Sunday Reflection with Fr Terry Tastard - 6 November 2011

Pope launches new Vatican portal

We live in an age of knowledge. Already there is a vast amount of knowledge in our world almost instantly available through the internet. You can research the history of the Crusades on Wikipedia. News pours in from every corner of the world, constantly updated. Sitting here in London we can read the daily newspapers of New York, Sydney or Nairobi. You can check the stock market. You can ask engineers via a blog to help you work out a stress equation. You can even get the computer to translate into English a passage in French, German or Latin. So much knowledge is coming our way that people complain about 'information overload'. We have infinitely more information at our disposal compared with previous generations. But are we any wiser than they are? You can know a lot and still be foolish, or at least, unwise. How to live life generously, fruitfully, harmoniously, thoughtfully - this is wisdom, and it is inseparable from our life in communion with God.

The scriptures this weekend have their own perspective on what we ought to know. In Wisdom 6.12-13 we are reminded that wisdom is a search. Even to seek wisdom is to begin to find it. To yearn for wisdom is to begin a quest in which wisdom will come to us. It sounds obvious enough. But do we do it? It is in part a question of focus. In our rushed, pressurised existence today our attention is scattered and distracted. We tend to confuse knowledge and wisdom. We know many things but too often they are fragmented bits of knowledge that do not fit into the bigger picture of who we are, and what God asks of us. Our reading today emphasizes that we have to want wisdom. Perhaps the first step is acknowledging our need of it.

In the gospel Jesus gives us a story about wisdom in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt. 25.1-13). Perhaps you think that the wise virgins should have been generous and shared their oil, but this would misunderstand the story. There are some things in life that we have to do for ourselves. You cannot ask someone else to undertake the process of spiritual growth for you. You cannot ask someone to find for you the wisdom you need. You can only do this yourself. The foolish virgins could not ask others to be alert, awake and on the lookout for them. They had to take responsibility for their own lives.

It would be a lonely and isolating existence if the story ended there, but the parable is taken up into the life of the Church. Here many seekers the grace of God and the experience of the saints encourages them in their search for wisdom. We take responsibility for our spiritual lives, but we do not do so alone. Alongside us is a great company of fellow-pilgrims. We learn from one another's experience. Faith gives us perspective on the events of life, as we seek to make sense of it. We pray through the events of life. We review our life with repentance, or thanksgiving, or intercession. Our communion with God in prayer helps us to be in communion with the loving wisdom that made the world, that came among us in Christ to defeat sin and overcome death. No wonder the first reading speaks of wisdom as something alive and active, seeking us as much as we seek it.


Fr Terry is parish priest at St Mary's in Finchley East, north London. Fr Terry's latest book: Ronald Knox and English Catholicism is published by Gracewing at £12.99 and is available on Amazon, on ICN's front page. To read Sr Gemma Simmonds' review on ICN see: www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=16114