Sirach 14:20-27, 15:1-10: Terror and Wisdom
Holy Thursday, April 18, 2019
Happiness is found in the pursuit of our vocation as an integral part of God’s plan in God’s time. Today’s reading tells us that we are to take individual responsibility for our actions, or lack of them. We remind ourselves that so frequently we become targets of anger when we work in God’s vineyard. We also remind ourselves that Wisdom serves a double function: it helps us in our search for our place in God’s plan, and she is also our bulwark in times of fear.
From today’s MAGNIFICAT Morning Prayer: John 15:18,20: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. No slave is greater than his master”. Disciples who follow Jesus faithfully must expect to follow him into dislike, ridicule, even persecution from those who find the Gospel threatening to their ways of thinking and acting.
Psalm 31 tells us that sometimes In the face of all my foes I am a reproach, an object of scorn to my neighbors and of fear to my friends. As my Dad used to say, You know who your friends are when it’s “stand up” time.
Wisdom 2:12-14 Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the Lord. To us he is censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us.
Jeremiah 6:25: Do not go out to the fields or walk on the roads, for the enemy has a sword, and there is terror on every side.
As we know, so often when we are doing the work we are called to do we encounter huge opposition. When we stand to witness, a wave of resistance greets us. This is when we need to rest in Wisdom.
Mother-like she meets and embraces us. She shelters us from the heat and dwells in our home. We can lean upon her and not fall. We can put our trust in her and not be shamed. We will find joy and gladness and everlasting name in her.
Where do we find Wisdom?
We pursue her like a scout, peep through her windows and listen at her doorways. We encamp near her house and fasten our tent pegs near her walls. We build nests in her leafage and lodge in her branches.
We learn from scripture that Wisdom comes from patient and active waiting on the word of God. When we meditate on this word, we receive the answers we seek. These answers will come in God’s time and in God’s way . . . but they will arrive.
So let us pray for those who would terrorize us. Let us forgive those who wish us ill and bring them with us as we ask Wisdom to open her doors to us.
And let us pray.
Psalm 31: As for me, I trust in you, Lord, I say: “You are my God. My life is in your hands, deliver me from the hands of those who hate me”.
And grant us the Wisdom to see goodness in all things and all people, just as you see goodness in each of us. Amen.
A re-post from March 4, 2012.
Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 11.3 (2009). Print.
Image from: http://akshatrathi.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/the-happiness-paradox/
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