Word to the Wise
Thursday, September 5, 2024 - Thursday in the 22th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Cor 3:18-23 and Luke 5:1-11]Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God....[1 Corinthians]
Much of the way we in the "western world" think comes to us from the Greek civilization hundreds of years before Jesus appeared on earth. The Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical way of viewing reality is strong among us. It is a cultural DNA that we take for granted. When St. Paul began evangelizing in Greece at Thessalonica and Corinth he encountered this way of thinking which saw Christianity as foolishness. How could a crucified criminal be the savior of the world, let alone rise from the dead? How could such a way of thinking and believing replace all the "gods" in the Pantheon? [cf. Acts 17]
In many ways, what won the day for St. Paul was his determination and perseverance in preaching. The values in Christian faith offered hope to many who only saw their lives as toil and drudgery. Paganism only offered capricious "gods" who might help but only in this life.
The situation hasn't changed in our day, only the "gods" have changed. From Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares and Athena, the West has turned to mony, sex, substance, power and consumerism to which Christianity seems foolish and unprofitable. The paganism of ancient Greece and Rome has been replaced by secularism and science - "human wisdom." Our churches become like the "altar to an unknown God" that Paul mentions in Acts 17:22-34. This may seem like a gloomy picture but what we confront everyday are "gods" that promise us joy and pleasure and power completely unconnected from faith, hope and love. Those who live without basic necessities for human life are threats and "losers." What we bring is not an abstract "pie in the sky," which secular culture deems "foolishness" but a faith that demands action on behalf of those whom secular society sweeps under the carpet of denial.
Evangelization requires a "counter-witness" no matter how foolish secularism may think Christianity may be. God's "foolishness" is stronger than human "wisdom." AMEN