The Word and the Wisdom

WORD 2day: Saturday, 8th week in Ordinary time

June 3, 2023: Sirach 51:12-20; Mark 11: 27-33

Jesus is the Word made flesh... the Second person of the Trinity, the Wisdom signified in the Old Testament personified in the person of Jesus,  God's guiding presence that was with the people of the Old Testament and came alive in human flesh in the New Testament. The readings taken together today, give us a twin perspective of Jesus and Jesus' relation to the figure of Wisdom!

1. Jesus has Wisdom: the Gospel presents to us the way Jesus tackled the trap that was laid for him by the shrewd pharisees and scribes. Jesus proves that he had the Wisdom, a great gift from the Lord. It is fundamentally knowing what to say and what not to say at a particular point of time and saying what is to be said in the best way possible with the choice of the right verbal or non verbal language! Now that was Jesus' forte. Be it in the event we read in the Gospel today,or the incident of the woman caught in adultery, or the case of the samaritan woman, or the discussion with the disciples asking for power and position... everywhere Jesus knew the right thing to be said and he chose the right sense of doing it.

2. Jesus as Wisdom: the way the first reading presents Wisdom, we come to clearly understand what the Old Testament speaks of as Wisdom is not merely a quality or a faculty, but a person, a personal presence of the Almighty! When Jesus lived and moved around, people readily and without much difficulty saw the Wisdom that he was. Jesus was, and is, the Wisdom that fills us with light and shows us the way. If only we accept the Wisdom of Christ in contrast to rest of the truth claims of the world, we would find that joy that is complete, that Christ alone can give.