God is mystery. So are all the workings of God – as he himself points out to Job. That does not mean they are unexplainable, but rather that no explanation or series of explanations can finally exhaust or complete our understanding on the subject.
In Proverbs today, we are presented with a mystery. Wisdom personified and made essentially co-equal with God. Existing before everything else and responsible, together with God and to his delight, for everything else that exists. This is why the tradition of faith has identified Wisdom with the Word, who is given the same treatment at the opening of St. John’s Gospel. Likewise with the Spirit of God who hovers over the face of the primordial waters in the opening verses of Genesis/the whole Bible. Both the Word/Wisdom and the Spirit are identified as God, even though God is also presented throughout Scripture as One.
St. Paul illustrates how this plays out in the life of believers, in the excerpt we read from his letter to the Romans. That is, because Jesus himself (who is the Word) has shared in the glory of God and yet also shares in our humanity, through him we become capable of receiving the Spirit of God. This enables us to conform ourselves more and more to Christ so that we too may be made worthy to share in that same glory of God. That is, to share in the fullness of his life, of his presence – as we were meant to from the foundations of the world, but which had been ruptured by our first parents as well as by ourselves.
Jesus gives us some indication of the mysterious interplay and relations between these Persons of God with each other and with us. And we are given assurance by Christ, that though we may not be able to bear the full mystery of God now, we will be guided there, if only we hold fast to that Spirit who has been given to us, that love poured out into our hearts that dares to cry out to God as our Father.
– Aaron Neiva
