Wisdom’s Part in Creation
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 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, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
The Trinity: such a mystery. So many theologians have tried to explain the Trinity and some, like St. Patrick with the shamrock, have made it somewhat clearer but really, the only thing you can do with mystery is be immersed in it and trust in it with faith - because you’ll never completely understand it. So, how do we immerse ourselves in the mystery of the Trinity? It’s not like the mystery of the Eucharist where Christ left us with tangible means to enter in through the reception of bread and wine, his body and blood. The Trinity is just kind of…out there. Most of us only pay real attention to it about once a year on the feast of the Trinity. Well, actually, that’s not true. Every time you pray, every time you seek the Lord and every time you have an encounter with him, you are petitioning, seeking and experiencing Trinity but it's natural and human to envision and relate to one of the Three at a time.
This week I’m focusing on the first reading, not only because it’s so darn wonderful but also because it shows us so beautifully the very nature of this elusive idea of Trinity and offers us a place to jump out of our cramped ideas of God into the wide adventure of mystery. The two words that sum it all up are: Wisdom and Delight.
In the first line it says, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,” Another translation says, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.” Before everything else, the Lord brought his wisdom into being – into a Being. This was the moment of conception, birth and rebirth. Was Wisdom his Holy Spirit? Was Wisdom his Son? Did he speak the Word, which was his Son and create Wisdom, his Spirit? We will never know for sure will we? It’s a mystery.
Scripture says, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word was God and the Word was with God.” We also read that the Holy Spirit hovered over the chaos and prepared it to receive the Word. But we shouldn’t try to pin this all down to a time line like the old conundrum ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ because God can’t be diminished into time lines and sequences. In any case, it doesn’t matter. The part of the mystery that concerns us is what was born out of the existence of the Trinity.
Creativity and delight.
How long has it been since creativity and delight have been in the forefront of your spiritual ponderings? When you think of God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, are ‘creativity and delight’ the first things that pop to mind? Probably not, yet these two words embody the whole nature of the mystery of Trinity. When the Three get together, that’s all that happens – wild creativity and absolute delight. They can’t help it. They are so in love with each other and so delighted with each other that their love and delight becomes creative energy and whatever flows from that creative energy totally delights them causing them to love each other even more, if that was possible, which exacerbates their delight and from that amazing things and people are created…and on we go. Once again, I’m making it all a time line of ‘this causes that which causes this’, which is nonsense, but we can’t even begin to comprehend it any other way. I think the Trinity is just delighted that we are trying to comprehend it at all.
Wisdom, Creativity and Delight - what an amazing vision of the Lord. No frown lines, just laughter wrinkles. The wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in the Trinitarian…energy. I don’t really like the word ‘energy’. It’s over used and doesn’t mean much any more, so I went to my thesaurus to look up another word. I’m going to use them all.
The wonder of it all is that we are invited to participate in the Trinitarian (take a breath) vitality, vigor, life, liveliness, animation, vivacity, spirit, spiritedness, verve, enthusiasm, zest, vibrancy, spark, sparkle, effervescence, ebullience, exuberance, buoyancy, sprightliness, strength, stamina, forcefulness, power, dynamism, drive, fire, passion, ardor and zeal.
We are invited and called to enter into all this because each one of us is a creation, a lovely consequence, of the circle of the Trinity. In love, wisdom and delight we were conceived and now, as manifestations of this circle of creative power, the Trinity delights in each one of us. “I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” We are called to be involved in that love, creativity and delight which means loving and delighting in ourselves and in others. There’s a tendency to think that before we can delight in ourselves, if we feel that’s allowed at all, we need to clean up and shape up. So, we spend our lives struggling with all we feel is wrong with ourselves and we believe that all that we see as wrong is what God sees as wrong. We spend our energies in fixing the creation without really knowing what is broken. We can’t do that. You can’t do that. It’s all backwards. In order for what is broken to be fixed you need to be immersed in the mystery of the understanding that you are an amazing consequence of the Trinitarian love circle. You need to enter into and stay within the delight the Trinity has in you. As you immerse yourself in the delight flowing over you, new creation is the result – what’s broken gets fixed in his time and wisdom. “Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.” Not only do you open yourself to be continuously created and renewed but you also begin to discover your own gifts of creativity, wisdom and passion, a discovery that creates in you a deeper love for the Lord and a greater delight in his creation. This is the circle in which we are called to participate; it is the expanding circle of creative life, not the restrictive cycle of despondent failure and inadequacy.
How do you begin to participate? With gratitude: gratitude for the mystery of the Lord’s love and gratitude for the mystery of yourself.
Cardinal Suenens in his book “A New Pentecost” writes, “For my own part, as the years go by, I become increasingly aware of God’s wonderfully active presence in my life and of my own poor correspondence to his many graces. The revelation of his unfailing concern, which finds no detail too small, awakes within me a hymn of joyful praise whose refrain could be from one of our glorious antiphons at Christmastide: ‘O Wisdom, you reach from beginning to end, ordering all things with strength and sweetness.’"
Trinity: the mystery of coming full circle; the mystery of coming home.
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