Wisdom

 

Wisdom with her daughters Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom, 

and she is readily perceived by those who love her,

and found by those who seek her.

She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;

Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,

for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence,

and whoever for her sake keeps vigil

shall quickly be free from care;

because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her,

and graciously appears to them in the ways,

and meets them with all solicitude.

 

When I was in graduate school, I wanted to study Wisdom. For an obvious reason: I had no idea what it was. I understood what intelligence was; I understood what knowledge was. But what was this mysterious third thing?

I was not able to, because there were no courses offered on the subject, and no faculty member would agree to supervise a reading course on it. Which is perhaps telling, perhaps not. I suspect that Wisdom has few friends in grad school.

Athena

Yet it was clearly something of importance. The Greeks revered it as the goddess Athena, and named their principal city after her. Bulgaria named their capital after her: Sofia. The principal church of the East was named for her: Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom. In India she is revered as Sarasvati, the active principle of Brahma, the supreme godhead.  Philosophy itself was named after her: “the love of Wisdom.” So why was no one talking about her? Why did nobody seem to know who she was?

Sarasvati

I assumed, of course, that Wisdom was something deeply mysterious, which for some dark reason one only acquired towards the end of one’s life.

So the striking thing about the reading is that it suggests that wisdom is not mysterious at all; that she is “readily perceived by those who love her.” That is the whole point, repeated, of the passage.

It is not that she is hard to find, or difficult to understand. It is that we fail to love her. We do not want her.

Thomas Aquinas, citing Aristotle, defines Wisdom clearly: “it belongs to wisdom to consider the highest cause. By means of that cause we are able to form a most certain judgment about other causes, and according thereto all things should be set in order.”

If that is not perfectly clear to you, to anyone, it is because you do not want it to be. For some reason, most of us would rather be chasing squirrels and barking up trees. Perhaps it comes to some of us late in life out of no more than sheer exhaustion—to turn to the loving hand that was there in every dawn all along. And to many of us, clearly, it never comes at all.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

- St. Augustine