4th Week of Lent 2021 (EF) - Monday - Wisdom of Solomon and the Whip of Cords

 I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the story from today’s epistle of King Solomon and the two women. I was in second grade catechism class, sitting on the carpeted floor of my home parishes church basement. 

And I remember being so impressed with the clever way King Solomon determined who the true mother was, with his wisdom. I wondered just how many other wise solutions to problems he devised. I could imagine myself in Solomon’s place dispensing wise advice.

As a young boy, I think this story inspired a love of scripture as a source of wisdom—wisdom to live one’s life by, wisdom to help you know the difference between right and wrong—truth and deception.

Kind of a strange story to hear right in the middle of Lent, especially when coupled with the Gospel story of Our Lord fashioning a whip out of cords and driving the money changers out of the temple and predicting how he will be put to death.

And yet, in a sense, had the Jews of the Lord’s day exercised the wisdom of Solomon, they never would have sullied the temple with their corrupt business practices.

We are certainly meant to be impressed with the Wisdom of King Solomon and recognize the folly of the moneychangers, and yet, during Lent, I think we are also to meant to recognize the times where we have been like the deceitful harlot, those times where we have conducted our earthly business in competition with God, where we have sullied his temple. They would have known that the Temple was to be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves.

It’s easy to imagine ourselves giving wise advice like Solomon, maybe even imagining ourselves imitating the Lord’s great righteous fury, fashioning our own whip out of cords to drive the thieves out of the Lord’s temple. And yet, It’s quite another thing, isn’t it to humbly admit how unlike Solomon we have been. How rather than Solomon, we’ve acted more like the deceitful harlot, willing to compromise the truth at the expense of another’s happiness to achieve our ends. It’s one thing to express righteous zeal at the thieves in the house of the Lord, it’s another to humbly admit that we’re the ones that have so often deserved to be on the receiving end of that whip of cords.

Mea culpa, Right?

May our Lenten observances continue to instill in us deep contrition for our sins, open us up to wisdom from on High, and that we might come to know the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.