Wisdom calls God ‘Abba, Father,’ because wisdom is friend, ahab, of God, who transforms enemies of God into ‘friends of God and prophets’ (Wisdom 7:27). To be a friend of God is to commune with wisdom, friend of God, in divine friendship, like Abraham, friend and co-companion of God. A friend of God loves wisdom, whose friendship with God is far more intimate than human friendship usually is, being a communion with God that is inseparable and indivisible, without involving unhealthy confusion or abusive fusion. The friend, ahab in Hebrew, lives in God through God in intimate union and inseparable communion, as does the prophet, who speaks God’s Word to those who have yet to awaken to that intimacy. The prophet suffers deeply as a result of this intimacy because God’s Word of friendship is despised and rejected by those who despise and reject God. Intimate communion suffers God’s suffering as one intimate communion, revealing the ultimate oneness of God’s timeless presence and the fleeting, temporal moment of chronological human time. Ordinary, oblivious awareness conceives timeless presence in temporal terms as time past, time future or time present, whereas In God, there is only the timeless presence of wisdom’s awareness of glory. The friend of God is also prophet because prophecy lives timeless oneness and suffers it with a co-suffering that heals all suffering, turning enemies of God into friends, just as the Cross of unselfish love does.
Wisdom suffers friendship with God as redemptive co-suffering, curing confusion and healing division in many wholesome, redemptive ways. Christ was incarnate wisdom and communicated wisdom’s redemptive healing in his life and death, sending the Spirit to commune with wisdom in union with his resurrection and ascension, sharing his glorification with friends of God and prophets. In the Spirit, redemptive co-suffering gathers all who awaken to its prophetic union into communion with his prophetic Name, hallowing saints, among whom some become elders who suffer in the Spirit this same hallowing communion. The Abba mystery of elders is inseparable from the ahab mysteries of friends of God and prophets because they are both expressions of the same mystery of redemptive co-suffering, love and hallowing communion. Saints live this communion and hand it on through their elders, extending Christ’s wisdom from generation to generation. Co-suffering is intrinsic to hallowing communion, where each person stands in for another out of love for all in each and each in all. This is the mystery of communion of saints as it is lived in practice as well as in theoria, contemplative vision, communicating the grace of friendship as prophetic deification.
Wisdom is mother to friends and prophets but also to priests and kings in the Holy Spirit, sustaining realms of wisdom and glory which are the many mansions of the Kingdom of God. The ultimate friend is wisdom who communes in sympathy with our suffering, to redeem suffering from despair, entering into suffering to turn suffering around to witness glory in the midst of suffering. Turning, metanoia, transcends noesis, intellection, by transfiguring it, generating transcending love which suffers in all to heal all suffering. This is Christ’s Holy Passion, curing passions through passionately dispassionate love, which is the unquenchable wisdom of the Cross. This is friendship that loves wisdom’s vision of friend and prophet, renewing co-inherent friendship and prophecy in every generation. Friendship of this sort unites heaven and earth both visibly and invisibly, uniting uncreated glory with created suffering in accordance with wisdom’s divine-human embrace. As friend of God, wisdom discovers purity of heart right in the midst of impurity, revealing purity of heart pervading the heavens and permeating the earth. As friend of God, wisdom unites uncreated light with uncreated glory in every realm, heavenly and earthly, emptying impurity without fixating on the void as vacuous vacancy, completing incompleteness without degenerating into totalitarian conformity, usurping ineffable completeness. The friend of God befriends heaven on earth, and earth in heaven, transfiguring enemies of God into friends of co-suffering love.