“We Have the Mind of Christ”

Who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel Him?

The prophet Isaiah posed this rhetorical question.  “Whom did God consult to gain knowledge?  Who taught Him the path of judgment or showed Him the way of understanding?” (Isaiah 40:13-14)

King Solomon posed the same rhetorical question, as we will read in our first reading at Holy Mass this coming Sunday.  “Who knows God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?” (Wisdom 9:13)

St. Paul in Prison by Rembrandt

Rhetorical questions.  God possesses unfathomable wisdom; we cannot plumb its depths.  To imagine that we know better?  Laughable human presumption.

Our ‘spirit’—our own proper intellectual capacity to reach God—it gets there only by faith.  We believe what we do not perceive, because we trust the authority of the source of the information.

But: the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are real.  That’s what St. Paul was saying when he wrote to the Corinthians:  “We have the mind of Christ.” (I Corinthians 2:16)

St. Paul wrote I Corinthians because of divisions among the people.  He diagnosed the cause of those divisions:  worldliness, imperfect faith, reliance on human approval.

So his letter clarifies the Gospel beautifully.  The unity of the Church consists in Christ Himself, present in the Blessed Sacrament, Who fills us with His supernatural, divine love, and Who directs us spiritually towards the true goal, which is to share in His resurrected, immortal life.

The resurrected, immortal life of Christ:  We believe that He lives that life, and that He shares it with us.  We experience interiorly the reality of that life by His divine inspirations, which He has equipped us to receive, by giving us the seven gifts.

The mind of Christ—it is wisdom, true heavenly wisdom—the savor, the sweetness of being alive, with no fear—no fear of death, no fear of human disapproval, no fear of the future—no fear whatsoever, except the fear of offending our good God.