THE SCAM OF WORLDLY WISDOM

SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT, POPE, DOCTOR

1 Cor 3:18-23; Ps 24:1-6; Lk 5:1-11

Worldly Wisdom as Foolishness

In our reflection yesterday, we stated that we left the mountain of God in the company of the devil, and that to come back, we must do so in the company of the Holy Spirit. As the psalm says: “Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? The man with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things.” No one can keep the two companies at the same time. James 4:4 says the same thing. ‘Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” The Lord taught the same lesson in Mt 6:24, saying that no one can serve two masters; the love for one is hatred for the other. God attracts us to his company or communion by his self-revelation, because he made us for himself and in his own image. But the evil one, who is the father of lies, attracts us with lies, using our attachment to creatures to lure us away from the company of God to his own evil company. He keeps us in his evil company by the same means of lies, illusions, and darkness. Thus, all who are found in his company are victims of scam and deception. His deadliest bait for us is ourselves. He presents himself disguised in the cloak of our glorified or exalted selves when his temptations fail to bring us to the enjoyment of creaturely goods.

He presents a kind of wisdom to us; a wisdom of this world, based on self-exaltation. We fall for his scam when we lack the light of the Holy Spirit; for without the light of truth we are ignorant of our true self. Only the divine light reveals to us how empty and useless we are without God. Without God, we are full of every capacity for sin and evil. Therefore, Saint Paul calls the wisdom of this world foolishness before God, for it is based on lies and ignorance. “Make no mistake about it: if any one of you thinks of himself as wise, in the ordinary sense of the word, then he must learn to be a fool before he really can be wise. Why? Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.” The wisdom that leads us to creatures and their enjoyment without their creator is no wisdom at all, for they are nothing without God, the creator of all. Today’s psalm reminds us of this too. “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples. It is he who set it on the seas; on the waters he made it firm.” We understand creatures and the whole creation only with the light of God and in the company of the Holy Spirit. The wisdom the Spirit gives us enables us to know and use created goods appropriately as means to our ultimate good, that is, God.

The Holy Spirit makes us live in the presence of Jesus Christ, who is the Eternal Wisdom made man for our salvation. Following Jesus Christ, we know the divine wisdom, which is beyond the comprehension of the worldly-minded. The Son of Man blessed Peter and his companions with his presence at the Lake of Gennesaret, and they left everything and followed him. “He got into one of the boats—it was Simon’s—and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.’ ‘Master,’ Simon replied, ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.’” He did the bidding of the Eternal Wisdom and was astonished at his catch. He and his companions never left the company of Jesus again; they became his disciples. We have received the same vocation.

Saint Gregory the Great learned to follow the Lord from an early age. He was born in Rome and entered public service as was usual for the son of an aristocratic family, finally becoming Prefect of the City of Rome for some years. He founded a monastery in Rome and some in Sicily, then became a monk. He was ordained a deacon and sent as an envoy to Constantinople for five years. He was elected Pope on 3 September 590; the first monk to become Pope. He reformed the administration of the Church’s estates for the good of the poor. He kept the Church safe during the troubled period of Rome’s decline. He propagated the faith in many places, including England. He wrote extensively on pastoral care, spirituality, and morals. He designated himself as ‘servant of the servants of God.’ He died on 12 March 604. May his prayers help us to live in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray: O God, who care for your people with gentleness and rule them in love, through the intercession of Pope Saint Gregory, endow, we pray, with a spirit of wisdom those to whom you have given authority to govern, that the flourishing of a holy flock may become the eternal joy of the shepherds. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.