Love of Wisdom

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Love of wisdom, in angels and saints, is the love-child of wisdom and the Name, born of glory, unveiling the Name in uncreated light, glorifying the Name in uncreated glory. Love of wisdom is the angelic response to wisdom’s first love, inspiring saints to fall in love with wisdom’s beauty, loving wisdom’s glory to their life’s end.  This ‘philosophy’ that inspires desert Hesychasm is love of wisdom that delights in the beauty and glory of the Name, very different from the scholastic philosophy of the schools or the rationalstic philosophies of the University.  There has always been what may be described as a phenomenology of wisdom that suspends metaphysical reification to uncover a pre-conceptual union of wisdom and glory, disclosing knowing that both knows and is known.   Awareness conjoins with presence at the heart of the Name, pure awareness wedded to pure presence as ever-present awareness.  Wisdom and glory in angels is communion with wisdom and glory in saints, unveiling the Name of ineffable Oneness among angels in heaven and among saints on earth.  Love of this wisdom is love of glory glorifying God in both angels and saints, gathering all into one hallowing glorification of the Name that hallows angels and saints, glorifying heaven and earth.

Love of wisdom is uniquely personal in the way it sheds the masks of personality in order to unveil the face of glory among the saints.  The angelic witness to unveiled personhood is never confused with a worldly cultivation of personality, so when elders bear witness to hallowed personhood in the revealed Name, genuine saints do not confuse this with cultivation of fame or a celebration of personality.  Sound love of wisdom is not confused with sophistry or with sophisticated theosophies that cultivate intellectual celebrity rather than humble love of wisdom.  Wisdom’s love of the Name has to do solely with the recollection and remembrance of God, not with the acquisition of fame or reputation.  God longs to be loved and known not because self-obsession intervenes and infects God, but because God loves all whom he is creating in his image, delighting in their illumination and deification as their likeness to his image.  The key to communion with wisdom is love of the Name, which is not a sophisticated self-love, but love of revelation.  The Name engenders love of truth, curing nihilism, love of beauty, curing shallow love of external appearance and love of goodness, curing love of power or wealth.   Wisdom knows her own and is known by her own, the hallowing glory of her deifying truth, glorifying beauty and transfiguring goodness.

Love of wisdom’s truth awakens hearts to wisdom’s beauty, bearing witness to the goodness of wisdom’s hallowing energies.  Angels delight in wisdom’s truth and glorify the beauty of wisdom’s goodness.  Saints partake in wisdom’s glory as the beauty of the truth of the Name.  Wisdom’s divine play delights in wisdom’s mysteries of glory, inspiring wisdom songs that generate light from light, regenarating glory from glory.  None of this is comprehensible to the syllogisms of scholastic rationalism, being the invisible reign of wisdom’s expansive glory.  But prophets of prayer delight in wisdom’s play of hidden glory, communicating prophecy with the poetic power of joyous prayer.  Angelic prophecy is easily overlooked in an age of consumerist materialism, but plays on without ceasing beneath the shallow surfaces of narrow opinion.  Lovers of wisdom listen to angelic prophecy and poetic expressions of pure prayer because they uncover the mysteries of glory being unveiled by the Name.  A harmonious symphony of wondrous communication takes place in the temple sanctuaries of awakened hearts, unveiling glory without ceasing, both heavenly and earthly.  Without love of wisdom, there would be no wisdom songs nor ears to hear wise prophecy, no grace of uncreated light nor love of uncreated glory.   Wisdom is loved by angels and saints who love mysteries of illumination and glorification in the Holy of Holies, who wed wisdom in glory and glory in wisdom, the holiest of holy mysteries.