Wisdom and Prudence

Homily for Friday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Wisdom is an important part of our life of faith. It is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and is connected to prudence, the cardinal virtue of making wise choices. Two lessons about wisdom are present in our Scriptures today.

The first comes from St. Paul who contrasts the wisdom of God – the message of the cross – with the wisdom of the world. In St. Paul’s time, the Jewish people were looking for a Messiah who would exercise great political and military power. The Greeks were looking for a leader who would be a great natural philosopher like Plato and Aristotle. Neither group could quite accept that in God’s wisdom, God had sent his son as our Savior who would die on a cross to show us the way to salvation.

St. Paul’s message is both a challenge and a source of hope. It is a challenge because we, too, are susceptible to mistaking worldly wisdom for God’s wisdom and falling prey to foolishness. We set our minds on what and how God should be and then hope that God fulfills our expectations. It is a source of hope because the wisdom of God is not some amorphous philosophy that we struggle to understand, it is a person – Jesus Christ – with whom we can have a relationship. Jesus shows us what and how God is, and he is the measure by which we can truly come to know, and therefore live in, his wisdom.

In the Gospel text for today, wisdom is perfected in wise choices. In the case of the virgins in the parable, five were prudent while five of them were not. However, they all fell asleep, and Jesus’ words to them were not to be sure to have oil. Jesus taught us to stay awake. Vigilance accompanies wisdom.

Foolish or wise, we are all susceptible to falling asleep. Wisdom and preparation are important, but so is ensuring we are not complacent in the face of them. We gratefully acknowledge that we have a sacramental church to help us in this spiritual task. Through the church, we cultivate the gifts of the Spirit and grow in practice and virtue. In the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we get a glimpse, a foretaste, of the wedding feast to which the bridegroom will come.