Well, this third lesson is entitled wisdom for life. You'll see why I titled it wisdom for life as we get down here very soon. We're going to be looking at chapter 6 verse 18, right where we left off back in the last lesson and we're going to go all the way through the second half of 14, chapter 14 verse 19. So a fair amount of material to cover here, so we better get started.
So last lesson, lesson two, we started the first six chapters. Saw a couple of different poems on seeking lady wisdom, wisdom's divine origins in chapter one and then pursuing her, desiring her clean, search chapter four. Now we have a third poem on seeking lady wisdom. We have some more poems to come up here soon.
Remember that this book is organized loosely, I think, very fairly you can say, between alternating poems and practical advice on wisdom applied, right? So the poem is given and you have various examples of how to apply wisdom to your life, then another poem is given, then more examples of practical wisdom. And that's what we're going to see here today as well in this third lesson. So here's our third poem on seeking lady wisdom.
I call it lady wisdom specifically because remember wisdom is personified as a lady. Sophia and Hochma are both Greek and Hebrew words, both of them are in the feminine and lady wisdom is a kind of a throwback to Proverbs as well. All right, so this poem is chapter six verse 18 all the way down really you could say to the end of this sixth chapter here verse 37. But a lot of people stop it here, verse 31, which is totally fair.
All right, so let's look at verse 18. Oh, right off the bat, he says, my son from your youth, choose instruction. So that's something worth pointing out here as well. Remember how he discussed before he's addressing his son or most of the time, son, sometimes you have the plural sons or children that's pretty rare, but you find it there sometimes too.
So he's giving his fatherly advice to his children. Certainly his biological children. We know he has biological children because it was his grandson who translated it into Greek for granted. So we know he has biological children, but certainly he has spiritual children or he has students to cypos who are in his, if he had a school, like a little Jerusalem classical school or something like that, or Torah school, he has a bunch of students there.
And so anyone who is listening to him, and that includes us, we to a certain extent are his spiritual children listening to his fatherly advice. So often he's going to address and especially if it's a new section, keep that in mind as well. You see it all over the place. I just have a few examples for you in your notes right here in chapter six, verse 18 and 23 and then 32 and really throughout the entire book.
And usually when you come up to him saying, my son, do this or that or don't do this or that, there's usually a new section of advice that he's giving there. So look for those little markers, those little milestones, and you kind of know in a direction that he's going. All right. So he dresses his son.
This poem here really, you can divide it into two halves. So let me read chapter six or excuse me, chapter six versus 18 through 22. And then we'll see what he's discussing here. All right.
My son from your youth, choose up instruction. And until you are old, you will keep finding wisdom. Come to her like one who plows and sos and wait for her good harvest. For in her service, you will toil a little while and soon you will eat of her produce.
She seems very harsh to the uninstructed. A weakling will not remain with her. She will weigh him down like a heavy testing stone and he will not be slow to cast her off. For wisdom is like her name and is not manifested too many.
All right. So this first half is basically he's getting fair warning. Wisdom is going to seem tough at first. And that's true, right?
We know it's true because of our fallen nature, our intellects are darkened, our wheels are weakened. It's hard to do what's right. It's easy to do what's wrong. You can't be steadfast in pursuing virtue and righteousness.
So obviously if you're pursuing wisdom, it's going to be tough. Remember we talked about this actually back in chapter two. He flat out says like out the gate, if you choose to seek wisdom, prepare yourself for temptation. That's the same idea.
He's kind of developing that. So prepare yourself for temptation, tribulations and testings. It might seem hard and it will. I mean, it's not necessarily easy to develop virtue until it becomes a habit.
Remember habit is a firm disposition to the good and it takes a while to develop habits. So wisdom will seem tough at first, right? But if you stick with it, you're going to be greatly blessed. Now wisdom is personified here as kind of a disciplinarian.
She's going to seem very, very harsh. She disciplines those who are pro-ture, but you got to persevere to the end. It says in verse 18, until you're old. So if you persevere to the end, if you're steadfast, it's going to go well.
If you bail out, you know, midstream or in the middle of the race and you don't complete the task of your life, really, that's the idea like St. Paul takes up. It's not, it's not going to save you, right? So this is a good example.
I should say really quickly, a brief apologetic point here. You're not once saved, always saved. You have to persist in seeking wisdom, seeking God, seeking righteousness and virtue. If you don't, then you don't persevere to the end and therefore you don't get to the look, the desired haven, which is of course heaven.
All right. So that's really, really, really tough. And I should say really quickly, that's what really all good coaches seem like. Good teachers, good coaches, even good parents, they might seem really harsh and like tough and they're disciplining all the time.
And you know, they don't seem like they're like, they're any fun at all, but if it's a good coach, teacher or parent, they're doing, they're, they seem harsh and tough for your own good. If you're an athlete, you want a coach to push you, push your limits and you want to super see those limits and get better, get stronger, get faster. If you're a student, you want your teacher to push you to drill you, to train your mind, to be sharp and to think and find fallacies in argumentation or whatever it might be. If you're a parent, you want to raise your child to be an upstanding Catholic citizen and desiring holiness and so on and so forth, right?
A kid, and I'll just riff on this for just a little bit more. Sometimes children in this, maybe your case, maybe in my case, I won't say. But when you're growing up, you're like, gosh, my dad's kind of a jerk, you know? Like, I can't do this, I can't do that.
I have a bedtime, I have my chores, I have my homework. And you know, if I get in trouble, I'm grounded for a long time and it's like, oh my gosh, this is terrible, my childhood is stinky. But then you grow up and you're like, wait a minute, actually, that all made a lot of sense. And my dad loves me or my mom loves me a lot and wanted me to grow up and to be a good person, a good human being full of faith.
And that happens a lot here. You hear this more often than you'd expect and that's the whole point. So, and now, obviously, if you pursue wisdom like a mother, which is personified as a mother often here, she is tough and disciplinary. And if you're steadfast and this is moving along with some of the images here, if you come to her and you plow and you sow, then eventually you wait for her good harvest and eventually you'll eat ever good produce.
So this is true. Like if you have a garden in your backyard, you plant your seeds and it seems like it takes forever to grow. Then all of a sudden, you get more tomatoes and you could ever eat and you're giving your tomatoes to all your friends and your family and then no one wants your tomatoes because you have so many tomatoes. It's the same thing where you plant the little seeds of wisdom in your life.
And eventually you're going to bear a good harvest and you're going to be able to eat ever produce. Really, and the week, by the way, sister to a weekling will not remain with her. You have to be committed. The life of discipleship of Jesus Christ, the life of pursuing true wisdom, of seeing things as God sees them and understanding things according to the proper end and God's design as I defined it myself, you have to be tenacious.
And it's very easy and we all know this is very easy to give up. It's too hard and I'm going to go back to my vices. The weeklings are not going to make it to the end. It's going to seem too overwhelming.
But if you do, you're going to eat of the harvest and the produce. Now about the produce idea and image right there, we saw this back in chapter one kind of echoing the fruit of the tree of life. Remember that wisdom is depicted as the fruit of the tree of life. And that makes perfect, beautiful sense.
If wisdom is a type of Jesus Christ incarnate, which we're going to see a whole bunch of that right now as a matter of fact, this is a good segue. Jesus is wisdom incarnate. Wisdom is a type of Christ and the Holy Spirit and God, the Triune God, generally speaking. Jesus is the fruit of the tree of life.
He's hung on the cross. He's hung on a tree. He himself is the fruit of the tree. And when we consume Jesus and the Eucharist, we're eating the fruit of the tree of life.
So it's very beautiful that wisdom is depicted here as the tree of life and she bears great fruit that we eat and we grow. So I like that a lot. We saw that back in chapter one. So this is the first half of just be to stick to be patient, stick with it.
It's going to be good in the end. And it's true and any moral theologian or any decent person will tell you habits do come easier once they're affirmed disposition. It's hard sometimes to be patient at first. But if you practice patience over and over and over again, eventually it's easy to practice patience because it's second nature.
Okay. So then let's get to the second half of this poem where it says in verse 23 and following let's go talk about submit to her. So again, she seems hard. She seems tough.
But if you submit to her, great things will happen. Verse 23, listen, my son and accept my judgment. Do not reject my counsel. Put your feet into her chains and your neck into her collar.
Put your shoulder under her and carry her. By the way, that, I'm going to say that right now before I forget, put your shoulder under her and carry her. That should make you think immediately of a cross. You put yourself under your shoulder under the cross.
If you carry your cross, then you're going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. So remember that verse 25, typology of carrying a cross because I'm going to forget to tell you later on. So put your shoulder under her and carry her. Do not fret under her bonds.
Come to her with all of your soul and keep your ways with all of your might. Search out and seek and she will become known to you. And when you hold of her, do not let her go. For at last, you will find the rest she gives and she will be changed into joy for you.
Then her chains will become for you a strong protection. Her collar, a glorious robe. Her yoke is a golden ornament and her bonds are a cord of blue. You will wear her like a glorious robe and put her on like a crown of gladness.
That sounds pretty awesome. That sounds like a lot of great promises. Now, again, you can kind of see this idea of, I was saying a moment ago, things are tough at first, but then they become easy, right? If you submit yourself to her, then virtue becomes second-hand nature.
That's the whole idea of what's being explained here. There's a lot of typology here with the New Testament with Jesus Christ. So the idea is submit to wisdom's yoke. Love her completely.
Shoulder her yoke like you would shoulder your cross like I said a moment ago and put on her chains and her collar like as if you were enslaved to her, which is important because we're enslaved to somebody. It's either state or Jesus. It's either our passions or Jesus, right? It's the world or Jesus.
We're enslaved to something. We give our wills and our souls to something. So give it to wisdom and it will become a source of joy. Now this whole idea of the yoke, the yoke of wisdom and submitting to the yoke, that 100% is going to be a type of Jesus Christ, wisdom and carnit because he says in the end of chapter 11 of Matthew, this is one of my favorite passages actually, it always has been.
I don't really have a favorite passage to people ask me, what's your favorite passage Nick? And I'm like, I have no idea. There's just too many to choose from. It depends on the chapter of life.
Or certain verses speaking in different ways, but this has always been a top favorite, I think, at the end of Matthew chapter 11, Jesus says these very famous words, they're very reassuring. They're very beautiful in their own right, but they echo like three or four different things in the Old Testament. We're going to zero it on this one here. So Jesus says in Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
Note the word rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now again, face value, that's really beautiful. I think we can all identify where we get weary and tired and discouraged and if you just come to Christ, he will give rest for our souls.
But there's so much more to it than that, especially in our context here, when he says, take my yoke upon you, he has this passage in Sir Act in mind, I think undoubtedly, because wisdom here in chapter six is put on the yoke of wisdom and you will be happy essentially, right? You will find rest for your souls. Actually, the word rest is here as well in verse 28. So if you put on the yoke of wisdom, she will, then you will find the rest that she gives.
That's Jesus Christ, wisdom and current. That's so beautiful. What an incredible connection here that many commentators, good Catholic commentators have pointed out and it's just lovely, right? Because Jesus is wisdom and current it.
So take his yoke and we will find rest. All right, so there's one connection for you. Another connection here, it says in the song, the poem, come to her in verse 26 with all of your soul, keep her away with all of your might. When you hear all your soul, all your might, sometimes with all your heart, you should immediately be thinking of the great commandment of Deuteronomy 6, the Shema.
Shema, here, listen, Obey, O Israel, the Lord your God is one, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your strength or your might. So the idea here is love wisdom is if you would love God with all your soul and with all of your might. Why? Because ultimately wisdom, uncreated wisdom is God itself.
Remember, we distinguish this in the last lesson. There's a difference between uncreated wisdom and created wisdom, which is a virtue uncreated wisdom is the triumph God. And so wisdom typifies Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Uncreated wisdom is a gift that is either a natural ability or it's a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit.
So in this case, though, we're talking about loving wisdom with all your soul and might, we're talking about loving uncreated wisdom, loving God himself, Father, Son of Spirit. That's a beautiful connection right there. But then once you find wisdom or God, cling to her, hold fast to her, that, and then she will give you the rest that you desire. So we already said that's the rest of Jesus promises because he is uncreated wisdom.
But this whole idea of clinging to wisdom or clinging to God is definitely a throwback and an echo to Adam clinging to his wife back in Genesis and got the whole idea of the bride clinging to the bride room in the song of Solomon in various places. This is the nuptial imagery between wisdom and us. So remember wisdom as a female can be both a mother as well as a spouse. So if we cling to wisdom and this nuptial marital imagery, that's definitely a type of clinging to God, right?
Because remember, God is the divine bride room. He's the husband. We are the bride. So the kind of image is inverted a little bit, but still the marital imagery is there 100%.
We cling to God. And God clings to us if we seek him, he seeks us and desires to bring us to himself. So beautiful stuff there and then don't forget the rest always echoes Sabbath rest. We were created on a six day, but we're created for the seventh day, the day of covenantal Sabbath rest.
And that's really the rest that our soul desires. You know, when Jesus speaks about, you know, I'm coming to me and I'm going to give you rest or here in chapter six, it talks about how, again, if you go to wisdom, she'll give you the rest that you long for. We're talking more than just a little break, you know, in the days, like I need a coffee break, I need a little rest or a good night's sleep or I don't know, you're going to go and watch a great movie with some popcorn and a beer or something like that. You know, it's more than that.
We're talking about the rest our soul longs for which it's only covenantal communion with God. And that's what wisdom will give us because wisdom teaches us righteousness. All right. So there's that one more, there's tons of connections here in this poem.
We want to spend the time and I'm going through this pretty quickly, but there's a billion connections. That's maybe a little exaggeration, but there's a lot. All right. So then her yoke.
So if you send yourself to her chains, send yourself to her chains and her collar like we talked about, if you enslave yourself to her, again, that seems harsh and difficult at first, but then afterwards, those chains and the collar on the yoke becomes easy, like Jesus says, my yoke is easy and it's going to provide what joy, protection, a crown, gladness, a glorious robe. That's what wisdom will provide you because again, virtue becomes easier the more you practice whatever virtue that is. But this idea of the glorious robe is what I want to focus on here. There's a lot here, for example, it does said, you know, her bonds are cord of blue, various commentators, it's not in your notes here, but various commentators, garmentaries, excuse me, we'll say the cord of blue is an echo to the tassels that like rabbis would wear because so they're wearing their garments and they have all these blue tassels and this is commanded in book numbers.
These various tassels represent the law. So the idea here is that wisdom, again, like we talked about in the last couple lessons, wisdom is God's law, his commandments, God's law and commandments in the moral life is God's wisdom. They're two sides of the same coin. So that's the idea there.
We'll be on that and let's look at the glorious robe. This gives me pretty excited and you don't really see a lot of this in commentaries, but it strikes me pretty powerfully. So she says that her call her chains and her collar will be a glorious robe. Well, that seems kind of interesting that wisdom is going to clothe us.
Why would that be important? Why would wisdom want to clothe us? Well, because again, it goes back to Genesis. We talked about how wisdom provides rest, echoing to Sabbath rest of Genesis and creation.
So does the glorious robe, specifically chapter three of Genesis because what happened in chapter three was the fall. Adam and Eve, they fall to the temptations of the devil, they commit the egregious and the pride, trying to be like God without God. They take the fruit and the rebellion and it's a disaster. Obviously, we know the story.
You want to study the story more? Go back to my study on Genesis. Well, righteousness was lost through them grasping at that forbidden fruit. And if you remember, they took the fruit and they ate their eyes were open and they realized they were naked and then they were ashamed.
Now the nakedness in question is not really physical nakedness. It's not like all of a sudden, like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I had that before. I'm so ashamed. Don't look at me.
Don't look at me. No, that's not what they're doing. The nakedness is really a spiritual nakedness first and foremost because the fathers talk about how they lost the glorious robe of righteousness, of grace, of justification. So they're estranged from God.
They're exiled from God. And this is why the Lord sacrifices an animal and clothes them with animal skins because there's a lot there. Sin causes death that animal dies and they're dead and then they're clothed with the skin of an animal, which is probably a lamb, which makes sense in connection with Jesus. Again, go back to the study on Genesis.
There's a lot more there. So here, there's the same connection. So Adam and Eve, they lost their glorious robe of righteousness and they're ashamed because of that. And then the rest of salvation history is how are you clothed again.
At the end of the Bible, when you look at the book of Revelation, everyone's clothes, like all over the place with glorious white robes, which are the righteous deeds of the saints. It's kind of interesting. Why are all these people clothed with white robes in the heavenly temple, these souls in heaven? It's because they have their garment of righteousness back.
That's the reversal of Adam and Eve sin. So here's the idea. If you follow wisdom and if you cling to her, if you submit to her and slave yourself to her, you'll be happy, you'll be joyful and glad and all the rest of it, but you'll get the glorious robe of righteousness back again. Righteousness.
So your obedience to wisdom or your obedience to wisdom, uncreated wisdom, God, you're going to be re-cloed with righteousness. But if you rebel against wisdom, you're still going to be naked in a shame because that makes perfect sense to me. So that's the idea here. And I haven't seen this in various commentaries, but I think I'm right about that.
I could be wrong. I'm happy to be corrected. But this glorious robe is definitely a throwback to the garment of righteousness that they lost and now is going to be returned. Now, what you do see some commentaries point out is that in Romans, Paul tells us to put on Christ.
Now, the idea of putting on Christ is the same idea in the word of putting on a garment because Jesus Christ is our garment of righteousness, right? When we're united to him through the sacrament of baptism and the rest of the sacraments, we're more identified with him and just completely cruciformity, like we're conformed to Christ. So I want to say then you're going to have the garment of righteousness back. So Paul says put on Christ as if you would put on a garment because he is our righteousness, just like wisdom here in chapter six says she will give you a robe of righteousness because that's exactly what Christ does to reverse the fall of Adam and Eve.
All right. So I hope that makes sense. So this is the whole idea that we're at the end of 31 here, the second half. Now, it kind of goes on a little bit more.
We could say it's not really technically part of the third poem, but it's the development of it where C.Rack here begins to talk about our choice. He emphasizes free. We'll talk more about free will in chapter 15 in the next lesson here, but this is all a choice that we have, which makes perfect sense. I mean, God desires our salvation.
He desires everyone to be saved, but we must cooperate with his grace. So this is why you have a conditional clause repeated here multiple times, like for example, 32 and 33, if you're willing, my son, you'll be taught 33. If you love to listen, you'll gain knowledge and so on and so forth. So that's a big if if you love to be taught, if you want knowledge, then you're going to follow wisdom.
The opposite is implied. You may, maybe you don't want to be taught. Maybe you don't want wisdom. Maybe you don't want instruction and you want to continue to be enslaved, not to wisdom, but to your passions or the temptation of the devil.
Well, that's your choice, right? So you got to choose. And if you choose wisdom, he gives some good advice. Find a good mentor.
It's not easy to understand wisdom and to meditate upon her mysteries, the mysteries of God on our own. That's verse 36. If you see, there's again, conditional clause. If you see an intelligent man visit him early, let your footwear out his doorstep.
That's good advice. If you see someone intelligent man or woman, of course, go visit them often. To me, I think of the word mentorship. All right, coaching or tutor or find a role model where you can learn from them because we all need each other in this quest for happiness and righteousness, Christ guides us all, but we are a family and so we on this earth should be assisting one another in discipleship.
And then of course, we have the saints in heaven through our role models and guides for our own path and they pray for us as well. All right, so mentorship. I like that a lot. And one more connection here before we move on to a whole smorgasbord of topics, which is this last command, chapter 6, 37, reflect on the statutes of the Lord and meditate at all times on his commandments.
It is he who will give insight to your mind and your desire for wisdom will be granted. All right, so a couple of things here. Number one, like the second half of the verse talks about, it's ultimately God who will give insight to our minds and give our hearts desire for wisdom. Remember wisdom is a gift.
The created wisdom as a gift is meant to guide us towards uncreated wisdom, which is God himself, right? So God ultimately is the giver of all good gifts, including wisdom. Remember wisdom is that one of the seven gifts of the spirit. But this idea, the first half of the verse is really important, I think, is worth stressing meditate on at all times on his commandments, meditate, meditate, meditate.
This is what we should be spending our time on. Now, there's a lot of connections to other passages in the Old Testament. I had mentioned already, remember the great Shama, love the Lord to God, all your heart, soul and might, but then the rest of the Shama prayer is to paraphrase or you keep reading. He says, think about these things when you lie down, when you wake up, when you walk down the road, right, teach them diligently to your children, put them on your forehead, your hands in the doorposts and all these things, right?
You have to be all in. Think about God's commandments and his law and his words all the time. So there's a connection for you. But here's two other connections.
Joshua chapter one uses the same idea here. So context, Joshua, chapter one is when Moses is dead. Joshua's a new leader. He's about ready to take leadership of his people.
He's probably afraid more of his or his relates than he is of the Canaanites. And then God appears to him. He has a little vision. It's an incredible, chaotic structure.
But the center of chapter one, let's go to chapter one verse eight of Joshua. God says, the book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you would have success wherever you go. Same idea. God says, and this is important for the whole book of Joshua, if you want success in the conquest of the land and you want success leading the people, you want success, defeating your enemies, you have to meditate on God's law and do not depart from it from the right hand to the left hand.
All right. That's a beautiful connection here with Cyrac. Another connection is the very beginning of Psalms. Psalm one and two really form a prologue for the entire Psalter.
Check out the Bible setting on the Psalms for more on that. But one chapter one verses one and two open up with a theme that reverberates throughout the entire Psalter as well as all of the wisdom literature, which is the two ways reject a way of unrighteousness and vice, except the way of virtue and meditate on God's law. Let me read it for you. Chapter one verse one, blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
But verse two, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. All right. So that's what Cyrac is talking about. Cyrac, and when he says here at the end of chapter six, meditated all times on his commandments, his law, his words, his scriptures, we would say, right?
That's what Moses said. That's what God said to Joshua. That's what King David said in the Psalter, right? Chapter one of Psalms.
This is the consistent teaching. It's true for us as well. Sorry to get a little preachy. I'm probably will do that more and more through wisdom literature.
But it's true. We have to, okay, for example, how many times do we, I'm speaking to myself, you know, full confession, full disclosure, you pick up the phone, you scroll on Facebook or X or social media and you're scrolling in and before you know it, half hour, 45 minutes an hour goes by and you're like, okay, well, was that all very fruitful? Sure, maybe I saw a cute cat video or saw something interesting on the news, but by and large, there's a lot of ways to time. Well, instead of picking up the phone and scrolling through social media, doom scrolling, they call it, pick up the Bible, right?
Meditate on the scriptures because that's going to be our success, as God said to Joseph and Joshua. Beautiful stuff here and that ends the chapter, chapter six here and the third poem on seeking lady wisdom. Hey, this is Doc Neck. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample.
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