Word to the Wise
Sunday, February 12, 2023 - 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time - A
[Sir 15:16-21; 1 Cor 2:6-10; Matt 5:17-37 or 5:20-22a, 27-28, 33-34a, 37,48]If you choose you can keep my commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God you shall live.....Before man are life, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him. [Sirach] We speak a wisdom to those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age, nor the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather , we speak God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew.... [1 Corinthians] You have heard that it was said to your ancestors....But I say to you....[Matthew]
Choices and the wisdom to make the "right" ones are part of being human. As we have seen from the Genesis account of the creation of the human person, God endowed us with "free will" and the ability to make decisions - to choose! This can run from the choice of what to wear in the morning to career or life/death health care decisions. We even have the choice to pay attention to the wisdom of God presented to us in the scriptures and especially in the teachings of Jesus, some of which appear in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel According to Matthew in today's gospel scripture! We don't have to read very far into that "sermon" to realize that Jesus' wisdom is very challenging and runs counter to many of the secular world's values. Indeed, the teaching in today's passage is a reinforcement of some of the ten commandments - "You shall not kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, etc." Those commandments have been around for a long time and yet their wisdom continues to be widely ignored!
The wisdom spoken of in the passages from Sirach and 1 Corinthians and the Sermon on the Mount can guide us in the decisions that life continually puts before us. There is an old saying, "Not to decide is to decide!" If we ignore wise guidance and ultimate goals and, instead, choose appetites and short-term goals, the consequences are ours to suffer. We cannot say that God has left us without light and wisdom. We can choose the latter or choose darkness and ignorance. What we cannot choose is whether or not to be human and make decisions! AMEN