So often Jesus answers a question with a
question of his own. He is on the receiving end of many questions in the
gospels, from scribes and Pharisees, from chief priests and elders, from
teachers of the Law and from disciples. The fact that he so often replies with
a question is not just a clever strategy on his part. It is because part of the
meaning of a question is the interest the questioner has in the answer. Why
does that person ask that question? What is it he or she is wanting in asking
that question of Jesus? So Jesus’ replies, in the form of questions, are aimed
at bringing to light also – and sometimes this needs to be done in the first
place – the interest or motivation that explains the question.
Today’s first reading is one of the
passages in which we read about the quest for wisdom, for truth. It tells of a
person’s eager desire for knowledge, understanding and meaning, and how that
desire has stayed with him all his life. In the course of his life he has
learned not just about the object of his desire – he has gained knowledge,
wisdom and truth – but he has learned also about himself and particularly about
his own motivation in the search for wisdom.
‘My very core yearned to discover her’,
says one translation. Another says ‘my soul was tormented in seeking her’. ‘I
have directed my soul towards her’, he says, ‘and in purity have found her’.
This is the point, to understand and to purify my motivations in my desire for
knowledge and wisdom. Why do I pray? Why do I want to know? What do I plan to
do with the knowledge I am seeking? Julian of Norwich speaks of ‘the
purification of the motive in the ground of our beseeching’. Our beseeching is
our quest, our prayer, our life’s search. The motivation of that quest needs to
be known and purified.
The replies of Jesus, usually as in today’s
gospel in the form of a question back, are meant to bring people into that
further depth of seeking where they are obliged to think also about their
reasons for asking the questions they ask. What is the interest of the chief
priests, scribes and elders in the questions they put to him today? It is not
that Jesus is resistant or closed to their questioning when he asks them a
question in reply. It is because he knows that their interest, their motivation
for asking, is not pure. They are out to trap him, to corner him and to use
whatever he says against him.
He is Wisdom itself, God’s Word, knowing
what is in human beings. His replies are always helpful, always supportive. If
he seems to be clever and evasive in not answering some questions directly we
can be sure that it is for the good of the questioner that he does this. There
is also a moral and spiritual dimension to asking questions, to seeking truth
and wisdom. The mind and heart must be properly disposed. A significant part of
growing in wisdom in the course of a lifetime is accepting our motivation in
seeking and asking – that it is not always pure or innocent, that it is
sometimes self-interested and partial.
The questions of Jesus oblige us to think
again about our own questions. They oblige us to enter into this broader and
deeper context in which our questions emerge: what is it you want to know? And
why do you want to know this? Only by continually searching the depths of our
hearts with these questions can we hope to enter into the light of truth, the
purity, in which Wisdom will be found.
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