Wisdom is open to all and loves humankind.^[1] Anyway, Solomon says, My son, if you accept my words of instruction and keep them deep within you, your ear will listen to wisdom. This means that the word is sown and kept deep in the soul of the learner as if in the ground. This is spiritual growth.

So he adds, You shall direct your heart to understanding and direct it towards instruction for your son. For in my view, the union of soul with soul and spirit with spirit in accordance with the sowing of the word brings growth to the seed sown and produces life. Everyone who is educated in obedience to his educator becomes a son.

God’s wisdom . . . [works] in many forms and many ways^[1] through technical skill, scientific knowledge, faith, prophecy; it shows us its power to our benefit, because all wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him to all eternity, as the wisdom of Jesus puts it.^[2] For if you call for practical wisdom and perception at the top of your voice, if you seek it as you would a treasure of silver, and if you track it down ardently, then you will realize the meaning of reverence for God and you will grasp the perception of God. The prophet spoke to distinguish this from the philosophic approach to perception. He is teaching us with great dignity and solemnity to search it out in order to progress toward reverence for God. So he opposed to it perception made in reverence for God, alluding to revealed knowledge in these words: For God grants wisdom from his mouth together with perception and practical wisdom, and stores up help for the righteous.^[3] When people are made righteous by philosophy, they have stored help for themselves and inward perception which leads to reverence for God.

Another passage of Scripture exhorting us to love of wisdom says it should be sought after like money. Must we therefore think holy Scripture praises avarice? It is well known to what great efforts and pains lovers of money will patiently subject themselves, from what great pleasures they abstain, in their desire to increase their wealth or in their fear of diminishing it. With what great shrewdness they pursue gain, and how prudently they avoid losses; how they are usually afraid to take the property of others, and sometimes despise loss to themselves lest they lose more in its quest and litigation. Because these traits are well known, it is right for us to be exhorted so to love wisdom that we most eagerly seek it as our treasure, acquire more and more of it, suffer many trials, restrain desires, ponder the future, so that we may preserve innocence and beneficence. Whenever we act in this way we are in possession of true virtues, because our objective is true, that is, is in harmony with our nature in reference to salvation and true happiness.

It’s unfitting, it’s insulting, that wisdom should be compared with money, but love is being compared to love. What I see here, after all, is that you all love money in such a way that when love of money gives the order, you undertake hard labor, you put up with starving, you cross the sea, you commit yourselves to wind and wave. I have something to pick on in the matter of what you love, but I have nothing to add to the love with which you love. Love like that, and I don’t want to be loved any more than that, says God. I’m talking to the riffraff, I’m speaking to the greedy: You love money; love me just as much. Of course, I’m comparably better; but I don’t want more ample love from you; love me just as much as you love money.

Wisdom and understanding must precede, in order for the fear of God to coexist along with them.

Solomon says, You will find a divine sense. For he knew that there were in us two kinds of senses, the one being mortal, corruptible and human, and the other immortal and intellectual, which here he calls divine. By this divine sense, therefore, not of the eyes but of a pure heart, that is, the mind, God can be seen by those who are worthy.

Students of these revered writings should be advised not only to learn the kinds of expressions in the holy Scriptures, to notice carefully how they are customarily expressed there, and to remember them but also to pray that they may understand them, and this is chiefly and especially necessary. Indeed, in these books which they are studying earnestly, they read that the Lord gives wisdom; and out of his mouth comes prudence and knowledge. It is from him that they have received that zeal for study, if it is endowed with piety.

We read in sacred Scripture, dearly beloved, that holy counsel should keep those who are solicitous for their soul’s salvation, as the divine Word puts it: Holy counsel shall keep you. If holy counsel keeps a soul, that which is unholy not only fails to keep it but even kills it. Perhaps someone says, Who can always be thinking of God and eternal bliss, since all people must be solicitous for food, clothing and the management of their household? God does not bid us be free from all anxiety over the present life, for he instructs us through his apostle: If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.^[1] The same apostle repeats the idea with reference to himself when he says, We worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you.^[2] Since God especially advises reasonable thought of food and clothing, so long as avarice and ambition which usually serve dissipation are not linked with it, any action or thought is most rightly considered holy. The only provision is that those preoccupations should not be so excessive that they do not allow us to have time for God, according to the words: The burdens of the world have made them miserable.^[3] Since bodily necessities are satisfied with little, while ambition is never appeased even if it obtains the whole world, let us reject wicked thoughts which spring from the poisonous root of passion. Let us, on the other hand, love only those which will help us obtain an eternal reward, so that what was said before may be fulfilled in us: Holy counsel shall keep you.

Seeing the city, [Jesus] wept over it, saying, ‘If only at least you had known.’ ^[1] He did this once when he proclaimed that [Jerusalem] would perish. Our Redeemer has not stopped doing this daily through his elect when he observes that certain persons have adopted corrupt habits after having lived good lives. He mourns for those who do not know why they are mourned for, who, in Solomon’s words, rejoice in doing evil, and delight in what is worse. If they recognized their impending condemnation, they would mourn for themselves!

What is the meaning of Prepare the way of the Lord?^[1] Make ready for the reception of whatever Christ may wish to enact; withdraw your hearts from the shadow of the law; cease from the types; think no more perversely. . . . Make the paths of our God straight. For every path that leads unto good is straight and smooth and easy; but the other is crooked that leads down to wickedness those who walk therein. For of such it is written, Whose paths are crooked, and the tracks of their wheels awry. Straightforwardness, therefore, of the mind is as it were a straight path, having no crookedness.

It is plain, I say, that it is we, who make rough with the nasty and hard stones of our desires the right and smooth paths of the Lord; who most foolishly forsake the royal road paved with the fine pebbles of apostles and prophets, and trodden down by the footsteps of all the saints and of the Lord himself, and seek trackless and thorny places. Blinded by the allurements of present delights, we make our way with wounded feet and our wedding garment rent, through dark paths, overrun with the briars of sins, so as not only to be pierced by the sharp thorns of the brambles but actually laid low by the bites of deadly serpents and scorpions lurking there.