A Truly Wise Person

The ending of today’s Gospel speaks about “the new and the old.” Jesus is saying that a person “instructed in the kingdom” has wisdom both old and new; in other words, that person learns from the past as well as from the present. Let’s look at each of those. We learn from the past by studying it. So the wisdom of the Kingdom comes first from the scriptures. The more familiar we are with the word of God, the more wisdom we possess. Along with studying the scriptures, we must pray over them and ask the Spirit to show us how they apply to our lives. We can also learn from the lives of the saints and writings of the Church. The saints may have lived extraordinary lives, but they all began as ordinary people who gave their lives to Christ. The writings of the Church, though sometimes very technical, contain the wisdom of centuries of living the faith. If you only have time to go to Mass on Sunday, just listening to the homily can help to apply the scriptures to your life. One way we can learn from “the new” is to learn from our mistakes. That includes learning from our sins. When we are truly sorry, we make an effort to change our ways. You might say we have to learn a new way to respond to that situation. In the Bible, the word repentance itself means a change of heart, a new way of seeing and doing things. We can also learn from the mistakes and the successes of our friends. As we share our faith with them, we share the stories of our lives, both good and bad. These stories can teach how to live our faith (or how not to!). One of the advantages of having friends whom we trust enough to confess our faults to is that we do not have to figure out life on our own. God can speak to us through a friend or relative whose advice we seek. A truly wise person is one who has received a lifetime of good advice.