Monday of the
Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
(Sirach 1:1-10; Mark 9:14-29)
More than eighty years ago T. S. Eliot’s asked: "Where is the
Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where
is the knowledge we have lost in information?" Even then, before the Information Age, it
seemed that humans were becoming lost in a sea of facts. However, the quest for wisdom is a perennial
effort as today’s first reading attests.
The Book
of Sirach was written almost two hundred years before Christ. It signals the word of God as the fount of
wisdom. By means of this word humans learn
to live well which is whole purpose of wisdom.
Christians see Jesus as the consummate word of God. He provides not only a modicum of happiness in
physical life but its fullness in the resurrection of the dead. In today’s gospel he indicates how to achieve
wisdom. People become wise by standing
before God in prayer. There they not
only ask God to provide their needs but listen to God telling them what to do.
It is difficult for us to wait on the
Lord in prayer. Not only in the Information Age
but throughout the ages we have wanted instant remedies to our problems. If we were given these remedies, however, we
would never become wise, never achieve happiness, and never know God.
