Wisdom to Do Right

Parables about Treasure and Pearl of Great Price

In all decisions, we may pray to God for the wisdom to do the right thing.

King Solomon was clever with affairs of state and built a splendid temple in Jerusalem.  Tradition ascribes 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs to him. God appears in a dream to Solomon, saying: ask me for something and I will give it to you. Solomon wants the wisdom to know the right thing to do.

Paul in his letter to the Christian community in Rome writes: “All things work for the good for those who love God.” In light of daily news, we might surmise all things are not working for the good. But Paul, the faith-filled disciple of Jesus, urges us to fix our eyes on eternal life in relationship with God, who ultimately will transform us. Start that life now!

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus continues the theme of choices. In his first parable, a farmer plowing someone else's field hits a clump that turns out to be a buried treasure. He sells everything he has to buy the field so that he can claim the treasure as his own. In the second parable, a merchant finds a pearl so magnificent that he sells all he has accumulated in life to buy that one pearl.

Jesus says to us in these parables: seize the moment. Make the right decision. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

So much for right decisions. What about the decision maker? Right decisions presuppose men and women with character or integrity. Character defines who we are at the core of our inmost self. It's an ethical reality. Centuries ago, the Hebrew psalmist spoke of King David as a great (though not perfect) leader who guided his people with integrity of heart and skillful hands.

Leadership also requires courage. Whether it's starting a new business, battling a life-threatening disease, getting married, struggling to overcome an addiction, or engaging in community service, life demands courage to move beyond our fears and self-doubts to achieve something worthwhile.

The most common phrase in the New Testament is “Do not be afraid.” The most common phrase in the Old Testament is “Be not afraid.” The phrase appears more than a thousand times in both testaments, so God may be trying to get that message across to us.

Finally, leaders have a “can do” attitude. They're optimists; they get the facts; they're enthusiastic and self-confident, and their confidence instills confidence in others.

At different times in life, all of us are called to be leaders: as professionals, business people, parents, citizens in a community and volunteers in an organization.  Seek always the right thing to do — not what is fashionable, not what is merely acceptable. And having found what's right, just do it.

Goodness Ultimately Will Triumph

Do not be afraid; I am with you always.

Sunday's word of God takes us back to the Wisdom literature attributed to Solomon. Today’s word was written to inspire people undergoing hardships to persevere in fidelity to God’s Covenant. God, the author says, is mighty and powerful, the source of all good, and a patient judge. And for such a mighty and caring and forgiving God, we should be grateful.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr captured a nugget of wisdom in his well-known prayer: “God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time...trusting that You, God, will make all things right, if I surrender to Your will.”

St. Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Rome speaks about the Spirit or energy of God dwelling within us. When we pray “Come, Holy Spirit,” for example, we are praying for an increased sense of that presence of God in us. God is present everywhere, yet we do not always sense it. Paul asks us to be aware in our daily lives. We are “living temples of God.” We might pray, as Paul and Barnabas did in the Book of Acts chapter 13, that God will give us the courage to live the “good news” boldly.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Good and evil, virtue and vice, live together. God is patient. But we know the harvest will come, when we will be accountable for our attitudes and behavior. In that judgment, we will see clearly our true from our false self. Jesus proclaims loudly that good will triumph.

One big obstacle to faith is the suffering of the innocent. If God loves us, why so much suffering in the world, so much injustice and violence? The Book of Job grappled with this. There are no easy answers. Yet God meets us in the midst of our struggles. People who have gone through great suffering often have strong faith. They testify to the presence of God within.

It is a great blessing to have a system of justice. Ultimately, God will call us to account. In the meantime, we are called to do everything we can to do right.

There are times when we face major challenges to our faith. St. Paul, for example, was shipwrecked. The crisis gave him an opportunity to speak about his faith. He knew that God wanted the best for him, as he does for us.

Whatever challenges we face, let’s put our faith in God, trust that God will be with us in whatever God asks us to do.

Let Jesus Transform You

Jesus Meets Zacchaeus

Sunday’s word of God brings us the book of Wisdom, a poetic and philosophical meditation about life, the quest for true wisdom, God’s grandeur and our insignificance, and God’s mercy and favor.

Here the author speaks about the all-mighty God of the universe, creator of billions of galaxies with millions of stars in each galaxy, an awesome creator God completely beyond us and yet utterly within us, a God who is a lover of souls. God, the author observes, can be found everywhere. The author's message is simple: Repent! Live a God-centered, other-centered life!

St. Paul in his letter prays that God will empower the Christian community to continue doing good for others and to stop worrying about tomorrow. Yes, we have today as a gift. Make the best of it.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus meets Zacchaeus in Jericho. This man’s job was to tax his fellow Jews and turn the money over to their occupiers, the Romans. Yet Jesus wants to stay at the house of Zacchaeus. His neighbors must have been shocked: Doesn’t Jesus know Zacchaeus works for the enemy?

But the call of Jesus became a transformative moment for Zacchaeus. From now on, Zacchaeus will be generous with what he has and honest in his business dealings.

Like Jesus, we too can help people transform into the best version of themselves. A good example, I think, is Dr. Karl Menninger, the renowned twentieth-century psychiatrist and guru in mental health. Meeting with a woman who had been depressed since her husband’s death many years before, Menninger noticed the beautiful violets she grew. So he wrote an unusual prescription: the widow was to read her local small town newspaper every day and send a violet to someone who experienced a significant life event—a birth, marriage, a death in the family.

Within a month, the widow called Menninger and said her life had changed dramatically. Every time she sent a violet, the receiver responded. The widow became known as the “violet lady” and began to live her life happily with new friends.  In short, she got out of herself by reaching out to others.

The point is simple. Jesus recognized the potential good in Zacchaeus that many failed to see. Christ calls us to transform others in a similar way by recognizing their gifts and abilities and asking them to use these gifts and abilities to bring joy and hope to others. Let the light of our faith in Jesus Christ shatter the darkness in other people.

Nelson Mandela said this clearly in his 1994 inaugural address as president of South Africa: “We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously encourage other people to let theirs shine.”

And so we might pray for the grace to be transformed, like Zacchaeus, so that we can reflect more transparently the presence or glory of God in our attitudes and behavior vis-a- vis our families, relatives, friends and colleagues. AMEN.

Persevering in Discipleship with Jesus

The Call of Jesus to Discipleship

The word of God highlights the transitory nature of human life with its limitations and shortcomings. But, says the author, take courage; God gifts us with wisdom to help us discern what’s the right thing to do. Some of today’s so-called gurus and pundits seem to marginalize God. God’s word challenges us to anchor our lives in wisdom: to do the right and love goodness and walk humbly with God.

We also heard St. Paul, in a letter from prison, asking a slaveholder to welcome back a runaway slave as a brother in Christ. Now some may ask, why didn’t Paul specifically condemn slavery? Others, of course, argue that the society and times then were different. In any case, Paul sees the dignity of every human being and asks us, do we love others as brothers and sisters of Jesus?

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus challenges us to make discipleship our first priority. In the two parables here, Jesus cautions us not to naively rush into discipleship without gauging the cost. If discipleship with Jesus our priority, then all of our other relationships will thrive. God will bestow upon us the grace, power and energy of the Spirit, to persevere in a life of discipleship with Jesus, who is our way, our truth, and our life.

If we commit ourselves to worthy goals, if we persevere, we can achieve many good things.
We have many examples, religious as well as secular. I give you one: Mother Teresa of Calcutta whose feast day we celebrated last Thursday.

Mother Teresa is a model of perseverance in faithfulness to God, prayer, and love. She joined the Sisters of Loreto and began teaching in India. Seventeen years later, she felt the calling to work among the poorest of the poor. Eventually she studied the basics in nursing, and began to care for the poor, sick, and dying on the streets of Calcutta. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, whose numbers expanded to over 4,500 sisters in more than 600 missions in 133 countries today. There is also a male branch and an association of Lay Missionaries.

Mother Teresa showed us what holiness is: doing whatever our life's work is as best we can. Through a life of prayer despite her own “inner spiritual darkness,” and through a desire to meet people’s basic need for love, Mother Teresa taught us the priority of prayer and service in realizing one's true self as a son and daughter of God our Father.

There are many examples of perseverance in trying to do our life's work as best we can. In light of the Gospel theme, let us ask God to grace us with the energy and power of the Spirit to persevere in our life of discipleship with Jesus, to let the beatitudes in Matthew Chapter 5 be our spiritual guide so that we can indeed be grateful coheirs to the kingdom of God.

Seeking our True Purpose

Duccio's "Jesus calling Peter and Andrew"

In the Gospel according to Mark, we have the story of the energetic, well-to-do young man who is looking for something more. He wants eternal life. And oh, yes, he has observed all the commandments.

But he wants to know: what else should he do? And Jesus recognizes the potential for spiritual greatness within him and says: Go, sell what you have and follow me.

Sadly, this person couldn’t give up what he had. He couldn’t see the potential for spiritual greatness within himself, to follow Christ.

Yes, the so-called “good life” didn’t seem to satisfy him. He wanted to live for something more, for someone greater than himself. This is indeed the quest of many people.

Among the books Viktor Frankl authored is “Man’s Search for Meaning.” In prewar Vienna, Frankl had a wife, two children, a good psychiatric profession and a comfortable home. But as an inmate at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, just outside of Munich, Germany, Frankl lost every earthly thing he treasured – family, profession, home.

These losses brought him face-to-face with the fundamental questions of human life: What should I be living for? What is my purpose?

Frankl discovered that people could put up with incredible hardships without losing their serenity and respect for others, provided they saw that these hardships had some ultimate meaning.

In their hearts, people yearn for something or someone beyond themselves that can give greater meaning and greater value to their lives.

Jesus in the Gospel recognized the potential for spiritual greatness in the young man, and when asked, gave him a pathway. But the man walked away.

I hope that each one of us recognizes and supports the potential for greatness within one another. And I hope that recognition will compel us to try, as best we can, to help one another to realize the incredible potential for good that we all have.

Facing the Light

Christ Risen

The word of God takes us back to the wisdom literature of ancient Israel. The author speaks about a person who always tries to do the right thing. But how do some react? They want to murder him. “Let’s see whether God will rescue him,” they say.

This raises the eternal problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? The word assures us God is close to us, even during the storms or assaults of life.

The author of the letter of James asks: why do some people choose evil? People indeed at times choose wrong over right, falsehood over truth. Christianity calls this human condition “original sin.” The fall from grace is described in the biblical Book of Genesis: man and woman hid from God.

Jesus, the Word made flesh, through his life-giving ministry and terrible death and glorious resurrection is our healer, our reconciler with God and one another. In baptism, we have become by grace what Jesus is by nature: sons and daughters of God, called to live a life worthy of that calling.

In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus challenges us to serve one another even if it may cost us dearly.  Jesus predicts his own passion and death and resurrection. This mystery reveals our true destiny: in relationship with God forever in a new, indescribable, transformative life.

Jesus brings us face to face with his and our own death: a fact of life.

Today, some people may die in their 90s or 100s in hospitals or nursing homes or hospices, or alone. The best seller “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” by a surgeon, questions when to “let go,” when to stop offering medical treatments that likely don’t work. The doctor asks: why submit the dying to the full panoply of procedures only to see them completely lose their independence.

Many of us know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages through which many patients and loved ones may pass:
-Denial: “No, not me.”  A typical response if one is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
-Anger: “Why me?” God may be a target especially if one is young. But it's ok to be angry with God.
-Bargaining: “Yes me, but.” The patient accepts, but bargains for more time. I'll do this or that if you, God, lengthen my life.
-Depression: “Yes, me.” The person realizes he/she is not getting better. The person regrets things done or not done.
And finally,
- Acceptance: “My time is running out but it’s all right.”

These stages can apply as well to other major life changes.

Dr. Kubler-Ross also wrote “Death: the Final Stage of Growth.” The title leads us to the Christian understanding of death. The foundation is Good Friday/Easter.

The story of Jesus did not end in the tragedy of the cross but in the triumph of the Resurrection, God transformed Jesus into an indescribable heavenly reality. And God also will transform us into a new kind of spiritual embodiment.

Our faith challenges us to remember that the light of our resurrection will shatter the darkness of our own death.