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The Fullness Of Life

By Fr. Florentino S. Lim, CIHM

True wisdom

The world is subject to a confluence of forces – material and immaterial, rational and irrational, affecting the different aspects and dimensions of human life.

Some forces tend to conflict with one another and can be mutually destructive. Other forces remain not in harness and improperly channeled, thus often causing chaos and disorder, pain and poverty, harm and death.

True wisdom, which is from God, is the only force that can bring about order, beauty, peace, harmony, prosperity and the abundance of every good. But due to lack of wisdom, civilization which took centuries to build is reduced into smoke and ashes in the course of a day. For it is natural for fools to insist on settling their disputes with guns and bombs when these can be settled through peaceful dialogues.

True wisdom is not prolific exercise of our inventive genius in creating more and more marketable products that tantalize the human appetites to no ends. For unless human talents are harnessed and directed towards the ultimate purpose of life and the essential good of every human person, such potentials will only increase the fuel that will bring about our own doom. Rightly do we receive this prophetic warning from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, one of the important documents of the Vatican Council II: “The intellectual nature of the human person is perfected by wisdom and needs to be. For wisdom gently attracts the mind of man to a guest and a love for what is true and good. . . Our era needs such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser men are forth coming.” (Gaudium et spes, N.15).

Sacred Scripture is replete with reference to true wisdom. We only have to leaf through the pages of the Book of Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes, or the Book of Wisdom of the Book of Sirach – which are among the sapiential books of the Old Testament – and discover some delightful text about wisdom.

Scripture tells us how desirable wisdom is, but it also cautions us against the false wisdom that stems from human pride, which is nothing but folly. In the New Testament, we see James' letter a contrast between this false wisdom and the wisdom emanating from God.

“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good life, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom but, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but earthly, spiritual, devilish. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity.” (James 3:13-17)

It entails some degree of humility to discover and acknowledge that true wisdom can only come from God. To have such humility in itself is wisdom. Certainly, our world will become wonderful and radically transformed if only every sector of the human family will learn to call upon our eternal Father, the God of mercy and consolation, to pour upon us His Spirit of Wisdom to guide the course of our earthly sojourn. Wisdom, thus, invited, will exorcise our nation and the whole world of countless ills and evils, and usher in the long-awaited peace, prosperity and universal solidarity.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful

and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,

and you shall renew the face of the earth.

O God, who by the light of your Spirit

did instruct the hearts of your faithful,

grant that by the same Spirit we may be

truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen