and reaching from beginning to end, You ordered all things
mightily and sweetly.
Come, and teach us the way of prudence!
Wisdom is one of God's key characteristics, as attested to in the sapiential or Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures. God expresses wisdom in the fact of creating "all things so that they might exist..." (Wisdom 1:14) God's Wisdom is often personified. She is the teacher, "the fashioner of all things, [who] taught me." (Wisdom 7:22). Proceeding from God, begotten by God, the breath of God's power, the effusion of God's glory, Wisdom is the beloved daughter present with God and assisting at creation. Wisdom is described, among many terms, as irresistible, steadfast, free from anxiety, penetrating through all spirits, altogether subtle, more mobile than any motion, a breath of the power of God, a reflection of eternal light, an image of God's goodness.
But Wisdom is also represented as a human attribute, undergirding all virtue. It doesn't so much have to do with knowledge or human prudence. Wisdom is knowing how to live fully, in harmony with God, with one's sisters and brothers, and with one's self. Such wholeness and integration is true holiness.
Today's antiphon honors, in the words of Fr. Pius Parsch, "the New Testament Creator of the invisible spiritual world rather than the Maker of the visible, material universe about us. Creation, with its glorious order, power and beauty, is but a faint type of the new creation established by Christ. In His Church and in the soul 'He reaches from beginning to end'; He is and remains in this universe till the end of time. How well 'He orders all things mightily and sweetly'!" (The Church's Year of Grace, Vol. 1)
All this is part of our yearning cry: "O Wisdom...Come, teach us the way of prudence!"
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