Wisdom and Ignorance

~ Brother Thomas Paul ~

Every moment of our lives, we are under the love and protection of the Almighty God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 301 talks about God’s love and protection. The Creator does not abandon His creatures. We are in His Mighty hands. God, the Creator not only gives us being and existence, but also, at every moment, upholds and sustains us. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of Wisdom and freedom of joy and confidence.
There are two types of darkness:
1.The darkness due to sin.
2.The darkness due to ignorance.
Sometimes wrong interpretations of the Bible unsettle us and make us upset…but when we consider that it is due to lack of knowledge, it becomes easy to condone them.
We too, have misconceptions due to lack of understanding. This darkness of ignorance can be dispelled only by Right Understanding. Jesus’ objective was to rectify this ignorance.
Where did the first act of Ignorance transpire?… Adam committed the first act of ignorance in the garden of Eden. What did God instruct Adam?… God forbade Adam from eating the fruit from the tree of Knowledge…
The tree of Knowledge there means the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is for God alone. That is Wisdom. When we live in communion with God, we are led by God and we will live our lives with the right judgement of good and evil. The first sin was thus committed in the garden of Eden. How can this sin be negated?
What was Adam’s Ignorance?
He believed the serpent who deceived them by telling them that upon eating the fruit their eyes would be opened and they would be like God….and have the knowledge of good and evil. Adam’s failure to understand that he was already like God and made in God’s image was his ignorance.
We are all like God, made in His own image and likeness. Our failure to believe this is our ignorance.
When we receive
Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, we become Christ like. Failing to acknowledge this is our ignorance.
St. Catherine of Siena and Pope Paul II reiterated….
“If you know who you are and who is within you…you can turn the world upside down.”
Hallelujah!!
We are beloved children of God and the Trinity resides within us. The Living God and Creator lives within us. Failure to believe and acknowledge this is our ignorance.
Jesus Christ came to dispel the darkness of this ignorance.
God made Him Wisdom for us because He knew this ignorance that came through Adam has dominion over us, His beloved children. Jesus is the Wisdom that dispels this darkness of Ignorance.
Wisdom came for us as a person.
It is written in Matthew 4:16…
‘The people living in darkness
Have seen a great light…on those living in the shadow of death..
The darkness we read is the darkness of Ignorance. The lack of Understanding about God and Man.
St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Aquinas write about this darkness of Ignorance.
One of St. Thomas Aquinas prayers..
‘O Lord, take from me the double darkness in which I have been born,
An obscurity of sin and ignorance.’