We see Divine Wisdom clearly shown
when the Apostles preached
Christ crucified and risen from the dead.

The gift of wisdom
By Edwin Gordon

The Oxford Dictionary defines wisdom as “being wise, knowledge, experience, which can be put to practical effect, sagacity, prudence, common sense.” All this involves scholarship and research. Scholarship can extend the frontiers of human knowledge. In the field of medicine and science it can improve man’s physical condition; in that of literature and history, music and art, it can deepen one’s understanding of human nature. Genuine scholarship often leads to a sense of awe and humility, an appreciation that the more we know the more we realize how little we know. This can be the beginning of divine wisdom. In the Gospels we can distinguish three different types of wisdom; worldly wisdom, human wisdom (which we find very common among the disciples) and divine wisdom.

    The example of worldly wisdom that springs to mind is that of the unjust steward who wanted to feather his own nest and fiddled the books. Our Lord said of him and of others like him “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” So too the rich man who built bigger and bigger barns to house the extra grain of his harvest saying to himself “eat drink and be merry for I have many years to enjoy my possessions,” not realizing that that very night his soul would be required of him. Of worldly wisdom Our Lord said, “God has hidden himself from the wise and the prudent and revealed himself to little ones.” He went on to say, “Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart.” In other words, the door to divine wisdom is that of humility.

    The primeval sin of our first parents was that of pride. “The day you eat of the fruit you shall be like unto God.” That sin was made up for by the humility of the Only-Begotten of the Father. The Word of God by whom all things were created, even to the uttermost star of the Universe, stripped himself of all the externals of his power and became a little baby in his mother’s womb, a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, needing his mother’s milk and her love and care. There in that baby we see divine wisdom incarnate and in his virgin mother the seat of divine wisdom.

    We often see human wisdom shown in the lives of the disciples with Jesus. So, for instance, when Jesus spoke to Peter about the Cross, that he was going to be arrested and put to death, Peter remonstrated with Him, “Lord, this is not going to happen to you,” whereupon Jesus rebuked Peter saying, “Begone Satan because that which you speak of is not of God but of man.”

    Again, we see how, when there was a storm at sea and the waves were coming into the boat, the disciples woke Jesus saying, “Lord save us, we perish.” Jesus replied, “‘Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?’ Then rising up he commanded the winds and the sea and there came a great calm.” In that frail boat we see a prophetic image of the Church across the ages, always tossed in the tempest of persecution and controversy but like Noah’s Ark, always surviving the storm. Voltaire said in his day that the Church would not last more than 20 years. Voltaire is dead and the Church continues with undiminished vitality and vigor. I remember just after Vatican Council II, the Church was enduring a particularly strong hurricane. I was a young priest troubled by the severity of the storm and talking to an old French nun about this. She said to me, “Father, God has plenty of experience”—perhaps a truth we sometimes forget! We see human wisdom particularly manifested at the moment of our Lord’s arrest when the disciples ran away together—“confugerunt simul.” Perhaps we could say cynically that this was the first time they exercised their physical collegiality! There are numerous examples of the way that the disciples showed human wisdom, whilst lacking a complete trust in providence. Indeed we can identify ourselves with them, particularly in their initial reaction to Our Lord’s death and resurrection—at first incredulity, then a glimmer of hope and finally excitement and joy. This is shown in the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were walking along, sad and dejected when Jesus joined himself to them and asked, “What is it you are discussing on the road and are sad?” They replied, “You must be the only one in Jerusalem who has not heard of all the things that have been happening there.” Jesus asked, “What things?” They replied, “All about Jesus of Nazareth. We had hoped that he would have been the one to redeem Israel, but the chief priests had him arrested and crucified.” The very words the disciples used, “We had hoped” showed that according to human wisdom they considered all was lost. Our Lord replied, “O foolish and slow of heart to understand the scriptures. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and so enter into His glory?”—and beginning at Moses and the prophets he explained to them the scriptures that were about himself. Likewise, “Is it not necessary that we should suffer these things so as to enter into his glory?”

    When faced with the apparent failure of the Cross in our own life we also can be tempted to say, “We had hoped . . .” and yet nothing that happens, happens by accident. It is rather like a Persian carpet; on one side of the carpet are only the loose ends with 5000 stitches to every square inch and on the right side of the carpet there is a wonderful pattern. We only see the loose ends of the carpet of life: the daily Cross, the small insignificant events that form the fibre of daily living: and yet these small events united to our Lord’s cross form on the right side of the carpet the figure of our divine Savior, crucified and risen from the dead.

    We see Divine Wisdom shown at the very beginning of the apostolic call. Jesus said to the young fishermen of Galilee, “Follow me and I will make you into fishers of men” and at once, leaving their nets, they followed him. Humanly speaking, they did something very foolish; we can imagine their relatives and friends saying to them, “Think about it more carefully; don’t act hastily. Is it wise to follow an unknown preacher, facing an unknown future?” There is a kind of Divine Wisdom in the way that these young men left everything without counting the cost to follow Jesus.

    Again we see Divine Wisdom shown on the occasion when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” But Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to Peter, “Blessed are you Simon son of Jona because flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father who is in Heaven.” We see Divine Wisdom clearly shown when the Apostles preached Christ crucified and risen from the dead. St. Paul for instance, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, continually preached Christ crucified. “The only knowledge I claim to have among you is about Jesus Christ and him as the crucified Lord”; “to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness but to those who are called, the power and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:21). He went on to say, “For, seeing that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe.” It was divine wisdom that enabled Paul to see all his trials as the instrument uniting him to his Savior, and so as an old man in prison condemned to death he wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near.”

    We see this divine wisdom manifested in a special way in the life and death of the English martyrs who valued the things of God more than human preference or riches. So Roper (St. Thomas More’s son-in-law) describes the meeting of St. Thomas with his wife Alice. “Master More,” she said, “I marvel that you who have always been taken for such a wise man, should play such a fool as to lie here in this tiny filthy prison and be content to be shut up with rats and mice when you could be about and at your liberty. . . .” After quietly listening to her long reproof, More replied, “How long, my Alice, shall I be able to enjoy this life?” “A full 20 years if God so wills.” “Do you wish me to exchange eternity for 20 years?” The author of this article studied at St. Albans English College Valladolid, Spain from which 27 young priests, former students of the College on their return to the English Mission were hanged, drawn and quartered for the Faith. One could well quote of them the words of William Shakespeare in Henry V at Agincourt, “This band of brothers, this chosen few. . . .” So too of the many martyrs from the Venerabile in Rome and in Rheims and Douay.

    Divine wisdom is seen in a unique way in the life of our Blessed Lady. She was the one created and chosen by God to be the seat of Divine Wisdom, the mother of his Son. Conceived without original sin, she consented at the Annunciation to God’s will, “Be it done to me according to thy Word,” and the words of the Canticle of Canticles were fulfilled, “Arise my love, my beautiful one and come. For winter is now past . . . the flowers have appeared in our land. . . .” At that moment Divine Wisdom became incarnate in her womb. She pondered and treasured Divine Wisdom in her heart. Her whole life was bathed in the light of that divine wisdom. That which she treasured in her heart, she gave to the world. By the cross on Calvary she penetrated that divine wisdom which saved the world through the foolishness of the cross. When our Lord said to John, “Behold your mother” he gave her to humanity, a mother who sees her children through the night of Calvary and the morning of Easter, washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb.

    There are many who, across the ages, have searched for wisdom. St. Matthew’s Gospel shows us how God rewarded the persevering search of the Wise Men. They had to set out on a long journey across mountains and deserts, a journey full of hazards from sandstorms and possibly robbers. Sometimes when the guiding star was hidden from them they had to walk by faith and ask the way. God rewarded their perseverance by once more showing the star, which halted over the place where the Child was; and “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.” There they found the infant Savior, Wisdom incarnate, with His Blessed Mother, truly the seat of Wisdom. There are others who are not among the learned but yet through their humility and fidelity to God’s will, are led to that same divine wisdom. Such are the shepherds who were led by the angel to adore the Child in the manger with his Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    In the search of the Wise Men we see a prophetic image of the many who have had to make that persevering search for the supreme Truth. Perhaps the prayer written by John Henry Newman long before he became a Catholic summarizes that fidelity to the light of God’s grace:

Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on.
The night is dark and I am far from home.
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet
I do not ask to see the distant scene
One step enough for me.

    Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio has emphasized the true role of our Blessed Lady in leading those who are searching for the truth to her divine Son: “May Mary, Seat of Wisdom, be a sure haven for all who devote their lives to the search for wisdom. May their journey into wisdom, sure and final goal of all true knowing, be freed of every hindrance through the intercession of the one who in giving birth to the truth, treasuring it in her heart has shared it forever with all the world.”  

Reverend Edwin Gordon graduated in law at the University of Bristol in 1956 before he began his studies for the priesthood. He has spent many years in pastoral work in England and is now a parish priest at St. Joseph’s, Nympsfield. He is the author of Upon This Rock (1985), which presents an outline of the creed, sacraments and beatitudes. His last article in HPR appeared in December 1998.

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