O Antiphons: Day 1–O Sapientia

“You’d lose your head if it weren’t attached to your shoulders.” All of the coaches and teachers and various other authority figures who have said this to me over the years are right. I would. In fact, I’ve done the closest thing possible many times: I’ve lost my glasses. For movies, for driving, for looking at anything further than 10 feet away, I need my glasses. They’re almost essential to me – but even as I write this I’ve lost them again, and in the same week as Star Wars comes out. For shame.

It’s an interesting thing that despite all the things a person can do well, all the talents and gifts and smart things one can claim, foolishness is pervasive. It’s all around us, it’s in us, and we spend a great deal of time trying to cover for it. You’ve found yourself explaining a foolish error before. You’ve said something you instantly regretted. You’ve been short-sighted and failed to catch yourself at it until it was too late and the damage was done. You, and I, are often fools.

That part of us, the foolish part, needs a Savior. It needs one who pays for sin, yes, but it needs one that compensates for its ineptitude. One who brings solutions into the situations we’ve mucked up. We who are fools need a Savior who, along with being holy and good and compassionate and merciful, is wiser than we are foolish.

It is wonderful, therefore, that when Isaiah described the Savior who would bloom from Jesse’s stump, he spoke of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. In fact, he went so far as to say that this Savior would “delight in the fear of the Lord.”

Do you know what the fear of the Lord is? It’s faith in God, yes, but the Bible says more. According to Solomon in Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” We wouldn’t expect that to be where wisdom begins. At least not naturally. We’d expect it to begin in study, in diligence, or in curiosity – but we’d be wrong.

Wisdom is borne in loving God, and holding him in high esteem. Our Savior, Jesus, did this perfectly from the moment he was born. As he did, he grew in wisdom and understanding. His knowledge increased and he became an unparalleled teacher. He accomplished this not because he was smarter than everyone else, not because he studied harder than everyone else, but because everything he learned and applied was subject to the perfect relationship he had with his Father in heaven.

Jesus was led by his Father, and wisdom ensued. May it be the same for us; as we grow in wisdom and knowledge, let us never forget the Head which it exists to serve.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel performed by Sarah Reeves