September 19, 2018
Wednesday, 24th Week in Ordinary Time1st Reading: 1 Cor 12:31-13:13
Gospel: Lk 7:31–35
Jesus said, “What comparison can I use for this people? What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace, about whom their companions complain: ‘We piped you a tune and you wouldn’t dance; we sang funeral songs and you wouldn’t cry.’“Remember John: he didn’t eat bread or drink wine, and you said: ‘He has an evil spirit.’ Next came the Son of Man, eating and drinking, and you say: ‘Look, a glutton for food and wine, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But the children of Wisdom always recognize her work.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
A psychiatrist chances upon a mentally retarded patient holding a fishing rod while sitting at his bedside. The patient looks sad and so the psychiatrist tries to cheer him up. He says, “If you will drop your fishing hook on the other side of your bed, you will get a good catch”. The mentally retarded patient looks at him with sarcasm and says, “You fool, if you think fishing possible on a concrete floor, then you must be retarded!” The moral is: Hardly can we entertain a fool without becoming fools ourselves.
At one point Jesus felt that his mission of converting people was as hopeless as dealing with fools. John the Baptist came as a frugal prophet, neither eating nor drinking. Yet people did not believe in him. Jesus came, eating and dining around, even with sinners, and him too they did not believe. In disgust Jesus exclaimed: “The children of Wisdom always recognize her work” (Lk. 7:35). The meaning of this statement is profound. None of the Jews were truly wise because they didn’t recognize the handiworks of wisdom. Not even those who claimed to belong to the intelligent circle of society recognized the dawning of salvation.
The biggest stumbling block was their intellect. They were too sure of their conclusions that the Messiah could not come from their neighbourhood with parents they knew too well, like Mary and Joseph. Too much intellectual calisthenics displaced them from the track of wisdom. That’s why they were offbeat as to the cadence of time. Up till now they are still waiting for the Messiah to come. Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech in 1917 said “Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time”.
The psychiatrist tried to get down to the level of that fool patient in the hope of taking him to the realm of sanity. He failed. God too has reached out to us and took us where we were in order to elevate us to the level of the divine. If he fails it is not that God is a fool but that we are shrewd and cunning. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M. Email: [email protected].
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