Christ, Eternal Wisdom

Christ, Eternal Wisdom

St. Louis de Montfort’s Love of the Eternal Wisdom is admittedly a difficult book to read and understand.

He composed it, as was previously mentioned, as a young priest. Montfort was totally absorbed in the Holy Scriptures and eager to transmit that knowledge to others.

It is not, however, impossible to understand. It does indeed take some effort to grasp what he is driving at, to understand just what he means. But the results of a little mental preparation for reading this work are well worth the effort we put into it.

The key to its understanding lies in the Old Testament. Especially the so-called Wisdom literature. They include Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Sirach and Wisdom. As we all know, these books do not by any means constitute the most popular section of the Scriptures.

This Wisdom literature concentrates mainly on the conduct of everyday life. There is little in it that even refers to the great themes of the Old Testament: the oneness and supremacy of God, the covenant of Mt. Sinai, the rules for Jewish worship of God, the election of Israel as the chosen people, the Law given by Moses.

What seems to have attracted Montfort to this Wisdom literature, particularly to the Book of Wisdom, was the fact that its main purpose was how to conduct one-self in everyday affairs. To the Oriental and Hebrew writers, wisdom, as they called it, was not something abstract and intellectual as it was with the Greeks. Montfort took the Hebrew notion of wisdom and the search for wisdom and applied it to the Christian search for God.

Christ, the WISDOM of GOD

He followed an ancient Catholic tradition of referring to Christ as the divine Wisdom, the Wisdom of God the Father. He attempted to take the maxims and proverbs of the Book of Wisdom and apply them to the Christian search for union with our divine Lord. How well he succeeded is attested to by the fact that his book, although not as popular as his True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is nevertheless a religious best-seller.

Love of the Divine Wisdom Can Come Only from Knowing Divine Wisdom

He states the purpose of his book at the very beginning. “ . that all those who understand will be inflamed with a new desire. A desire to love you and to possess you in time and in eternity”. The key idea that he stresses is that love of the divine Wisdom can come only from knowing divine Wisdom.

Hence the title of the first chapter: To love and seek the divine Wisdom it is necessary to know the divine Wisdom. “How can we love something,” he writes, “if we do not know it. Can one love something ardently while knowing it imperfectly?” The reason why people love Christ, the divine Wisdom, so little and so poorly is that they know so little about Him.

The knowledge of Christ, he maintains, is the most noble, the most satisfying, the most useful and the most necessary of all kinds of knowledge.

It is the most noble, the knowledge with the greatest dignity, because it is knowledge of Christ Himself, the uncreated and incarnate Wisdom, who contains within Himself the fulness of the Godhead and the fulness of humanity.

Knowledge of the DIVINE WISDOM . . .

. . . is the most satisfying kind of knowledge because it leads to complete happiness, the happiness of possessing Christ. It is the most useful and the most necessary because it leads us to eternal life, life which consists of knowing God and His Son, . Jesus Christ.

Montfort was aware that at least some of his readers would be acquainted with the Old Testament’s Wisdom literature. Acquainted with its series of maxims on how to get along in the present life. He takes time, in this first chapter, to insist that he is speaking of the Wisdom that is Christ Himself, and not some kind of cleverness in our dealings with others. He distinguishes true wisdom from false pretense or lie. Furthermore, the false is a taste for lies, covered with the appearance of truth.”

. . . is the Most Satisfying Kind of Knowledge Because it Leads to the Happiness of Possessing Christ

There is also (and here he is referring to many of the proverbs in the Old Testament) wisdom that is merely natural and the true Wisdom Who is Christ Himself. True wisdom, he says, is first of all the substantial and uncreated Wisdom, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. True wisdom is also created and accidental (that is, existing in human creatures). And this is the gift of wisdom that we receive from the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Many of us would consider it unnecessary to go through all of this elaborate defining and distinguishing of the various meanings of the subject being treated. But St. Louis de Montfort was a man who liked to avoid any possible kind of confusion in his readers. He rarely, if ever, indulged in the long, flowery effusions that characterized the writing of his day. But he was apparently so concerned with not misleading his readers that he thought this kind of clarification of his subject to be helpful to one and all.

His point about the importance of knowing Christ is, however, one that is well taken. It is no more than a repetition of what Christ Himself told us: This is eternal life, that they know you, the Father, and me, the Son.