Sunday’s first reading finds King Solomon in prayer. He wants Wisdom who helped build the universe to labor at his side as he builds the temple. Solomon personifies Wisdom as a feminine spirit, very close to God, who was present when God made the world and who knows and understands all things.
Solomon reflects on how hard it is for humans to know God and live as God wills. No one, he concludes, can know God’s intentions without the gift of Wisdom. It is the spirit of Wisdom who straightens the paths of those on earth and saves them.
Solomon’s prayer raises the difficulty of following God just as the gospel confronts us with the challenge of following Jesus. Like Solomon, we must pray and open ourselves to Wisdom’s guidance and power. Like the gospel that asks us to renounce our possessions, this prayer calls us to get rid of what we think we have in order to make room for what we really need — the spirit of Wisdom who will infuse us with strength to carry on.
Solomon’s Prayer
For who knows God’s counsel?
Who can discern what God wills?
The reasoning of mortals is worthless; our plans likely to fail.
For a perishable body weighs down the soul,
and this earthly tent
burdens the anxious mind.
We can hardly guess at what is on earth and what is at hand we find with labor; but who has traced out what is in the heavens?
Who has learned your counsel,
unless you have given Wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?
And thus the paths of those
on earth were set straight.
Wisdom 9.13-18
- For what wisdom do you ask the Holy Spirit?