The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. One could look at this week’s readings as offering some perspective on these matters by looking at most perennial of all human actions, eating and drinking.
Consider the readings on three levels. First, St. Paul makes it clear enough that excessive eating and drinking is contrary to the Christian life. Seeking delight in food and especially drink will not actually lead to delight. Instead, happily, he recommends taking up a different bodily delight: singing to the Lord!
Secondly and more attractively, eating and drinking well can be a useful analogy for what wisdom offers. In the first reading, we see what sort of “feast” wisdom offers: dressed meats and carefully prepared wines! This is an invitation to see how a good feast can teach us about the life of the mind. We can’t gain wisdom by the constant consumption of informational “empty calories.” Nor should we simply restrict ourselves to stark, austere informational equivalents of water and vegetables.
Finally, and sacramentally, Jesus invites us to see wisdom above all in the liturgical celebration of communion. Far from the height of foolishness, right worship is truly the source and summit of wisdom. While Jesus offers spiritual food for eternal life, it is still food. It is not simply some invisible “spiritual” worship.
We need all three of these levels or dimensions in order to be wise rather than foolish. The readings can teach us not simply about the need to search for true wisdom, but that the ways to search for true wisdom can be learned from the basic hungers of human living. It would be foolish to look elsewhere.
