O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High and, reaching from beginning to end, you ordered all things mightily and sweetly. Come, and teach us the way of prudence.During the last week before Christmas, our family has adopted the practice of singing a verse from "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" that corresponds to the antiphon for Vespers that is sung before the Magnificat that evening. These antiphons, known as the "O antiphons," give us different ways of encountering the mystery of Christ: Wisdom, Adonai, Key of David, etc. The antiphons are ordered according to the movement of salvation history. To encounter Christ as "wisdom" is to encounter Him at the moment of creation. As the Son, he receives the loving, creative energy of the Father and, filled with the Spirit, pours out that energy into creation, a universe that is intelligible, subject to laws, dynamic, ordered to transcendence, ordered back to its Creator.All creation thus bears the imprint of Christ. It is through Christ that "nature" can be understood properly as "creation," as gift, as the medium through which we find our way back to the primordial love that created us.