and his action seriously, then we have to understand that the wisdom of the cross is all about letting go – and that is the hardest thing for any person to do. How do we develop a spirituality that let’s us let go? The assisted dying debate has encouraged all of us to re-enter into that landscape, to explore the boundaries again of the limits of what it means to be truly human.

Richard Rohr, a contemporary Franciscan writes that:

 

‘What the crucified has revealed to the world is that real authority that ‘authors’ people and changes the world is an inner authority that comes from people who have lost, let go, are refound on a new level’ (Eager to Love, 2014).

It is particularly difficult for modern people to understand a spirituality of letting go- for as a people we have developed mastery over so much; death is the final arena in which in many ways we are still seeking greater control.

Of course, being in hospital and experiencing illness are difficult and challenging experiences for all of us. But, what it is vital for Christians to ask is: how does our understanding of Jesus’ greatest teaching, his death on the Cross and subsequent resurrection, help us to experience, live through and endure the losses, pains and sufferings that life inevitably brings us?

That is a deeply spiritual question that as individuals we must bring to our relationship with God, i.e. our prayer life. Life teaches us, if we let it, to adapt and change; rather than to become more and more rigid, inflexible and trenchant in our views and approaches. God’s wisdom: ‘while remaining in herself, renews all things’. Such Wisdom is that which, out of inner peace and enlightenment, enables renewal, adaptation and most importantly re-creation. For such Wisdom is unconcerned that re-imagining will damage or jeopardise her own deeply developed and anchored truth; for truth and beauty itself cannot be remade by error. What is it then which enables us to remain true, holy and wise? Is it doing the things we have always done? Or is it an ability to change the externals to better reflect for the moment, for the age, the inner radiance of wisdom’s face? : ‘In every generation she (i.e. wisdom) passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets’.

Where is wisdom to be found? In holy fools, who subvert the mores of the day, like St Francis, who: make strange the contemporary consensus by their eccentric life styles and who through their faithfulness to the disruptive and erenic depth of the Gospel re-imagine God’s righteousness for themselves and therefore for those who have eyes to see them.

Having eyes to see wisdom, having a life to embody it, having the imagination to welcome it : holy wisdom shines like the sun, but many clouds obscure her beauty. If we wish to see her, we have to brush away the darkness, and pierce the shady trees of our doubt and fear. Welcome her. Welcome her. Welcome her home to your heart.

Wisdom of Solomon 7:26-8.1 For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.  Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom. She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well.

Mark 8:27-38 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.   Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’  He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’