February 12, 2017 — Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
SIR 15: 15-20; PS 119: 1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34; 1 COR 2: 6-10; MT 5: 17-37
All the readings on this Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time seem to address from one perspective or another the idea of “free will” as it goes hand in hand with “God’s wisdom.” St. Paul speaks to this ongoing philosophy and discussion of “free will” more than anyone else in Holy Scripture. However, as he points out in our Second Reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians, “We speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory.”
In addition to St. Paul, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote volumes about the issue of “free will.” The point of all of this is that on the one hand we are gifted with free will, but we must accept the reality that making the wrong moral decision has consequences. In our First Reading from the Book of Sirach, we hear “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” That is immediately followed by “Immense is the wisdom of the Lord.”
We do have choices throughout our lives. One of those choices is pursuing stewardship as a way of life. One can choose to be a steward or choose not to. Nevertheless, if we look at it from the point of view of God’s wisdom rather than ours, it really is not a choice at all. It is something we should and must practice. In a homily this past June, Pope Francis said, “You cannot love God without loving your brothers and sisters; in fact, you cannot love God without being an active participant in the Church.”
