8th Sunday after Pentecost 31 July 2022 Living in the Spirit
One can be intelligent but not wise. Many people are too ‘clever’ to come to terms with God, either as to understanding or obeying.
A humble peasant praying reverently is showing more wisdom than a highly educated person mocking religion.
They say if you don’t know history you are condemned to repeat it. But it seems that even if we do know history we are condemned to repeat it!
Folly can be kept in circulation and it is contagious.
Every generation makes the same mistakes. We should improve over the centuries but it seems we do not.
We have progressed technologically but not morally.
Generally, if we are learning a new skill and we get something wrong, we go back and get it right, gradually gaining greater control over the skill in question.
We do this cheerfully with certain tasks we attempt, concerning say, music or language, yet we do not do it with our whole lives.
Playing sport or music we could not be so careless as we are with life itself – as to whether we are hitting the right note or not!
Our Lord points out to us in today’s Gospel that the swindlers of the world plan their way more carefully than the honest people.
He is exhorting us to use more of that wisdom He has planted in us, to learn just one thing from the criminal world – that we have a goal and we press on towards that goal no matter what else.
We need a more precise attitude to whether we are doing right or wrong, and this will enable us to build up good habits and perform better overall.
Granted it is harder to live a whole life than to do one or other task, but we have a great deal of help available if we call upon it.
The grace of God will enable anything He asks from us. He will never command the impossible.
He will make it clear to us what He wants and then give us the strength we need to do it.
This works better the more we try it.
We tend to stay with what we know and just say we are good enough generally, and that should be good enough for anyone else!
But now, having been baptized, we live by the Spirit (epistle) and that is another matter.
We have received the Spirit within. He has the power to do things even if we do not, and He will enable us, as He works through us.
We can uproot various bad habits we may have despaired of ever removing, simply by asking for the strength from the Holy Spirit.
Being good all the time amounts to getting each thing right as it arises. There is no complicated formula, just calling on God's help at each step. Eventually, the right responses become habitual and therefore relatively easy.
Living in the flesh is slavery to passions and disordered desires. We can be set free from that slavery, whereby we want the right things in the right way and the right amount.
Wisdom and intelligence can meet and get along together. We know how things work (intelligence), but more importantly how they fit in with each other (wisdom).
The Holy Spirit transforms us into what we were always meant to be, holy children of God.
This
is what each individual is called to, and the Church also, to radiate life and
holiness to the world so that people will flock to the Church as a sign of hope
and refuge. And it shall come to pass in the
last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in
the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
shall flow unto it. (Is 2,2).
We
can learn from history after all, at least what not to do. Do not go on
ignoring or denying Almighty God, but give Him first place in our hearts,
minds, and lives.
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