Recently the NPR program "Science Friday" featured a young biologist named Danielle Lee. In the course of talking about the excitement of her career, she commented that individual curiosity is the springboard of all the cumulative knowledge we have. Today's liturgy invites us to consider the difference between the search for knowledge and the acquisition of wisdom.  

In her commentary on the Sunday scriptures, Sr. Dianne Bergant of the Congregation of St. Agnes says that while human beings search for wisdom, "human wisdom cannot plumb the depths of reality. The deepest questions of life do not seem to be satisfied with answers derived from experience."  

The Book of Wisdom, like Proverbs, presents Wisdom as a personification of God, the God beyond human fathoming and whom we still seek. Where can we find wisdom or knowledge of God? Today's first reading makes an exceptional promise: She is "found by those who seek her," and, "She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire."

There's a conundrum in this: We seek her, and she anticipates our desire. It's a bit like the poem, "The Hound of Heaven." The poet, Francis Thompson, speaks of God's pursuit of him: "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; / I fled Him, down the arches of the years; / … I hid from Him, and under running laughter." Thompson ends the poem with the insight that by fleeing God, he was fleeing his own life. 

With today's psalm we pray, "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God." What better response could we make to the response to the promise of Wisdom and Thompson's discovery of God's love? 

Jesus' parable about the wise and foolish virgins is confusing at best. Perceptive children hear it and ask, "Why does Jesus praise the selfish ones?" and, "Why didn't they just share what they had?" These same children might make a connection between the parable and competition they learn through their school's grading system. In this practice, everybody gets ranked on a scale from knowledgeable to … some euphemism for foolish. Additionally, the children are taught not to cheat by sharing their answers. Is this the Gospel? The reign of God as the survival of the fittest?  

Our first reading and psalm subtly offer an interpretation of the strange parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Using the wisdom reading as a guide, we can come to a different interpretation of Jesus' riddle-story (parable). Wisdom says, "She is readily perceived by those who love her, and found by those who seek her." Wisdom 6:11, the verse preceding our selection, says, "Desire therefore my words; long for them and you will be instructed." This suggests that seeking wisdom, that keeping plenty of oil for our lamps, is not a question of being more or less knowledgeable, nor of being stingy. The search for wisdom is a question of love and deep desire.

The Jesuit spiritual director Mark Thibodeaux said, "Much of Christian spirituality presumes that our desires are bad. … Ignatius believed that our problem was not desiring too much but rather desiring too little." Because we are made for God, the only thing that can satisfy us is relationship with God and growing in love with all that God loves. All the rest — knowledge, fame, wealth, beauty, accomplishment, popularity — are nothing more than two-bit substitutes for the love that fills the human heart.

The wise women were the ones whose desire led them to be prepared for the long haul. Nothing they owned or hoped for mattered more than being ready when the bridegroom came. The "foolish" ones (wiser in the estimation of some), were more circumspect with their priorities, not putting all their eggs in one basket. They were ready to pay a price, but they weren't handing over a blank check.  

Like the curiosity that leads to a passionate search for new knowledge, getting in touch with our deepest desire and giving it our all is what, in Wisdom's own words, makes us worthy of her, worthy of the God who planted those desires in us and who meets us "in anticipation of [our] desire."

Wisdom turns out to be qualitatively different from knowledge. We can acquire knowledge through study, practice and even the internet. According to these Scriptures, wisdom is not so much an acquisition as it is a relationship of love. More than possessing it, it captures us. Understanding wisdom as a name for God, we realize that we may seek her, but she who embedded the desire in us longs even more to find and live in us.

How many times have you heard St. Paul bashed for what he says about women? Today's selection from his first letter to the Thessalonians offers a very different take on Paul's attitudes. Sandwiched between two readings that berate religious leaders for failing their vocation, Paul's reflection portrays authentic ministry in distinctly feminine terms.

This, the first of Paul's letters, is probably the oldest text in the Christian Scriptures, giving us fascinating hints about the life and thought of our earliest Christian sisters and brothers. The Thessalonians, people of Greek heritage, were not steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures, so Paul was not concerned about connecting his preaching to them with Jewish traditions. Thessalonica was, so to speak, virgin territory for the Gospel — a situation that called Paul to discern about how to make the Gospel alive for cultures other than his own. 

Coming from Greek and Jewish patriarchal societies in which women's contributions were undervalued, his contemporaries might have thought Paul had gone off the deep end with his description of his mission. Presumably an unmarried man, Paul compares the way he and his companions approached the Thessalonians to the loving action of a nursing mother. Steeped in a religious tradition that prized dogmatic teaching and theological debate, Paul described his ministry as filled with gentleness and affection. Finally, closing the circle of images, he said that he and his companions longed to share their very selves with the community — an image of exactly what a nursing mother does for her child.

In contrast to the Lord's warning to the priests who "have caused many to falter" (Malachi 1), Paul thanks God for the way his word has reached the community as the very word of God.  Unlike the officials Jesus criticized for posing as teachers without interiorizing the message they preach (Matthew 23), Paul and his companions strove to give witness by their lives as much as by their words. They rejoiced in the fact that their community has discovered the same power of God working in their own lives.

In this short segment of his letter to the Thessalonians, without necessarily intending to do so,  Paul outlined a theology of vocation and ministry. He described his approach to evangelization as being as natural and wondrous as the way a mother's body produces nourishment for her hungry infant. Because she is willing to provide and because the child is hungry, she is capable of giving of herself in what is one of the most unique and intimate ways any creature can give to another. By describing his ministry as like that of the mother, Paul echoed the Last Supper scene in which Jesus offered his own body for others and commanded them to do the same.  

We hear these readings at the beginning of National Vocation Awareness Week (Nov. 5-11). While the bishops' conference calls this "Vocation Awareness," the website of the U.S. bishops' conference concentrates on "religious vocations": vocations to religious communities, the diaconate and priesthood. In a video produced for the week, several women and men describe the joy they find in living their vocation.

Augustinian Fr. Richie Mercado explains that the witness of his parents' joy in their married vocation inspired him to seek what would bring him the greatest joy. He added that anyone will be happy in life as long as they are authentic in their response to God's call. Highlighting the mystery of vocation, Sr. Vicki Lichtenauer of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, described the fit of her choice for religious life saying, "I don't know if I ever felt like I was falling in love, but essentially I was falling into something." Each in their own way, these people explain that their vocation has called the best out of them and led them to the service of others.

In today's Gospel, Jesus ended his tirade about hypocritical ministers with one of his pet themes: "The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts self will be humbled; but whoever humbles self will be exalted." Paul's self-giving response to others' needs reflects that.  By using the image of the nursing mother, Paul assures us that the living of our vocation will come naturally as long as we are willing to be generous and responsive to others.  

Paul didn't ask the Thessalonians to be missionaries like himself. He only asked them to allow the word of God to continue to work in them as it had in him. To say that no one could ask more is an understatement! Young or old, celibate or in a committed relationship, no matter our gender, all God asks is that we give of ourselves exactly as we are — and that we give our all. Then, as happens through the nursing mother, God's grace will flow through us for the good of all.