Reading Francis

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. – 1 Cor. 1:25

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. – 1 Cor. 3:18-19

When I was studying religion in college, St. Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians were the first books of the Bible that I got a really deep dive on. My professor, Charles Talbert, was (and still is, though he has passed away) a well-regarded scholar of the New Testament, and his book, Reading Corinthians, was our textbook. I needed it, because there’s a lot to sort out in those two short books. Dr. Talbert’s insight helped make sense of what could otherwise seem like one long, unhinged rant by Paul. (Interrupted by I Corinthians 13, which everyone uses at their wedding.)

One of the things that I didn’t really get at the time and mostly skipped over in my later studies was this theme of the Gospel as foolishness and human wisdom as utterly misguided. Maybe it was because I was a nerd who liked getting good grades, but I had trouble letting go of the idea that human wisdom was actually on the right track.

Pope Leo’s encyclical this summer, Magnifica Humanitas, helped me connect in a new way with Paul’s riff on foolishness and wisdom, and I was reminded of that when these readings came up in Daily Mass this week at the same time that I was catching up on a discussion earlier this summer that America Media did on the encyclical. That discussion reminded me of the section I called “the soul of the encyclical” back on my first read. I know it’s long, but I’m going to repost the first nine paragraphs of that section below. It’s so worth your time to read it, even if you don’t have the stomach to read the whole encyclical.

Leo’s point, I realize, is Paul’s point. While people expect a God of power and wisdom who bestows strength and intelligence to those He favors, the Gospel tells of a God driven by love to become as vulnerable and suffering as any of His creatures. Rather than literal Deus ex machina miracles that rescue believers from any harm, God instead chooses to so fully embody our experience that there is no pain we can suffer (save sin) that God hasn’t experienced first-hand. 

In doing so, He elevates and sanctifies the experience of suffering that we all share. What it means to be human, and what it means to be divine, is to love and be loved, to care and be cared for, to suffer with the vulnerable and accompany each other through our common vulnerability. In the eyes of a power-addicted world, it is foolishness. It is nevertheless Good News.

Here’s that section from Magnifica Humanitas (link to the whole thing; buy a copy):

118. Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a “limit” — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. The light of faith offers a perspective on reality that helps us recognize what we call the “contingency” of the things of this world. While it is right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it is also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that “religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, propose that we live, without oversimplification, this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, interpreting it in the light of our original and fundamental relationship with God.”

119. It is precisely within our limitations that the following find a place: compassion, as well as a sincere concern for the needs of others; a generosity that can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure; spiritual experience and the worship of God. We see this at many moments when our limits become tangible: when we face rejection, when we suffer the illness or loss of a loved one, when we encounter our own weakness or failure. Mysteriously, it is precisely in such moments that we can discover a new wisdom, tangibly experience the closeness of others and encounter the presence of the Lord.

120. Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or suppress it, but to integrate it. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity. To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human.

121. The moral corruption of our limitations as created beings — namely the evil that clearly agitates the human heart — ruins society and life, at times reaching extreme forms of inhumanity. Yet even these painful expressions of our limitations leave openings for the good. Even when persons dehumanize themselves and bring about tragedy, a small light continues to shine within humanity, one that can be rekindled, with God’s grace, along paths of conversion and reconciliation. As Viktor Frankl rightly observed, in moments of horror, “we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

122. Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others. In this same experience, we remain capable of intuiting a fraternity greater than ourselves and of perceiving injustice as a scandal. Authentic culture and art preserve this spark, resisting the normalization of evil. For this reason, certain works have taken on an almost prophetic significance: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.

123. History does not appear solely as a record of human violence, but also as evidence that humanity is capable of creating institutions that protect our shared life. Over the past two centuries, this can be seen in several emblematic achievements: the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1863), whose operational neutrality ensures compassionate care for all; the long process that led to the abolition of slavery, which represented not only a legal shift but a transformation of conscience; the establishment of the United Nations (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which articulated a shared language for affirming, at least as a common ideal, the universality of human dignity; and the 1951 Refugee Convention, which recognizes the duty to protect those fleeing persecution and danger. In each of these cases, the desire for good took concrete shape in public contexts — laws, institutions and practices — capable of limiting the abuse of power and defending the vulnerable. Yet none of these developments emerged without encountering resistance, narrow interests or cultural inertia. Moral progress almost always unfolds through a long and demanding journey, often marked by setbacks. We need only think of stalled peace processes or the slow implementation of environmental commitments. The very fragility of these achievements highlights how precious the responsibility is of those who initiate and sustain them.

124. Certain events make it clear that history can also change when individuals truly take the dignity of everyone seriously: the civil rights movement in the United States of America, closely associated with the testimony of Martin Luther King Jr., or the end of apartheid in South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela and his decision not to surrender the future to hatred. In different contexts, many courageous and generous women have also stood out, including Saint Laura Montoya, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Maria Montessori, Elisabeth Elliot, Wangari Maathai, Benazir Bhutto and countless others from every continent whose commitment has contributed to making history more humane.

125. Alongside these public signs, there is a more hidden but decisive story. We see it in religious communities that choose to serve in poor and dangerous places. We also see it in the martyrs of fraternity and justice, such as Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Saint Oscar Romero and Blessed Enrique Angelelli; and in those witnesses who embodied the hope of the Gospel as well as human dignity amidst harsh, often inhumane conditions, such as Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận. Above all, it is visible in the “martyrs of everyday life” who care for, educate, accompany and comfort without fanfare, such as parents, nurses, doctors, volunteers and those who remain alongside an elderly person or an outcast. Their testimony demonstrates that goodness does not advance automatically, but requires the perseverance, memory and interior conversion necessary to begin anew, even after defeat.

126. It is this intertwining of just institutions, credible witnesses and daily fidelity that sustains hope and provides clear direction for technological progress without allowing the heart to regress. For this reason, humanity — in all its grandeur and woundedness — must never be replaced or surpassed. We can embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities, provided that we do not abandon the very essence of our humanity, namely the capacity for relationship and love. This leads to a crucial question: if an authentic “more than human” exists, where is it to be found? The Christian faith answers that question by pointing to a fulfilment that does not arise from a technological divinization, but through God’s grace received in Christ.