6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A
SIRACH 15:16-21
If you choose, you can keep the commandments,
and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given.
For great is the wisdom of the Lord;
He is mighty in power and sees everything;
The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him,
and He knows every human action.
He has not commanded anyone to be wicked,
and He has not given anyone permission to sin.
Jesus ben Sira, an Israelite sage of the 2nd century BC, lived and wrote in Egypt around 190 BC. His grandson published his book about fifty years later. These were difficult times when Israel, under the rule of the Syrian kings, the Seleucids, was tempted by Hellenistic customs, which would soon be imposed violently by Antiochus Epiphanes.
But the greater danger was not in the imposition, but in the attraction of that way of life, completely foreign and opposed to the traditional way of life. The book is therefore an exposition of the Old Law and the ancient customs to maintain them in the face of the modernizing and paganizing winds of the time.
1 CORINTHIANS 2:6-12
We speak of a wisdom, among the mature, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away, but we speak of the wisdom of God, mysterious, hidden, which God predestined before the ages for our glory.
None of the rulers of this age knew it, for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; but as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
God has revealed it to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
Paul continues to develop the idea that it is not human wisdom, -Greek philosophy- the wisdom of those who follow Jesus (“the mature,” an expression that seems strange to us and in which some want to see a certain Gnostic resonance). It is a divine wisdom, hidden from the wise of this world.
Precisely for this reason they crucified Jesus, because his wisdom is foolishness to the world, just as the wisdom of the world is foolishness to those who live in the Kingdom.
The wisdom of Jesus and those who follow him is a gift of the Spirit.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.