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Vigils Reading
September 12, 2022
Wisdom as the source of life,
from Pathways in Scripture by Damasus Winzen. [1]
The most wonderful field for contemplation is the way in which God led his chosen people through the vicissitudes of history. Sections of the book of Wisdom, as well as Sirach reviews the course of Jewish history to praise the magnitude of God=s mercy in which he delivered Israel, his firstborn, out of the hands of them that sought his life. There is no better way to a deep understanding of the Scripture than the passages of Wisdom which refer the whole history of the patriarchs to the constant presence of wisdom in God=s chosen ones. A few words are sufficient, for example, to put Noah in the full light of God=s eternal designs fulfilled in Christ: When the deluge destroyed the earth, wisdom healed it again, steering the course of the just one with contemptible wood. When wisdom throw=s her light on the great fathers of the chosen people, they begin to shine as the images of him in whom they were all fulfilled. Sirach is a master in the art of painting, with a few strokes, a faithful picture of the great spiritual leaders of Israel and in their portraits we recognize the features of Christ…
The teaching of the sapiential books would not be complete, however, without the revelation of two other great mysteries, which represent in some way the beginning and the end of God’s ways: the mystery of the divine personality of the Word of God, and that of the eternal life of the just. Wisdom is not a mental image or an abstract thought or a guiding principle. It is a divine person. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made anything from the beginning. I was set up from eternity and of old before the earth was made. I was with him in forming all things; and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times, playing in the world, and my delights were to be with the children of men (Prov 8:22ff). It is the inner nature of wisdom to be the true, substantial image of the Father=s glory. The words of wisdom: For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of his almighty glory, a reflection of the everlasting light and a spotless mirror of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness were used in the letter to the Hebrews (1:3) to describe the only-begotten Son of God.
If wisdom were only a personification of the law she would be dead. Only as a divine person can she become a source of life. Though she is one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself she makes everything new (Wis 7:27). As this is shown in the beginning of creation, so still more gloriously at the end. The last triumph of wisdom is the last judgment, which will bring eternal life to the just. In the earlier periods of the Old Testament revelation, the immortality of the soul was shrouded in mystery. Now it enters into the full light of faith. The souls of the just are in the hands of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. In the eyes of the unwise they seemed to die, but they are in peace (Wis 3:1-2).
From the beginning to the end the universal rule of wisdom has been established. Nevertheless, those whose eyes have been opened in baptism to the light of Christ will realize that the teaching of Solomon lacks one thing: the foolishness of God, Christ crucified. Wisdom was going to be more than a guide to the wise, more than eternal life for the just, more, even, than the beginning of creation. She was to become the Lamb who should not only expose but take away the sin of the world. The Wisdom of Solomon preached reward to the virtuous and death to those who hate her. But more than Solomon is here, where Christ Jesus becomes unto us sinners wisdom and justice and sanctification, and redemption through the foolishness of the cross (1Cor 1:30).