There is a dance that goes on throughout the Bible, throughout salvation history. It is a dramatic dance, a demanding dance. From one perspective, it is a dance that expects the impossible of humanity, expects ballet from a wounded crippled dancer. From another perspective, it is the eternal patience of a ballet instructor with an uncoordinated student, working towards the end of year, end of life, concert, the final performance on which everything depends.
We have spoken before about that dialogue aspect to prayer. Of God teaching us God’s word, that we might speak God’s language of love, respond to God’s invitation to live God’s life, that we might sing the music of the spheres. That this in fact is the end-goal of our baptism, namely, our becoming divine, what is known as deification in the Latin tradition or theosis in the Greek.
One way this conversation, this harmony, this merciful yet high-stakes dance is described biblically is in terms of wisdom. I think I have mentioned before Wisdom seems to straddle the divine-human divide. Sometimes Wisdom seems divine, sometimes it seems created. Sometimes it seems to be the Word descending; sometime creation ascending, creation becoming divine. And this latter way might be the best way to think about it.
Our readings touch on the drama of wisdom. Our first reading describes wisdom as that moment when we touch the livewire of life. When we realise we are really living, either in joy or in suffering. When our hearts are laid bare, either soaring or plummeting. When we know we are on sacred ground, and truth like a minefield or perhaps a field of exotic, beautiful fragile plumes, truth is all around us. Nothing can outweigh this prize, since all else takes it bearings from this communion with God.
Perhaps this is what our second reading is getting at: the wildness, the danger of the experience of wisdom. Again, we have mentioned this before. How dangerous the divine is. That touch of fire that burns away all impurity. Here, it is like a surgeon’s blade, seeking out sin in the depths of our hearts, seeking it out so that it might be cut away, an operation that seeks to make us well, but like every operation is traumatic, one requiring both the skill of the surgeon and the submission of the patient.
In fact, the Bible often talks about the danger of holiness, how it is just one short step away from pride. In Genesis, the invitation to life trips over into the fall. In Leviticus, the perfect sacrifice seems to move almost immediately into a disastrous ritual of Aaron’s sons. In the New Testament, Peter’s moment of triumph, his confession of faith, turns straightaway into him being called Satan by God. And the disciples’ professions of loyalty in Holy Week soon turn into the worst of betrayals, the abandonment at the Cross.
There is something fraught about humanity. We alone in creation are the site of the revelation of the Word of God. But somehow this potential for Wisdom, this potential to hear the music and dance rightly, quickly turns into the temptation of ego. Instead of focussing on the task, the responsibility which alone is the ground of humanity’s dignity, I begin to think, wow, I’m special.
As Christ says, of all creation we are the richest, so much has been placed into our hands, the very fate of the universe. But somehow as soon as it is placed in our hands, the doorway through which we must pass shrinks to zero, when we take our eyes of the gateway of grace, instead choosing to focus on the riches at hand.
Thank God it is not up to us. Thank God the picture of the patient teacher is more accurate than that of the uncoordinated, lost student. Somehow it is precisely in remembering that it is all gift, that we are fundamentally, radically poor. Somehow it is in ultimate humility that true wisdom is found.
But in our Lady we see that this humility is not bashful. It is no shrinking violet. Somehow, when holding the hand of God as a child does its parent, this humility is more confident than arrogance. In being lost in the music or in the back and forth of the conversation, in being transfixed by the beauty of God, humanity like our Lady can so forget herself that she can both say yes to the impossibility of being the mother of God and say yes to being sent to the infinite needs of our neighbours.
When we look at our world, we see its impossibility. It would be the definition of pride to think that we can fix it. But it is the epitome of hope to believe that it can. Just not by us. Only by God. Through us.
Perhaps in our Mass today then we might pray for this vision of real wisdom. That we might see our lives as the greatest of all adventures. Each of us as irreplaceable parts in a symphony of God’s word, God’s word transforming the whole of creation into the Bride of Christ, the Church, creation redeemed.
Comments