Jubilee 2021: Waters of Wisdom
“You freely poured forth the Waters of Wisdom.” With this statement, the O Lumen of St. Dominic takes a distinct turn. Instead of listing his virtues in titles as it had done before – he is the Rose of Patience, the Ivory of Chastity – the antiphon now praises an action of his, and while it clearly draws our attention to his generosity, the emphasis shifts away from the man himself. True, he freely pours forth these waters, but they do not come from him; they are not his waters to pour. This change has the very subtle effect of turning our attention to the Truth behind the man, and we see St. Dominic in a new aspect and the mystical atmosphere of the ‘Waters of Wisdom’ obscures our neatly-ordered picture of him.
In a way, that is precisely the point.
To understand this better, let’s take a little detour through the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. Many critics of St. Thomas suggest that his philosophy draws too heavily on the philosophy of Aristotle, that – overly influenced by the Greeks – he deviates from the Christian understanding of the world. Echoing Tertullian, they frequently ask: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” By this, they mean that the development of virtue in a man, the goal of the Aristotelian ethics, is at best only incidental to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to set man free from ‘dead works’. Martin Luther was perhaps the most famous of these objectors, and his teaching of ‘Sola Fide’, justification by Faith Alone, is still at the core of most Protestant theology.
If we look a little closer at St. Thomas, though, we see that these critics quite often miss the nuance of his teaching, and this is nowhere more apparent than in his discourses on Divine Grace and the Holy Spirit. If St. Thomas points to the development of virtue as a key to growth in the spiritual life, it is not a virtue free from grace. In other words, we don’t grow in virtue by ourselves, and the natural virtues of Aristotle will never get us to Heaven on their own. Aquinas makes this quite clear, and when he discusses the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, we see that even our meager little efforts at the natural virtues are sourced in God’s grace and must be perfected by the Paraclete in order to complete our Redemption. The Gifts of the Spirit are above and beyond natural virtue and surpass it in every way. Without the Holy Spirit, we can profit ourselves nothing.
But what if we work with Him?
The Gift of the Holy Spirit that St. Thomas says perfects our natural knowledge of the truth is:
Wisdom.
In the book of Sirach, we read:
“The Lord himself created wisdom;
he saw her and apportioned her,
he poured her out upon all his works.”[1]
This Wisdom, begotten before time, was poured out by the Father upon all creation, and it is the Way of the Lord written into the nature of everything – the eternal Logos, the Word, who gives to each created thing its order and purpose. That is the reason that man can think in terms of virtue at all! All things were made according to God’s will and that is how men know that there is a ‘good’ toward which they tend.
Sin, however, has defaced this natural virtue and our very ability to know it is wrapped in confusion, as we briefly discussed in our post on St. Dominic as the Teacher of Truth. That is why we need a Savior, who can not only direct us to the Truth, but also give us the capacity to live in it. Who better than the eternal Logos Himself? The very Wisdom that God poured forth at the dawn of creation? That is, who better than the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ?
Virgin and Child with Sts Dominic and Rosa of Lima (Detail) by Gianantonio Guardi (18th Century), Oil on Canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.
And that is the core of this part of the O Lumen. The ‘Waters of Wisdom’ poured forth by St. Dominic were no less than the waters promised by Our Lord when He said: “He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” These waters are no less than the Holy Spirit Himself, who was given after Jesus, the Wisdom of the Father, ascended to the Father in order that the Spirit might be poured out on all flesh, that man might be saved.
St. Dominic did not simply teach Truth in the natural sense, he shared with everyone the Spirit that had already been given to him. As he learned knowledge through study, he learned wisdom through prayer – and that Wisdom is not a thing, but a Person, a gift of the Holy Spirit Himself learned in intimate relationship with Him. While we have emphasized St. Dominic’s learning of the Truth, it would be utterly incomplete if we did not also draw attention to his tireless life of prayer, when he would often spend whole nights before the altar of God crying out on behalf of the world not only with tears, but through the Spirit who ‘intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words’.[3]
This was the Life that Dominic gave to those to whom he preached, and it is the Life that made possible everything in his preaching. Behind all his good works, we see not only a good man, but a man born in the Spirit and in Truth and we see that it was God who worked through Him, truly and wonderfully. That is why he was not simply a Teacher of Truth, but also he that gave forth the supernatural reality of the gospel.
Join us in a fortnight when we’ll reflect on St. Dominic as the ‘Preacher of Grace’.
Blessed St. Dominic, he who pours forth the Waters of Wisdom, pray for us!
[1] Sirach 1:9
[2] John 4:13-14 (RSVCE)
[3] Romans 8:26
