Lord, help me to see what you see. Help me to see things how you see them. Help me to love what you love and hate what you hate. Attune my mind and heart to yours so that my heart may beat with your heart. May the hidden designs of your heart echo through my heart. May your Eucharistic hiddenness and Eucharistic outpouring train me to see and feel your humble, gentle ways and say “yes!”
Imagine if we saw things how God sees them. How differently we would respond to people in our life if we saw them like God sees them, with His Fatherly heart of love! How differently we would respond to difficult events and situations in our lives if we saw them like God sees them, as part of the unfolding of His beautiful plan.
Wisdom as Intimacy
To ask to see what God sees is to pray for wisdom. Solomon could have asked for anything, and the Lord praises him for asking for wisdom. Among the Church Fathers and Medieval theologians too, wisdom was held in the highest esteem. Why is this? Because wisdom means a familiar intimacy with God and His ways.
Wisdom brings us into attunement with God and His ways. To have a will perfectly in sync with God’s is, as the spiritual writers say, to enjoy the intimate union of spiritual marriage with God. To be entirely one with God in the perfect concord of love, to taste and savor Him and His ways is to have loving wisdom. As the Latin fathers and scholastics loved to say, sapientia (wisdom) comes from sapor (to taste). To have loving wisdom is to taste God and resonate with His ways.
Gaining the Gift of Wisdom
But, as the Lord says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways…For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:8-9). We are not immediately in tune with God. It takes much self-denial and renewal for us to think the thoughts of God and be men and women after God’s own heart. “Do not conform yourselves any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). We need the gift of Wisdom!
We might consider, for instance, God’s ways as enshrined in the Sermon on the Mount and especially the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for justice, and those who are persecuted. Really?! We would not have come up with this on our own. Our ways are not immediately in accord with God’s ways.
God has a special place in His heart for the poor, the downcast, the suffering, the little ones. Our own minds and hearts, over time, are to come in sync with God’s perspectives and His tender heart. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, leads us to this place:
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to the little ones. Yes, Father, for so it is well-pleasing before you! …Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” (Mt. 11:25, 29)
Here is a heart attuned to God’s own heart as it cries out yes! in perfect concord with the Father’s hidden designs.
St. Paul on Wisdom
St. Paul’s two letters to the church of Corinth captures this reorientation to God’s ways. 2 Corinthians 10-13 recounts Paul’s own life and ministry as an example of this. God’s ways include His power being made perfect in weakness: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). All the trials, sufferings, and weaknesses that Paul recounts (2 Cor. 11-12) are transformed when He sees them as God sees them, as God bringing about a victory through them just like He did in Christ’s Cross and Resurrection (cf. 13:4). This is at the heart of God’s wisdom in the mystery of His plan of salvation for the world and in the mystery of His plan in the drama of each of our lives.
St. Paul began his correspondence with the Corinthians on this theme, contrasting God’s wisdom with the world’s wisdom (1 Cor. 1-2). It is the wisdom of the Cross that Paul proclaims, and this is folly to the world. Paul comes not with human eloquence or human wisdom but with the Cross of Jesus Christ (2:1-2). There is a wisdom that he proclaims, but it is God’s wisdom:
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (2:6-8)
The crucified Lord of glory remains at the heart of God’s wisdom and stamps itself on all His secret and hidden designs for our lives.
The secret and hidden wisdom of God showed itself to the eyes of faith on the Cross of Jesus. This secret and hidden wisdom shows itself in the Beatitudes, in contrast to the glamor of the world. This secret and hidden wisdom is at the center of the heart of Jesus, meek and humble, in His predilection for the little ones. This secret and hidden wisdom shines forth this very moment in the Eucharist. “Godhead here in hiding whom I do adore / Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more. / See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart / Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te).
The Eucharist, the Ultimate Teacher
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament trains us to discern God’s ways in His secret and hidden wisdom. We would not have guessed that God’s wisdom was to be found in the Cross. Likewise, we would not have guessed that God’s wisdom was to be found here, under the appearance of simple and humble Bread. Here too is the secret and hidden wisdom of God.
Eucharistic Adoration helps us to see things how God sees them. The humble yet sublime Host attunes our minds and hearts to God’s in His secret and hidden wisdom. Then we are better able to discern His hidden and gentle hand in the unfolding events of our lives. His Eucharistic hiddenness and Eucharistic outpouring train us to see and feel His humble and gentle ways throughout our lives and say, yes!
The Blessed Mother, the Ultimate Example
In the end, we need rose-colored glasses. Yes, rose-colored glasses. More specifically, we need Rosary-colored glasses! We need to see things how Mary saw them. As we pray the 20 mysteries of the Rosary with our Blessed Mother, we see our own joys, times of light, sorrows, and victories more as God sees them. Mary did not always fully comprehend the mystery, but she did always perceive in faith the secret and hidden wisdom of God. As Mary cuddled her newborn Infant to her breast, she adored her Lord and God. As Mary stood by the disfigured body of her Son on the Cross, she gave her yes! to God’s hidden designs of Redemption. As Mary, later in life, received the Eucharist from the hands of John the Beloved, she found the same secret and hidden wisdom of God, as she received her Son anew.
With Mary, we too bow low before the Eucharistic Mystery and God’s secret and hidden wisdom as it extends throughout our lives: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth! Yes! For so it is well-pleasing before you!” (cf. Mt. 11:25-30).
Editor’s Note: For more on Eucharistic theology, check out Fr. Ignatius’ new book, co-authored with Fr. Jesse Maingot, OP and with Dan Burke, How to Be His: A 33-Day Dedication to Our Eucharistic Jesus, available from Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Amin Zabardast on Unsplash
