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Pentecost, June 8, 2014, by Fr. Kevin Anderson

How smart are you?  Do you have “book learning smarts” or do you have “street smarts?”

Would you say that you have a lot of knowledge or lots of wisdom?   Well, here are some questions for you to ponder:

 

How come when a remote control has batteries that are weak, we press harder on the button?
How come we constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
How come when vacuuming and we keep running over a string a dozen times, we will reach down, pick it up, examine it, and then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
Why is it that no plastic bag container will open on your first try?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Why do we sing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” when we are already there?

Why is the time of day with slowest traffic called rush hour?
Why do they sell hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight?

 

How does one answer such questions?  This weekend we hear about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  As Paul said in the second reading, “there are many gifts of the Holy Spirit.”   I would say that there are thousands upon thousands of gifts that we could identify.  Classically, we name seven principle gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Knowledge, Piety, Counsel (or Judgment), Fear (or awe) of the Lord, Understanding and Courage.

 

I would like to talk about the first two:  knowledge and wisdom.  They are both important. Knowledge is the insights that we gain from someone else’s experience.  For example, someone did something and we learn from . . . or we look it up in a book, or from the Internet.  There exists a fact or experience “out there” and now I have it. 

 

Wisdom is gaining insight from my own experience.  For example, I did this and now I have learned from it.  If you put a button up your nose, it get stuck (I learned that about age 9). 

 

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato can be considered a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.

 

In terms of faith, there is a place for knowledge . . . that is, memorizing facts, learning doctrine, hearing about other people’s experience of God (as we did in the first reading) with the disciples able to speak in different languages. 

 

Wisdom is trusting one’s own experience of God.  And this is something that we don’t usually do.  That is, if I can copy someone else or someone in authority says that it is OK then it must be true.  But who am I to have a “God experience?”  Well, I say, “Who are you NOT to have a God experience?” 

 

God wants to get “to you” or rather “to touch your life in such a way that you simple “know” the presence of God.  When you have it . . . even if it was just a glimpse that occurred many years ago, do not discount it.  Believe in it. 

 

Recently someone asked me “how does one convey faith?”  I said, “start by talking about your own experience of God, or you own experience of knowing a peacefulness  . . . like Jesus talked about in the gospel.”  When Jesus appeared to the disciples he said, “Peace be with you” or rather “I give you peacefulness.”   A peacefulness could be your God experience.

 

I told the person who asked me the question (and I use this example often) that when people argue about what is accurate in the bible, or people get confused about the changes that occur in the liturgy, or they complain about the sexual abuse of priest. . . . I say, “you know if somehow the all the events in the Bible were proven to be false (that is, they never happened), or if we found out scandalous things about some saint or we somehow found that Jesus was married or that Mary wasn’t a Virgin (all of which would be hugely upsetting).   Those would not affect my faith . . . because I know from a wisdom inside me about God.   I trust the God presence that I have experienced.  It certainly helps that other people can validate and confirm a similar experience . . . but I have learned to trust the God working within me. That’s called the gift of wisdom.

 

So we celebrate this Pentecost weekend, not only as something that occurred years ago (which it did and which was good) and so we have the gift of knowledge about that and what the early Church did with that experience . . . but we also celebrate how the Holy Spirit is working through you right now, today (which it is) and we ask, “OK God, what do you want me to do?”   

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