Vigils Reading

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS

From a commentary by Dom Damasus Winzen4

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To fear God, in the Old Testament, does not mean to be afraid of Him, but

to be devoted to Him. “In the fear of the Lord a person has great confidence…

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life”. The wisdom which grows out of this

fear of the Lord is, therefore, a progressive transformation of the heart…

The Book of Proverbs is a guide to establish peace in the minds of the

faithful by bringing them into contact with the light of that Divine Wisdom

which rules the world gently and peacefully. The fear of the Lord, the keeping

of the commandments, the right way of life, is the object… Wisdom and folly are

opposed to each other as life and death. It is the Way, the Truth and the Life

Who speaks in these proverbs. His charity is foreshadowed in the love of the

poor…Wisdom was with Her Father when He established the heavens, and

when He set a circle upon the face of the deep, and when He appointed the

foundations of the earth. Therefore Wisdom opens to the eyes of mortals the

divine meaning of this visible creation.

The teaching…would not be complete, however, without the revelation of

two other great mysteries, which represent, in someway, 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 only a mental image or an

abstract thought or a guiding principle. It is a Divine Person. It is the inner

nature of Wisdom to be the true, substantial image of the Father’s glory. 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. 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.

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 would 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

and redemption” through the foolishness of the Cross.

4 Pathways of Scripture, Dom Damasus Winzen, pg. 93 Unpublished MS.8