The gentrified ignore Wisdom’s call.
This is a post based upon work I did in the summer. It did not turn out how I intended it to. Essentially what I understood is that Solomon and David came from different backgrounds. David was a shepherd and Solomon born to wealth. Solomon here has been gentrified. He is not like St Cuthbert (also a shepherd) or Conan the Barbarian, he has lost his primal instincts. That said the wisdom of Solomon is something to marvel at.
I looked into the Book of Proverbs, which are written by Solomon son of David, king of Israel. King David, the prophet par excellence in Christianity, is an ideal king and the forefather of the Messiah. His son Solomon sought after Wisdom or Sophia (though not until old age did, he recognise the folly of his earlier years). Our Lord, while portraying Solomon as a teacher of wisdom and arrayed in glory, declared he was excelled by “the lilies of the field”.[1] How reminiscent of viewing the commonplace with wonder?
One thing I realised is for all Solomon’s wisdom it is David that I am more drawn to. Perhaps when I am older I will see that my earlier years were folly as Solomon did? However, it is the romantic in me that is drawn to the tale of the underdog, the shepherd boy, who rises to greatness rather than the one who is born into greatness. Choosing ones birth is a conscious decision, then life becomes a question of how rather than why. St John Henry Newman wrote:
The Mission of My Life
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.
Amen
Addendum
As Proverbs is in part about the Blessed Virgin Mary personified as Wisdom we might say a little about her role in the creation of the Word through her fiat to God. She made herself through her humility and devotion into the perfect reciprocal for the Son who’s Incarnation we have just celebrated. Proverbs read in this way shows how she was there in the mind of God from the beginning with the Word. She is the vessel through which grace passes into the world:
The Gifts of Wisdom
8 Does not wisdom call,
Proverbs 8:1-3
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2 On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
Wisdom’s Part in Creation
22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
Proverbs 8:22-31
the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
The gentrified are too comfortable, like Solomon, they go there way in the city when Wisdom calls from the square and the rooftops. A ‘rebuke’ to follow Our Lady when she invites us to.
What Matters Most 