“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?  On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.  O simple ones, learn prudence;  acquire intelligence, you who lack it.” (Proverbs 8: 1-5)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, in the ancient book of Proverbs, chapter 8, we read the words of a woman, tenderly calling from the gates of a town where all could hear her, inviting the people to wisdom – to herself:

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.  Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.  When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.  Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—“  (Proverbs 8: 22-25)

Mother Wisdom is described as God’s “master worker”, in there with him designing and building the cosmos and the earth.  She is celebrated as a manifestation of the divine. Jesus honored her when he said “…wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” (Luke 7: 35)

“And now, my children, listen to me:  happy are those who keep my ways.  Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.”  (Proverbs 8: 32-33)  Holy Mother Wisdom – Sophia, in the original Greek language of the New Testament – exhorts us to listen.  To pay attention.  And to pay close attention to details, as she did when designing and crafting the universe alongside God.