Wisdom’s Choices
The Thirty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time 2020
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November 8, 2020
Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 63; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13
As our church calendar year approaches its end and we ponder more deeply the end times, we rely upon the wisdom we have gleaned during our lifetime. The reading from Wisdom tells us how wisdom is made known, and the gospel explains that the proof of our wisdom is seen through our actions. As the first reading says, “taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence,” and wisdom will give good counsel for all those who keep vigil. Wisdom will keep the faithful one free from care. This is good advice for each of us in this post-election process, but its ultimate significance is for our march towards our own mortality and the hope for our salvation.
Wisdom is the practical understanding of how the world and society works, and it helps people copy with the complexities of daily life, including suffering and sickness, death and disaster. We gain wisdom form life’s experiences and from our observations about how the world works. Wisdom is passed down from those who are experienced to those perhaps not yet willing to listen. If we knew in our twenties what we know in our seventies, we may have made drastically different decisions. Wisdom is the pursuit of knowledge merged with practical experience and related to the proper ordering of life in relation to God.
The story of the ten virgins, or better said, the ten young girls, five wise and five foolish help us reflect upon the importance of wisdom for the correct ordering of our choices to a life in Christ. Part of the story is to emphasize the importance of being and staying prepared, and it also makes us look at the missed opportunities if we do not stay vigilant. We do not want to stand outside the door of heaven’s banquet pleading, “Let me in.” We don’t want to hear the words, “I don’t know you.”
The story also tells us that faith cannot be borrowed as easily as a jar of oil can. If we have wisdom, then we have the responsibility to be guided by it. For instance, we can have all the data and knowledge that wearing a mask in the time of COVID is good and reasonable, but if we do not wear it continuously when we are out in public, we are not acting in accord with wisdom. All the degrees and achievements in the world matter nothing unless we have the emotional and spiritual capital to make prudent choices in wisdom.
I’ll end with a note of hope. In the Gospel, the door to the banquet hall is shut tight by the bridegroom. We have made our choice, foolish that it may be, and we live with its consequences. God wants us to act with prudence and wisdom and not to rely solely upon our own resources. This is meant to signify an ultimate closed door not to be opened again, but our knowledge of God that we glean through wisdom shows us that if that door is shut, somehow, somewhere a window will open and we will have another chance, and if we miss it, God will open another window or a different door, and still another until we get it right. God will try another way, issue a new invitation, until we hunger for God’s presence as deeply as God hungers for ours, and we will come together in the end because we belong to God. We will also be with God.
Scripture for Daily Mass
First Reading:
Monday: (Ezekeil 47) The angel brought me back to the entrance of the temple,
and I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east,
for the façade of the temple was toward the east; the water flowed down from the southern side of the temple, south of the altar.
Tuesday: (Timothy 2) You must say what is consistent with sound doctrine,
namely, that older men should be temperate, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, love, and endurance.
Wednesday: (Timothy 3) Remind them to be under the control of magistrates and authorities, to be obedient, to be open to every good enterprise. They are to slander no one, to be peaceable, considerate, exercising all graciousness toward everyone.
Thursday: (Philemon) I urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment, who was once useless to you but is now useful to both you and me. I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.
Friday (2 John 4) let us love one another. For this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning, in which you should walk.
Saturday (3 John 5) Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey. For they have set out for the sake of the Name and are accepting nothing from the pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such persons, so that we may be co-workers in the truth.
Gospel:
Monday: (John 2) Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area.
Tuesday: (Luke 17) Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
Wednesday (Luke 17) As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they were going they were cleansed.
Thursday (Luke 17) “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. There will be those who will say to you,
‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.
Friday (Luke 17) I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.”
Saturday (Luke 18) “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.’”
Saints of the Week
November 9: The dedication of Rome's Lateran Basilica was done by Pope Sylvester I in 324 as the pope's local parish as the bishop of Rome. It was originally called the Most Holy Savior and was built on the property donated by the Laterani family. It is named John Lateran because the baptistry was named after St. John. Throughout the centuries, it was attacked by barbarians, suffered damage from earthquakes and fires, and provided residence for popes. In the 16th century, it went through Baroque renovations.
November 10: Leo the Great, pope and doctor (d. 461) tried to bring peace to warring Roman factions that were leaving Gaul vulnerable to barbarian invasions. As pope, he tried to keep peace again - in particular during his meeting with Attila the Hun, whom he persuaded not to plunder Rome. However, in Attila's next attack three years later, Rome was leveled. Some of Leo's writings on the incarnation were influential in formulating doctrine at the Council of Chalcedon.
November 11: Martin of Tours, bishop (316-397), became an Roman soldier in Hungary because he was born into a military family. After he became a Christian, he left the army because he saw his faith in opposition to military service. He settled in Gaul and began its first monastery. He was proclaimed bishop in 371 and worked to spread the faith in at time of great uncertainty and conflict. He divided sections of his diocese into parishes.
November 12: Josaphat, bishop and martyr (1580-1623) was a Ukranian who entered the Basilian order and was ordained in the Byzantine rite. He was named the archbishop of Polotsk, Russia and attempted to unite the Ukrainian church with Rome. His opponents killed him. He is the first Eastern saint to be formally canonized.
November 13: Francis Xavier Cabrini, religious (1850-1917) was an Italian-born daughter to a Lombardy family of 13 children. She wanted to become a nun, but needed to stay at her parents’ farm because of their poor health. A priest asked her to help work in a girls’ school and she stayed for six years before the bishop asked her to care for girls in poor schools and hospitals. With six sisters, she came to the U.S. in 1889 to work among Italian immigrants. She was the first American citizen to be canonized.
November 13: Stanislaus Kostka, S.J., religious (1550-1568) was a Polish novice who walked from his home to Rome to enter the Jesuits on his 17th birthday. He feared reprisals by his father against the Society in Poland so we went to directly see the Superior General in person. Francis Borgia admitted him after Peter Canisius had him take a month in school before applying for entrance. Because of his early death, Kostka is revered as the patron saint of Jesuit novices.
November 14: Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Superior General (1917-1991) was the 28th Superior General of the Jesuits. He was born in the Basque region of the Iberian Peninsula. He is considered one of the great reformers of the Society because he was asked by the Pope to carry out the reforms of Vatican II. November 14th is the commemoration of his birth.
November 14: Joseph Pignatelli, S.J., religious and Superior General (1737-1811) was born in Zaragosa, Spain and entered the Jesuits during a turbulent era. He was known as the unofficial leader of the Jesuits in Sardinia when the Order was suppressed and placed in exile. He worked with European leaders to continue an underground existence and he was appointed Novice Master under Catherine the Great, who allowed the Society to receive new recruits. He secured the restoration of the Society partly in 1803 and fully in 1811 and bridged a link between the two eras of the Society. He oversaw a temperate reform of the Order that assured their survival.
This Week in Jesuit History
· Nov 8, 1769. In Spain, Charles III ordered all of the Society's goods to be sold and sent a peremptory demand to the newly elected Pope Clement XIV to have the Society suppressed.
· Nov 9, 1646. In England, Fr. Edmund Neville died after nine months imprisonment and ill-treatment. An heir to large estates in Westmoreland, he was educated in the English College and spent forty years working in England.
· Nov 10, 1549. At Rome, the death of Paul III, to whom the Society owes its first constitution as a religious order.
· Nov 11, 1676. In St James's Palace, London, Claude la Colombiere preached on All Saints.
· Nov 12, 1919. Fr. General Ledochowski issued an instruction concerning the use of typewriters. He said that they could be allowed in offices but not in personal rooms, nor should they be carried from one house to another.
· Nov 13, 1865. The death of James Oliver Van de Velde, second bishop of the city of Chicago from 1848 to 1853.
· Nov 14, 1854. In Spain, the community left Loyola for the Balearic Isles, in conformity with a government order.
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