On the First O Antiphon... “O Wisdom”

O Wisdom, coming forth from the most high, filling all creation and reigning to the ends of the earth; come and teach us the way of truth.  Amen: Come Lord Jesus

Ecclesiasticus 24.3-9, Proverbs 1:20, 8, 9 and Corinthians 1:30

O come thou wisdom from on high Who madest all in earth and sky, creating us from dust and clay, to reveal salvations way.  Rejoice, rejoice Emmanuel, shall come to thee O Israel

Wisdom...By definition:

·         accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment

·         the trait of utilizing knowledge and experience with common sense and insight

·         the quality of being prudent and sensible

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God is:  “All Knowledge, All Insight, All experience, All prudence and All sensibility and thus All Order in creation.

In His Wisdom God the Father sent His only Son to be Emmanuel (God with us) to bring divinity to humanity.  And in the human and divine Christ child the eternal WORD was made flesh for us as He had promised through the prophets throughout history.   

Wisdom is a divine attribute, the breath of God’s power, the shining of God’s glory

At the beginning of John’s gospel we hear of the Word made flesh, the Word, the divine Logos, the eternal thought, reason, .  Through Him all things were made.  He is the archetype of the universe and all things are ordered in and to Him.

In our lives we strive for balance of individuality and community, we strive for structure and order for the good of all.  God, Wisdom is the creator and order of all in creation and all is moving according to His plan.  Thus our lives only have order in Him and we can not find balance and order without Him.  As “Wisdom”, God teaches us the virtue of prudence, that of wise decision making and careful discernment of what our decisions will do to affect the balance of right vs wrong.  As “Wisdom” God orders all things and teaches us how to avoid things that harm us, both materially and spiritually.

But if all things are according to His plan, then what of what of free will?  The trouble with pondering that is that we are trying to figure out what God’s plan is.  We constantly try to define God’s presence in our human sense of time and space and forget that for God there is and never was time as we know it. He always has and always will exist outside our small and narrow human definition of time.   Pray for patience, understanding, and that His will be done.  Put ourselves in His hands.  It’s hard to do, but that’s our call. 

Mankind is inherently looking for order based on an innate need for it and basic insight from the creator that all is His will. We are born with this need for balance and seek it in the material world even to the point of exploring the smallest of fundamental particles making up the material universe, to the exploration of the vastness of space and time.

Recently there have been initial tests of a new facility in Europe (the most powerful machine ever built) for accelerating electrons to incredible speed and crashing them into each other to release even smaller particles  in a desire to discover order (that is) what makes up even the smallest elements of creation we humans can conceive.  I personally am excited to see this because we all know that no matter how small the particles are which are discovered there will be a continuing quest to find out what even those particles are made of and so on and so on as man gets only a tiny glimpse into the marvels of the divine order of creation he continues to marvel at its incredible order and plan.

Man similarly has built machines which peer into the vastness and incredible size of space beyond the boundaries of our senses, yet to find more and more marvels and incredible structures of time and order as He looks farther and farther into what we define as time and as space.  The most honored intellects of our time Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking both came eventually to ultimate conclusions after years of deep cosmological research and thinking that there is an order in the universe which we can not as humans define and likely never will within the limits of our human minds.

As Catholic Christians we profess in the creed that we believe in the seen and the unseen.  For these final days of Advent let’s take some time in prayerful gratitude for our God who is Wisdom, the eternal Word and considering how we order our lives toward Him. Let’s consider how we trust in His will and His plan, even in the difficult times in our lives and how we make decisions based on prudence and care for others, in love and faith.

O Wisdom beyond our understanding

All in creation is by, from and towards You

Help me to point all I do to You

O Wisdom, All knowledge and insight is from You

Help me be prudent, making my decisions with love

O Wisdom, Eternal Word of God

Help me trust in Your will and Your plan

O Wisdom, God of strength and kindness

Help me to keep my life in balance

O Wisdom, God of all knowledge and love

Knowing that all is in Your loving hands

Help me to prepare

To enter into the grace of Your coming into the world

With an open heart

12/9/09

Deacon Andy Cirmo,

St Elizabeth Seton, Naperville IL
Advent ‘09