In today’s Gospel Our Lord laments that the public square in his time had been reduced to two polarized parties whining at each other: the ascetic, traditional types, who saw life as an extended funeral, and the hedonistic, progressive types, who saw life as a party. Each party had some valid points, but each also sought simply to absorb the other into its own way of thinking and feeling and to ignore any merits it may have had. When John the Baptist and Our Lord enter the public square, the parties try to do the same thing to them. Our Lord reminds them that the true goal is to seek wisdom: they are receiving John and him as if they were other children on the same level who should just get with one program or another.
The world today works very similarly: people want us to think, to feel, to act in a certain way, to either spend all our time making waves and partying, or to stay quiet and just suffer through life like everyone else trying to make a living. Wisdom, as Our Lord describes today, is recognized by all as something not worthy of criticism: it goes beyond opinion to the question of a truly fulfilling way of life. There is wisdom in moments of joy and moments of duty, but neither can be excluded. Wisdom keeps the bigger picture always in mind, and based on it we know that there are moments of feast and of famine in life. Jesus is the Wisdom of God, and he seeks to help us to break out of lifestyle stalemates and to embrace life, with its lights and shadows, in all its fullness and truth.
Let’s pray today for the Wisdom that breaks us out of any ruts or stalemates in which our lives are stuck.
Readings: 1 Timothy 3:14–16; Psalm 111:1–6; Luke 7:31–35.