Word to the Wise
Friday, March 27, 2020 - 4th Week of Lent - Fri
[Wis 2:1a, 12-22 and John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30,]The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: "Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgression of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord. To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways.........[Wisdom]
It could not have been difficult for our ancestors in faith to find a proto-type of Jesus in the figure described in the Book of Wisdom, which forms the first scripture for today. Like the poems of the "Suffering Servant" in Isaiah, the whole meaning and purpose of Jesus' life are laid out. The "wicked" are indeed "thinking not aright," but their description is right on. It is their reaction that is wicked. The combined psychology of threat and envy is on display just as it would be later on in the gospel accounts of Jesus and those who opposed him.
The expression, "Just who does he/she think he/she is to be coming here and telling US what we should or should not be doing?" might capture some of this kind of thinking. The people of Nazareth displayed it when Jesus came to preach in their synagogue! [Luke 4:24-30] We are not exempt. It could be a challenging Lenten "penance" to identify the times we felt this way about someone and come to recognize the danger such thoughts can represent. In Jesus' case, the thoughts were turned into lethal action. If such an examination of conscience would make us uncomfortable, isn't that one of the purposes of Lent? AMEN