Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr B 2024

Title

Living in the light of our future

Outline

Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Scott Hahn about his book Catholics in Exile

In many ways that has always been the case with Catholics in the USA

He was talking about how living in exile went beyond conventional wisdom to receiving divine revelation.

That is the theme of our first two readings: Wisdom presents Solomon as realizing his need for and therefore praying for the divine gift of wisdom and then valuing her when she came. He did not need better counselors; he needed divine enlightenment. We see that in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, those Isaiah ch 11 gifts that you know so well.

Hebrews talks about the divine Logos, not the Bible but Jesus himself, who knows us better than we know ourselves, to whom “we must render an account,” and therefore whom we need to enlighten us about ourselves and others (to the degree we need to know) in the light of our future hope.

I pray for and leave myself open to such wisdom or enlightenment every day.

In our gospel we see it at work

There is a man who knows that there is a hope, an eternal life that is more than this world. He kneels, submitting himself to Jesus and asks how to get it.

Jesus first questions whether he has been enlightened: “Good teacher?” “You know that no one is good but God,” i.e. do you know who I really am? There is no response.

Then he asks him about God’s commandments, and he is well-formed and sincere in his commitment to them. Yet he seeks something more, for Jesus loves him and God has put a spark of enlightenment in him.

Then comes the diagnostic command, “Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Will he respond in glad obedience to Jesus, God in person, the Logos in flesh? No, he will not. He is attached to his security and does not have enough hope in “treasure in heaven” to let it go.

Jesus generalizes to his disciples: it is impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom. Only divine intervention makes it possible.

Peter responds, “What about us? We did it.” And Jesus responds, “Yes, I know; you will be supplied now, albeit with persecution, and you will also receive that “eternal life in the age to come.”

God had worked his miracle and they had received the wisdom of God with the sword of the divine Logos cutting them free from their attachments as could be seen in the nets laying on the beach.

So the conclusion is simple

Pray for divine wisdom and follow it even when it is contrary to conventual wisdom.

Ask our Lord to penetrate our hearts with his divine logos and to reveal our attachments. With me it was biblical studies books that I clung onto, with you likely something different.

And always ask the question whether this or that is part of the follow me of Jesus or is part of that which you or I should leave behind.

Thanks be to God who not only calls us but gives us the insight, inner power, and wisdom on how to follow the call into his kingdom.