Wisdom Love and Suffering

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today explore the path and pattern of experience of Presence in life. Luke relates in the Gospel the response of Jesus to the Pharisees question about the timing of the coming of the kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is among you is Jesus proclamation. The faith tradition of the Pharisees includes the understanding of the emanation of God described in the first reading as Wisdom. The details of the attributes of Wisdom reveal that the Pharisees must have lost this intimate relationship with the Divine. The psalmist expresses the praise and thanksgiving which are the fruit of the experience of faithfulness and enlightenment which is life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus presents a path to the deeper relationship with God which many in His time and many today reject. The path to the intimacy is given by Jesus and it involves death to self. Richard Rohr after 40 years as a Franciscan and 30 years as a priest offers the wisdom of two paths to greater intimacy with God. In his recent books, The Naked Now and Falling Upward he declares that deep love and deep suffering are two paths which will open our wisdom to the Presence of the Kingdom of God.