Vigils Reading

FOOLS ARE PLEASING TO GOD

From “The Praise of Folly” by Desiderius Erasmus4 ◊◊◊

Our Lord gave thanks that God had concealed the mystery of salvation from the wise, but had revealed it to babes, that is, to fools… It tends to the same effect when in the Gospels He often attacks the scribes and Pharisees and doctors of the law, whereas He faithfully defends the ignorant multitude. For what is “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees” except “Woe unto you that are wise?” But He seems to find most potent delight in little children, women, and fishermen. And even in the class of brute creatures, those which are farthest from a foxlike cunning were best pleasing to Christ. He preferred to ride upon a donkey, though had He chosen He could have mounted the back of a lion without danger. And the Holy Spirit descended in likeness of a dove, not of an eagle… Add to this that Christ calls those who are destined to eternal life by the name “sheep”– and there is no other creature more foolish, as is witnessed by the proverbial phrase… “sheepish temperament,” … commonly used as a taunt against dull-witted and foolish men. And yet Christ avows himself as shepherd of this flock and even delights in the name of Lamb, as when John pointed Him out, “Behold the Lamb of God!”…

What do all these things cry out to us if not this, that mortal men, even the pious, are fools? And that Christ, in order to relieve the folly of mankind, though Himself “the wisdom of the Father,” was willing in some manner to be made a fool when He took upon Himself the nature of a man and was found in fashion as a man? And likewise He was made “to be sin” that He might heal sinners. Nor did He wish to bring healing by any other means than by “the foolishness of the cross,”

and by weak and stupid apostles… Beyond this, He forbade them to be troubled about what they should say before magistrates and He charged that they should not inquire into times and seasons; in a word, they should not trust to their own wisdom but wholly depend upon Him… St. Bernard is following him, I suppose, when he interprets that mountain whereon Lucifer established his headquarters as “the Mount of Knowledge.”…

The Christian religion on the whole seems to have a kinship with some sort of folly, while it has no alliance whatever with wisdom. If you want proofs of this statement, observe first of all how children, old people, women, and fools find pleasure beyond other folk in holy and religious things, and to that end are ever nearest the altars, led no doubt solely by an impulse of nature. Then you will notice that the original founders of religion, admirably laying hold of pure simplicity, were the bitterest foes of literary learning. Lastly, no fools seem to act more foolishly than do the people whom zeal for Christian piety has got possession of; for they pour out their wealth, they overlook wrongs, allow themselves to be cheated, make no distinction between friends and enemies, shun pleasure, glut themselves with hunger, wakefulness, tears, toils, and reproaches; they disdain life and dearly prefer death; in short, they seem to have grown utterly numb to ordinary sensations, quite as if their souls lived elsewhere and not in their bodies. What is this, forsooth, but to be mad?

Yet we see men of this sort predict future events, we see them understand languages and discourse which they have not previously known, and in general manifest something partaking of the divine. No doubt this happens because as the soul is a little more free from the taint of the body, it begins to exert its own native powers… And this truly is the portion of Folly, that “good part” which “shall not be taken away” by the transformation of life, but will be perfected