October 7, 2009
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Breaking Open the Word By James Cavanagh Oct. 11: 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture readings: Overview: This week’s readings include some tough lessons. Our first reading extols the value of wisdom—even if it means forsaking success (“scepter and throne”), prosperity and even our health. Along with wisdom the author prays for prudence, which may be defined as practical reason or common sense. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (repeating an ancient maxim) calls prudence “the charioteer of the virtues” because it guides all the other virtues. The first reading may not seem difficult, but how many of us are willing to trade our material comfort, the good opinion of others or even our health for something as intangible and impractical as wisdom? The second reading is related to the first insofar as it focuses on the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, which is another name for wisdom. To seek wisdom is to seek Christ, “the Word made flesh” (Jn 1:14). Another word for “wisdom” is truth. Finally, in this week’s Gospel we hear about a rich man who was attracted to Jesus, but was unwilling to follow him because “he had many possessions.” He addressed Jesus as “good teacher.” But Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good?” Jesus wants him—and us—to be clear that the answer to the question, “What good must I do?” can only come from the one who alone is good, namely God. “Only God,” Pope John Paul II said in his encyclical “Splendor of Truth,” “can answer the question about what is good,” which he did when he gave us the Ten Commandments. The difficulty for the rich man wasn’t in his head—he knew the commandments—but in his heart. The difficulty for most of us lay in the fact that, like the rich man, we usually know what good we must do, but lack the will to do it. Key verse: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Catechism of the Catholic Church”: “The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant” (No. 2563). Pope Benedict XVI: “Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se” (“Caritas in Veritate,” 36). |
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