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Today's readings challenge us to put our lives totally into God's hands.
The author of the Book of Wisdom challenged the people of his time, and now us, to ask where true wisdom is to be found.
Saint James says much the same thing very bluntly. When we don't get our own way we resort to quarrelling and fighting and killing.
In Saint Mark's Gospel Jesus talks about suffering and death. When he does so, his disciples talk about greatness and fame.
In our first reading the "wicked", those who do not possess true wisdom and knowledge from God, are coming up with some fairly serious and evil plots against the "just one". They call him obnoxious; they say that he sets himself against their ways, that he points out their sins. This guy has to go. He's causing too much trouble. He's upsetting the status quo. What's the solution? Attack, torture and kill him to see if God truly will take care of him as he claims.
But, the author of the Book of Wisdom says, the wicked are wrong on two counts: They trust in their own wisdom and self-sufficiency, and they assume that life is limited to this world.
Putting the just one to the test will neither prove whether he is right or wrong nor force the hand of God to step in and save him. God does not exist to settle the petty disputes of human beings. God offers us humans’ wisdom and knowledge, which we can either use or ignore to our betterment or destruction.
This may be why we sometimes feel that God does not answer all of our prayers? Saint James says because often we ask wrongly, we ask God to do things our way rather than to ask God to show us his way. True wisdom is seeing life through God's eyes, not ours.
Likewise Saint James says that we sometimes ask for things so that we can squander what we receive for our own pleasures. If we are sick and we pray for healing, do we do this so that we can then use our renewed health to better serve others, or do we pray for health so that we can return to our way of living? If we pray for a good paying job, do we do this so that we can be more generous to others or for our own selfish pleasures?
The model that Jesus offers is a human life spent for others in service and self-giving. Our prayers should be asking for those gifts and graces that will make us more like Jesus, true disciples who lay down our lives for others. Is this the focus of our prayer? Or is it more a matter of give me this and give me that so that I can do what I want?
To make his point even more clearly, Jesus compares the disciple with a child. He is not emphasizing the innocence or the sweetness of childhood, but the fact that in his society the child had no rights of any kind. Children were the lowest rung on the social ladder. This does not mean that they were unloved or abused, but that they were totally dependent on others.
Discipleship means seeking this type of lowly dependence on God, rather than seeking greatness and fame. Our prayers, then, should be a matter of seeking God's ways and not our ways. “For the Lord up holds our Life”.
Wow! To be a disciple of Jesus is no easy task is it, especially here and now. How do we accomplish such a task? And the answer is we don’t. It is humanly impossible, but with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all things are possible.
The disciples encounter this same challenge, they found it hard to believe that the “Messiah” (The Son of Man) would suffer and die. They looked for a triumphant person who would bring about prefect justice and peace and happiness on this earth: someone who would put an end to all suffering and to death. This didn’t happen the way they thought it would. And this may be why the disciple never seemed to get it. I suppose this may also be a stumbling block for us today.
Life can be much like a hurricane, coming at you with different names at different times and places throughout your life. But remember, that in the center of every hurricane there is calmness. And with Jesus at the center of our lives, there will always be that calm in the midst of the storm, because unlike a hurricane, Jesus, and those who have faith in him will never die!