Today is the birthday of Jean Faucault, who is famous for using the pendulum to describe the earth's rotation around the sun. In Faucault's Pendulum (1990), Umberto Eco wrote the following as a description of what Faucault may have observed when speculating about the earth's rotation,
"The Pendulum told me that, as everything moved — earth, solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansion — one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move. And I was now taking part in that supreme experience. I, too, moved with the all, but I could see the One, the Rock, the Guarantee, the luminous mist that is not body, that has no shape, weight, quantity, or quality, that does not see or hear, that cannot be sensed, that is in no place, in no time, and is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, number, order, or measure. Neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth.
It is a beautiful description.
I couldn't help but think of the last line of the gospel as I was pondering the description above, as well as, the opening lines of the first reading.
Jesus tells us in the gospel that "But wisdom is vindicated by all her children."
St. Paul reminds us in his letter to Timothy what is the center of gravity for us all, "you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth."
Wisdom and the pillar and foundation of truth are the center upon which the pendulum of life swing.
As Umberto Ecco describes so well, "one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move."
Is there something upon which life pivots, single point in which the universe moves? Or are we simply left to our whims and fancies?
Jesus in the gospel is acknowledging the truth of things. Jesus points out that children are often moody and petulant who expect the world to obey their quickly passing whims. But these whims are never sustainable. Children are emotional, moody, fickle and irritable. There is not a great deal of stability for theirs is one of immediate gratification and this alone is risky and unstable.
There must existence something that is deeper and more stable than the whims of people and the fancies they are attracted to given any moment.
Wisdom alone shows forth the truth, a truth that belongs to the church JEsus founded. There is pivot point, a hook un which everything moves. God has chosen that point of stability to be rooted his church, "you are peter and upon this rock i build my church, the gates of the nether world will not prevail. What you bind on earth you bind in heaven; what you loose n earth you loose in heaven."
The Pendulum has been set. We must enter into the swing of things and move and dance according not to the piper of the age but the song of truth which echoes forth from the church through the ages.
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