28th Sunday... B.

DOCTRINE AND FAITH 
(Wisdom 7,7-11; Hebrew 4, 12-13; Mark 10, 17-30; 28th Sundayof Ordinary Time, Year B)

          Today’s first reading praises the loftiness of wisdom. It surpasses wealth, beauty, and precious stones. When asked to request for anything he wished, Solomon preferred wisdom to every other thing. One may ask, what is wisdom? The answer, however, is not simple. Wisdom as the Bible would have it is allying one’s will with that of God. The recurrent refrain in the corpus of Wisdom Literature of the Bible holds: The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom. A wise person may be simply defined as one who gives things their proper values and who orders his priorities well. He is the one who gives God what is due to him and does same to fellow men.
       Themes in today’s readings may serve as yardsticks with which to measure how wise we are. The second reading from the letter to the Hebrews dwells on the effectiveness of the word of God. It holds that the word of God is alive and active. Once it leaves the mouth of God it must produce the effect it is meant to achieve. This is because there is life and power in the word of God. Let us recall what is in the creation narrative: God said; Let there be light; and there was light.The prophet Isaiah compares the word of God to rain that never returns to the sky as vapour unless it has achieved its purpose. Thus, we can describe the word of God as being dynamic. A truly wise person is one who allows the dynamism that is encapsulated in the word of God to become effective in him by allowing the word of God transform his or her life. He lays his heart bare and open to the word of God. We are also wise when we allow the word of God described as incisive and penetrating to really enter into our innermost being, into our heart in order to pass judgment on our emotions, aspirations, thoughts and actions. Our wisdom depends on the extent we allow the word of God to transform us.

       The gospel reading presents the incident of a young man who approached Jesus demanding to be told what he was to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus indicated to him the ordinary way of keeping the commandments. When he pointed out that he has been observing them then Jesus told him that what he needed to do was only one thing: Sell all you have, give them to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come and follow me. The young man went away sad. Instead of accepting and welcoming the invitation of Jesus which is the expression of his love and condition to be happy, the young man went away sad and afflicted because he was rich. He was not wise enough to follow the directives of God that would bring him true happiness. He was much attached to his wealth and did not accept the divine wisdom which, according to the first reading, is more precious than gold and silver: I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer, for compared with her, all gold is pinch of sand and beside her silver ranks as mud. Divine wisdom which looks like foolishness in the eyes of men consists in renouncing the goods of the earth in order to live fully in love and having treasures in heaven which satisfies the human heart. It is, therefore, necessary to be detached from the goods of the earth. It is a sign of wisdom to have our priorities right:spiritual things first; then followed by the material ones.Jesus further remarked that it is difficult for a rich man to enter into heaven. To enter into heaven, it is necessary to have a pure heart. If the heart is loaded with attachment to material things, there would be no space for charity and generosity. The unfortunate thing about material thing is that the quest to have more of it never ends. The Latin adage has it thus: amor habendi habendo crescit (literal translation goes thus: the love of having, by having increases). What is forgotten is that material things never satisfy human heart. We are created not to be attached to money or other material things. Money should be our servant not our master as most of us do make it. A truly wise person is one who makes his heart free from all attachments to money and material things. The wealthy person who is not attached to his wealth but uses it for works of charity and generosity is also wise. May we ask the good Lord in today’s Mass to give us the wisdom that would enable us to allow the word of God transform our hearts and make it free from all attachment to material goods and be disposed for generous and spontaneous works of charity to the needy among us. +John I. Okoye.