Meditation: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25

21st Week in Ordinary Time

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

What’s the most absurd thing you’ve ever heard?

Perhaps it’s a joke told by a five-year-old who laughs so hard he can’t even deliver the punch line—yet gets everyone laughing with him. Perhaps it’s a YouTube video of an animal acting like a human being or vice versa. Perhaps it’s something in the natural world: fish with brilliant colors that are invisible in deep water or a hard-to-classify animal like the platypus. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

When the philosophers of Athens heard St. Paul’s story about Jesus, they just couldn’t make any sense of it either.

Think about this for a moment. If you had never heard the story before, could you imagine it? Think about the good Creator of the universe. How does he react when his creatures turn away from him and decide they can improve on the way he has made them? Instead of giving up, destroying them, and starting over, he intervenes again and again on their behalf. When all else fails, he takes an enormous risk. The immaterial, invisible God is born as a human child. The omnipotent Creator becomes helpless and dependent. Misunderstood and rejected by those he has come to rescue, he accepts a shameful death. And then, three days later, he returns, vibrantly, indisputably alive.

Could anything be more ridiculous from a human, “practical” point of view? Nothing can explain it except God’s unconditional love for us and his willingness to go to any extreme to win us back to himself. Nothing, that is, but the logic of divine love.

For Pope Francis, as well as for all of us who believe, the gospel story makes perfect sense. That’s because it follows what the Holy Father has called “the logic of the cross, which is not primarily that of suffering and death, but rather that of love and of the gift of self which brings life.”

If we “get” this divine joke, the only appropriate response is gratitude and celebration.

“Father, I revel in your love for me. Thank you, Jesus, for coming to share every aspect of my life. Holy Spirit, your wisdom is beyond my imagining. Blessed Trinity, I rejoice in the ‘surprise ending’ of the resurrection!”

Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 10-11
Matthew 25:1-13