Choosing what a fool desires

20^th Sunday OT

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

No one chooses to be a fool. No one gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, “I'm going to be a fool today.” However, it is possible to look into that mirror and say, “I want what I want. Consequences be damned.” What happens next is folly. Aquinas tells us that folly opposes wisdom. Folly occurs when an otherwise rational person “plung[es] his sense into earthly things, where his sense is rendered incapable of perceiving Divine things” (ST II-II.46.2). NB. if your sense is occupied with earthly things, it cannot be occupied with divine things. Another way of saying this is: if you are living day in and day out as if there were no divine things to contemplate, no divine truths to ponder, then you are a fool. Thus, Paul warns the Ephesians: “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise...” Good advice. But how do we live as wise persons? He answers, “...do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” To “continue in ignorance” implies that we are ignorant but that we can not be. “Try to understand” implies that we do not yet understand but that we can. Knowing and understanding then are key to being wise. Knowing and understanding free us from folly.

But there is a catch. Knowing and understanding have to be pursued; that is, knowing and understanding must be sought out and lived out. It's not enough to know a truth and understand that truth. For truth to be fully grasped in all its glory, it must be integrated into every decision, every act, every thought. It must be made manifest in the real world in real time. Otherwise, it's just an interesting proposition. A bunch of words. Consider this bunch of words: “...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Next Sunday, we'll read that upon hearing this bunch of words, several of Jesus' disciples walked away from him. He'll watch them leave and ask those left behind: “Do you also want to leave?” Wisely, they did not and stayed the course. But what were they thinking between his question and their answer? Were they contemplating divine things, or had they fallen to folly? Were they spinning Jesus' words into a metaphor or a parable or a test of faith? If he was speaking truth, then how were they going to make that truth manifest in the real world in real time? They all heard the truth. They all saw wisdom in the flesh. The ignorant and confused stayed. Those plunged into worldly things walked away.

We have the same choice to make. Stay or walk away. Be wise or be a fool. Listen one more time: “...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” What are you thinking? Maybe: he means the Eucharist, obviously. Or maybe: he's speaking symbolically; it's a sign. Or maybe: he's talking about how we come together in one Body to reinforce our communal bonds. Or! Or. . .I have no idea what this means fully, but I'm ready to live my life contemplating its truth and acting on that truth. What if all of these thoughts brush the truth but fail to grasp the Mystery fully? What then? Some walk away in shock, choosing folly. Others hang around edges, lobbing questions/objections but refusing to listen to the answers. And some stay, wasting their lives trying to change both the question and the answer. The wise, they stay, content to see their ignorance worn away through contemplation. They know that they do not know. They understand that they do not understand. But they also know and understand that wisdom comes from pondering divine things. No one chooses to be a fool. But many choose the things a fool desires. The wise, they admit ignorance when confronted with divine things. But they will also choose contemplation of those things rather than running away. If you will live, think and pray on this: “...my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” 

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Cannot unmake what God has made

19^th Week OT (F)

Fr. Philip Neri Powell OP

St. Albert the Great, Irving

The Pharisees ask a technical, legal question. And they want a technical, legal answer. By asking the question the way they did, they reveal themselves to be religious bureaucrats at heart. They may have been trying to lure Jesus into a sectarian dispute btw rival schools of Jewish bureaucrats. Or they could've been asking the question in a naked attempt to trap him. Or maybe both. Regardless of their motivation, they represent a way of looking at God's Law that enslaves the human person rather than frees it. Jesus jumps over the bureaucratese of the question and goes to the theological center of marriage, reaching all the way back to the moment of creation by quoting Genesis: “...the Creator made them male and female and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” And because the man and the woman are made one flesh, he adds, “...what God has joined together, man must not separate.” Marriage does not result from a policy-decision or a court ruling or any enacted law. It is a creature of the Creator never to be unmade.

Now, being good 21^st c. Americans and Catholics, we are all likely running through our heads right now some of the reasons divorce might a good idea. Adultery. Financial/physical abuse. Abandonment. We can be experts at finding exceptions that give us what we think we want. To this Jesus says, “Moses allowed you to divorce...because of the hardness of your hearts.” IOW, Moses made divorce possible only b/c he knew that the human heart is always prepared to defy God's will. He set in place a procedure for unmaking what God had made. Now, the Pharisees have to argue about the terms of that bureaucratic procedure. And lose themselves in footnotes, definitions, distinctions, and precedents. All this policy minutiae keeps them busy, allowing them to set aside the deeper question: can we as creatures unmake what God has made? We can kill, certainly. Ignore. Redefine and reframe. But we cannot unmake. We cannot take something made and make it as if it were never made. Jesus' answer to the Pharisees on the question of divorce answers a whole host of unasked questions. He's taking us back to the moment of creation and showing us that everything that IS is for a reason, a purpose and nothing we can do can undo that. He's placing front and center the necessity of recognizing and acknowledging that for us there is no denying the Real.

That sounds all groovy and such. The Real. Who in their right mind denies The Real? No one. But we do it everyday, thus revealing that we are not always working with right minds. Think about how often you hear The Real defined away. Killing innocent life in the womb is called “reproductive health care.” Surgically and chemically altering a male body to appear female is called “gender affirming care.” Riots are called “mostly peaceful protests” and foreign wars are called “police actions.” And marriage gets a shiny new definition via judicial fiat. If marriage is just a sentence written in ink on paper, then divorce can be nothing less. Just as easily and arbitrarily re-created. But the question Jesus puts to us remains: can we as creatures unmake what God has made? No. We can make ourselves think we've unmade The Real. We can pretend and behavior accordingly. But the simple truth is The Real doesn't change just b/c we wish it away. Like God Himself and his merciful will, it remains. It remains for us to discover, explore, and obey. That's the way to peace. The only way to salvation.

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