17 December 2020
Thursday of the Third Week of Advent
“O Sapientia, O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge! Alleluia!”
We now enter into the final week before the Nativity, and so enter into a distinct tenor of the Advent season. For centuries the Church in the West has marked these days with special prayers known as the “O Antiphons” which are prayed with Mary’s Magnificat each evening, and which now also serve as the Alleluia verse before the Gospels at each daily Mass until Christmas Eve.
Today’s antiphon calls upon the divine Wisdom which guides creation. Again, our readings offer a contrast to this claim in the genealogy of Jesus which we hear in the Gospel. We hear of Judah’s blessing from his father in the first reading: “You, Judah, shall your brothers praise… The scepter shall never depart from Judah…” (Gen 49:8,10) Yet, we might wonder if such a blessing is in accord with a Wisdom which guides all things. Judah’s most notable descendents who also are named in Gospel genealogy are conceived when he lies with Tamar. Tamar, whom after being married to two of Judah’s sons who are struck down for their wickedness, Judah spared from ancient execution for prostitution only because he was revealed as complicit in the act of prostitution. (Gen 38) Tamar, like Rahab (Jos 2) and the wife of Uriah (2 Sam 11), had suffered at the hands of men who treated them unjustly. They had been pushed to the outskirts of society like Ruth the Moabite. Surrounded by those acting contrary to wisdom and justice, would these women consider that Wisdom guides all things? Probably not when looking at the unjust deeds around them.
Yet, Wisdom does seem to get the best of even the unjust. Judah and David upon recognizing their sins are brought to contrition and to act to try to make some amendment for their deeds. Those who had misused Rahab are defeated in battle and she is able to start a new life and family in peace. And Ruth, whom others were ready to despise as from a foreign land, is loved and treated justly by the one who becomes her husband. In fact, these very women, misunderstood and ill-treated are the very ones whom Wisdom raises us and seeks to make signs of divine justice and power. From them is descended the Messiah. From them comes the humanity that is taken up by divinity in the Incarnation. Let us pray that divine Wisdom such us how to trust in grace’s work of raising up the lowly, and come teach us how to receive fully our share in the divine nature and divine labor that Christ offers us.