All wisdom comes from God (HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF THE 7TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Homily for Monday of the 7th Week in Ordinary

Sirach 1:1-10. Psalm 93:1abc,1d-2,5. Mark 9:14-29

All wisdom comes from God

With Faith, all things are possible 

"All wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him forever" (Sir.1:1). If wisdom comes from God, we can not seek wisdom without loving God. If we truly want to be close to God, we must be wise. "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." With the gift of wisdom, we can come to the understanding that through prayers, we stay close to God in love, and through fasting, we mortify our flesh so as to be godly, and with prayer and fasting we can defeat the evil spirits in our world.

Concerning prayer and fasting, Jesus said to his disciples in today's Gospel, concerning the boy with a mute spirit: "This kind can not be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29). 

The boy's father had brought the boy to Christ's disciples, but they could not expel the evil spirit. That the father brought his son to the Lord's disciple is a clear indication of his faith in the disciples, but the disciples did not have enough faith to expel the evil spirit. Jesus told his disciples they lacked faith.

Even though the father of this boy came with some faith, he still got a boost to his faith when he said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" A valuable lesson from this passage is the statement of Jesus that "If you can! All things are possible to him who believes."

Today, many of us profess our faith in God with words, but our deeds do not reflect our faith in God. If we focus on Jesus, with prayer and fasting, nothing will be impossible for us.

May God grant us an increase in faith and fill us with wisdom to overcome the forces of darkness through Christ our Lord. Amen