Saturday of 8th Week in Course 2023
Wisdom. Holy Wisdom in Greek is Agios Sophia. The word is in the feminine gender not only in Greek but in Latin, so the pronoun is “her.” Sophia is a she, and we’ve probably all known women and girls who carried that very Christian name. Jesus ben Sira, the author of the deutero-canonical book of Sirach, wrote not long before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and his writings, very lengthy, became part of the Greek OT because they were both practical and transcendent. Today we read: “When I was young and innocent, I sought wisdom openly in my prayer.” He helps us understand more about Wisdom with the analogy of a ripening grape. And he considers Wisdom to be profitable, because it keeps him from doing things that are stupid and self-destructive. That’s good advice for anybody in any age.
The Catechism tells us (216) that “God's truth is his wisdom, which commands the whole created order and governs the world. God, who alone made heaven and earth, can alone impart true knowledge of every created thing in relation to himself.” Wisdom is seen as a kind of emanation from God, through whom the universe was made. It’s a short jump from that to the teaching we find in St. John and St. Paul that the Word of God, the Incarnate Jesus, is from eternity the means of creation coming into existence.
The one thing Wisdom does very well is keep the wise man and woman focused on following the Law. That’s not the six-hundred plus little nit-picky regulations about diet and leprosy that governed the Temple priests, but the clear natural law of God codified in the Ten Commandments, and, for us disciples, the twin law to love God and love neighbor, even to self-sacrifice. We need to cultivate an internal, positive attitude that the Law of the Lord is indeed perfect, refreshing the soul, and His commands enlighten our eyes.
Our Gospel offers us a delightful incident from St. Mark that shows both the wisdom and cleverness that Christ Jesus exhibited in His ministry. We know that one of the attributes that attracted so many followers to Jesus is that His teachings were not wall-to-wall citations from Rabbi Hillel or Gamaliel or somebody, but came from His lips out of His mind and heart. They were authoritative without footnotes and a table of references. He spoke as if He was directly plugged into the divine mind and will, because He WAS plugged directly into the divine mind and will–His Father’s. So the elders of the Jews, trying to discredit Him, demanded to know His authority. They were almost certainly trying to trip Him up. They asked, expecting Him to give an answer that would be open to attack. Like “I get my authority from God,” which would be grounds to accuse Him of blasphemy. So He asks them a loaded question: where did the baptism of John–a baptism of repentance–come from, heaven or some human? That would pin them on a dilemma, which they themselves understood. So they backed away from the encounter, fearing a popular uprising.
We don’t always have to be clever like Jesus, but we do need to seek Wisdom and pray for that virtue daily. When my wife and I say our morning prayers together, we ask for the wisdom to know God’s will, and the other virtues needed to carry it out in our day and time. Not a bad way to start every day, don’t you think?
