Hopefully, you are blessed to have some wise people in your life!
Who is the wisest person you know?
- Mother or father?
- Sister or brother?
- Husband or wife?
- Friend?
- Teacher?
Whoever it is, I suspect this person helps you open your eyes to something you had not realized before. A truly wise person helps you to see, and helps you step back to get perspective.
Too often, we cannot see the forest for the trees. Our wisdom figures help us to step back and see where individual pieces of the picture puzzle fit. The wise person helps us see what is not always evident.
The wisest person I know today
I have been blessed by knowing several wise people who help me step back and see how pieces of my life are part of a beautiful picture puzzle we call God’s kingdom, God’s dream for us and all of creation.
Recently Pope Francis once again opened my eyes with his simple yet profound insights into wisdom.
Wisdom is precisely this: … to see the world, to see situations, circumstances, problems, everything through God’s eyes. This is wisdom.
I cannot think of a more profound insight into wisdom!
Who of us can claim to know all of the pieces of God’s creation fit together? From our limited perspective we think we know better. If we were God, we would put the pieces together differently… or maybe even throw away some pieces that don’t seem to fit.
Need an example? Who of us in our wildest dreams would have thought of a cross as a key piece of the picture God sees?
He continues
The Holy Spirit thus makes the Christian “wise”.
Not in the sense that he has an answer for everything, that he knows everything, but in the sense that he “knows” about God, he knows how God acts, he knows when something is of God and when it is not of God; he has this wisdom which God places in our hearts.
Mary as “Seat of Wisdom”
This title says there is something special about Mary and wisdom. Clearly, now Mary now sees everything through God’s eyes.
Did Mary have the fulness of wisdom from the moment of her Immaculate conception?
There was so much Mary did not know and had to ponder.
Did Mary see the whole picture when her heart was pierced so many times – losing Jesus in the crowd, watching her son’s painful execution, holding his beaten body in her arms?
Probably not!
Mary struggled to understand her sorrows as part of the magnificent kingdom in God’s mind.
Yet, as “first disciple,” she trusted that her God had a wider perspective.
She was open to the gift of wisdom… emptied herself to allow God’s wisdom to fill her. She kept all these things in her heart.
Now she is the seat of wisdom. She truly sees with God’s eyes and is the model of God’s wisdom filling her heart.
Wisdom as a gift
Pope Francis reminds us
Wisdom is something that we cannot invent, that we cannot obtain by ourselves: it is a gift that God gives to those who make themselves docile to the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, we must ask the Lord to grant us the Holy Spirit and to grant us the gift of wisdom, that wisdom of God that teaches us to see with God’s eyes, to feel with God’s heart, to speak with God’s words.
Now, with Francis
“Let us pray for the gift to see with God’s eyes, to feel with God’s heart, to speak with God’s words.”
Originally posted on Vincentian Mindwalk
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