Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2003 Proverbs 9:1-6 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58	Listen to Audio

The so-called “Serenity Prayer,” well-known because it encapsulates in a few short phrases the power of Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve-Step programs to enable people with addictions to live in sobriety, one day at a time, is really a prayer for wisdom, isn’t it? You’re familiar with the prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom, the subject of all three of our readings today, is simply the ability to know the difference.

In the Old Testament reading from Proverbs, Wisdom is personified as the gracious hostess, laying out a lavish banquet before her guests. And, in a section not read today, she is contrasted with foolishness, the harlot. The banquet of wisdom is a wonderful, lavish variety of nourishment that leads to life, while folly, the attractive but deceptive counterfeit, leads to death. Wisdom is the ability to know the difference between what leads to life and fulfillment, and what leads to death and ultimate frustration.

The prayer, however, is right – once we know the difference between what leads to life and what leads to death, that is, once we have wisdom, then we need both serenity and courage to actually choose rightly and follow through in action.

That’s why St. Paul, in telling the Christians at Ephesus to watch carefully how they live, emphasizes the need for thanksgiving. It is only when we have the vision and the insight to recognize all things as gift, and live in a spirit of thanksgiving, that we will have the motivating power to use God’s gifts rightly. And the criterion for how we use God’s gifts is unselfishness. Do we receive the gift of God saying only, “I love it”? Or do we say, “I know you give this out of love, how can I show my love in return”? Wisdom is knowing the difference, knowing the proper use of God’s gifts, the use intended by our Creator and Redeemer.

Just two days ago we celebrated our patronal feast as a parish. The Assumption of Mary is an affirmation of the gift and sacredness of human flesh, as the container and vehicle for the divine presence – the Word of God made flesh.
The promise of Jesus in giving us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink is that he fulfills our deepest hungers, not with superficial satisfactions that only serve to create more and stronger desires and appetites that ultimately lead to death. It would be simplistic to say merely that Jesus fulfills our spiritual hungers rather than our material hungers. True enough, but those spiritual hungers paradoxically are filled only by sacrifice and self-emptying. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us nothing other than his sacrifice. He invites us to become what we eat, and what we eat is his body given up for us, and his blood poured out for us.

It takes wisdom – divine wisdom – to recognize this as truly good. The wisdom of the world, which is folly in God’s eyes, always says, “What can I get out of it? What more can I get?” The wisdom of God, which the world considers foolish, says with Jesus Christ, “How deeply can I give?"

Truly this wisdom, the ability to know the difference between imitating the generosity of God and following the self-centeredness of the world, requires both serenity to accept and courage to put into practice.

© Thomas Welbers 2003