Wisdom
We don’t do anyone a favor by failing to shine God’s light of truth to the world. God has always called men and women to His own wonderful light.
Even pagans had a longing for truth and light. I have added a picture of a statue depicting Diogenes, a pagan figure who went about with a lamp searching for an honest and truthful man. Unfortunately, he was never satisfied. Since he did not have the Truth and the love of Christ, which would have given him hope, instead he is credited with founding a world view called Cynicism. He is a tragic figure.
If we don’t see the light, let’s bring it into our world. If we do not see the truth, let’s bring the Truth to all who meet us. Let us love as Jesus loved.
written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
The first reading we have is from Proverbs, which is called Wisdom literature. There is the Book of Wisdom, that and Sirach and Proverbs. The Wisdom literature, basically, is a wisdom, and I always assumed that there is and old man or an old woman sitting there, or maybe they are sitting together as a husband and wife thing, "Yeah, yeah, remember there, that, we need to act that way. We need to act that way. Remember Robert used to do that, and that caused nothing but trouble." The wisdom that comes from living our lives. The wisdom that comes from living our lives trying to follow the teachings of Christ. The wisdom that comes from seeing life go around you and people doing things that are contrary to the teachings of God, and you see the consequences. Oh I, I’m picking on you today, Robert, but that's all right, you're a wonderful guy. “I remember 35 years ago when Robert did such and such and now he's 90 and he's still suffering the consequences of what he did.”
We know that. We see that. We know that that's the way the world lives. Each of you can sit now, and say, "Oh, I remember when... and someone else is bearing the consequences." And one of the consequences is, as Jesus says, it is not going to remain hidden. If nothing else, it is going to be in your heart forever. The stupid things that you do. The unwise things that we do. And we look at, how is it that we look at the Wisdom literature, Proverbs specifically, and go, "Yeah, he's right!" It's because it is teachings that are consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of Jesus.
The wisdom comes from God. That wisdom is written on our hearts. We know it. It is called natural law. We know that there are certain things that are good and certain things that are bad. It is bad for me to walk up and hit Christina up the side of the head. That's just bad. We know that.
And one of the things that is most disturbing is we have the truth, the capital T, Truth. We know that the Church is the depository of the faith, and we look at society. Let's go back to the society of the 1960's, the 1970's. I was talking about TV shows, movies. The kind of conduct that is shown in media as being acceptable.
What are the consequences of that? What are the consequences if a young person is watching a show and a young woman is talking about how good she is, that she rarely ever goes to bed with somebody on the first date? And that is the standard that is upheld! How does that have an impact on women and on men? It changes the way that, and the media is presenting that to us, of how we perceive somebody. We fail to perceive them as people. We go, "Oh, there's a cute young girl, I wonder how quickly I can get her to go to bed with me.”
We see the same thing going on today. The strong, strong push to have us look at people and go, "Oh, he's homosexual. He must be absolutely wonderful." Or, "He's totally confused about whether he's a man or a woman, he must be absolutely wonderful." That has an impact.
And that impact, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, can be perceived as being very negative.
The impact of the 1960's is not good. They had a bad impact on the United States. There is no question about it. The Summer of Love. The drugs. Everything else. Those are bad things. They had a bad impact.
Yet, we know within our Church the teachings of, "No. It's wrong. Don't do that! It's wrong." That knowledge of knowing it's wrong is something that comes from living life; from what is built within us; and from the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Yet we are in a position that we feel very reluctant to go up and say, "No! It's wrong. That conduct in which you are engaging is wrong. It has consequences.” Because we don't want to impose our religious view on someone else, to look at someone's conduct within the prism of our own morality. Which means basically, we're cowards.
Because morality is not subjective. Jesus didn't say, "Well, I want you to be nice to your... well, I want you to love your neighbor, but it depends on the circumstances and it depends on who they are." Jesus never presents morality as a something that is relative. "Well, you know, if you really love her a lot and she's your daughter, it's all right if she does that. And, you know, if you love your son, it's all right. And you know, a little bit of alcoholism just isn't bad. You know, it runs through the family. We don't have to worry about it."
And Jesus is telling us in the reading today, "No! No! You know the truth!" What is the point of knowing the truth? How does he describe it? You light a lamp of truth and you hide it inside a vessel so you can't see the light. Or we put it under the bed. I always wondered about that one, wouldn't the bed catch on fire? But that's another point. We hide it. And Jesus says, "No! You put it on a lamp stand to be a light for others.”
Well, in this world that we are experiencing now, that we have experienced in the course of our lifetime, where is the answer, "No, that's wrong!"? Where is the answer of saying, "No! What you are doing is morally wrong."?
And I'm going to put it in the context of the priests and the bishops in this Church. If a priest, who takes a vow of celibacy decides that he wants to have a relationship with a woman, there is nothing inherently immoral with that (God created men and women for each other) outside of his vow. He is breaking his vow to God. It is sinful in that context. If a priest goes out and says, "I want to have a relationship with a young man”, not only does that break his vow, but it is inherently sinful. It is sinful by its very definition.
What happened that people didn't look at it and go, "Aaagh!"? They didn't look at it and go, "What you have done is so morally repulsive you deserve to be punished for your relationship with a woman, but the other is immoral and illegal and it is abusive!" And isn't the same problem that you see there, that allowed that, the same problem that we experience when people are coming out and saying, "Well, you know. It's all right, you know, I'm really happy that my daughter has had only had seven or eight sexual partners instead of eleven if she had been in this other age group. That's all right, though, that's really an improvement," without saying, "No! It's immoral!"?
Is it appropriate for men to treat women as objects? No! It's abusive. Is it more abusive for a man to make sexual overtures, and to be rude, crude and socially unacceptable with a woman, or to have sexual relations with her out of marriage? To be unfaithful to a wife? Which one is immoral? Which one can we accept? Which one do we say, "Whoa, wait a minute! It absolutely cannot occur!"?
Right now, at this time, the abusive conduct, which is just absolutely reprehensible, is where we are drawing the line. But why aren't we drawing the line for the man who says, "Well, I'm happily married, but you just have to understand, Darlene is just absolutely beautiful. I should be able to have a relationship with her, too.” Where are the people who are saying, "No! You can't do that!"?
Why aren’t we putting the light out? Because in this world, the light is not coming from where we expect it to come. Aren't WE called to be the very light? To go to the world and say, "No! No, no, no!" Because the truth is, the natural law is, the wisdom of age is, the teachings of Jesus Christ, the depository of the truth within the Catholic Church all say, "No! That conduct is wrong!"
And if we're not saying that, aren't we simply hiding our light so no one can see it? Do we not have an obligation, as much or more than the priests, to simply go into the world to be an example of what it means to be the light, and when it is appropriate to simply say, "No."
September 24, 2018 3