But wisdom is vindicated
12 DECEMBER (Mt 11,16-19)
Sin produces poisonous fruit in our hearts and in our bodies. It destroys all forms of life: social, political, familial, economic, financial, scientific and professional. Suffices one bad habit and a life is led to death. The same earth is surrounded by death with a man’s sin, who does not use his intelligence for the greater good, but foolishness for his great evil. The word of God is very explicit in this respect. It would enough listening to it.
“But if you do not heed me and do not keep all these commandments, if you reject my precepts and spurn my decrees, refusing to obey all my commandments and breaking my covenant, then I, in turn, will give you your deserts. I will punish you with terrible woes – with wasting and fever to dim the eyes and sap the life. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will consume the crop. I will turn against you, till you are beaten down before your enemies and lorded over by your foes. You will take to flight though no one pursues you. “If even after this you do not obey me, I will increase the chastisement for your sins sevenfold, to break your haughty confidence. I will make the sky above you as hard as iron, and your soil as hard as bronze, so that your strength will be spent in vain; your land will bear no crops, and its trees no fruit. “If then you become defiant in your unwillingness to obey me, I will multiply my blows another sevenfold, as your sins deserve. I will unleash the wild beasts against you, to rob you of your children and wipe out your livestock, till your population dwindles away and your roads become deserted (Lev 26,14-22).
Listen to the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob! All you clans of the house of Israel, thus says the Lord: What fault did your fathers find in me that they withdrew from me, Went after empty idols, and became empty themselves? They did not ask, “Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, Who led us through the desert, through a land of wastes and gullies, Through a land of drought and darkness, through a land which no one crosses, where no man dwells?” When I brought you into the garden land to eat its goodly fruits, You entered and defiled my land, you made my heritage loathsome (Jer 2,4-7).
The greatest harm is not the desolation that sin produces in society and on the earth itself, reduced to a desert, to some piece of iron, unable to givelife to its inhabitants. This desolation is a slight thing. The real damage is produced in the heart. It atrophies, becomes like a stone, insensitive, waterproof and ends in its death. The man becomes blind, deaf, dumb to every action of grace and truth. This is what is happening in our days. The Lord is speaking to us through a crisis with no way out and what does man do? He persists in his sin, in his vices, his rights, in his achievements and inhis science of death. Become insensitive to truth and grace there is no hope of salvation for him. Yet a little spiritual sensitivity would be enough to understand there is urgent need to change the standard of living. That it would be just to break free from sin and vice that is killing our modern social life.
“To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”
But what’s more sad is that even the prophets of the living God, his ministers, have become insensitive to the truth and grace. They are not able to see things from the wisdom of Jesus Christ. Many speak from their stupidity and ignorance. It is impossible to recognize the justice of their wisdom. Its works are missing. The first work of wisdom is to read history with eyes of pure truth. If history is read from the falsity of the heart and mind, it is a sign that one is deprived of all wisdom. Today, this foolishness has reached the summit of its perversion: it is declaring the non need, non necessity to be sensitive to the grace and truth.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints free us from so much foolishness.