23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
WISDOM 9:13-19
What man can know the counsel of God?
Who can discern what the Lord intends?
For the reasoning of mortals is inadequate,
and our designs are likely to fail,
because the corruptible body burdens the soul
and this earthly tent weighs down the mind with many concerns.
And scarce do we guess the things on earth,
and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty;
but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?
Or who could ever know your counsel, unless you give wisdom
and send your holy Spirit from on high?
And thus the paths of those on earth were made straight,
and people learned what pleases you,
and were saved by wisdom.
Those who have pleased you, Lord, from the beginning.
We are quite familiar with this beautiful book, called the “Book of Wisdom of Solomon,” and which was probably written in Greek in Alexandria at the end of the 1st century BC or the beginning of the 1st century AD. Its “Wisdom,” like all the Wisdom of Israel, consists of interpreting and applying the Scriptures to daily life.
The passage we read today is extraordinary, without a doubt, as a reflection on the limitation of human wisdom regarding the knowledge of God. There is in it a conception of the human being as something spiritual constrained by its material condition, which is understood as a burden, as a heavy tent that weighs down our mind. It is the Spirit that enables the human being to rise above their earthly gravity.
In our culture, these conceptions are not in vogue. We feel radically material, we identify with “our body,” a transcendent or eschatological sense says little to us, and the word “spiritual” sometimes does not escape pejorative connotations.
And yet, it is essential that, overcoming any dualism, freeing these images from all metaphysical pretension, we interpret the human being as “clay with the spirit of God” (Genesis 2:7), subjected to slavery, a slavery that attracts and prevents them from walking, from being themselves (Exodus 16:2-3), “in need of liberation.”
Wisdom, present before God from eternity, poured out upon the “earthly” so that they may know how to live, could very well be the starting point for a “descending” Christology. Personally, I like it much more than “The Logos,” which has no biblical tradition and is a much more static word, with more metaphysical dangers. Jesus is, for us, the Wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).
PHILEMON 1:9b-10 and 12-17
Beloved:
I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus, urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment; I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I would have been glad to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.
Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.
This is the only occasion in the three cycles of the Sunday readings in which this letter of Paul is used. No one questions its authenticity. It was probably written in the year 61 or 62, from prison, in Rome.
Onesimus, a runaway slave, meets Paul in Rome, who converts him to Jesus. Paul returns him to his legitimate master, Philemon, who is his friend and also a Christian. But he returns him as a brother, united by the same faith in Jesus.
It is very interesting – and for us very surprising and instructive – to verify that Paul does not destroy the institution of slavery by legal means, but by real means, modifying the real relationship that will henceforth exist between the two people. What master/slave relationship will there be in the future, when the two have sat at the same table, side by side, celebrating the Lord’s Supper?
On the other hand, the text is not related to the other two. We are reading a series of texts by Paul, rather at random, to complete the end of the liturgical cycle.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.