The Church sees a prefigurement of Mary in the Wisdom of the Old Testament. In Hebrew, the word for wisdom (חכמה) is feminine, and these texts have a double reference: to the the uncreated Wisdom, the Logos, and to the the perfect response of creation to that Wisdom, Mary.

A beautiful example of a wisdom text applied to Mary is Sirach 24. In this text, wisdom speaks of herself as a person; she will reside in Zion and will be known for her beauty and grace. She will also be a mother given to all God’s children to being forth virtue in them.

Wisdom has taken root in Jacob above all in the Blessed Virgin, who is Israel’s perfect response to the creative Wisdom of God. As the created wisdom, Mary is said to be “the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope”.

Mary in her incomparable purity is the mother of fair love, because she never let any difficulty get in the way of loving God. She never let any obstacle cause her to deviate from perfect conformity with the will of her Beloved Spouse, the Holy Spirit.

“Wisdom” appears as the mediatrix of creation and salvation history, as God’s first creature in whom both the pure, primordial form of His creative will and the pure answer, which He discovers, find their expression.

Mary is the portal of her Son, the perfect creaturely (and thus feminine) response to His Word, the perfect disciple, the Bride par excellence, creation’s embodiment of Wisdom, and the mother of all those called to be disciples with her.