O Wisdom! Begotten from the mouth of the Most High! (Wisdom is about Friendship)

Wisdom Incarnate teaching the teachers in the Temple.

The “O Antiphons” appear at the Magnificat in Vespers from today up until Christmas.

Today we have “O Wisdom!”

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodidisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter disponensque omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, who was begotten from the mouth of the Most High, reaching out from end to end and ordering all things with power and friendship, come to instruct us in the way of prudence.

We cannot know Wisdom Incarnate unless we belong to Jesus, who presents us to our Heavenly Father in Himself, us, from the first man Adam until the very last, with the divine power of friendship.

We surely know nothing of this Wisdom Incarnate unless we praise in all humble thanksgiving that prudence which judged that being crucified for sinners is the way of love in all truth.

That “fortiter suaviter,” which I translated with the force of the context as “power and friendship,” reminds me of this beatitude: Yikes!

Wisdom and its prudence demands that our understanding is consonant with God’s will, not just on an intellectual level, but by way of sanctifying grace, by way of the supernatural virtue of faith.

If we are in the state of sin, we cannot be wise, we cannot be prudent, we cannot but do things for the sake of appearances, which is a bitter abuse of power.

It is great wisdom to judge that the Lord is to be praised for permitting any suffering in our lives, by which we learn to look to Him instead of to ourselves.

It is great wisdom to judge that it is most fitting to rejoice in the Lord at all times, in all conditions and circumstances.

O Wisdom!