2nd Sunday of Advent. Kingdom Storytellers

Mark 1: 1-8

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” ’, John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

 

“History repeats itself.” Usually when we hear that, someone is expressing something negative about the world and how, as a human race, we never seem to learn. However, we need to ponder on it in a more positive light when it comes to our spiritual life. When we listen to the Gospel at Mass, we are hearing the Church's story – its history. As familiar as it is, it remains somewhat removed from us unless the story we are listening to becomes the personal story of each one of us and becomes a deep part of our own spiritual history. If our own stories don't correlate to the Church's story, we may need to examine our spiritual life to make sure it's a life and not just a dogma.

Have you ever had a John the Baptist in your life? Was there ever a time when you were longing for something more, wanting an upheaval that would break open a stream of life in the dreary dryness of your spiritual landscape? Did God send someone who spoke words that drew you to a river of inner change or who pointed out the One you were waiting for? The person may have been a friend, a teacher, a priest, an author or a speaker. Whoever it was and whatever it was they said, those mountains that were overwhelming you seemed far less threatening. Either that or you just felt stronger and more able to move ahead and climb those mountains with excited determination instead of fear. Perhaps this person opened the Word in a way you had never heard before. Maybe they spoke of the love of God rather than the condemnation of God and inspired you to begentle with yourself and eager to open your heart to the Lord.

If you can think of someone like this then God sent John to you. He sent you a voice that cried out to your wilderness, one that made your paths straighter and prepared your heart to hear the voice of the Lord. This voice humbly turned you toward the Messiah and said, “There. There is the Lamb of God. There is the one you seek. Go, follow him.” The reason you were able to take the first step toward the Lamb was because you heard the love in John's voice and you knew that this Lord who inspired such love was the Lord you wanted to follow too.

God sent you John. God made the history of the Church part of your personal story and now the story of John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness heralding the coming of the Messiah is the story of you.

Perhaps you have been a John the Baptist to someone else. Have you ever gone through your own wilderness and come out stronger and more sure of who you are and who your God is? Have you ever found yourself at the right time in the path of someone who desperately needed the comfort of a smoothed path? In the first reading, God said, “Comfort, oh comfort my people. Speak tenderly to them. Tell them everything is all right.” Have you ever heard those words of Isaiah and felt a stirring within your soul? Then you are John. What you have heard and learned in the wilderness is for the speaking of to the people. The history of the Church is your story.

Maybe you need a John the Baptist in your life right now. Are there crooked paths and rocky mountains blocking you? Have you been living on the edge of a wilderness longing for the Messiah to come to you? You can ask God for a John the Baptist to come to you but remember that in scripture, John cried out to many and not all responded to his words. The ones who came away unchanged and unmoved were those who thought they knew exactly what the Messiah should look like when he came. They had fixed preconceived ideas about God and who he was. They were unwilling or scared to change their ideas and perceptions and when John said, “Behold the Lamb,” they could not see Jesus for who he was. Do you have set parameters in how God can speak to you or touch you? Are you waiting for a God of the Old Testament, a God of condemnation, fire, thunder and upheaval? Are you open to a Messiah who may come quietly through surprisingly ordinary events? Are you willing to experience God's love and comfort? There are many who are not. They don't think it's allowed or they don't think they deserve it. Some don't think they need it and some are afraid of change even though their present spiritual lives are anything but satisfying. That, too, is part of the history of the Church and is being relived in the personal stories of many.

Advent is a good time for seeing our stories in Scripture and realizing that it is not just history we are listening to; it is the present moment Advent of our lives. We have voices in the wilderness among us and Jesus continues to come to us all. The wilderness is within us and the Jordan is available. We have yearned for our Messiah and we have fallen asleep waiting for him. We have pointed him out in love and we have been lukewarm and careless about his presence. We have accepted him and we have made judgments and turned away in self-righteousness. We are living out the story over and over. We write our stories daily and each day we have a choice as to who we want to be. We can be John in the wilderness, a broken one being submerged in the river or Christ holding out a hand to someone in pain. We are free to choose if we are going to be open or closed. We are free to say yes or no to moving forward and to change. We just don't have the freedom to not be part of the story. Even those who think they have absolutely nothing to do with the story are a major part of it.

There is one other thing that is necessary: sharing our stories with one another. If we never communicate with others the flow and rhythm, the valleys and mountains, the rough spots and levelled paths of our own personal stories, the Liturgical community will never become fully what it is meant to be: all of us working together to integrate The Big Story into the world through the medium of our own stories. The Mass cannot remain to us an individual private time of worship because this is not part of the real story and it is not what leads to full Advent. When Jesus comes he comes to create one unified story by inserting himself into each of our histories. If we never share, we never really understand what the coming of Jesus means in totality. If we are all strangers to one another, Mass almost becomes like spiritual technology – we push the right buttons and click on the right links and we follow the instruction manual – but we remain isolated from one another, never quite experiencing the fullness of the story come to life.

The readings during Advent and Christmas are beautiful and true but they aren't just 'once upon a time' stories. They are the narrative of our lives, stories we listen to and should resonate with deeply because:

We are the story. We are words made flesh. We are Advent.

1st Sunday of Advent. And When He Comes Again...

Mark 13: 33-37
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’

Welcome to Advent. Welcome to the time of Arrival. Pay attention. Be aware. Keep alert. Keep awake. In the Gospel, Jesus' words have a sense of urgency and maybe even of danger. If we're not paying attention, the time of arrival could come suddenly and we could miss it. What a tragedy that would be. It would be a tragedy and it is a tragedy because we miss him all the time.

The celebration of Advent in the church year has a three-fold purpose. The first two purposes are easy to identify: to focus our attention on the first coming of Christ and to reawaken our anticipation of the second coming of Christ at the end of the world. It's the third purpose that gets lost not only during these next four weeks of chaotic Christmas preparation but also in the busyness of our whole lives. And what Jesus said in the Gospel holds true for every single day of our lives. We don't know when the Master will come and he may find us asleep when he comes suddenly. The church graciously offers us this season of remembrance – a time to remember that not only did our Lord come and will come again but also that he is always coming, sometimes at dawn, sometimes during the day, sometimes in the evening and sometimes in the dark of night. Pressures and obligations distract us, we struggle with daily life or we are spiritually asleep and we miss him. It's true. All of us continually miss Advents every day of our lives.

So, the Church offers us a season to renew our spiritual attentiveness. But how? How can we sharpen up our awareness so that when the presents are opened, the food consumed and the lights and decorations are packed away for another year, we still have a spiritual alertness within? How can we develop a habit of anticipation and longing for his coming and his arrival? Prayer is the answer but often prayer is dry and uninviting or it has become a dull routine that we tend to hurry through – if we get to it at all with all the demands life dumps on us. The Christmas season is an especially difficult time to renew our sense of prayerful waiting simply because of all the added pressures and demands. How, then, can we reconnect with prayer to make this period of waiting a time of true anticipation?

What would you like for Christmas from God? If you could ask for any spiritual gift, a gift that was for you and you alone, what would you ask for? Take some time to think about that and don't just give an answer that you think is the right one or an answer that you think would please your priest, your spiritual mentor or your friends. Somewhere deep inside of you is a yearning and it could be so deep that you haven't paid a lot of attention to it. What do you really want from God? The reason it's so important to name your deepest spiritual desires is because God put them there. Once you recognize and name a desire, go to God and tell him that this is what you want for Christmas. But don't leave it there. As often as you can remember, pray and tell God that you are looking forward to him giving you the gift of your heart's desire.

This prayer shouldn't be a long one. The shorter the prayer, the better so that you can pray it at any time no matter what is happening. I call it “Pocket Prayer” - a prayer small enough to pull out of your heart any time of the day. When we were discussing such a prayer in our woman's group, my friend, Margaret, brilliantly termed it, “Tweeting God”. Think in terms of a prayer 140 characters or less. Less is better because in this prayer, wordiness doesn't count for anything but turning often to the Lord is key.

Recognizing one or more of your inner desires is important for this Advent prayer because you will then pray from your heart with a yearning that underscores your waiting. Listen to what St. Augustine said about desire. “The desire is thy prayer; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.”
What could be simpler? What could be more in tune with Advent, the season of waiting daily for the arrival of Jesus? You don't even really need words at all. All you need to do is turn to God, open your heart and show him your desire.

Something happens when you pray often like this. You start to develop a prayer life not just a prayer time. Because your prayer is simple, short and frequent, you begin to “tweet God' about more than your inner desires; you begin to speak to him about everything. He becomes the receptor of all your thoughts. You develop a deeper sense of the God in whom you live, move and have your being. You awaken your awareness and you become more alert to the times when Jesus comes to you unannounced. You suddenly catch glimpses of him watching you from the eyes of another person. You will see him and welcome him in the middle of a busy mall, while you're at work, when you're walking down the street, when you look at the starry universe or when you're gazing at some magical Christmas lights. And then you will tweet him. “Thank you. The world doesn't know you but you are here. I can feel it.”

Naturally, I can't guarantee that God will give you the specific desire of your heart right on Christmas day. God has his own calendar and his own perfect timing. Both Simeon and Anna in the temple waited patiently on God's timing for years and God blessed them with their own personal and perfect Christmases: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation...” and “...[she] began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” If Simeon and Anna had not been prayer-full people and had not been awake and fully aware of what the subtle manifestations of God felt like in their lives, they would have completely missed the Christ child. Really...he was just another baby in the arms of his mother. No one else in the crowd sensed anything special or wonderful about this particular child. But the hearts of both Simeon and Anna were so immersed in prayer that they immediately sensed they were in the presence of everything they had ever hoped for, desired and waited for all their lives. This was not a thunder and lightening-bolt revelation. This was a penetrating but subtle shift in the spiritual atmosphere. All the other weary, busy and distracted people in the temple missed it but Simeon and Anna knew without any doubt that the veil between heaven and earth had been dislocated just enough for the son of God to slip through into the world. They recognized him because they knew him. They were so familiar with him that even clothed in the humanity of an infant, they knew exactly who he was.

It was enough for them. It was more than enough for them.

Pray. Pray short but pray often and lace your prayers with thanks. Eventually, your prayer will become more than you talking at God. It will create within you a vibrant and aware heart that is awake and able to recognize the Lord when he comes.

And he will come.


Rejoice always; pray constantly; give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (I Thessalonians 5: 16-18)

Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

The Sparrow King

Matthew 25:31-46 (“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”)

I'm going to look at an aspect of this Gospel that isn't normally emphasized. The Gospel itself definitely a warning message to all of us about how critical it is to consider each person we encounter as a manifestation of Christ himself but the message this Sunday is not only about caring for the unfortunate. This is the feast of Christ the King and in the first reading and the psalm we receive the understanding that he is not just a distant and removed king waiting for judgment day. He is a shepherd king, a king who walks with his people and shepherds them. He is a parent, a father, an older brother and one who suffers with his people.

A lot of you are parents and some of you are not but you have or had parents and I would hope that when you were a child you experienced the secure feeling that came from knowing that if things got really rough, one of your parents would always go to bat for you. Wise parents allow their children to fight most of their own battles but they also discern when a child is in a situation where he or she is just not capable of dealing with the problem and needs a parent to step in and take control. Those of you who are parents can no doubt think back to many situations where your child was bullied or was ill or was struggling with a situation where you recognized that adult intervention was definitely needed. The point here is that a good parent doesn't just objectively recognize situations where a child needs help; a good parent acutely feels the child's pain. Even when parents judge that it's all right to allow the child to try to deal with the challenge, parents die a thousand deaths if they think their child is scared, hungry, alone or physically threatened. The feeling is, “When you do it to my child, you do it to me.”

When you read or listen to the Gospel where Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it (or did not do it) to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it (or did not do it) to me,” think about a king who, like every good parent, is sliced to the core when one of his little ones is hurt, scared, lonely, excluded, sick, hungry or in an emotional, mental or physical prison.

Certainly we should always be aware of easing the suffering of his people – and that doesn't just mean other Christians. It means everyone. Still, to be able to effectively see Christ in the suffering ones, the small ones, the Anawim, we need to back up a bit and embrace the fact that we, too, are small ones. We all suffer. We all experience loneliness, fright, depression, spiritual or physical hunger and all the traumas that go with being a broken human in a broken world. We all need to spend time pondering the fact that our king is not a king in absentia. He is not an unapproachable autocratic type king who sits on a throne of terror. He is here with each one of us and when we are hurt, he dies a thousand deaths. Every parent knows the truth of that.

When the Israelites of the Old Testament demanded to have a king over them rather than a judge, they said, “Now make for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” They wanted their nation to look like the other nations of the world and God warned them that the kingdoms of the world they were wanting to emulate had rulers who took from the people. “[The King] will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.”

Still the Israelites insisted on a king and, except for the reign of a few good kings, kingship became equated with dictatorial inaccessibility, cruelty and bondage. Jesus came to turn the entire worldly image of a king completely upside down. He came to release his people from bondage. He came poor and whatever he possessed was freely given away. Instead of cruelty he dispensed healing and love. Instead of arrogance he displayed humility. Instead of intricate political maneuverings he walked in glowing transparency with no hidden agendas. Instead of building up armies and power, he built a group of twelve weak men. And instead of maintaining a cold, regal and demanding headship he became our Shepherd, our Father, our Brother, our Offering, our Healing, our Safety and our Beloved.

He became the Shepherd King, the Parent King who knows when it's healthy for us to struggle through and when it's time for him to step in and take over – if we will let him. He knows when we don't want him and he knows when we're longing for him like a deer thirsts for a running stream. But no matter what his wisdom knows is right and appropriate and no matter if he knows we will reject his hand or gratefully cling to it, his heart always acutely feels our pain. It is imperative that we experience the truth that we are small and lost and that we have a King who comes to us daily with compassion, understanding and an open hand, not the clenched fist of enforced subjugation. If we do not first experience our own beautiful smallness and the astonishing healing humility of our king, our efforts to reach out to others in need will be sporadic, mechanical and often patronizing. We will find ways to give so we don't have to become involved.

I've said it before: you cannot give what you haven't got. You cannot share a compassion that truly heals if you have never experienced seeing your king coming to you in your own pain, coming in the rags of a shepherd to show that his authority does not reside in regalia but in the love he wears.

When you have experienced your king in this way, then when you go to others in need you will go to them with the full authority of the king which is the authority of love. You will go to them as Jesus the King came to you saying, “You are my brother. You are my sister. Because of this I have suffered with you and whatever has been done to you has been done to me.” We cannot go to the poor and suffering as if we are separate from them in any way because Jesus does not come to any of us separated from our pain.

I love the story of the man who looked out his window on a bitterly cold winter day and saw a flock of sparrows huddled in the snow, perishing from the freezing winds. There was a barn there and the door was open but the sparrows didn't understand that there was shelter, safety and warmth in there. The man went out and tried to shoo them toward the barn door but the sparrows would just take fright and fly in all directions before settling back on the frozen ground. The man sadly realized that the only way he could get the sparrows into the barn was if he became a sparrow. Only then would he be able to speak their language and lead them to shelter.

This is what our King did for us. He became what we are because he felt our pain. When we know that the king himself has led us to healing warmth and shelter, how could we not do the same for others? When we do so, we are at one with the nature of the divine King – the King who does not separate himself from his people.

“... may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Buried Treasure

Matthew 25: 14-30
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”

The above is the shortened version of the parable where the master returns to find that all his slaves except one had done well with his entrusted property. The one slave who did not do well was scared of his master and instead of wisely investing the money he had been given, he buried it for safe-keeping. It's good background knowledge to know that one talent was worth 15 years wages for a laborer in those days so even the one talent the master had entrusted to his slave was not negligible. That was a lot of money and the master had a right to expect at least an effort to use it judiciously and he was justified in being upset with the slave for burying his talent in the ground thereby relieving himself of all exertion and all responsibility of discovering his unique capabilities.

The phrase we need to pay attention to in this parable is “to each according to his ability”. The master was shrewd and attentive to the skill levels of his slaves. He understood the abilities of the slave who only received one talent. He did not overwhelm this man with responsibility he couldn't handle and in the same way, the master understood the abilities of the ones to whom he entrusted larger amounts. He knew what he was doing. In that way, he was not only a fair and merciful master but also a master who observed his servants and knew what he could realistically expect of each one. Perhaps the problem of the servant who buried his talent wasn't just that he knew his master was a hard master; perhaps his problem was that he compared himself to the ones who were given more and, when he saw their skills, became discouraged, gave up and said, “I'm no good. I'll never be able to make 5 talents like that other guy. I don't know how to wheel and deal in the marketplace like he can. I'm not aggressive or knowledgeable and all I've learned to do is grow crops. I'm sunk. I'll just bury the talent in the garden where I can keep an eye on it.”

He never thought that with his one talent, an enormous amount of seed money, he could have used his skills and started up a business of growing food for others. It would have been totally within his capacities and it would have made some profit for his master. However, if his idea was that he had to look just like the other slaves and operate exactly the way they did with the skills they had, it was game over for him. He was definitely going to fail or at least struggle mightily to hang on to that one talent.

Who has not gone through that agony of comparing oneself to someone else and feeling like an inadequate loser? There is a kind of backward spirituality in comparing self negatively to others. It's easy to feel that if we tell God that we know we're inadequate, we're failures and not as good as someone else, it will forestall him from making that judgment on us himself. Maybe he won't point his finger at us if we're already pointing our fingers at ourselves. Self examination is a healthy thing but it can also become an unhealthy negative habit where we spend all our time recognizing what's bad about ourselves and being totally afraid to recognize what's good. We end up 'burying our talents' because we have this image of God as a hard master. Surely he will be happier with us if we bury our one talent because at least he'll know we aren't arrogant and cocky.

The master in the parable was, indeed, angry with the servant but not because he lacked the same success as the other servants. The master was angry because he did not give the servant more than what the servant could handle and he did not expect the same from that servant as he expected from the ones who received more talents. The problem was that the servant got all caught up in his negative self-analysis and in his fear of the master and didn't even try. He didn't even try to evaluate the positive aspects of himself and come to an understanding that the master only wanted him do what he was trained to do and use his gifts in the best way he knew how.

That kind of fearful lack of effort on the master's behalf is called going underground as a gifted creation of God. We are afraid of crossing a line and going to the other extreme. “Oh God, I thank you that I am not as other people. I tithe, I go to Mass on Sunday, I am busy in your service...” We are honestly afraid of arrogance – or we should be. But if you have a fear of becoming arrogant, then recognizing and being grateful for your gifts and abilities will not lead to arrogance; it will cut arrogance off at the root. The trick is retaining and actively maintaining humble gratitude to God for everything that you are.

I don't blame the master of Jesus' parable for being angry, knowing that the master symbolizes God. I can understand that the Father would be a mite upset if he created something uniquely beautiful, loved it, shaped it to have a specific reason for existence that no other created being had and then that creature started looking at everything it was not created to be and decided it was no good. God might want to say to that creature, “Who do you think you are? Who gave you the wisdom to decide that you are not beautiful and not uniquely formed for a work made just for you? What gives you the right to second guess my intentions and my decisions? Do you think you are greater than me that you can decide that you aren't good enough, strong enough, intelligent enough or gifted enough? Have you even thought about how I define success and value? Do you stop to think about what's valuable to me? Or are you always looking at someone else and deciding they epitomize what I want in everybody? Are you basing your judgments on the world's definition of success? Look at me. Look into my eyes. See what's there? It's called love. It's called delight and desire. You are what I desire – the you I created you to be. Keep your eyes on my eyes and don't ever look away because if you do, you'll start to fall into the bottomless dark pit of everything you are not.”

What Jesus is telling us is that God would like us to go further than “do no harm”. It's not enough to just maintain the essentials and keep ourselves out of trouble. It's not enough for him and it's not enough for us. It's not enough for him because he has given each of us a unique character, unique gifts and a unique role to play for the building of the kingdom and it's not our responsibility to decide that, compared to somebody else, we don't have much value or importance. And it's not enough for us because as long as we are judging our own capabilities and our value as insignificant or trivial we stay in a mode of fearing God as a harsh master and we lose out on the joy of being a true gift.

A friend emailed me recently. Because of an accident, she has struggled for years with her self-worth because she can't physically and mentally take on what she was once capable of doing. In her email, she said that she had decided to appreciate people more and to make sure she expresses that appreciation to them instead of just thinking it. I don't know if she realizes what an astounding journey she could be embarking upon and what that kind of ministry can do for the building up of the kingdom. If I had to choose between someone who speaks to thousands at conferences and someone who commits to saying to someone else, “Thank you for what you did and for who you are,” I would choose the Ministry of Appreciation as the action that would have the most long-lasting impact on people and the capacity to actually change a community - especially if she expresses that appreciation to those who are usually in the background and who wouldn't often receive appreciation. I hope she does not compare her ministry to a ministry that has higher visibility and feel that hers is lacking or insignificant. The Church desperately needs her and many more people like her.

Unearth the buried treasure that is you. Dust it off and shine it up. It's priceless. It cannot be found anywhere else.

“Oh God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it may be.”(Jean Vanier via a powerpoint presentation by David Wells, keynote speaker at a Diocesan conference)

“Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.” (Teilhard de Chardin SJ)

On Wisdom

The Gospel message this week is clear: stay awake, pay attention and be spiritually prepared. However, underscoring the whole message is the Wisdom Edge. There is more to this scripture than just being ready for any spiritual eventuality, be it the end times or otherwise. There is a call for wisdom. Not knowledge – wisdom.

 

Wisdom is the oil for the flame that lights our way but very often people get confused between knowledge and wisdom. It's good to strive after knowledge because knowledge is valuable and very helpful. It's a great beginning. All the bridesmaids in the Gospel had knowledge, even the ones who ran out of oil. They knew that some night the bridegroom was going to come and 'steal' the bride to take her to the house that he was preparing for her. They knew that he was coming - they just had no idea when he was coming because it could take as long as two years to build a home for his bride. The bride and her attendants had to always be ready to leave suddenly.

This accurate knowledge of the rituals, traditions and the special event the night might bring was what brought all the bridesmaids to the right place at the right time and engaged in the right motions. But five waited with knowledge and wisdom and five waited with just knowledge. The ones who operated just on knowledge of the tradition had no real inner attachment to the possibilities of what the night could bring so they didn't bother to have more than barely enough provisions. They were waiting because that's what you do when you're a bridesmaid. It was the rule. It was the ritual. That was the way it was always done.

Wisdom goes beyond the way things have always been done; it looks for the spirit behind them, seeks the depths, senses the promises, envisions the unseeable and listens for the unheard. Then wisdom waits patiently and hopefully for the consummation of the promise. Wisdom dwells in the spaces between the black and white of knowledge. It's in those spaces that the mystery of God moves and one of the most potent parts of the mystery of God is wisdom. Wisdom is a gift, one that we should all ache to have and seek constantly because it is a light that will keep us ready for the moment the bridegroom comes to sweep us all away to the celebration. We will only receive it if we ask for it.

In the first reading from Wisdom it says: “Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.”

Anyone can seek wisdom and what is so wonderful is that the most illiterate peasant can be full of amazing spiritual wisdom. Conversely, the most knowledgeable person can be very much lacking in spiritual wisdom. Spiritual wisdom is not the same as the natural wisdom that comes with life's experiences. Life experience can contribute to spiritual wisdom but there's a point where experience just can't prepare us to recognize or touch the heart of God and it can't build up the grace to wait in patient hope. This is where we discover that wisdom is sheer gift and grace. Past experience teaches us to wait for something already known so if we experienced Christ in a certain way at one time, natural wisdom leads us to expect him in exactly the same way again. Through spiritual wisdom, the Spirit soaks us in the understanding that God comes in his own timing, sometimes unexpectedly and often in a form we won't recognize if we're depending on what we experienced in the past or on what others have experienced. Wisdom gives us eyes that are ready and waiting to see the fresh unknown.

Wisdom expects the unexpected. Wisdom delights in the fact that God is always the same but always new, always coming, always here, always a surprise and always more than what we thought or imagined. Wisdom teaches us to wait for the only thing worth waiting for: Christ's coming. Whether it's for his coming at the end of the world or for his coming into our present moment, wisdom teaches us how to wait: with the oil of patience, full expectation and joyful hope. Wisdom reminds us of our baptism and whispers, “You are an anointed one waiting for your Beloved. Watch out...he's coming soon. Keep your eyes open.”

Wisdom is also what teaches us how to appropriately apply any knowledge we have gained through experience. It isn't always what we think and it isn't always what knowledge suggests would be reasonable. I love this definition of the difference between knowledge and wisdom:

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

If wisdom's ways were always based on what is reasonable, we would not know the shocking unreasonableness of God's love for all of us. Wisdom goes beyond the rational and the logical into territories we are not always familiar with. Just because we know in our heads that Christ died for us doesn't mean we have explored where this astounding love came from. We can only reach that region with wisdom as our guide.

I am going to end this reflection with one of my favorite scriptures. It's from the book of Wisdom, written by Solomon who cherished wisdom above all else and was greatly blessed by God because of it. I'm including it here because not everyone has a bible that includes the book of Wisdom. 

Read this description of Wisdom and then ponder on the precious mystery that you are called to walk all your days in companionship with her. 

The Nature of Wisdom (Wisdom 7: 22-30)

There is in her (wisdom) a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
mobile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;

Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.