Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
When I was a child, my dad gave me a small treat if I read one chapter of the book of Proverbs each day, for a month. Since it has 31 chapters, and since most are simply a collection of one-line proverbs like in today’s reading, this seemed pretty easy to me. I sometimes wonder at the huge effect of such a small action. While some proverbs are culturally conditioned and don’t make a lot of sense to us today, the great majority still ring true, because humanity is still the same fallen race we were nearly 3000 years ago when these were written. My dad recognized them for what they are; short, simple teaching tools about how people, relationships, and the world work. Recognizing them as true, we can live a life in greater peace with ourselves and others.
The rapid pace of technological and cultural change has been normal now for well over 100 years, and in many eyes this has diminished the value of wisdom one-liners. Corn has grown a lot taller than ‘knee-high by the 4th of July’ for many decades, for example. That and many others like it are forgotten, because they no longer offer anything useful. Today it is also easy to find and spread untrue information, so we frequently assume proverbs are dated, whether they are of this age, or from the word of God.
I’d like to offer a salute to seeking wisdom and trusting proverbs. Through the mediation of Jewish and Christian leaders from thousands of years ago, the Lord has given us the Word of God. These human leaders worked together in council to prayerfully discuss and deliberate about which religious literature was divinely inspired to the level of sacred scripture. We can trust that they were knowledgeable about the subject and guided by the Holy Spirit. Trust works best when we also have humility. We need to remember that there is a lot we do not know. In our modern world, for example, experts can and do have a better (but not perfect) understanding of their area of expertise than a non-expert. When they get into groups, they eliminate a lot of the errors in individual reasoning. This is why there’s a whole department of health, and not just a head doctor. A group of experts can use their knowledge to make better decisions. It’s easy to forget about this in the internet age; anyone can upload a YouTube video or host a ‘news’ website. Groups of people working explicitly for our benefit, however, are by definition more trustworthy. Those are the groups we should trust with modern questions, like what to do about a pandemic. In a similar but greater way, we humbly trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance delivered through Church and the Word of God to tell us about the Lord’s call.
Do you have the humility it takes to trust and follow the Word of God? ‘All peoples’ ways are right in their own eyes, but it is the Lord who proves hearts.’ Let us ask the Lord for these gifts, so that we may richly profit from the wealth of wisdom contained in the Word.
-Chris Nieport