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Homily for Friday of the 6th Wk in OT, 21 Feb 2025, Gen 11:1-9 & Mk 8:34-9:1
“What profit is there to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?” There is a word in English that describes a question like this: IRONY. You went after something that you thought was profitable, and it led you to your bankruptcy.
I checked the origin of the word IRONY. It comes from the Greek eironia which means “To hide one’s true intentions” or “to pretend not to know”. In Tagalog we say, “Nagmamaang-maangan.” Isn’t that how the snake behaved himself in the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3? In Genesis 3:1 we are told that the snake asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” He was feigning ignorance and Eve corrected him and explained that God had actually allowed them to eat of the fruit of any tree, except that of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then follows the irony: he is able to convince them that they were not going to die; that instead, they were going to be like God, knowing good and evil.”
There’s the irony of it. It was when they aspired to be godlike that they got elienated from God. It was when they started ambitioning for immortality that they began to die. It was when they wanted to gain knowledge of good and evil that they began to make stupid decisions.
We call it irony because what follows is the opposite of what one expected. We see it also in the story of Babel in today’s first reading: They built a tower to avoid getting scattered and the result was the opposite; they got scattered.
It takes a while before people are able to say, “How ironic.” Often, it takes a lot of experience, including that of making a stupid mistake and realizing it only later—that what you thought was gain was actually going to cause you a terrible loss.
Now I see why the origin of the word IRONY means “to be deceived.” It brings us back to the common cause of ironic choices: that character in the Bible who represents darkness but presents himself as an angel of light. In the Gospel, Jesus gives the formula or antidote for those poisoned by the venom of the Great Deceiver—KENOSIS, the emptying of self. To deny oneself, to take up one’s cross, to follow Jesus in a path that leads to suffering and death, but is actually the way to eternal life.
