By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

 
Is it status or vanity? Ambition or greed? A “choice” or murder? Freedom or license? Reputation or pride?
Ever notice how the world and the Christian never seem to see eye-to-eye? What one calls white, the other swears is black. It’s like living in a permanent state of irreconcilable differences.
The world-wise call it religionism, conservatism, idealism — everything but what it is — the difference between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man.
“Between the wisdom of Christ crucified and the wisdom of the world, there is a radical opposition, an irreconcilable hatred,” writes the Carmelite Father Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, in his book, “I Want To See God.”
God’s wisdom and the world’s are doomed to exist in eternal opposition, mostly because God’s wisdom is so far superior to that of man. However, He does not reveal this wisdom to just anyone. It is reserved for those who are faithful followers of Christ.
Father Marie-Eugene explains that there are three orders of wisdom through which we will progress in our journey to God.
The first wisdom is the natural moral law God inscribed into our hearts, enabling us to know what is good and evil and how we should treat our neighbor. “The natural moral order is … the first manifestation of the order established by wisdom,” he writes. “True, it is the most humble manifestation, but because it is founded on the nature of things, it is at the base of the whole moral edifice.” No one can aspire to higher virtue who does not first conform himself to this natural law.
The next level was given to us in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus “raised the bar” to a higher moral order. “Since we are the children of God, we must be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect,” Father Marie-Eugene writes. “And since Jesus Christ has been sent to show us the way that leads to God, and to be an exemplar of the perfection we are to realize, we must follow Him and model our actions on His.”
The third and highest level of wisdom comes from the infused supernatural virtues we are given that enable us to live up to the high moral standard set by Christ, particularly the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. These virtues have God as their object and motive, and as we develop them through prayer and meditation on the faith, “they tend normally toward liberation from all that is human in order to find in God alone their nourishment and their support.”
Human reason alone could never comprehend the kind of wisdom revealed to the soul by the action of the Holy Spirit through the gift of wisdom.
Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen writes, “Only one who lives under the influence of this gift can truly judge and regulate everything according to God so that nothing, not even suffering, can disturb his inner peace because he knows that even the most painful happenings are permitted and ordered by God for the good of His elect.”
God’s wisdom always brings peace to the soul. “To them that love God, all things work together unto good.” (Rom 8:28)
It’s like receiving a higher form of intelligence, or a kind of radar vision that is able to see through the deceptive rhetoric of the world. What is called “personal choice” or “tolerance” is too often a cover for a variety of social sins that are discovered only in their after-effects — divorce, abuse, disease, etc.
As Father Marie-Eugene explains, the wisdom of the world is “a corrupted wisdom which does not remain faithful even to the natural law and seeks only indulgence in the passions. It is the wisdom … of the pagan world which, sunk in idolatry and sensuality, lost the sense of those duties that the natural law imposes on every man.”
We escape all these ills by adhering to the wisdom of God, and the more we love Him, the more we are able to develop the gift of wisdom. Although all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit can only abound in souls who possess charity, the gift of wisdom has a special connection to love of God.
Father Gabriel uses the example of a mother and a child to explain this connection. “Because of the affinity of thought and affection that binds a mother to her child, she knows its heart much better than any other person.” There is a certain knowledge — a familiarity — that only comes from love. Too few of us are willing to love God like this, to the point of what the world calls “folly,” even though this is our call as Christians. We should love like Mary Magdalen, who asked the caretaker in the garden to give her Christ’s body, even though she never thought for a moment about what she would do with it once she had it. She just wanted her Lord. Once she had Him, she’d work out the rest of the details. This is love unto folly. It thinks first of the beloved, and then of itself.
To love God so much in the midst of a culture that’s trying to erase all evidence of Him is a tremendous challenge, but God has given us everything we need to meet this challenge. It’s far too easy to cave, particularly when we stumble upon that nasty little snare known as “human respect.” We’re too afraid of what people will think of us.
“It is terrible how much harm we can do if we allow ourselves to be carried away by the fear or the shame of being seen as Christians in ordinary life,” wrote St. Jose María Escrivá about this problem. “How can one desire neither to displease God nor to clash with one’s surroundings? These two things are opposed: it is either the one or the other! The sacrifice has to be a holocaust where everything is burned up, even the thought: ‘What will they say?’”
We’ve all heard it. “Everybody’s doing it. Why aren’t you?” “Aren’t you carrying this religion thing too far?” “Don’t be such a prude.”
It comes in a lot of different forms, but it’s the same old thing — the need for human respect. This is a temptation that uses the wisdom of the world to lure the righteous away from the wisdom of God — not because it’s better, but because it’s more comfortable.
St. Jose María Escrivá wrote about a young man who fell into this trap while trying to break off with a girl friend who was leading him into sin. “He seemed to be totally determined, but when he took up his pen to break with his girl friend, his indecision and lack of courage got the better of him: It was all very human and understandable, people said. According to some, it seems human love is not among the things which one has to leave behind in order to follow Jesus Christ totally, when He asks you.”
For Christians living in a secular society like ours, the wisdom of God becomes the pearl of great value that we were somehow lucky enough to stumble upon. But there’s only one way to claim this prize — selling everything we own for the One we love.

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615