Solomon chooses wisdom over wealth and power as his highest value, although he has more of both than most of Israel’s rulers. In Israel’s tradition wisdom is both practical knowledge of what works and a sense of one’s place in the whole of God’s creation.
In St. Katharine Drexel, one of our American saints, we have someone who learned in her family the wisdom of using wealth to help people in need. Her mother, Emma Bouvier Drexel, opened her home three days a week to people who needed food, clothing, rent money, and medicine, giving away about $20,000 a year in the mid 1800s. Kate and her two sisters helped with this work. Their father’s will put millions in his daughters’ hands but out of reach of suitors.
Katharine began supporting Indian schools at the request of Bishop James O’Connor of Omaha, her parish priest in her teens. At an audience with Pope Leo XIII, Kate asked for more missionaries on the frontier. “Why don’t you become a missionary yourself?” the pope asked.
Eventually Kate did, finding a void in her heart until she gave herself as well as her wealth to this work. She founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, built, and staffed almost 100 schools, including the first black Catholic university — Xavier University in New Orleans.
Long before most people knew what civil rights meant, Mother Katharine Drexel dedicated her money and her life to guaranteeing them for all people.
Solomon’s choice
I prayed and prudence
was given me; I pleaded
and the spirit of Wisdom
came to me.
I preferred her to scepter
and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken
any priceless gem to her,
because all gold, in view of her,
is a little sand; beyond health
and comeliness I loved her.
I chose to have her rather than
the light, because the splendor
of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
Wisdom 7.7-11
- What is more precious to you than anything else?
- What would you do with your fortune?