Taste and See: Love, only love

We have a wisdom to offer those who have reached maturity: not a philosophy of our age, it is true, still less of the masters of our age, which are coming to their end. The hidden wisdom of God which we teach in our mysteries is the wisdom that God predestined to be for our glory before the ages began.

It is a wisdom that none of the masters of this age have ever known, or they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory; we teach what scripture calls: the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him.

These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God.

1 Corinthians 2:6-10

The Second reading at Mass on Sunday, the 6th Sunday  in Ordinary Time, is packed with pungent Pauline ironies.

Who are those who have reached maturity? Surely not those who think they have reached it. How might we define maturity? In terms of  intellectual rigour? Well again and again, we see the ‘wise’ stumble because of their emotional immaturity. In terms of accumulated years? Well, just look at the incapacties aged brings! In terms of financial, life-style, security? Just a blip in the stock market or a change in government policy and we find ourselves exposed and on the rocks. All can seem acheived, mature, well,… until it isn’t!

And what is wisdom? The teachings of books; the cany of argument and rhetoric? Our acheivement, what we struggle to with great effort? No it is what God has thought, what God has intended before we ever began.

Paul speaks of maturity gifted by our receiveing and being sustained by what is at the heart of everything. And that, simply, is the love that is God and that is ours when we stop struggling and allow ourselves to be drawn into the current of that love that tears down and builds, that cherishes and trains, that allows us to lose ourselves and find ourselves, brought to wholeness in him.

• What false wisdom do you hold onto?
• What new security does the Gospel call you to?

Stained glass. Colombiers, Beziers, France. (c) 2015, Allen Morris.

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