In Christian iconography, Sedes sapientiae ("The Throne of Wisdom") is an icon of the Mother of God in majesty. When the Virgin is depicted in sedes sapientiae icons and sculptural representations, she is seated on a throne, with the Christ Child on her lap. For the more domestic and intimate iconic representations of Mary with the infant Jesus on her lap, see Madonna and Child.
This type of madonna-image, as a variant of the Byzantine Hodegetria type, appeared in a wide range of sculptural and, later, painted images in Western Europe, especially about 1200. In these representations, some structural elements of the throne invariably appear, even if only handholds and front legs. For hieratic purposes, the Virgin's feet often rest on a low stool. Later, Gothic sculptures of the type are more explicitly identifiable with the Throne of Solomon, where

two lions stood, one at each hand. And twelve little lions stood upon the six steps on the one side and on the other.

The Sedes sapientiae icon also appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and Romanesque frescoes and mosaics, and was represented on seals. The icon possesses in addition emblematic verbal components: the Virgin as the Throne of Wisdom is a trope of Damiani or Guibert de Nogent, based on their typological interpretation of the passage in the Books of Kings, that describes the throne of Solomon (I Kings 10: 18–20, repeated at II Chronicles 9: 17–19). This was much used in Early Netherlandish painting in works like the Lucca Madonna by Jan van Eyck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_Wisdom

Daily Grace: The Love of Eternal Wisdom

Daily Grace: The Love of Eternal Wisdom

An ancient prayer for Wisdom

The “O Antiphons” refer to the seven antiphons that are recited (or chanted) preceding the Magnificat during Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours. They cover the special period of Advent preparation known as the Octave before Christmas, Dec. 17-23.

Each antiphon is a name of Christ, one of his attributes mentioned in Scripture. They are:

• December 17: O Sapientia- O Wisdom
  
• December 18: O Adonai - O Sacred Lord of Israel
• December 19: O Radix Jesse  O Root of Jesse
• December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of  David
• December 21: O Oriens O Dayspring
• December 22: O Rex Gentium O King of the nations
• December 23: O Emmanuel O God with us

O Sapientia: “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.”
 Poetic translation
O Wisdom, that proceedest
from the mouth of the Most
High, reaching from end to
end mightily, and disposing
all things sweetly come
and teach us the way of
prudence.
Isaiah 11:2-3: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.”.

How to Mortify Pride and Cultivate Humility

How to Mortify Pride and Cultivate Humility

A Well within a Well

On October 4, 2010, we celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assissi . The day was also the  40th anniversary of the great St. Catherine of Siena being proclaimed a " Doctor of the Church". Both the saints really do deserve to be called Doctors of Humility, I must say.Both had their moments of Enlightenment, their encounter with Jesus, just as most of us .(Isn't it a fact that we too have  had such moments of enlightenment..., those moments when we experienced the nearness of God? Of course, most of us have had our moments of God Experience! Let’s not deny that.) We have had at least our primary school or even a graduate level experience of God. But then we might have stopped with that! But these saints ..., they  went a lot of steps forward, they have had their post graduation, nay, they  had even gone further in the field of Perfection and have thus attained the coveted Doctorate in Holiness before they died . But how? They worked on it … with real focus! And that is why, Jesus sent both these saints to us for " re- evangelizing" us! (Yes, I did say…“us”! ). There is much to learn from these two saints.
      First, let us think of St. Francis. He was one who wrestled with his body in order to control all the vices contained within it. He called his body " Brother Donkey" and commanded it to obey the Master Jesus who was within him. He had the Wisdom to realize that his body was the temple within which the Holy Trinity preferred to dwell. So with persistent wrestling and patient waiting he won over all the vices within him. Slowly but steadily he tamed each of the wild beasts within him - the boasting lion of Pride, the fiery fox of Desire, the self-indulgent swine of Gluttony, the lazy hippo Sloth, the ferocious leopard Anger, the green eyed monster Jealousy, and the foolish race horse Avarice! While taming these wild vices within, he was also nurturing their opposite Virtues. He was so successful in subduing these  brutes within him that he could very well tone down the external beasts. That's what the story of Brother Wolf of Gubbio tells us:

“Francis and his companion began to walk on. Suddenly the wolf, jaws wide open, charged out of the woods at them. Francis made the Sign of the Cross toward the wolf who immediately slowed down and closed its mouth. Then Francis called out to the wolf: “Come to me, Brother Wolf. I wish you no harm.” At that moment the wolf lowered its head and lay down at St. Francis’ feet, meek as a lamb.”

He could do so because he had gladly obeyed the tender, kind Voice of the Crucified from the San Damiano Crucifix : “"Francis, don't you see that my house is being destroyed? Go, then, and rebuild it for me." Francis took it as his mission in life and he set out readily to obey that Voice, and with great joy he began the work at once…, and he never stopped his work till death.

    Now let us turn to St. Catherine. Christ worked great miracles through her, like healing of the sick and the lame, deliverance of the possessed, raising the dead etc. She even had the stigmata - invisibly during her life and visibly at her death ( Remember , St. Francis who is acclaimed as the Second Christ is the first to receive stigmata in the history of the Church!). Christ’s reasons for choosing her was to save souls and heal his Church. The same mission , to rebuild Church, to Re-Evangelize! One of St.Catherine’s principal teaching was Self-Knowledge – ie. Knowledge of oneself and the Knowledge of God. Both go together.She presented this great mystical teaching using several metaphors , like the well within the well, the cell of self-knowledge , the peaceful sea and the mirror. Catherine’s personal understanding of herself and the knowledge of God started with a solitary experience she had within the cell of her family house when she  was sixteen years old.Lord Jesus appeared to her while she was in prayer in that cell, and He said, “ Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you have beatitude in your grasp.You are she who is not and I AM HE WHO IS. Let your soul become penetrated with this truth, and the Enemy can never lead you astray….”

 And this became the “fundamental maxim” that turned out to be the cornerstone of St. Catherine’s life and teaching. The wonderful fact is that  Catherine understood the great truth of this “maxim” even as a teenager and she continued to work on it. Stone by stone she erected her Temple of life over this sturdy foundation. She realized that she was nothing, that she had no being or existence on her own. What being she had was the Creator’s own doing, her self was a gift of God.

Ever since this encounter with God, Catherine’s whole life became a witness to that attitude of true humility. She herself explains that the cell of our soul is a well in which there is both earth and water.In the earth we recognize our poverty, the fact that we are not, nothing.   As we discover this earth , we also discover the Water beneath it, the living Water, the very essence of "God’s will which desires nothing else but that we be made holy”!

  Let us ponder over these and dig deeper into the wellsprings of our Self, so that we too will realize what we truly are…

Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus.

A Few Years on a Modest Wall

She lived in an era when Face Book was not even a distant possibility. Yet what she wrote on the modest wall of her life has become more than a community page on the FB. Loving God was her greatest charism. "To put the Lord's mercies on record" was a happy mission for her. She never had the time to read  the romantic  fiction of her days,but she read stories about the deeds of the great French heroines—especially of St. Joan of Arc,. Even before she was fourteen, she knew each chapter of the 'Imitation of Christ' by heart!
For a long time she had nourished her spiritual life with the “fine flour” contained in the Imitation of Christ for she had not yet found the treasures hidden in the Holy Gospels.
She writes,

"Seeing my great thirst for knowledge, God was pleased, when I was fourteen, to add to the “fine flour,” “honey” and “oil” in abundance.This “honey” and “oil” I found in the conferences of Father Arminjon on The End of this World and the Mysteries of the World to Come. While reading this book my soul was flooded with a happiness quite supernatural. I experienced a foretaste of what God has prepared for those who love Him;" This book inspired her so much that it  plunged into her heart "all the great truths of religion" and a "happiness not of this earth"!

Then when she was seventeen or eighteen, her favourite author was St. John of the Cross. It was all the spiritual food she needed at that time. She quotes with ease from the "Canticle of the Soul". After that she found all spiritual books as dry because by then she had found the Hidden Manna in the Scriptures. "There you have whole meal nourishment" says she.
Looking up at the moon from the room with a view upstairs, she writes, " those silvery rays the moon cast on a sleeping world, the stars, the fleecy clouds floating by in the evening - how everything conspired to turn our thoughts towards Heaven."
  That young girl called herself the " the little flower of our Lady". " The Blessed Virgin too kept good watch over the little flower that was dedicated to her. She did not want to see it tarnished with stains of the earth, so she took care to plant it high up, in her own mountain air, before it opened".
What a darling Saint we have in Therese , whose feast we  celebrate on October 1.She also had a special devotion to Holy Angels, especially the Angel sent by God to guard her (the young girls of these days with pixies and vampires as pals, please note this, and BEWARE !). October 2 is  the feast day of Guardian Angels.
Maranatha..., Come Lord Jesus.

Digging wells and cisterns

"My people have committed two sins:
       They have forsaken me,
       the spring of living water,
       and have dug their own cisterns,
       broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
So goes Jehovah's complaint about the faithless Israelites.(Jeremiah 2 :13) Now what are cisterns? They are man made reservoirs, hewed and chipped out of rocks, for storing water. These can very well get polluted by dirt or insects, or if broken, water can just seep out of it, leaving it empty. Both can be disastrous. But wellsprings are different. here the water comes from a source of its own, from the depths of the earth. it is unpolluted fresh water.
I've been trying to read the Book of Wisdom  last week, trying to pump out the freshness of the Living Word from the Bible. Suddenly there fell before me a fantasy novel, a creative imitation of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer. I was forced to read it due to an unforeseen circumstance. But then I realized the difference between a well and a broken cistern.I felt like Dante  in the second circle of Inferno.There, he meets Francesca da Rimini  who tells him  her woeful story of how she happened to reach hell.It was all due to a weak moment of temptation to which she yielded, and before long lo..., she and her brother in law Paolo were murdered by her husband Giovanni even before they could repent!A terrible domestic tragedy indeed!.See how she narrates the whole incident to Dante , who was moved to tears of sorrow and pity seeing her afflictions!
       One day, to pass the time away, we read
      Of Lancelot - how love had overcome him.
      We were alone , and we suspected nothing.
       And time and again that reading led
       Our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,
        And yet one point alone defeated us.
         When we had read how the desired smile
         Was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
         this one , who never shall be parted from me,
         While all his body trembled , kissed my mouth.
A Gallehault indeed, that book and he
who wrote it, too; that day we read no more."
While she narrated thus to Dante, her lover Paolo Malatesta, her companion in sin wept beside her in that second circle of inferno where Lucifer buffeted forever the carnal sinners with violent storms.And Dante fainted !
In the Old Testament times, there are mentions of how the Israelites dug wells and how Philistines came and plugged them with silt or mud. But then they kept on digging again and again, because water was and still is essential for life.Water, the elixir of life. Ha!
Maranatha, Come Lord jesus