Thursday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

“I am a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you?” [Brother Andrew]
  
We arrive at the concluding part of St. Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians that he outlined at the beginning of the Epistle: “For the word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But it is the power of God to us who are being saved.” [1 Cor 1:18]

Paul once more urges the Christians of Corinth to set aside “the wisdom of the world” and become fools so that they can achieve wisdom. It’s quite a challenge to be thought of as foolish for following the Lord. It requires a good measure of humility, an ability to laugh at oneself, and the insight to understand that God’s wisdom and human wisdom are two very distinct things.

It's not as if the Corinthian community had everything figured out. Paul was writing to a bitterly divided church. They argued about the nature of true preaching, and they were divided into different factions [each with its own leader.] Later in the letter, we’ll see that they’re also split over the practice of spiritual gifts. Paul is trying to tell them that their self-estimation isn’t at all congruent with reality.

In our own day, it might be good for us as individuals and as a Church to ask ourselves if we are living in [Divine] reality or in our own distorted view of ourselves as having worked out pretty much everything? There’s a reason we talk about having “blind spots” because we are incapable of seeing what they are unless the Holy Spirit gives us the grace to see ourselves as we should be – fools for Christ.