1Co 2:7 It is of the mysterious wisdom of God that we talk, the wisdom that was hidden, which God predestined to be for our glory before the ages began. NJB

Sunday 13th Feb. Homily by Fr. Raymond   1 Cor. 2:6-10   THE GIFT OF WISDOM   St Paul tells us about a gift of Wisdom that comes from God; a wisdom that doesn’t belong to the philosophies of this world.  He describes it is a knowledge of things eternal; things hidden; things no eye has seen, no ear has heard; things beyond the mind of man even to conceive.  This Wisdom, he tells us, is nothing other than the knowledge of what God has prepared for those who love him.   Thanks be to God, by the grace of Baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we all share in this gift; a gift that affects our lives tremendously.  Our knowledge that we are called to an eternity of loving communion with our Creator, a God who’s very definition is love; that we are all his children, and above all that he sent his only begotten Son to become one of us; to suffer and die for us; to free us from our sins.  This knowledge must have a tremendous influence on our under-standing of what life is all about; our appreciation of ourselves and of everyone else in this world of ours!  This is truly a Wisdom beyond price.    Let’s try for a moment to imagine what it is like for those who don’t have this wisdom; those who don’t believe in an after-life.  The more noble of them will have only a sense of philanthropy to see them through.  But that philanthropy will constantly be frustrated by the realities of life.  The rest will only have an equally frustrated selfishness, because the more we want for ourselves, and the more we make our own interests the be all and end all of life, then the more we will be frustrated; and neither of them will have any real sense of hope or ultimate purpose of life.  Above all they will have no answer to the sufferings and tragedies and injustices of life; no sense that all justice and goodness will ultimately triumph and all injustice and evil be punished.   Yet there must remain in them, in spite of themselves, an innate hunger for the ultimate answers to life and, tragically, they seek them, subconsciously, in the dreams of science fiction or the fantasies of the worlds of Harry Potter.   So, let us continue firm in our faith in the reality of the promises of God.  Let us put our hopes in those things which no eye has seen, no ear has heard and especially let us be assured by St Paul’s inspired word that: “your hopes will not be disappointed.