Foolishness, weakness, wisdom & strength

The world today is awash in information and facts, but thirsts desperately for happiness while it seems to be slipping ever faster into self-destruction.

Science tells us much about what, where, and how, but fails in answering "Why?" and its light thus leads only to more darkness.

The elites of this world try to imprison faith into an increasingly tiny private sphere, dismissing it as superstition or quaint anthropological specimen while ignoring their own futile vanity.

Such is the path of mankind walking according to its own wisdom, its own strength and its own signs alone: walking into nothing but oblivion.

We have a different path, as St. Paul tells us so wonderfully in today's first reading (1 Corinthians 1:17-15):

For Christ did not send me to baptize
but to preach the gospel,
and not with eloquent wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the word of the cross
is folly to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God.

For it is written,
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart."

Where is the wise man?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since, in the wisdom of God,
the world did not know God through wisdom,
it pleased God through the folly of what we preach
to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs
and Greeks seek wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews
and folly to Gentiles,
but to those who are called,
both Jews and Greeks,
Christ
the power of God
and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God
is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.

This is echoed in today's Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 10-11):

The LORD brings to nought the plans of nations;
he foils the designs of peoples.

But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
the design of his heart, through all generations.

So we preach what the world considers foolishness and we live what the world considers weakness, following the path St. Paul recounts in his next letter (2 Corinthians 12:9-10):

But he said to me,
"My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power
is made perfect in weakness."

I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then,
I am content with weaknesses,
insults,
hardships,
persecutions,
and calamities;
for when I am weak,
then I am strong.