Wisdom's House

This week the first reading has been from the book of Wisdom, one of those "deuterocanonical" books that is not typically found in your Jewish or Protestant Scriptures. (It was originally written in Greek, automatically excluding it from the list under consideration by the rabbis after the fall of Jerusalem; the Protestant Reformers then followed the Jewish canon for the Old Testament of their Bibles.) Anyway, it's quite a fabulous book, with many sections that seem to be speaking almost directly of Christ, even though it was written 100 years before the Incarnation.
To me, today's reading includes one of those passages--although it could more easily be read as referring to the Holy Spirit. To say that Wisdom "is the refulgence of eternal light,
the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness" certainly sounds a lot like the Letter to the Hebrews' description of Christ as "the refulgence of [God's] glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word."
There was another thing that struck me. "Naught that is sullied enters into her [Wisdom]." That sure sounds like what the book of Revelation says with regard to the Heavenly Bride of Christ. Living in this profound, supernatural wisdom is like an anticipation of heavenly life!

Speaking of heavenly life, today's saint is the Eastern bishop Josaphat (not to be confused with "jumpin' Jehosaphat," inspired by an Old Testament king). Josaphat is considered a martyr of Christian Unity. At Mass, the homilist pointed out that this needs to be one of our highest priorities as followers of Jesus. Our Lord said that it would be by the unity of his followers that he himself would be recognized by the world as the One sent by the Father. All we have to do for the evangelization of the world is be a united Church! Josaphat pursued that in his way, first by seeking communion with the Pope himself, and then promoting that communion, even though it certainly wasn't politically correct. That's why he died a martyr, after all! The image of him about to get a halberd to the head is from St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milwaukee. The monk-martyr-bishop was only about 43 at the time of his ultimate witness.