O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and reach from one end of the earth to the other, rightly and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.
The first of the O Antiphons speaks of universal comprehensiveness: from one end of the earth to the other. In the secular world, this notion usually ends up meaning some form of coercive power, one that forces conformity. But the holy Wisdom of God—Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh—used no coercion. Christ calls to us in love, and wherever the Image of God in us exists, to that extent we may respond in the power of God’s loving grace.
Knowing this, perhaps we can understand why the antiphon ends as it does: “Come and teach us the way of prudence.” Instead of turning back to earthly power, with its fantasies of compulsion, majority votes, and determinism, we call upon God to teach us the holy way of divine prudence, “rightly and sweetly ordering all things” in the harmonious and impelling language of the Divine love, the Wisdom of God: Christ our Lord.
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