O Wisdom

How our Cistercian Fathers and Mothers loved Advent!  All the promises fulfilled, all the types seen clearly, all the dreams come true in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.  I thought it would be beautiful this year to look at the O Antiphons through the eyes of our most liturgically conscious mother, St. Gertrude.
 
 
O WISDOM uttered by the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end of earth to the other with great power, yet ordering all things with gentleness, come!  Teach us the way of prudence!

God asked Gertrude to write a book, a book about the very depths of his wisdom, about what is most divine in divine love.  And what is it that is most divine?  It is a tenderness full of divine yearning, the tenderness within mercy, in Latin “pietas.”  In Greek it is the “splagna” within “eleos.”  St. Luke captures it in one line of the Benedictus: “Oh the tender mercy of our God”---not simply mercy but tender mercy, a mercy personified in Jesus and his heartfelt way of responding to our needs.  With this as context let us look at Wisdom through Gertrude’s eyes and hear her praying.

“O wise Love, your motto is relief for those who are miserable…You impose an end to universal misery through the glorious work of your mercy…Behold, O Wisdom, your pantry full of loving-kindness is already open.  Ah, look upon me, the culprit, standing outside the door of your charity.  Fill the little cloak of my poverty with the blessing of your gentleness.  Behold, before you is the empty little cup of my desire.  May the latch of your fullness open…O wise Love, shelter and cover over my negligence.  Make amends for me for all my negligence through my Jesus, abandoned by free will to your judgement.”
Let us trust with Gertrude that the door of wise Love is already open to us before we even knock.  Jesus, our Wisdom gazes at us with loving kindness, ready to give us all the wisdom we need to get through today.