O Sapientia

O Antiphons time already! Goodness, how quickly Advent goes. You're probably busy and preoccupied with a myriad of things; I know I am! But let's try to quickly take advantage of these focuses for reflection that the Church gives us in these final days of Advent.

O Wisdom, who came forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly, come, and teach us the way of prudence.

The phrasing of "reaching from end to end" is tickling my brain this year. What does it mean? Is it temporal, from the beginning to the end of time, or earth's creation to its destruction? Or spatial, "from the River to the ends of the earth," as the coming king's sovereignty was described in today's psalm? Or both, or something else entirely?

Ends. I have a lot of loose ends right now, a lot of things I'm trying to finish up, a lot of questions I'm trying to find answers to. These ends, I'm impatient to hurry and have arrive already. Other ends, like the end of Advent (how is it already almost over?), the end of a little one's littleness (how does she have a tooth already?), I'm unprepared for.

"O Wisdom... reaching from end to end, and ordering all things..." I need that wisdom, that order. The long to-do list, the questions I can't resolve by myself, all the "ends" that I look at and feel are coming too quickly or too slowly, they're all going to come in God's time. If they feel "off" to me, I'm the one who is off kilter, and I need to learn to hand God my master plan and let Him teach me to order it rightly.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high

Who orderst all things mightily;

To us the path of knowledge show

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice, rejoice; Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!