The 'O' Antiphons: Sapientia

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Warning. Religious posts ahead. It is that time of year, after all.

I've allowed myself to slide behind, and some of these posts will be late, meaning the relevant date has already passed. Still, it's the spirit and thought that count, or that at least directs me in a more favorable direction, so I'm going to write these posts anyway.

The O Antiphons are seven prayers each beginning with the word 'O' followed by a title of Christ as Lord. They are traditionally sun in mass prior to the Magnificat on the seven days leading up to Christmas. It's an explicitly coded prayer, in that that first letter of each title for Christ in each installment (Sapientia, Adonai, Radix, Clavis, Oriens, Rex, and Emmanuel) listed backwards for each installment is "Ero cras," that is, "tomorrow I will be there." When recited from the 17th to the 23rd of December, on the last day "tomorrow" is the Christmas Vigil.

I am beginning this prayer one day late.

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O Wisdom, you come forth from the mouth of the Most High.
You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner.
O come to teach us the way of truth.

Wisdom, in the Biblical Sense, is described almost as common-sense informed by divine inspiration. It was actually, perhaps, the original awareness of the Holy Spirit as envisioned in the New Testament, in the sense that the Spirit of Wisdom, especially in the Book of Proverbs, is an entity that is supplicated to and treated with something almost akin to autonomy. The Catholic interpretation, of course, identifies the Holy Spirit as a definite component of the Trinity; as an entity that is indivisible from the greater being of God, but that nevertheless fulfills a distinct role.

* * * * *

What does it mean to come forth from the most high? A figurative interpretation goes a long way to explain most contemporary readings of the Bible: the work is divinely inspired. This is the ground of arguments of "Biblical Infallibility" today. Ironically, the idea is even more exciting when described literally.

The earliest records of the Hebrew YHVH describe him as a god of wind and storms. Life is consciously imparted through the act of breathing, while earth is simply the substance used to construct light. Language, the understood backbone of civilization, and certainly a consideration among Biblical writers, is tied to the mouth, and throughout both the Old and New Testaments important figures are inspired by, struck by, or even taken away by great winds.

The idea of breath can also be considered from a non-Biblical perspective. Speaking personally, I've always been tempted to consider the Big Bang and aftermath, including inflation, as a sort of great exhalation. If wisdom "fills" all the universe and holds "all things together" than a literal readon consistant with science also embodies wisdom as the basic forces of our universe, strong and weak, electromagnetic and gravitation, that impose order or, to put it (perhaps) more correctly, modify the rate of entropy.

I'm interest, incidentally, on Damien and Tom's take on this, from a theological perspective, and Michael's, from a scientific angle.

The O Antiphons were formalized during the Middle Ages, if not prior. It is highly unlikely that the writer intended to draw a parallel between Biblical wisdom and the Big Bang. The parallel, however, is present, and it is the ability to frame religious writing in new and sometimes quite different contexts, that makes the writing applicable and universal.

With this in mind, wisdom might also be described as hope. If attractive energy is what binds particles together, ultimately allowing for stars, galaxies, and life, and if attracive forces represent the degree of order in a system, than wisdom is essentially divinely inspired common-sense: it is rational behavior based on evidence of order. If there was no order to our behavior, if our actions had an arbitrary impact (which, examined closely, pretty much rules out self-consciousness in the first place), then there is no reason to prefer any action over another.

All this navel-gazing has a point. The more we consider not so much the specific choices we make, but why we feel strongly about those choices, why we feel strongly about ourselves and the world we live in, why we are convinced of our ability to make accurate observations about reality, the fact that the evidence we collect can be accurate and informative, and even allows interpolation, the more we come to understand the scale of the universe and our places in it. This awareness leads to premeditated, conscious, and informed choices. It allows us reason with leftover room for awe.

I'm not convinced that the "acquisition of wisdom" will necessarily lead one toward Christianity or religion in general... I think this is a tool available by many different routes. The point, is rather, that if we know how to tell the forest for the trees, we can see much more of the forest than we might expect. Inflation theory and not scraping the Teflon surface with steel wool have more in common than we think.

The night is young.

* * * * *

Tonight was one of the most pleasant I've had in a long time... probably since last weekend when I saw my family in Rochester. After church I came home, and spent most of the afternoon cleaning. After dark, Jessica and I set up the Christmas tree and decorated it with all of our ornaments. We ate macaroni and cheese and Jess' homemade tomato soup for dinner, ate ice cream and I saw It's a Wonderful Life for the first time.

A very wise film.

Later we set out by our little tree and I finished reading the Emigrants for class. And now Jess has gone to bed, it's after three AM, and I'm typing this.

Tonight has felt important.

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