 Welcome everyone, thank you for coming to join us here at the Gentile Gallery. So, no Jews allowed in the house, all right? We're just going to be talking about Christ here today. We'll reference the Old Testament scriptures a little bit, but in a Christian context. Very glad to be here to spend time with you for this first workshop. Thank you for coming. We'll go ahead and start with the prayer, and then we'll see where the Holy Spirit takes us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord Jesus' word, wisdom, send your Holy Spirit upon us as we gather and talk and think and pray and contemplate. Take us where you want us to go, touch our hearts, open our minds, help us to receive the wisdom that transforms us. Not just a wisdom that informs us, but that transforms us into the people that you have created us to be. We give you thanks for the opportunity to be here. We praise you and ask you to turn this hour and 15 minutes into a song of praise and glory for your goodness. Mother Mary, please pray for us. All you women, saints in heaven, pray for us. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Oh, you know what I really would like to do? I really would like to sit down with each and every one of you and hear your stories. I would really like to sit down and hear, okay, why did you come here? It's probably because you already love the women saints. It's probably because you have stories of how these women have journeyed with you, how they've been part of your conversion story, or maybe you're here because you haven't had that experience, but you're curious and you're wondering, what is it about this devotion to the saints and what can I learn? I don't know, I just wish, I wish we had time to share everybody's stories and maybe as the course of the conference unfolds, we'll be able to do a little bit more of that. But I'm gonna share with you just a little bit about my story and my encounter with four women saints in particular. And then we're gonna maybe go through some thoughts that I prepared ahead of time, if that's where the Holy Spirit takes us as they're reflecting on wisdom and divine wisdom here. So I was raised Catholic, I grew up in a wonderful, healthy, functional family and had everything at my disposal to become a good and upright practicing Catholic citizen. And then I decided to become a theater major at a large state school and become immersed in a lot of negative influences, a lot of influences that started to build up resistance towards the truth. And specifically that started to build up a lot of hatred towards the church and resistance towards the priesthood as I was influenced more and more by feminist ideologies and I thought that I was supposed to find my liberation in this sort of secular idea of feminism. I slowly separated myself from the church of my childhood and the church of my upbringing and never quite made a deliberate decision like I'm going to abandon my faith but slowly over the course of time just more and more separated and alienated from Catholicism and from the church. And it wasn't until my junior year as a theater major and I was planning to graduate and go to New York and do the Broadway thing, that was my plan. My little brother who you all have met now, Father Anthony, who was only 15 months younger than me but my spiritual guru in many ways, he had the courage to sit down with me and to give me a challenge as he saw me separating myself from my faith and he gave me a challenge to take one year of my life and to actually learn what a Catholic should learn, read what a Catholic should read, pray what a Catholic should pray, go where a Catholic should go, do what a Catholic should do. He gave me a challenge, he also gave me a 15 page plan that laid out prayers and that laid out reading assignments and that laid out practices of liturgical devotion like going to Eucharistic adoration which believe it or not, raised in a Catholic family, going to Catholic school, I had never gone to Eucharistic. I had no idea what Eucharistic adoration was. I didn't have any idea. So he had me praying rosary and he had me reading scripture. Anyway, that was sort of a conversion point in my life even though it wasn't like a Holy Spirit emotional moment, it was a moment of decision and a moment of will where I decided I was gonna go ahead and give this a year of my life before I decided to reject my faith entirely. So at the end of that year, of course God works when you start opening up the opportunity for him to come in and you start praying for the virtues and stuff. God works through that and at the end of that year, instead of going to New York, I decided to take a year of service with a group called the National Evangelization Team, Net Ministries, centered in St. Paul, Minnesota and had an opportunity to live in Catholic fellowship with other people and to learn more about my faith and to realize that this was the freedom, this was the liberation that I was trying to find through the secular feminist movement. It was really present here in the church. It was really present through the truth of Christ and I started to have this eye-opening experience of realizing that actually feminine freedom, feminine liberation comes through our union with Christ and that the church has a place for women, that the church has a need for women and that the church has a communion of women through history who have influenced the world and their families and culture and society and the church, the Catholic church, that there is this host of women who have gone before me and it was just a totally radically new way of understanding Catholicism. I don't know how we can be so blind or unaware of these things, but I was, had the experience with Net, decided after that to come here to Franciscan University and to get my degree in theology because I still had a lot of questions. There was a lot to learn. I still had a lot of not understanding why this and why that came here to study theology. Thought I was gonna get all my questions answered. And the questions, the things that had made me angry and resistant that I didn't understand about the church, that was all taken care of, but what I also realized studying theology was that when you really come before the mystery of God and the truth and the revelation of Jesus Christ, it's just more questions, it's just more mystery. You just come before these things that you will never be able to fully grasp and comprehend and this is one of the things I think is for me it's important to keep in mind when we're talking about wisdom. Like sometimes I can get in my head like, okay, divine wisdom, it's a gift from the Holy Spirit and I'm gonna pray for it and then I'm gonna get it all. I'm gonna understand, I'm gonna comprehend. If I get that gift of wisdom, everything's gonna make sense. Everything's gonna fall into place and it's gonna make sense and I don't think we can reduce it to that. I don't think we can reduce it to the rational, like to the intellectual. It's so much deeper. God's wisdom is so much deeper. It's so much about this experience of union with his will that we can't comprehend and it's about lives being transformed and it's about the mystery of the cross and all these things, right? So when we reflect on wisdom, we can talk a lot about it on an intellectual level but I think it's really important to encounter wisdom as a lived experience and that's where the women saints, all the saints are such great gifts and models to us because we can enter into their lives and their stories and we can pray for their intercession to help us live wisdom, to live wisdom, to be united with wisdom, not just to think wisdom or to act according to prudent thoughts or whatever but to truly unite ourselves to a life of incarnate wisdom and I think the saints help us model that, okay? So part of my conversion experience was coming to love the saints, coming to realize that women, so many women from so many different backgrounds, such a rainbow of histories and personalities and jobs and duties and vocations all came to find this flourishing, radiant, beautiful life in the heart of Mother Church and that was compelling to me. So a lot of what I ended up writing about as life unfolded and I went in other directions as far as my work of research and writing and stuff was just kind of looking at how did the women saints help us to live a life of Christian holiness. I've found that compelling for myself and that's how the projects have unfolded. So my four favorites for women who have journeyed with me throughout important stages of my life are the four Teresa's and we'll talk about them as we unfold a little bit but I do want to start by laying a little bit of groundwork here as far as the saints and wisdom before we get specifically into those four Teresa's. So we've talked, oh man, it's been so much to take in already, hasn't there? Just being here with all the things people are sharing and I'm trying to hear what everyone's saying and thinking about how this interacts with my thoughts of what I want to share but it's too hard, again, you study theology and you just kind of end up with your mouth like dropping the floor like oh my gosh, there's so much and it's so beautiful and I'm not gonna be able to sew all the pieces together but there's a couple of things that I wanna touch on and the first one is this idea about human wisdom versus divine wisdom, okay? So we know human wisdom is a thing that can be kind of like a natural gift or whatever and we know there's also this gift that comes from God. So on your handout, what I did with the handout was I just tried to give you a lot of the scripture references that I'm gonna be referring to as we go through the talk. You can follow along with that if you want to, if you just don't wanna bother with that, it's totally fine but I thought that would be maybe a simpler way for you to follow along with the references than having everyone open up their Bibles and turn to all the pages and so forth. So I wanna start with wisdom, book of wisdom chapter eight, verse 21, on this concept of human and divine wisdom. So Solomon says, I perceived that I would not possess wisdom unless God gave her to me, okay? So first off, it's a gift from God. I couldn't possess wisdom unless it came from God. Okay, secondly, wisdom is feminine and we'll touch on that briefly too. I would not possess wisdom unless God gave her to me. Now here's the interesting next point and it was a mark of insight to know whose gift she was. So there had to be some kind of human insight to understand that wisdom is a gift from God. Do you see how it plays together? Like there's a natural wisdom, a natural understanding that gets, that comprehends that my wisdom is limited. It only can go this far but it's a thing, it's insight. You have to have the insight to know that wisdom is a gift from above, okay? So I just start with that to lay the foundation, the groundwork for the concept that we are talking about understanding by our own natural comprehension that we need a gift from God to have full wisdom, okay? I can think of examples in my life and you probably can too of human examples of wisdom. I was thinking about this like my dad, okay? He is a brilliant mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics for years and years and years and God has gifted him with a very logical, very rational mind and so he thinks through things. Clearly he considers all the various angles. It's kind of like life is one big formula and as long as you've got your variables in place, you'll get a nice tidy equation and he's a wonderful, wonderful man to go to for advice and wisdom and guidance because he thinks so clearly. He can sort through things and put them into logical, rational order, okay? So that's a kind of human wisdom, that sense of reason thinking, clear thinking and so forth. It's a kind of human wisdom, okay? Now there's also my husband Joe who is with us here today. Joe's sitting in the white shirt back there and my mom is juggling the six children right now over at the hotel. So he didn't know I was gonna say this but Joe has a different kind of human wisdom. He has a wisdom that is built into his gut. He just has a sense of what is right. He just has a sense of what needs to be done. He is an amazing and gifted leader because he just can perceive things. He sees a situation and he just knows how to chart a course. It's very different than my dad's sort of more thoughtful, rational, mathematical type of thinking everything through. Dad will take 12 years to make a decision, Joe will take 12 seconds because he knows he has a gut sense of it, okay? That's another kind of human wisdom. It's a gift that's built in. You guys are thinking for yourselves right now the different wisdoms that you've seen, that you have or that you've witnessed in the people that you love. There's the wisdom of my kids, okay? And my oldest is only 11. But there's the wisdom of children who without any veils, without any baggage, without any ideologies or agendas, they just get it. They just understand. They have sort of this perception of wisdom that isn't colored by sin and history and confusion. Like I remember the first time kind of trying to explain to my oldest daughter the reality of abortion. You have to have these awful conversations. It comes up at some point. You have to discuss what's happening and mothers are taking the lives of their own children. I can still picture the look on her face of just utter horror and complete confusion. What? Why would anyone ever do that? That's the wisdom of children, right? They just totally perceive to the truth of things without the complication of our heads getting in the way or our pride. Human wisdom. All examples of human wisdom. But these are not what we're talking about when we talk about divine wisdom. It's not these human wisdoms. It's something deeper and greater that comprehends all of this, but transcends all of this. And as we've already alluded to in some of the other talks today, ultimately this divine wisdom became incarnate as a human person, as Jesus Christ. And our union with Jesus Christ is our union with divine wisdom. And it's not something we can reduce to formulas. And it's not something that we just get on an intuitive level. In fact, on the contrary, a lot of times God's wisdom is very counterintuitive, right? The folly of the cross, the paradox, the gut level does not chart that kind of a course. It's different. It's different than that, okay? But this is the wisdom that we have access to. This is the wisdom that we have been invited to unite ourselves to in our relationship with Jesus Christ. I wanna touch on a little bit of a misdirected understanding about wisdom that was something I had to sort of navigate through in my feminist days when I was moving into theology because there's secular feminism, but then there's also kind of like a radical feminism that seeped into Catholicism and Catholic theology and has sort of a trickle down effect that we can see in a lot of places even within Catholic circles. And so I wanna touch briefly on an unfortunate, misunderstood idea of wisdom from specifically from Old Testament scriptures that we have to make sure we're not going down that path when we start talking about divine wisdom. So Sophia, you've probably heard the Greek word for wisdom and the wisdom literature talking about Sophia and using the feminine pronouns and so forth. There's lots of different personifications of wisdom that have this feminine element. I have that for you under the heading wisdom as feminine and eternal. So from the book of wisdom chapter seven versus 22 and then 25 to 26. Listen to the feminine imagery. Wisdom, the fashioner of all things taught me. For in her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, for she is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Nothing defiled gains entrance into her. She's a reflection of eternal light. So there's this kind of feminine, eternal seems kind of like a divinized reflection on something feminine that certain camps of feminist theologians have wanted to pounce upon and sort of create out of this a new feminine deity, like a goddess, a Sophia goddess. And this, I'm sorry to say it's still present. Like I checked out a bunch of books from our seminary library when I was doing some research for all of this and I couldn't believe how many books on the shelf of our very good, very solid, wonderful seminary are still advocating this theology that was kind of thrown out here in the 1970s and 1980s about Sophia goddess wisdom. And I just wanna share with you a quote that I found that I thought was just, I thought it was so ridiculous and bold. If you look the little insert there, beware wisdom Sophia hijacked, okay? So feminist theologians, including Rosemary Radford Ruther, Elizabeth Shusler Fiorenza, Susan Katie and others take this idea of divine wisdom with its feminine personification and have tried to turn it into a female god. And here it was laid out in this book, Sophia, The Future of Feminist Spirituality. Listen to how bold this claim is. They wrote, it is our thesis that Sophia, despite her flaws, can be developed into a powerful integrating figure for feminist spirituality, okay? So we're gonna take Sophia and we're going to hijack her. We're going to take wisdom and we're going to use her for our feminist agenda. And the biblical Sophia provides us with a starting point for that development. These passages need to be highlighted and used to continue her development in our day when her full divine status can be seen as an asset. I read that, I was like, are you kidding me? You're setting out a theory to create a deity because it's gonna be an asset to your ideology? That isn't how we operate as Catholics. We take what God reveals and we orient ourselves towards that truth. We don't take our ideas and then orient scripture towards what we want it to be. You have to be on the lookout for this stuff. You have to be on the lookout for this kind of hijacking of truth. I just wanna throw that out there because for me that was part of the journey. Way back when was a misunderstood feminism. Divine wisdom is not a goddess. Divine wisdom is not another deity. Divine wisdom when we use the feminine pronouns is not saying that God is a woman or that there is some goddess, that the patriarchal oppression of our Catholic hierarchy made sure we didn't all know about. That's not true, it's a bunch of garbage. I just wanted to mention that. Here's the fact and this is what I learned in the course of my conversion experience. This is what I have in little asterisks there. Feminists, anyone who's looking for the true flourishing and the true liberation of women needn't look no further than the women saints to see flourishing femininity and the tremendous freedom of life in the spirit. We are surrounded by models of women who radiate the image of God beautifully to the world by embracing the Christian message. They're all over the place. We have to be willing to look at their image and recognize that is femininity, that is womanhood in its beautiful liberated form. So that's an important point for me that I just wanted to share. The saints in their lives, because they have become servants, slaves, whatever that terminology is that we're using, because they have laid themselves down at the service of the love of Jesus, they are able to integrate in themselves these two wisdoms. They're able to be living walking examples of divine wisdom moving throughout the concrete situations and circumstances and realities of their lives. So they bring together those two things in their lives. So I wanna just make that point that the saints give us guidance for understanding wisdom and I wanna give you a few scriptures to help illustrate that it's not just me saying we should turn to the saints for this, okay? So 1 Corinthians, chapter two, verses 12 to 13, we're now in kind of the middle section of page one there on the handout. Saint Paul writes, we have not received the spirit of the world but the spirit that is from God so that we may understand the things freely given us by God and we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom but with words taught by the spirit. Right, the saints have been in the school of the spirit, the school of the spirit, the school of the spirit of God who teaches us in our hearts, who teaches us through our union with divine wisdom, through our union with the spirit of God. This is how we learn, this is how we come to understand. It is not an intellectual thing on a purely human level. It is by being united to the spirit. This is what the saints show us. They are the ones who have been led and moved by the spirit. How does that look in their lives? How did they open themselves to that spirit? And it's different, this is the thing. When you look at the rainbow of the saints, it is different for every person in every story. There is not a formula for how the spirit moves in our lives but there is the consistent theme that it is the spirit that brings us into encounter with wisdom. Ephesians chapter three, verses 18 to 19. The spirit gives us the power to comprehend with all the saints or your translation might say the holy ones. The spirit gives us the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. The spirit does for the saints what the spirit is wanting to do with us which is to bring us into union with Christ so that we have the fullness of God dwelling in us. This is the mission. This is really what we're called to do. This is why we are here not just at Franciscan University of Stubbornville. This is like why we exist. You know, it is. It's the reason is that we want to be united with Christ with the spirit. This is the whole mission. Uniting ourselves to this wisdom is what God wants to do in us. Colossians one, nine to 12. We do not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. How? Through all spiritual wisdom, right? The wisdom of the spirit and understanding to live in a manner worthy of the Lord. This wisdom doesn't stop at our heads. This wisdom affects our actions, our lives, our witness, our being to live in a manner worthy of the Lord so as to be fully pleasing in every good work, bearing fruit, growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with every power in accord with his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy giving thanks to the Father who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. We have been made fit by the spirit of God to share in the inheritance of the saints, friends. What is the inheritance of the saints? It is eternal bliss in heaven and it is deep fulfillment on earth until we get there in a way that the world will never comprehend. The fulfillment and the joy of living in life in the spirit is not something other people will look at and get. They won't get your poverty, they won't get your sacrifices, they won't get your joy in the midst of those struggles. But that gift, that inheritance of the saints is guaranteed to us in this life and in the next. We are fit to share in that inheritance, that spirit of God is given to us as a gift. What's keeping us from receiving this? What's keeping us from the full reception of that wisdom, that encounter with the truth with Jesus Christ? Whatever it is, that's what we have to get rid of. Whatever it is, that's in the way. We've been made fit. We have to make sure that we're not restricting that. Colossians 1, 26 to 27. I'm at the last quote on the bottom of page one now. But now it has been manifested to his holy ones. To whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. It is Christ in you, the hope for glory. Okay? The mystery? The mystery and the people waiting through ancient ages to know what this is all moving towards, it's been made known to us. It's been made known to us. We know, we have the secret. We have this at our fingertips in such a different way than the people waiting for Jesus would have had. We have access to this. Okay. So with the saints, we pray to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can be incarnate livers, livers of wisdom. Not just lovers, but livers of it, all right? I know that sounds weird, like liver and onions, but I mean, like living the wisdom, living the wisdom, okay? There's a document that came out in 2014 by the International Theological Commission called Census Fidei in the Life of the Church. And I wanna talk about it a little bit because it's kind of a cool and confusing and a little bit of a complicated and controversial and incredibly important idea, the Census Fidei, the sense of the faithful. Do you know that in the history of the church, there is this idea that the faithful, us, we, us, the faithful, the praying church has an instrumental role in the development of doctrine, in the unfolding of how we understand truth, the Census Fidei, that we as a praying community of the church actually help to guide the official doctrine making magisterial declaration giving church through our sense of the truth of the faith. By your baptism, you participate in this sense of the faithful that keeps the church on track, my friends. And Popes, before declaring dogmas, have sent letters out to their bishops and have said what are your people saying about this? What are your faithful saying about the immaculate conception? What are your faithful saying about the doctrine of the assumption? Before I declare this, you tell me what your people are praying and saying. And when what the people are praying and saying matches with what the Holy Father discerns as being the right time and the right way, you have this coming together and the proclamation unfolds. It's a unity and it's a harmony. And if we are not living our vocation as spirit-led, baptized, wisdom seekers, the church suffers. The church suffers. The scandals in the church is a sign of a suffering church, my friends. We have an obligation, we have a mission, we have a divine anointing as lay people, as baptized people to exercise the sense of the faithful and to keep the church on track. And it doesn't matter if we feel fear from on high, if we feel like structures may be crumbling, we preserve the sense of the faithful and we navigate through that without doubt. And we navigate through that by staying connected to wisdom with a capital W that keeps us from veering into error. And to the extent that we are not united with wisdom, it is my fault, it is my fault when things go astray. We turn to ourselves and we say, how am I living the sense of the faithful? Okay, so the census Fidei, I have this, do I have this quoted for you? Yes, top of page two. The census Fidei, the sense of the faithful fosters true wisdom. It gives rise to the proclamation of the truth. The sense of the faithful fosters true wisdom. This is part of our charism as lay people to participate in the fostering of true wisdom and to understanding the truth. We have a mission, not just in our own lives of holiness and our own journey to heaven, we have a mission in the church to make sure the census Fidei is alive and well and that we are fostering true wisdom and that we are keeping mother church in line with true wisdom. The next quote from number 100 in the same document. In the history of the church, the saints are the light bearers of the census Fidei. The saints are the light bearers of the sense of the faithful. We look to the saints to help us understand what is the sense of the faithful? What is this mission to bear light to the world but also to bear light to the church? The saints are the light bearers. Mary, mother of God, the all holy, perfectly exemplifies the delight in God's word, the eagerness to proclaim the good news that the census Fidei produces in the hearts of believers. In all succeeding generations, the gift of the spirit to the church, the gift of the spirit to the church has produced a rich harvest of holiness and the full number of saints is known only to God. Of course we know that, right? The saints aren't just the canonized ones. They're not just the ones with the official ST in front of their name. Everyone who ends up enjoying that bliss with Christ in heaven and many of us here still on earth, we pray God are part of this company, the rich harvest of holiness that the spirit gives to the church. This is our mission is to be led by this spirit within the church. So the saints, this was sort of what I was trying to say here is that the saints are led by the spirit and they help us to be holy and to have access to wisdom. Now we're gonna transition into talking about the four saints. And I wanna do this by looking at Proverbs chapter eight. When I was meditating and reflecting on different passages from wisdom literature, this one stood out to me because there are a few sections in this passage that really jumped out to me as radiating the spirituality of my four chorises. So here's what we're gonna do as a little exercise. We're gonna do a little Catholic choir camp here. We're gonna divide the room into two sections. You know how this goes? Sometimes you pray the liturgy, the hours and you have side A and you have side B, okay? We're gonna read through Proverbs eight versus one through what do I have, 36 with a little skipping in the middle. Each side is gonna get a verse, okay? So over here, you guys, you're side A. So you would read verse one together and then you would shut up and side B takes over and reads verse two. And we're gonna do choir style all the way through, okay? I'm going to ask you to stand because we do a lot of sitting at this conference. So we're gonna do our choir style reading of Proverbs eight and then I'm gonna pull out a few sections which I think I marked for you. Yeah, do you have the purple and the blue and the red and the green? Okay, so pay attention to those little passages because that's where we're gonna springboard when we talk about the four chorises, okay? So side A, do you know who you are? Yes, good, yes, this is side A. Side B, do you remember? Yep, you're side B, okay. Side A, we're gonna start together, here we go. Does not wisdom call and does not understanding raise her voice on the heights beside the way at the crossroads she takes her stand. Beside the gates in front of the town at the entrance of the portals she cries out. To you, O people, I call and my cry is to all that live. O simple ones, learn prudence, acquire intelligence, you who lack it. Here, for I will speak noble things and from my lips will come what is right. For my mouth will utter truth. Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous. There is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to one who understands and right to those who find knowledge. Take my instruction instead of silver and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than jewels and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I wisdom live with prudence and I attain knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. I have good advice and sound wisdom. I have insight, I have strength. By me kings reign and rulers decree what is just. By me rulers rule and nobles all who govern rightly. I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently find me. Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold and my yield than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness along the paths of justice. Endowing with wealth those who love me and filling their treasuries. And now my children listen to me. Happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise and do not neglect it. Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But those who miss me injure themselves and all who hate me love death. Thank you. You can be seated if you want to. Stay standing if you need to, it's fine. Nice job, by the way. You guys sounded, you know, I once heard that you can judge the health of a religious community by how well they chant choir together. You would think you guys were all harmonious and good fellowship with each other. That was well done. So one of the points in reading through this, I think it's so important when we reflect on scripture and kind of share our own ideas and thoughts about meaning and insight or whatever, it's just also really important to just come and contact with scripture and to just let the words be what they are and to just bring ourselves into the contact with the living word of God. So I thought, I think Cardinal said something about that at Mass2, which was so cool, was just, you know, we just bring ourselves into contact with the scriptures, even if the homily is really lousy and terrible, you're still hearing the living word of God preach to you every week, you know, and it always leads us to the Eucharist, which is leading us to that encounter with Christ. So I wanted this also to just kind of speak and say, you know, there's so much here, like if nothing else came out of this workshop, just sit with Proverbs eight. What a reflection on wisdom. What a reflection on this personification of this divine attribute, okay? But I do have to fill a little bit more time here in my session, so I'm gonna talk some more about some ideas that I had about this passage. And the point I'm gonna pull out is that each one of these four chorises, my four chorises, line up with one of these concepts about wisdom, and you know, for every verse in there, you could probably come up with your own favorite saints and how their stories and their lives and their writings help you to understand that facet of wisdom. We can't do all of it, but this is what we're gonna hit on. So we'll start by talking about St. Therese, and it's verse five, where's my, oh, there it is, okay. Verse five in Proverbs eight. Oh, simple ones, learn prudence. Acquire intelligence, you who lack it, okay? So this I associate with St. Therese of Lisu, the little flower, the doctor of the church, who died at only 23 years old, but what a font of lived wisdom in her short life, right? And many of you are familiar with her spirituality of the little way that it's in the small opportunities of the little struggles and challenges and sacrifices of daily life that we are able to give these gifts to Jesus, these gifts of love, the bouquets, you know, of the sacrifices and that kind of thing, but also her little way isn't just about little acts, it's also about a profound recognition of her own littleness. Of her own need to be filled by God's power because of her not feeling like she possessed it herself. That's an important and deep part of the doctrine of the little way is that Therese understood this littleness in her soul, and I wanna reflect a little bit about that idea of the simple ones being filled with wisdom, being filled with intelligence, being filled with prudence. Oh, simple ones, learn prudence, acquire intelligence, you who lack it, okay? So Proverbs 9.4 was a favorite line for Therese. Proverbs 9.4, do I have that for you? Yes, okay, whoever is a little one, top of page three, whoever is a little one, let him come to me, okay? And we see Jesus saying that again in the Gospels. So looking at this concept of the little one, the Hebrew term for the little one is haser lev, all right? And breaking down, and I consulted my brother who's the scripture scholar to understand this concept a little more profoundly of the little one, we're not just talking about a short person or a young person, we're talking about something more profound, haser lev, haser means to decrease, to diminish, to strip off, to disappear, to be lacking, okay? So haser is this idea of something that's not even there. It's disappeared, it's lacking, it's been stripped off, and lev referring to the mind, the heart, the will, the inner man. So haser lev, this idea of the little one, it isn't just someone small or childish or cute or stupid, it's someone who is fundamentally missing something. Like the heart has something that's disappeared, the heart has something that's been stripped off, that's lacking, that's diminished, the inner being, the person themselves is missing, is little in the sense of not having, lacking, okay? So the little one, the spirituality of the little one is talking about an impoverished heart, a heart that is decreased, that's diminished, that is almost nothing in its obscurity. The little one, as Therese understood it, is in a sense unable to even function on its own without help from somewhere else, because I am so little that I have nothing to offer, okay? So it's a profound sense of littleness. It is a profound sense that I do not have within me what I even need to begin functioning. That's where Therese starts from with the little way. It is a profound humility, it is a frightening humility because of the dependence that it requires. The independence that we want to have, that we want to chart, she sacrifices all of that, and recognizes that her dependence must be upon Christ himself. And she talks about her heart, her desire to love, is so impoverished, it's so little that she's not even gonna try to love on her own power. Look at her quotes. She says, to love you as you love me, I would have to borrow your own love, borrow your love. She's gonna borrow the love of Christ because her love isn't good enough. This is her brilliance, this is her audacity. I don't have it, I'm gonna borrow yours, and I know you're gonna give it to me because I have that kind of confidence. I would have to borrow your own love, and then only would I be at rest. She says, elsewhere, these are just different quotes pulled on this theme. We have merely to take Jesus by his heart. You know, I think about my two and a half year old, he's this really active physical little creature and he just loves jumping and bouncing and doing somersaults and he'll come to the top of the stairs and he wants me to carry him down so I go up to get him, but he starts jumping before I'm at the top, because he just trusts he's gonna just land in mom's arms and she's not gonna topple backwards and everything's gonna be fine. I'm like, thank God we didn't fall down the stairs yet again today, he has this complete confidence to literally throw himself into my arms. I just think it's so Therese, she just had this confidence, just throw herself into Christ's arms to take him by his heart. You know, Xavier takes me by my hand or by my arms, Therese takes Jesus by his heart and just grabs on. Wherever that heart's going, that's where I'm going to. I'm taking you by your heart and I'm not letting go because that's the love that I need to fill my heart. She is so fundamentally unable to love with divine love that she doesn't worry at all. She just lets Jesus do it. That is a kind of wisdom that goes beyond human comprehension. Her next quote here, ah, give me a thousand hearts to love you, but that is still too little, Jesus. Beauty supreme, give me your divine heart itself to love you. Oh my divine savior, I rest upon your heart, it is mine. A thousand human hearts won't even begin to do the trick. Your heart alone, Jesus, your heart alone. Oh simple ones, learn wisdom, acquire intelligence, how? We merely take Jesus by his heart. That's how we acquire it. Not on our own power, not in our own wisdom. We take Jesus by his heart. All right, moving on to Teresa of Avila. And let's see, what was the line we pulled out from Proverbs eight for Teresa of Avila? We were looking at verse 10 and 11, it's in red. This reflection on wisdom, verse 10 and 11 from Proverbs eight, take my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. Teresa of Avila, the great mystic, the reformer of the Carmelite Order. Teresa of Avila who, one of her great masterpieces, another doctor of the church, by the way, the interior castle, right? The interior castle, my soul is a castle that is meant to host the king of kings. What condition is the castle in, is the question, right? How have I prepared for this majestic guest? Her reflection on the interior castle is this, I mean, some of you are familiar with the spirituality of moving through the stages of illumination and purgation and union, and it's very profound, it's very deep, but the basic idea is that she understands the soul is this incredibly valuable, amazing place, this tabernacle, this temple where God is pleased to dwell and that no gold, no riches, nothing earthly can compare with the presence of God in our souls, and so, you know, like what we heard today about the idea of the human person being the temple, right? The human body, the human being, the human soul united with the body, a temple where God is fit to dwell. This is Teresa of Avila's mystical theology. This is the understanding that everything in this world has nothing compared to the glory of that union with Jesus, of that mystical marriage, right? Where that culmination of being united with the person of wisdom takes place in our souls. That's still on this side of heaven, folks. That's still on this side of heaven, that mystical union, and some doctors of the church think we can all get there, some don't. Some things that's special grace, I don't know what your vote is, but we might as well try to get as close as we can. We might as well move towards recognizing the treasure that we have been given in being capable of hosting the King of Kings, the spirit of God dwelling in our hearts. She talks about different stages of spiritual growth and development, I'm gonna just share with you briefly the Four Waters that she talks about. These are these stages, just kind of looking concretely. This is the thing I love about Teresa of Avila. Mystical, just incredibly elevated spirituality, but still as practical as a story about a water wheel and how it's gonna help us move towards the union with wisdom, capital W that we're looking for. So she talks about the Four Waters. First of all, when we're trying to move towards this union with the person of wisdom, it's like drawing water up out of a well, okay? Like how many of us have actually drawn water out of a well? I don't know, but you get the idea, you have to pull on this thing and you have to lower it down and then you have to heave hoe to get the bucket back up and there's a lot of labor involved and if it's a big bucket and lots of water it's gonna be heavy and it's gonna be tough. Like you're exerting a lot of effort to get the water. That's stage one in the spiritual life. It takes a lot of effort. It's like you have to build those virtue muscles we were talking about last night and that's hard at the beginning. It's hard work, but we set out on that course and if we are dedicated and if we persevere we progress to the next level, which is the windlass, the pulley, the pulley system where you're still, you're drawing up water by some labor and some effort but you're able to get more water with less effort because you have a new system in place. That's the next level. That's how it feels when we're advancing in prayer and union with God. It becomes a little bit easier. It still involves effort and labor but it's not quite as difficult as it was in the beginning. That's stage two, stage three, irrigation. You have things put in place where water starts coming and flowing in kind of on its own. You put systems in place where you're not having to pull and muscle it but you did have to put the systems in place. There was still effort and labor involved but now water is starting to run into your soul. The water of union feeling like you don't have to exert as much effort to be united with God. And then finally the fourth stage, of course, is the heavenly reign. This is how she describes that final stage of union. It's just a gift from God. You don't have to do a darn thing when you arrive at this state but receive the gift. You receive the gift of God's grace in his union, right? She talks about her experience of accomplishing, that's the wrong word, because it wasn't by her own power. It's the gift of God, of attaining, shall we say, the spiritual marriage, the union with Christ. This quote I have for you on the page. On arriving at this state, the state of union, the state of spiritual reign, the soul clearly sees that there are no riches, no estates, no honors, no delights that can give it such satisfaction even for the twinkling of an eye. For this is the true joy. This is the content that can be seen to satisfy the union of the soul. And we see the wisdom that she is reflecting on. Take my instruction instead of silver. Knowledge rather than choice gold. Wisdom is better than jewels. All that you may desire cannot compare with her. And she says there's nothing like it. There is nothing that can compare, yes. On the water levels, it's called a windlass or a pulley. So that's where you're still using your own labor, but you have a system in effect to get more water, less labor. All right, that's Teresa Vavala. Teresa number three, Edith Stein, okay? I know it's a little bit of a cheater to call an Edith a Teresa, but that was her religious name when she became a Carmelite. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein. Oh, born a Jew, became an atheist in her teen years, but always seeking truth. She says my desire for truth was itself one soul prayer. Even in her years of atheism, even in her years pursuing her doctoral degrees in philosophy, in the era of the Second World War, seeking truth, that was her prayer. And of course, ultimately she found that truth by encountering the witness of a Christian friend and encountering the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avala. She read it in one night, closed the book, put it down, said this is the truth. And as life unfolded, she herself became a Carmelite nun. So Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, okay? The verse that stood out to me from Proverbs eight that made me think of her was verse 17. I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently find me. And that was Edith. She was seeking him. She was seeking him. She didn't know to call upon the Holy Spirit. She didn't know to encounter the Gospels, but she was seeking truth with a capital T. She was seeking wisdom with a capital W. And do you know what the moment was when her atheism collapsed? And that's how she puts it. She says, this was the moment when my atheism collapsed. It was when she had the witness of encountering a friend of hers, Anna Rhinoch, whose husband had been killed on the front lines in the war. And Edith went over to Anna's house to comfort her grieving friend. And in the presence of Anna, a faithful Christian, Anna was the one giving comfort to Edith. Anna was the one with faith in the resurrection. Anna was the one with hope in spite of death. Anna was the one who preserved such a sense of hope in the midst of death, grief, and loss that Edith's atheism collapsed. It could not stand. It could not exist in the face of such a witness. You cannot explain that kind of hope and joy. You cannot wisdom, you cannot philosophy that kind of wisdom and hope and joy that makes no sense. That is the wisdom of the cross. That is the paradox of the cross. That is what we have been gifted as Christians is the hope of new life and the paschal mystery that out of death comes the resurrection. You can't human wisdom that. You can't philosophy that. And so the seeker of truth and the seeker of wisdom and the philosophy doctorate laid it down at the folly of the cross. And her minds search for rational understanding bowed down to the wisdom of God. Because of the witness of a faithful woman, my friends, the census Fidei, the lived life of the laity, the witness that we give, the impact that we can make on the people who encounter us by simply accepting the joy and the hope of the gospel, the lives that can be changed. We are the Ana Rhinox. We are called to witness this in the midst of our crosses, in the midst of our miseries, in the midst of our, I don't get it. In the midst of our moments where the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to the world, we must be that witness. Pray God for the spirit to have the strength to be that witness. Oh, what should we pull out here about Teresa? Okay, St. John of the Cross, another Carmelite friend. Edith Stein writes on the science of the cross, reflecting on John of the cross and the dark night of the soul and all these deep and profound and mystical wisdom-y things that we can't get into except to touch on them. She says, Edith Stein, this is, I'm skipping through Paul's Sermos Appiancie. We've heard that already, the Sermon on Wisdom. The quote underneath there, she says, it depends on God to raise man above his natural mode of thinking to quite a different manner of knowing. Right? This is not our natural way of thinking. This is not my dad's logic. This is not my husband's gut instinct. This is something else. This is something else and it depends on God. John of the Cross says, and she reflects on this in her book, through the intellect, you receive wisdom concerning one or two or three truths. However, in the light of faith, the soul receives at once all of God's wisdom. That is the Son of God who communicates himself to her in faith. Through faith, we receive all of God's wisdom. That is the word with a capital W made flesh. That is Jesus Christ. That's what we receive in faith. The wisdom with a capital W, Jesus Christ. That's what we receive in faith. That's what Edith Stein came to know and love and embrace. That's where her search for truth took her. Fourth, Teresa, St. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and this is Proverbs 8, verse 34 and 35 that made me think of her. Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors, for whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. Mother Teresa, whoever finds me finds life. Wisdom is speaking, whoever finds me finds life. Jesus is wisdom with the capital W. Whoever finds me finds life. Do you know where Mother Teresa found Jesus? In the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor, she found the same Jesus that she encountered every day in the Eucharist. And sometimes we reduce her to sort of an external do-gooder, a server of the poor, but when you know her and when you know her spirituality and you hear her speak, she says none of it would work. I could not go out and serve. I could not have picked that first person out of the gutters if I did not see Jesus in that person, the same Jesus that I receive in the Eucharist, such a Eucharistic spirituality, the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. If you seek me, you will find me. Folks, Jesus is right here with us. Jesus is in the distressing disguise of my four-year-old son on tantrum day. He is in the distressing disguise of the challenges. He is in the distressing disguise of the crosses we didn't choose. Jesus is in the distressing disguise of the things that the wisdom of the world does not get. The wisdom of the world does not get. Pick up the man who's going to die in three minutes and give him a dignified death. The wisdom of the world doesn't get that. That's where Christ is. That's where wisdom is with the capital W in the distressing disguise. And if we're walking by, if we're not looking for wisdom in our midst, no wonder the church is hurting. No wonder our witness is not so convincing. Where am I walking by? Where am I walking by wisdom? Where am I turning my head the other way from the cross that I don't want to pick up, right? This is our mission. And it's an important one. Each and every one of you here. Such an important mission. To seek wisdom where it can be found. To call upon the Holy Spirit. To fill us with the eyes to see with the ears to hear. To see Jesus in front of us in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor or the fill in the blank. This is our mission. This is our mission. May we have eyes to see it. Let the word of Christ Colossians 3.16 to 17. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. This word that we hear this weekend, the word that we hear at every mass, the wisdom of God spoken through the scriptures, let it dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. And with gratitude in your hearts, sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. That's our mission. Let's close with prayer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.