Second Sunday After Christmas
A Chinese proverb tells us that the first step towards wisdom is getting things by their right names. What more important name to get right than ‘God’? So, is our response to that name chilly, wary or warm? In Things Hidden, Richard Rohr points out, ‘Most people do not realize that humanity did not, by and large, expect love from God before the biblical revelation.’ Capricious pagan gods were to be placated. Those who submitted to them, though intelligent, lacked wisdom in naming them ‘gods’ instead of ‘illusions’. Our God is not an illusion, or capricious. God is steadfast in love. Made in God’s image and likeness, so too are we. Any response to God on our part other than love would be unworthy of God. God gives love, wants love; is love. Today’s First Reading (Sir 24:1-4, 8-12) calls God ‘the Most High’ (24:3). That’s where we set our sights: high. We don’t lower them to near worship of superficial entertainment, or to escapist busyness that blinds us to the past, locks us to the present and numbs us to the future, Instead let’s use right names and call the past ‘teacher’, the present ‘opportunity’ and the future ‘hope’. Then life can bring us wisdom, and fashion us in full. Otherwise, the words of Greek tragedian Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) may haunt us by their beauty and their dread: ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’
Copyright: Fr Tom Cahill (Intercom)
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