(WIS 7:7-11; PS 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17; HEB 4:12-13; MK 10:17-30)
Wisdom. Isn’t that what we really all seek? Deep down. We all want to be knowledgeable and use good judgment in all that we do. We want to make good decisions. We want to have awareness where we use our experience to make the right choices and to help others make the right choices. We want to be a wise partner in marriage. We want to be a wise parent. We want to be members of society to that people come to for advice and for help in solving problems. And we want that wisdom of heart, where we are so in tune with God that we are able to regularly choose right from wrong, even in the face of the most challenging of temptations.
We want this. We need this. We yearn for this. Deep down, I feel that every human being wants this level of wisdom – the type of wisdom spoken about in the first reading from the Book of Wisdom. A wisdom that will help us to lead loving and morally sound lives, a wisdom that we can leave with others, and wisdom that ultimately brings us into communion with God.
Jesus tells us how to get there. In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells the rich young man that he is lacking one thing. He asks him to go sell everything he has, and then follow Him. The rich young man cannot do it. He was so close to ultimate wisdom. He was doing everything right, except one thing – sacrifice. He was not willing to sacrifice his material possessions for Christ. To achieve the ultimate wisdom and grace of God, this man could not part with the things of this world.
The thing is? Would many of us? Thankfully God has not yet asked me to sell everything I have and follow him in blind faith. He doesn’t ask that of most of us. But I don’t think that is the point of this parable. God is not asking us to sell everything we have, drop everything we are doing and go follow Him. He knows that we need things like shelter, clothing, food, and transportation. And He wants us to have luxuries in life and enjoy life.
But what he does ask is that we renounce those things that are holding us back, and he wants us to follow Him in everything that we do. We sacrifice those material things that are keeping us from having the tightest relationship possible with Him, those favorite sins of ours, those vices where we get greedy and want more. Jesus wants us to be happy and to enjoy the good pleasures in this world, but it must be in the right perspective. God must be first and foremost in our lives, in everything that we do, and anything that stands before us and God we must be place second (or third, or fourth…), and sacrifice if necessary.
This is tough for us. But it’s through sacrifice for our Lord that we achieve His wisdom. This is where we so often fail, because we can talk the talk, but it is so hard to walk the walk.
You can look at any aspect in todays world to see where this is true, and how difficult it is to live a life of sacrifice. And I’m talking just a little sacrifice. In a world of “more” and instant gratification, how often do we sacrifice anything for our soul and the souls of others? Therefore when it comes down to sacrificing our personal wants or desires for our spouse or our children, we so often fail. But yet, we think we’re getting wiser. We think just as we get older, and have more life experience, this means that we are wiser, right? This is what we think. But unless you have Christ guiding your life, it’s not the case. Our “experience” is a house of cards. Experience is not the same as wisdom – and there are many experienced people in this world who are not wise. And the devil knows this. Satan knows that if he continues to redirect us and entice us with perceived wisdom and distractions that we will truly fail to see and experience Christ’s truth – an experience that will truly lead to wisdom.
There are so many distractions in the world today. Things that we think are hot button issues that if controlled with more laws, will fix society. Same-sex marriage. Gun violence. Abortion. Contraception. Drugs. Pornography and a sex-crazed culture. Our right and freedom to do anything that we want to do as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. The list goes on and on. Each is its own evil, and each should be fought to the utmost degree. But they are largely smokescreens that cover up a larger, underlying problem. And it’s a problem that, if fixed, could fix all of the above. That problem is marriage.
Yep, it’s the same thing I wrote about last week. And it’s the same thing I wrote about a few other times in recent months and what I’m going to touch on in the coming weeks. And coming out of the World Meeting of Families and with the Synod on Families currently underway – Marriage and Family is the biggest priority in the Church. But in this secular world, the sanctity of marriage and the family is being sacrificed right before us.
We can achieve a wisdom, like that in the first reading today, through a Sacramental Marriage. We can achieve wisdom in our families by living the Church domestically – that’s in our homes. But we must sacrifice. We must sacrifice our selfish desires for our wives, and husbands, and children. We must be willing to renounce those things that keep us from having a Sacramental marriage, and ultimately keep us from receiving God’s grace. And we must look to the other sacraments – namely Confession and the Eucharist – to help us achieve this.
Can we totally eradicate all those problems listed above by simply living a Sacramental marriage? No, because no human is perfect. We cannot expect a perfect society. We cannot expect every person and every marriage to be perfect. No one is perfect. But a lot more of us could try. And we all could try better. If we simply worked a little harder in our marriages, and sacrificed a little more, and embraced our faith and the Church a little more, perhaps a lot of those other problems would fix themselves.
But Satan doesn’t want us to focus on the core problem. Satan doesn’t want us to sacrifice. He doesn’t want us to renounce those things that make us happy, and he wants those things to interfere with us and our relationships, and especially our relationship with Christ.
He only wants us to focus on the headlines and what’s making news. And lets face it. Divorces and problem marriages are not in the news. Broken families are not in the news. When bad things happen, we want to blame lack of gun control or the politicians or the police or some other group of people. But how many of us look at the family? How many of us look inward at ourselves, or own families, or our own marriages, when seeking where the problems lie?
Because when we do, to use a boxing term – it’s a body blow to the devil. As I wrote last week, marriage and family can indeed change the world. The family is a life changing grace and Jesus doesn’t want us to renounce the family, but embrace it with Him as the center. We don’t have to renounce all our possessions, or our hobbies, or things that make us happy, but we need to keep it all in the right perspective, and look to our marriage and our families as the avenue to Gods grace. But we must be willing to sacrifice anything that stands between ourselves and that grace.
We can try to put up the front, but God sees right through us as the second reading from the Letter of Hebrews says today. He sees who we truly are, what our family life truly is, and what goes on behind closed doors. And in time, the world sees the evidence. Because how we treat each other in our families will transcend to how we treat others outside our families. Do we treat others with dignity and respect and love? Or do we treat each other with anger and impatience and disrespect?
What type of mark will your family leave in this world? What level of wisdom will you achieve? Will you present a false wisdom, telling people to “do what I say, not as I do”? Or will you impart a wisdom of the heart – one that can positively impact and inspire others and is only achievable through a close relationship with Christ, through our faith, through our marriages and our families, doing everything in His name, and sacrificing all that stands between you and His grace?
