Every once in awhile you read something that really sticks with you, and even as the days and years move on in their inexorable course you find your mind’s thoughts always gravitating back for some intangible reason.
Wisdom 7:24-26 is one of those instances that has struck such a chord that I find myself always coming back to it, even in the most random of moments. Similar in scope to the personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:21-32, Wisdom (sophia in Greek) is here described in the highest of terms, a cascade of appellations that crescendos in the victory of light over the darkness, in which Wisdom is fairer than the fairest of lights.
Throughout Christian historical theology the sapiential descriptions of wisdom have been seen as pertaining ultimately to the Son. Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 1:24 about how Christ is the wisdom of God, and John uses similar language along a similar vein of thought in describing the Son as the Logos. The author of Hebrews even seems to allude to Wisdom 7:24-26 by speaking of the Son as the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.
One of the most powerful aspects of Wisdom is how passing into holy souls from age to age, she produces friends of God and prophets. Our relationship with and toward God is not meant to be some esoteric exercise, but is a true and vibrant reality that was from the beginning the desire of God for us. In the Incarnation we find the initiation of this descent, where the wisdom of God who is fairer than the sun comes to dwell with us.
For Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion,
and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity.
For she is a breath of the might of God
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled can enter into her.
For she is the reflection of eternal light,
the spotless mirror of the power of God,
the image of his goodness.
