Word to the Wise
Wednesday, September 20, 2017 - Wednesday in the 24th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Tim 3:14-16 and Luke 7:31-35]"For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, 'He is possessed by a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, 'Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is vindicated by all her children."
SEPTEMBER 20 ST. ANDREW KIM AND COMPANIONS (Martyrs in Korea)
At this point in the Gospel According to Luke, Jesus has just met with the disciples of John the Baptist, whom John sent to question Jesus. Jesus tells them to go and tell John, "what you have seen and heard." Then he reflects on the opposition to John the Baptist on the part of the scribes and Pharisees. They refused to accept John's baptism of repentance and accused him of being possessed by a demon. Now they are refusing to accept Jesus because they consider him to be a glutton and a drunkard because he freely eats with tax collectors and sinners. The contrasting images of John and Jesus show that the scribes and Pharisees would oppose anyone who didn't fit into their narrow interpretation of Jewish life. However, the tax collectors and sinners accepted both John and Jesus, and in this, they became "wisdom's children."
An experienced pastor or bishop knows that there will be some people in the parish who will reject whatever the pastor does, no matter what, unless he adopts their narrow view of the parish or even of Catholicism. On a much broader level, there are groups of Catholics who have gone into schism rather than accept the Second Vatican Council and reject any overture to help them come back into unity with the Church they claim to love. The "children of wisdom" know that the Church is a very large reality with all kinds of people in it. The message of salvation, as Pope Francis continually tells us, is directed to all the world and not to some elite persons. This vision of the church contrasts sharply with those who advocate something called "the Benedict option," (based on a statement by Pope Benedict XVI musing that the church may have to become a smaller group of faithful). The broader vision may be "messier" than the narrower one, but it seems to me that the gospel supports the broad one. AMEN