Wise or Foolish? Your Choice!

August 26, Friday  of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time
Daily readings: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 and Matthew 25:1-13

The wise lives each day preparing for something much greater.

There are two opposite words or persona in today’s readings – the wise and the foolish. Based on the readings, we could define wise as someone who knows what he is doing or what he should be doing. A wise man is prepared for he knows and understands that life’s events do not always come with a warning and that he knows and admits that many things are beyond his control. Being wise is not having unlimited knowledge or the power to know everything. Instead, being wise is being prepared because the wise realize that so many things are not within his control.

On the other hand, we see in the readings what foolishness is. A foolish man lives as if there is no tomorrow. His view is myopic, living only in the moment. Christians are not to be foolish, for we should not only live for the moment but heaven.

Thus, someone who spends all his energy and resources enjoying the moment is a fool. On the contrary, the wise live each day preparing for something much more significant. He prepares for what can be helpful to beyond the grave – kindness, generosity, compassion, forgiveness, and holiness of life.

The reading tells us that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. It is because no human capacity can ever grasp the wisdom of God. By our measure, we think God may be a fool, for why would He send His only begotten Son so that we may have eternal life? To the world, that is foolishness. But this is God’s wisdom surpassing our human capacity to grasp what wondrous love is.

Are we foolishly living for the world, enjoying all its pleasures at the moment, forgetting that we are just passing through? Or do we have the wisdom to see the obvious that no one who invested his wealth on earth was ever able to bring all these to his grave?