Today’s readings: Proverbs 9, 1-6; Ephesians 5, 15-20; John 6, 51-58.

When we analyse our life and behaviour, it is not all folly or all wisdom. Folly and wisdom alternate in the way we manage our lives. There are circumstances when folly takes the upper hand just as there are times when we manage to calm down and reflect enough to make wise choices and decisions.

We all long to make sense of our life and all that happens inside and outside us. We cannot pretend to be in control all the time, and we may often be taken by surprise and fall prey to instant reactions that we regret later. St Paul’s words in Ephesians are very appropriate today when he warns: “Do not drug yourselves with wine”.

Our culture, among its many features, is also a drug culture in many senses. We drug ourselves in many ways, leading to dissipation which, in Paul’s meaning, is exactly the opposite of being spirit-filled. The spirit with which we have been sealed is a spirit that empowers; it is a spirit of courage and boldness, not a spirit of evasion. Paul exhorts the Ephesians to lead their lives as intelligent, not senseless, people.

Today’s first reading from Proverbs sings the praises of wisdom, the gift in life that contrasts not so much with ignorance as with folly. Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance humanist movement which abandoned medieval pieties in favour of a rich new vision of the individual’s potential.

Erasmus in 1511 wrote his classic ‘In Praise of Folly’, meant to be a fierce statement about 16th-century Christian ideals. Its irony is thick, with Folly, the essay’s central character, praising herself endlessly and arguing that life would be dull and distasteful without her.

What is it that makes life senseless? What is it that gives meaning to life? And what is the role or function of religion in all this?

For Erasmus, and very much in line with what today we are struggling to rediscover in religion, religion is more to be seen in its potential to enhance the individual and provide the richness of a new vision of life.

When Jesus, proceeding today with Chapter 6 of John’s gospel, speaks of himself as the living bread and of the possibility of living for ever, what he really means is a value-added existence, a life that is fully human and the possibility of being fully alive.

The bread of life Jesus speaks about is no doubt the Eucharist. But broadly speaking it stands also for whatever we eat to nourish our own selves.

You are what you eat, they say. The food one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind and health. This applies also to the life of the spirit. In this day and age we cannot afford to relegate Christian living exclusively to the sphere of popular religiosity or piety.

In the social and cultural context of this island, popular religiosity still plays a major role in church life and practically it is around this type of religiosity that our calendar orbits. But we can no longer simply boast about religion being a major element in the texture of our national identity.

This was unfortunately echoed these past days in the Church’s reaction to proposed amendments concerning the vilification of religion.

Though I can condone that religion has formed an integral part of the texture of our identity as a nation, I find it absurd to consider religion, where identity is concerned, on par with the flag or the national anthem. Standing by the standard analysis of today’s society and of the changed role and function of religion in the construction of reality, this perception of religion no longer holds ground.

There was a time when religion, in the set-up of our society, provided stability and was a sure point of reference. But that is no longer the case today. What we need to count on more now is the wisdom within. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove would call this the wisdom of stability in his book about “rooting faith in a mobile culture”.

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