My Dear People, 

Today Paul has a message to the Corinthians which parallels the message of the Gospel. The Jewish people, seeing that Jesus overthrew the money changers in the temple, seek a sign which will show by whose authority Jesus did this. Jesus gives them no sign but says: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” This of course was not a sign of the actual temple in Jerusalem but the temple of his body. 

Paul stresses the message of the cross and Jesus Crucified, which is a stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.  After stressing the importance of the message of the cross, St. Paul now contrasts the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. 

By “wisdom of the world” he means the attitude of man when he is not pursuing his proper goal. “World,” which has various meanings in Sacred Scripture, in St. Paul, it has the pejorative meaning of “all sinful men”--people estranged from God. This human wisdom cannot attain knowledge of God (cf. Rm. 1:19-25), either, because it demands external signs or because it accepts only rational arguments. 

For the Jews, only signs will do—miracles which prove God’s presence (cf. Mt 12:38ff; Lk 11:29). They want to base their faith on things the senses can perceive. For people with this attitude, the cross of Christ is a scandal, that is, a stumbling block, which makes it impossible for them to gain access to divine things, because they have in some way imposed limits as to how God may reveal Himself and how He may not. 

The Greeks (St. Paul is referring to the Rationalists of his time) think they are arbiters of truth, and anything which cannot be proven by logical argument is nonsense.  “For the world, that is, for the prudent of the world, their wisdom turned into blindness.  It could not lead them to see God. Therefore, since the world had become puffed up by the vanity of its dogmas, the Lord set in place the faith whereby believers would be saved by what seemed unworthy and foolish, so that, all human conjecture being of no avail, only the grace of God might reveal what the human mind cannot take in” (St. Leo the Great, Fifth Nativity Sermon).

Christians, whom God has called out from among the Jews and the Gentiles, do attain the wisdom of God, which consists in faith, “a supernatural virtue. By that faith, with the inspiration and help of God’s grace, we believe what He has revealed is true—not because it is intrinsic truth as seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God who reveals it, (who can neither deceive nor be deceived.) (Vatican I, Dei Filius, chap 3). The same council goes on to teach that faith is in conformity with reason (cf.  Rom 12:1) and, in addition to God’s help, external signs—miracles and prophecies—and rational argument do act as a support of faith. 

“In the wisdom of God” this has been interpreted in two ways, which complement one another. Roughly, the first interpretation is: according to God’s most wise design, since the world could not attain knowledge of God by its own effort, through philosophy, and through those elaborate systems of thought the Greeks were so proud of, God decided to save believers through the preaching of the Cross, which to human eyes seemed to be foolishness, and/or a stumbling block.

The second interpretation, favored by many Fathers and by St. Thomas Aquinas, contrasts Divine Wisdom—as manifested in creation and in the Old Testament—with human wisdom, and runs along these lines: Since the world, because of its distorted view of things, failed to attain knowledge of God, and despite the way He manifested Himself in creation and Holy Scripture, God has decided to save man in a remarkable, paradoxical  way which better reflects divine wisdom—the preaching of the Cross. 

In both interpretations it is clear that the Apostle is trying to squeeze into one expression a number of truths—that God’s salvific plans are eternal; that human wisdom, which is capable, on its own, of discovering God through His works, has become darkened; that the cross is the climax of the all-wise plan of God; and man cannot be truly wise unless he accepts the “wisdom of the cross,” no matter how paradoxical it may seem. 

[Passages were taken  from the Navarre Bible]

Penance Service.  We will have the Lenten Penitential service on Wednesday, March 6th.  This is in conjunction with Jim Gontis, from the Evangelization office in the diocese. He will be giving Talks on Monday the 4th, Tuesday the 5th and Wednesday the 6th at 6 PM. This is a great opportunity to make Lent more profitable by participating in a Lenten penance service and an opportunity to clear your conscience and be able to make your Lent more profitable. 

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente