![\"Magic](\"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/magic_lamp_in_sand.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There was once a fool who rubbed a magic lamp.
\nThe genie materialized and said,
\n\u201cAnd your third wish?\u201d
\nThe fool, who had never seen a genie before, said
\n\u201cWhy are you offering me a third wish
\nwhen I haven\u2019t had a first wish yet?\u201d
\nThe genie said, \u201cOh, but you have.
\nYou don\u2019t remember it, of course.
\nYour second wish was to have everything restored
\nexactly as it was before I offered you three wishes.\u201d
\n\u201cIn other words, I only get one wish,\u201d
\nsaid the fool, feeling cheated.
\n\u201cA lot of people never get any wishes, so hurry it up,\u201d said the genie.
\n\u201cAlright,\u201d said the fool, \u201cI wish I were irresistible to women.\u201d
\n\u201cFunny,\u201d said the genie, vanishing with his lamp,
\n\u201cthat was your first wish, too.\u201d*<\/p>\n
We\u2019d like to think that there are fools in the world,
\nand then there are the rest of us.
\nBut the truth of the matter is that we are all fools
\nat one point or another.
\nWe all do foolish things from time to time.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s readings are all about foolishness and wisdom,
\nand the choice between the two.<\/p>\n
St. Paul tells us to \u201cwatch carefully how you live,
\nnot as foolish persons but as wise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s first reading from the book of Proverbs
\nis actually part one of a two-part poem comparing Wisdom and Folly.
\nIn part one, which we heard today,
\nthe image is of Wisdom preparing a banquet.
\nShe builds a magnificent house with seven columns
\nand prepares the meat and wine.
\nShe makes an attractive feast to draw in the simple
\nand then she calls from the heights to everyone in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeave foolish ways behind,\u201d she says, \u201cand embrace wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the second part of the poem is a shadow image of the first.
\nIn the second part someone is also preparing a banquet
\nand calling people from the heights,
\nbut this second person is Folly, the opposite of Wisdom.<\/p>\n
This part of the poem begins by saying, Folly\u2019s banquet is of stolen water, and bread taken secretly. Where Wisdom invites guests in to make them wise, Wisdom welcomes those who lack understanding But the point of the poem is And so today we are confronted with a choice, Both choices seem attractive. But this is not a one-time choice. And if we\u2019re honest with ourselves, we have to admit Like the fool who wasted his three wishes, We are often tragically, destructively foolish.<\/p>\n But there is one of Jesus\u2019 commands The one thing that we as a Church have continued to do It is presided over by sometimes foolish priests, bishops, and archbishops, And yet, somehow, for some reason, we still come here week after week Among all the foolish things that we do There are countless books published about the miracles of the Eucharist, It is the one place where we can be faithful.<\/em> We don\u2019t have to understand it. We do not need to understand it. The more we come to the Eucharistic banquet, Understanding is not a prerequisite to enjoying the banquet. The fool with three wishes spent those wishes foolishly, *From a short story by Rick Norwood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was once a fool who rubbed a magic lamp. The genie materialized and said, \u201cAnd your third wish?\u201d The fool, who had never seen a genie before, said \u201cWhy are you offering me a third wish when I haven\u2019t had a first wish yet?\u201d The genie said, \u201cOh, but you have. You don\u2019t remember it, of course. Your second wish was to have everything restored exactly as it was before I offered you three wishes.\u201d \u201cIn other words, I only get one wish,\u201d said the fool, feeling...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Foolish Wishes - Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[349],"tags":[1087,357,530,1088],"class_list":["post-6960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homily","tag-genie","tag-gospel-of-mark","tag-proverbs","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/magic_lamp_in_sand.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-1Og","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6962,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6960\/revisions\/6962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFolly is raucous, utterly foolish;<\/em>
\nshe knows nothing.<\/em>
\nShe sits at the door of her house<\/em>
\nupon a seat on the city heights,<\/em>
\nCalling to passersby as they go on their way straight ahead:<\/em>
\n\u201cLet those who are naive turn in here,<\/em>
\nto those who lack sense I say,<\/em>
\nStolen water is sweet,<\/em>
\nand bread taken secretly is pleasing!\u201d<\/em>
\nLittle do they know that the shades are there,<\/em>
\nthat her guests are in the depths of Sheol!<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFolly\u2019s banquet leads to death.<\/p>\n
\nFolly invites them in to trap them.<\/p>\n
\nand wants to help them grow.
\nFolly welcomes those who lack understanding
\nin order to take advantage of them.
\nOne is helpful.
\nThe other is destructive.<\/p>\n
\nthey\u2019re both attractive.
\nThey both host parties and try to draw people in.
\nThey both offer food and drink,
\nthey both call out to the crowds, inviting them to enter.<\/p>\n
\nthe choice between attending the banquet of Wisdom
\nor the banquet of Folly.<\/p>\n
\nNo one becomes foolish intentionally.
\nWe make foolish decisions because we think they\u2019re good,
\nor we\u2019re caught up in an attraction
\nthat leads us down a path of foolishness.<\/p>\n
\nThis is a choice we face every day,
\nin minor ways and in more significant ways.
\nHow am I going to spend my time today?
\nWhat should I decide?<\/p>\n
\nthat we often choose the banquet of the foolish,
\nin our personal lives,
\nin our professional lives,
\nin our culture,
\nand even in our Church.<\/p>\n
\nwe often waste our time at the banquet of Folly,
\nfailing to choose the life that God has invited us to live.
\nWe fail at living out the commandments,
\nwe fail at living out the Beatitudes.
\nWe\u2019ve convinced ourselves that we don\u2019t really need to
\nturn the other cheek this time,
\nor love these enemies,
\nor forgive each other seventy times seven times.
\nThere are so many ways that we choose Folly over Wisdom.
\nAnd as we\u2019ve seen from the news out of Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
\nno one is exempt from choosing folly,
\nnot even those at the highest levels of Church.<\/p>\n
\nto which we have, for the most part, stayed faithful.
\nThere is one action that we as a people
\nhave remained true to over the centuries:
\n\u201cDo this in memory of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nyear in and year out
\nweek in and week out
\nday in and day out,
\ndespite our folly,
\nis celebrate the Eucharist.<\/p>\n
\nit is attended by sometimes foolish people,
\nand it is assisted at by foolish deacons like me.<\/p>\n
\nto gather and receive the Body and Blood of Jesus,
\ntruly Jesus, truly present among us.<\/p>\n
\namid all the mistakes, all the selfishness,
\nwe have remained true, if nothing else, to that one action.<\/p>\n
\nbut maybe the most amazing Eucharistic miracle of all
\nis that among all the foolishness and follies of our lives,
\nthis one wise practice continues.<\/p>\n
\nWe can\u2019t always control how we feel or think,<\/em>
\nand we can\u2019t always measure up morally and spiritually,<\/em>
\nbut within our inadequacy, doubt, and confusion,<\/em>
\nwithin our foolishness,<\/em>
\nwe can be faithful in this one deep way:<\/em>
\nWe can go to Eucharist regularly.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe can\u2019t ever fully comprehend it.
\nAnd that\u2019s ok.
\nWhen the Jews complained about Jesus and asked
\n\u201cHow can this man give us his flesh to eat?\u201d
\nJesus didn\u2019t answer them with a lesson in Eucharistic theology.
\nHe simply repeated himself:
\n\u201cUnless you eat my flesh and drink my blood
\nyou do not have life within you.\u201d
\n\u201cWhoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
\nremains in me and I in him.\u201d
\n\u201c\u2026the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWe simply need to trust in the one who said it.<\/p>\n
\nthe banquet of Wisdom,
\nthe closer we draw to Jesus,
\nand the more we will understand it.
\nThis is the promise of Wisdom,
\nwho sets out the banquet and says,
\n\u201cYou the simple, you the naive,
\ncome in that you may grow in understanding.
\nCome in that you may live.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nUnderstanding is a blessing we receive by attending the banquet,
\nby answering the invitation.<\/p>\n
\ngoing after Folly, not Wisdom.
\nWhat will we use our wishes for?
\nWhat will use our God-given freedom for?
\nTo hold on to anger or to forgive seventy times seven times?
\nTo increase division and polarization, or to love our enemies?
\nTo continue the cycle of violence, or to turn the other cheek?
\nTo choose Folly or to choose Wisdom?<\/p>\n