September 17, 2014
Wednesday, 24th Week in Ordinary Time
1st 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 joke is told of a psychiatrist who chanced upon a mentally challenged patient holding a fishing rod while sitting at his bed.
Since the patient looked sad, he tried to cheer him up saying, “If you will drop your fishing hook on the other side of your bed, I’m sure you will get a better catch”. The patient looked at him and said, “You fool, there ain’t no sea in here. How can one fish on a cemented floor?” The moral is: Hardly can we entertain a fool without becoming fools ourselves.
For Jesus, converting his people was as hopeless as dealing with fools. They neither believed in John the Baptist who shunned food and drinks, nor in him who went about eating and drinking with tax collectors. In disgust Jesus exclaimed: “The children of
Wisdom always recognize her work” (Lk. 7:35). The moral is: Over a man who abandons the ways of wisdom, wisdom is powerless and cannot set him free from his folly.
Not even those who claimed to belong to the intelligent circle of society recognized Jesus as Messiah. That was because they were too sure of their conclusions that the Messiah could not come from their neighborhood. Up till now the Jews 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”.
Today the Lord visits us in manifold grace-filled opportunities that each day brings. But we are too “intelligent” to be responsive.
We rant about the imperfections of society but keep mum over our failure to use our power to initiate change. If we just improve the lives of the few people under our employ, we’d be ranting less about the number of poor people in the world! We find our politicians foolish. But in finding them foolish, we declare ourselves the electors of fools. This is what we get for being too intelligent to be responsive to God’s grace. Or is it for being too foolish to submit to God’s promptings? – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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