Where do you go for wisdom? Knowledge, well uni is a good place to go for that; and there’s the library (if modern university students know where that is), there’s the internet and the other media. But wisdom is about more than knowledge, more than facts. Wikipedia has a short entry about wisdom, but that’s knowledge not wisdom, rather than wisdom about wisdom, and a lot of net talk about wisdom it rather new agey. There was Bruce Beresford’s film, The Getting of Wisdom (1978), in which the heroine learns ‘wisdom’ is to be got by being an opportunist. Pauline Kael wrote that “what she learns is the principle of contagion: that you get close to the powerful, so that their power can rub off on you, and stay clear of the helpless and weak, so their failure won't infect you.” That’s worldly wisdom, as our media might teach it. There was another movie, also, called Wisdom (1986) with Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore, but the main thing you learn there is how to mess up your life and other people’s bigtime.

So where to go for advice on wisdom? One sage I’d always recommend is St Thomas Aquinas, the Patron Saint of universities and university students, and arguably the wisest man since Solomon (if we leave out the two on our icon for now). Tom followed Aristotle’s thought that wisdom considers the highest things, or other things from the highest point of view, especially the why behind the wherefore (cf. Sir 24:4). Science tells us what things are like, how they came to be like that, how they might be used, and so on. Science can describe the age and evolution of the universe, where it might be going, what are its component parts, right down to their genes and atoms and subparticles. But what it can’t tell us is why there is a universe at all, rather than nothing, or what the universe is for, or how we best take part in it ourselves, or whether there is anything beyond it.

For that we need more than science. We need wisdom. To be able to look upon things so high and glorious, and speculate about them, without getting intellectual vertigo; to be able to take the broad view of things as if from above, without getting overloaded; to be able to peer deep into things, to their very essence, without being paralyzed to act: this is to take a divine perspective on things, and that requires a gift of the Holy Spirit. Of course, there is a worldly wisdom, a natural, man-made wisdom, which is clever and even conniving: but it does not direct us to what is really good to do, true to believe and beautiful to enjoy. Divine wisdom is what we need, and that presupposes a connection with the divine, through faith and prayer, Word and sacrament, the body of the Church and devotion to the Head of that body, its brain, its Wisdom, who is Christ.

Now St Thomas says lots of other interesting things about wisdom. He points out that it is most intimately connected to right reason and to charity. Rationality is obvious: wise old ladies might not have the highest IQs or the best education, but they are no dummies either. To see deeply requires perceptiveness, attention to detail, imagination, contemplative poise and seriousness, analytical thought, intellectual perseverance, practicality and reasonableness. And to go through reason and beyond reason, we need to know the God who is love. If there is no love in your heart you will never have real sympathy or connaturality with things human or divine.

What gets in the way of such wisdom? Thomas says that mortal sin is the big obstacle, because it kills charity in the heart and clouds the reason. If you’ve got serious sin in your past or your present, his advice – and mine – would be stop it, right now, and get to Confession this Lent. Secondly, Aquinas advises that unpeacefulness is an impediment to the getting of wisdom, since bustle and bother make harmony difficult, contemplation impossible. Thirdly, beware of anti-wisdom, what Big Tom called folly, by having your head so far up in the clouds that you lose touch with practical reality, or by your head so down in practical minutiae that you miss the bigger picture, or by being intellectually lazy or fatuous or wasted by lust and sensuality. There were reasons the ancients recommended celibacy for students and teachers: it helps keep your mind free of distractions.

Well, we might know what it is, and why it matters, and what obstructs it, but how do we come by wisdom? Sedes sapientiæ, one of the ancient titles for the Mother of God, gives us a pointer. The Throne of Wisdom was a title by which people like St Peter Damian sang the praises of the new Throne of Solomon, the vessel of Wisdom incarnate, the one who carried the Wisdom of God in her body and  her soul. She was the one most appropriate to enthrone Him because her reason was unclouded by sin and her will was united in perfect charity with His. As St Thomas observed, when we meet a good child we think: He must have had a good mother. This child certainly had a good mother, the best of mothers.

Yet Mary is not Wisdom: she is its womb, its throne, its monstrance. She is the professor’s chair, not the Professor. Wisdom is her Son, the Sophia or Reason conceived in the mind of the Father from all eternity past, the Logos or Word sung by the Father for all eternity to come (Sir 24:3,9). The Father thinks and speaks a distinct divine person, God the Son. But this wisdom is not just for God Himself. He communicates it further, to humanity, as God the Son becomes Jesus Christ our Lord. He earnestly desired that our minds might be one with his, now on earth, and more perfectly and forever in heaven; that we might enjoy a beatific vision of Him, seeing him face to face, mind to mind, heart to heart. And so he sent His Wisdom to live and die amongst us as a man, He sent His Son born of a woman (Sir 24:8,11-12; Gal 4:4-7). When we meet a good child, as St Thomas observed, we think: He must have had a good mother. Yet in this case it was she who learned from Him how to be good. As a man, but first as a baby, he was Holy Wisdom Incarnate, and as she held him close to her heart he infused that heart with His wisdom. He, it was, who made her Notre Dame the Throne of Wisdom.

The University of Notre Dame is the most suitable place to bring this Icon of the Seat of Wisdom as she begins her journey around our country’s universities, since it is to Notre Dame the Throne of Wisdom that this University is dedicated. In the Jubilee Year 2000 Pope John Paul II gave this mosaic icon by Slovenian artist Ivan Rupnik to the universities of the world. It has been travelling around them ever since. It is like the World Youth Day Cross which he entrusted to the youth of the world, only this icon is specially for those youth – and older people – who are scholars. He charged you: “Dear Teachers and Students, this is your vocation: make the University an environment where knowledge is cultivated, a place where the individual finds direction for the future, wisdom and inspiration for effective service of society. I entrust your journey to Mary, Sedes Sapientiæ, whose image I entrust to you today, so that she may be welcomed as a teacher and a pilgrim in the university campuses of the world. Mary supported the Apostles with her prayer at the dawn of evangelization; may she also help you to invigorate the university world with a Christian spirit.”

So John Paul the Great has told you where to go for authentic wisdom. Go to Christ Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life. Go to that Virgin whom all generations call Blessed (Lk 1:42,48), and learn from her “who pondered all these things in her heart” (Lk 1:29; 2:19). She taught the apostles in the Cenacle, that first Christian university, to sit still, to listen, meditate and pray, as the Spirit of Wisdom was poured out upon them at Pentecost (Acts 1-2). After their university experience with Christus Pædagogus, our first Professor, and then with Mary his tutor, those first Christian students shared what they had learned with all the world. Now is again the dawn of evangelization. Study well your diverse disciplines, contemplate their deeper meaning, and delight in cultivating a higher wisdom too, so that you will have something to offer a hungry humanity (Sir 24:19-22). Become yourselves, seats of wisdom, professors’ chairs, expositors of the light of Christ to all the world.

The Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, delivered this homily at the Mass to welcome the Icon of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom to Australia, at St Benedict's Church, The University of Notre Dame, Sydney, on 16 March 2009.