The book of Wisdom was written about 100 years before the time of Christ. Today, the author of the book of Wisdom points to those as foolish who see the good in creation, but who cannot recognize the God who created it. We can get mired in the beauty and the goodness of the created object and not see the creator who is behind it. We can be lured in by the beauty of these created things, ultimately making them our gods and our idols.
As we look at this reading on wisdom and creation, we celebrate one of the great Doctors of the Church and one of the great theologians of our faith: St Albert the Great. Born to an influential family in Germany at the beginning of the 13th century, Albert became a Dominican friar who taught at prestigious universities in Paris and Cologne. He is best known as one of the Fathers of the scholastic method of philosophy in the Medieval period that became the predominant system of philosophy in the Catholic Church for centuries. His synthesis of the philosophy of Aristotle was further developer by his student and friend, Thomas Aquinas. But Albert the Great did not make knowledge and learning his idol, which our reading from Wisdom warns against. Albert wrote a compendium of knowledge which addressed topics such as natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. He was made a saint and a Doctor of the Church by Pius XI in 1931, who declared St Albert to be “a saint whose example should inspire the present age so ardently seeking peace and so full of hope in its scientific discoveries. He is the patron saint of philosophers and scientists. St Albert the Great - pray for us.
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