December 2/First Tuesday of Advent
“I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” ~ Luke 10.21
No matter how often I read this passage from Luke, it always leaves me a bit defensive. What’s wrong with being “wise and learned?” I have spent years of my life pursuing wisdom and learning! Rather than interpreting Jesus’s words as an absolute exclusion of the educated from divine revelation, I see today’s Gospel as challenging us to consider the role that intellectual achievement plays in our spiritual lives and, indeed, our lives at large. Do we use our learning to judge or criticize others, like the high priests, scribes and elders of Israel who were the “wise and learned” in Jesus’s day? Has intellectual achievement become a golden calf, a false idol that we worship out of pride or the need for adulation? Do our heads sometimes enable us to keep our hearts safely stowed away and distant from God’s loving intervention? There is nothing wrong with intellectual curiosity or critical thinking. But as we move deeper into Advent, we might be attentive to how we are using our intellectual gifts, and what priority we give them in our spiritual lives. If we put more stock in how critically we think than on how powerfully we love, we risk becoming like Luke’s “prophets and kings,” who viewed Jesus from the outside, with analyzing, distancing eyes that failed to see what he truly was. As the medieval theologian Thomas à Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ, “Surely, when the day of judgment comes, we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done, not how well we have spoken but how devoutly we have lived.” Learning is a good and useful thing, but it is a humble heart that will show us the path to God’s kingdom.
Lord of all wisdom and truth, help me keep my heart child-like in its trust and ever open to your loving presence. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120225.cfm
To hear the Choir of Saint Michael and All Angels, North Bassett, sing “Lord, Thy Word Abideth,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcghwj7zZZg&list=RDqcghwj7zZZg&start_radio=1
