Please read the passage before the homily.
“All men are by nature foolish who are in ignorance of God.” In the past two hundred years or so we have conquered space, replaced animals with vehicles, and wiped out diseases. We have discovered many planetary systems different from ours. We have globalized our marketing and commerce. Yet wisdom calls us foolish and ignorant.
It is not that we have acted foolishly in inventing airplanes, trains, and automobiles, or that we have conquered diseases and sent ourselves to the moon. What is foolish, in the eyes of the Book of Wisdom, is that we have tended to pat ourselves on the back and bask in the laurels of our own inventiveness without adequate regard for the Lord who has created all this out of nothing. We have taken and reshaped what God has made out of nothing, which would not have existed for us to use if God had not created it first.
We have learned how to use creation to our material comfort, but we must not forget the creator when we rejoice in what we have done. The author of the Book of Wisdom calls us foolish for not knowing who God is and the position God has in the universe and in our lives.
We are struck by the beauty of creation. The Northen Lights several nights ago were resplendently spectacular. The power of the hurricane is immense. The ability of tiny seeds to grow in a harvest is gentle and magnificent. If we are struck by the beauty of nature, then we should be equally if not more so for the power of God that has created all these things. We can rejoice at our created world, but we can more rejoice and praise God who has made the world we live in. All of us are by nature wise because we have knowledge of the God who has created everything in the universe.