Comment
When seeking wisdom don’t forget the role of faith and prayer
Bishop Shelton J. Fabre
As we are all aware, growing through the stages of life can be classified roughly as growing from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to young adulthood, from young adulthood to mature adulthood. Progression through these stages physically is simply called aging, but progression through these stages also involves the necessary components of advancing psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. One of the most beneficial and yet difficult aspects of growing through the stages of life is learning lessons that only human experience can teach us. The insight gained in the realms of psychological, emotional and spiritual growth through these stages of life is often classified as attaining knowledge or, better yet, wisdom. As we all know, wisdom is a good virtue to acquire. One way of defining wisdom is to see wisdom as the result of connecting all of our growth experiences together, reflecting on them, and putting into practice the fruit of this reflection on our lived experience. For many reasons lately, both peaceful and demanding, I have been reflecting again on the gift of wisdom. Maybe with the ‘slowdown’ (does life ever really slow down?) that the summer months bring, I have more time to allow my mind to wander off in reflection and prayer, and the gift of wisdom has again captured my focus in reflection and prayer. The attainment of wisdom references our overall and complete experience of
growing through these stages of life in all ways. However, attaining wisdom is a quest made up of many individual experiences at different times in life when we made a decision to do one thing and not do another, when we made a decision to react in one way and not to react in another way, and all of these individual experiences teach us lessons about life. Reflection on all of these lessons can in time bring us wisdom. The individual lessons learned through these experiences are both positive and negative, and the negative experiences may simply be called learning lessons from the school of the hard knocks of life. While the attainment of wisdom is always a noble and good thing, I think that we can all agree that the lessons learned through the school of hard knocks in life are sometimes really difficult to integrate into our lives. When we learn lessons through the school of hard knocks, after the lesson is learned it is our hope and prayer that our lives are not so damaged or bruised that we will not be able to eventually recover from the experience, and that we will integrate the lesson learned, and with time and reflection be wiser because of all such experiences. Each one of us has undoubtedly learned many lessons through the good experiences in life and through the school of hard knocks. If we further reflect on these experiences, however, our minds and hearts turn to those who have made the journeys through the stages of life with us. These people are our parents, spouses, siblings, friends, co-workers, counselors, clergy, religious or simply lifetime confidants. We ran to them for advice and counsel. After seeking their advice, sometimes we may have acted on the advice in the manner in which it was suggested, or sometimes we have veered off in our own direction, acting against the advice offered. Nonetheless, these people in our
8 • Bayou Catholic • Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux • July 2021
lives are the ones who celebrated with us when things went our way, or comforted us when things fell apart. Regardless of whether we accepted their advice or not, we can be grateful for those who were willing to listen to us, to empathize with us, and to offer good counsel. Hopefully through it all, we grew in wisdom. In the end, the source of all wisdom is the living God, and he has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Word of God, our hope and our wisdom. As we continue to seek wisdom, may we always remember the role that faith and prayer play in our quest to find it. A blessed July to you, and Happy Birthday to our beloved country, the United States! I hope that your summer is progressing well, and that you have time for leisure and relaxation. BC
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One way of defining wisdom is to see wisdom as the result of connecting all of our growth experiences together, reflecting on them, and putting into practice the fruit of this reflection on our lived experience.
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Comfort For My People
