Sunday 12 February 2017

Seeing Hidden Wisdom, 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A



1 Cor 2:6-10
Today I want to tell you about a secret.
Its not my secret. But at many times in his letters St. Paul speaks about a “secret”, a hidden truth revealed, its repeated feature if how he describes what has been made known in Christ.
He says at one stage (1 Cor 15:51), “I tell you a secret…”, speaking of the resurrected of the Body that will occur to everyone at the end of time: namely, that we shall all be changed, with new different glorified bodies.
He says another time (Eph 3:3-9, also 1:9), where he uses the word “secret” 5 times in just 6 verses, that God had a hidden plan to unite all peoples in Christ, both Jew and Gentile, and that this was His secret plan from the dawn of time.
He says this also elsewhere.
But today I am thinking about this because we heard him speak, in our second reading (1 Cor 2:6-10) of the “hidden wisdom” that has been “revealed”.
-a "secret" or "hidden" wisdom that is hidden no more -it has been revealed in Jesus Christ,
However, it's also true that in each case it remains hidden from most of humanity because people fail to see it -even though its been made known.

My point to you today is this: the hidden, the unseen is actually the more important.
The unseen is actually what will last forever.
Let me know a comparison between God and love in this regard:
Love cannot be seen.
God cannot be seen.
Love is visible in its effects, as God is visible in His effects, but neither can be seen directly while we live in this world
Yet, both love and God are what give meaning to everything else.
And, as scripture says, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8) -so it's hardly surprising that this analogy of both being unseen while both cause the meaning of everything holds.

To come back to St. Paul's text: St. Paul says that they crucified Him because they didn't recognise this hidden wisdom. The “masters of our age”(1 Cor 2:6) rejected Him because they didn't see what was there to be seen.
We, too, can reject what is most important if we fail to have our eyes truly open.

Today, this day, even without pausing to make the conscious choice,
I can allow myself to get so caught up in busy-ness that I fail to see what is important in the midst if the busy-ness. I can busy cooking lunch, or busy unlocking the church doors, busy, busy busy, and I can fail to see and value the PEOPLE who are before me.
And I fail to truly value the people for what they are because I fail to truly see GOD, and see how God chooses and loves these people, and wants me to love these people.

BUT its not just busy-ness that does this to me.
Laziness, failing to mentally engage with the world, with the TRUE hidden meaning of the world, there is a type of mental laziness that fails to see what is before me, fails to see what God has shown me.

The REMEDY to this isn’t complicated.
We’re already here at Mass, so we have the truth before us -but how to see it?
It involves that interior attentiveness that we call ‘contemplation’.
It involves regular times of prayer, when I wake in the morning, when I go to bed at night, and pausing to re-find Him during the day.
None of this is complicated. But when we don’t do it, we become like those who “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8) because they failed to see what He had shown them:
“the things no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him”(1 Cor 2:9)
-the “hidden mysteries” He has already told us about, that give meaning to everything else.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thankyou for this reflection, father! Lovely homily.