In what true wisdom consists
“Behold, this child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel.”—Luke 2:34
These were the words of holy Simeon when he had the consolation of holding the infant Jesus in his arms. Among the other prophecies he then uttered was this: that “this child was set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel.” In these words he praised the lot of the saints, who, after this present life, shall rise to eternal life in the kingdom of the blessed; and he lamented the misfortune of sinners, who, for the brief and miserable pleasures of this life, bring upon themselves the ruin of their eternal perdition.
Yet, for all their misery, these wretched souls, thinking only of the enjoyment of present goods, call the saints fools for seeking to live poor, humbled, and mortified. But a day will come when they shall know that they were wrong, and shall say: “We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor” (Wis. 5:4). We fools—see how they shall confess that they themselves were the true fools. Let us examine in what true wisdom consists, and we shall see, in the first point, that sinners are the true fools, and, in the second, that the saints are the truly wise.
First Point.—Sinners are truly foolish.
1. What greater folly can there be than this: that, having it in their power to be friends of God, men should choose to have him for an enemy? This is what makes their life unhappy in this world and earns them, by their damnation, an unhappiness that is eternal. St. Augustine relates that two courtiers of the emperor found themselves in a monastery of solitaries, and one of them took up the life of St. Anthony the Abbot and began to read. “He read,” writes the saint, “and his heart was stripped of the world.” He read, and as he read, his affections were detached from the world.
Then, turning to his companion, he said: “What are we seeking? Can our hope rise any higher than to be friends of the emperor? And through how many perils do we come to a still greater peril? And how long will even this last?” Then he said: “Friend, fools that we are, what are we seeking? Can we hope for more on this earth, by serving the emperor, than to become his friends? And to reach even that, after so many perils, we expose ourselves to the greater peril of our eternal salvation. And even then—when shall we ever succeed in becoming the friends of Caesar? But if I will it, I can become the friend of God this very moment.” I can acquire his friendship by striving to return to his grace. His divine grace is that infinite treasure which makes us worthy of his friendship. “For she is an infinite treasure to men, which they that use become the friends of God” (Wis. 7:14).
2. The Gentiles thought it impossible for a creature ever to attain friendship with God, since friendship makes friends equal to one another, as St. Jerome says: Amicitia pares accipit, aut pares facit—“Friendship receives equals, or makes them equal.” Yet, despite this, Jesus Christ himself declared that if we keep his commandments we shall be his friends: “You are my friends, if you do the things I command” (John 15:14).
3. What folly, then, I repeat, is the folly of sinners, who, though they might enjoy the friendship of God, choose to live in hatred of God! The Lord hates none of his creatures: he hates not the tiger, the viper, or the toad. “For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made” (Wis. 11:25). But God cannot but hate sinners: “Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity” (Ps. 5:7). For God cannot but hate sin, that enemy of his which is wholly contrary to his will; and therefore, in hating sin, he necessarily hates the sinner who is bound up with his sin. “But to God the wicked and his wickedness are hateful alike” (Wis. 14:9).
4. The sinner’s other folly is to lead a life contrary to the end for which God created him. God has not created us, nor does he preserve our lives, that we may labor to grow rich, to gain earthly honors, or to take our pleasures, but that we may love and serve him in this world, in order to go and love and enjoy him for eternity in the next. “But the end is life everlasting,” writes the Apostle (Rom. 6:22). And so the present life, as St. Gregory says, is for us like the road given us by which to reach our country, which is Paradise. “In the present life we are, as it were, on the road by which we journey to our country” (St. Gregory, Homily 11 on the Gospel).
5. But the misfortune of the greater part of mankind is that they go mad in their living: for, instead of walking the road of their salvation, they walk the road of their damnation. One man goes mad for possessions, and for a vile gain loses the immense goods of Paradise; another goes mad for honors, and for a little smoke loses the glory of being made a king of Heaven; another goes mad for the pleasures of sense, and for such brief and wretched delights loses the grace of God and condemns himself to burn forever in the prison of Hell.
Poor fools! If, after committing some sin, a man were to have his hand burned with a red-hot iron, or were to be shut up in a dark room for ten years, he certainly would not do it. And does the wretch not know that, by sinning, he will be condemned to lie shut up forever in the pit of Hell, where, buried in fire, his body shall burn for all eternity? Some, writes St. John Chrysostom (Homily on the Recovery of the Lapsed), choose to lose the soul in order to save the body; but do they not see that, in losing the soul, they lose the body as well, which shall be condemned to suffer eternal torments? “If we neglect the soul, we cannot save the body.”
6. In short, sinners so far lose their senses that they become like the brutes, which follow the instinct of sense, snatching at whatever pleases the flesh, without considering what is lawful or unlawful. But this, says St. John Chrysostom, is to act not like a man, but like a beast. Hominem illum dicimus qui imaginem hominis salvam retinet: quae autem est imago hominis? Rationalem esse—“We call him a man who keeps intact the image of man: and what is the image of man? To be rational.” To be a man means to be reasonable—that is, to act not according to the appetite of sense, but according to reason.
If God were to give a beast the use of reason, and the beast acted according to reason, we should say that the beast acts like a man. And so, by contrast, when a man acts according to sense but against reason, what must we say? We must say that the man acts like a beast. He who acts like a man, according to reason, looks ahead to the future: “Oh, that they would be wise, and would understand, and would provide for their last end” (Deut. 32:29). He looks ahead to the future—that is, to what must come after the end of this life: the account he must render at the hour of his death, after which he shall be destined for Hell or for Paradise, according to his merits. Non est sapiens qui sibi non est—“He is not wise who is not wise for himself,” writes St. Bernard (On Consideration).
7. Sinners think only of the present, never of the end for which they were created. But what does it profit them to gain everything else, and not to attain the one end that alone can make us happy? “But one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). To attain this end is the one business necessary for us: miss this, and all is missed. And what is this end? It is to obtain eternal life: Finem vero vitam aeternam—“But the end, eternal life.” Sinners live with little thought of attaining this end; meanwhile they draw near to death, and to their entrance into eternity, and they do not know where they are heading.
If the pilot of a ship, asked where he was going, answered that he did not know, who would not say, asks St. Augustine, that he was steering the ship to its ruin? Fac hominem perdidisse quo tendit, et dicatur ei: quo is? et dicat, nescio: nonne iste navem ad naufragium perducet?—“Suppose a man has lost sight of where he is going, and when asked, ‘Where are you going?’ he says, ‘I don’t know’: will this man not lead the ship to shipwreck?” And then the saint concludes: Talis est qui currit praeter viam—“Such is he who runs outside the way.” Such are those wise men of the world, who know how to make money, to gain honors, to take their many pleasures, but do not know how to save their souls.
Poor rich glutton, who knew how to make himself wealthy and to live in splendor, but then died and was buried in Hell! Poor Alexander the Great, who knew how to win so many kingdoms, but then died and was condemned to eternal torments! Poor Henry the Eighth, who, after rebelling against Christ and his Church, saw at the hour of death that his soul was lost, and cried out in despair: “Friends, we have lost all!” O God, how many others now weep in Hell in the same way, and cry out: “What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow” (Wis. 5:8). See, they say, in the world we made a great figure, we had great riches and honors; but now all has passed away like a shadow, and nothing is left to us but to suffer and weep for eternity. St. Augustine says that, for sinners, there is nothing more wretched than the happiness they have in this life. “Nothing is more calamitous than the felicity of sinners, by which their perverse will, like an interior enemy, is strengthened” (Ep. 5 to Marcellinus).
8. In short, to all these careless of their souls there comes that which Solomon says: “Mourning taketh hold of the end of joy” (Prov. 14:13). All their amusements, honors, and grandeurs end in eternal sadness and weeping. “Whilst I was yet beginning, he cut me off” (Isa. 38:12). At the very moment when they are weaving the web of their hopes to make their fortune in the world, death comes, and, cutting short their life, makes them lose everything and sends them to burn forever in that pit of fire.
And what greater folly can there be than this: to wish to make oneself, from a friend of God, a slave of Lucifer? From an heir of Paradise, to become by sin one condemned to Hell? For the moment anyone commits a mortal sin, his name is written among the number of the damned. St. Francis de Sales said that if the angels could weep, at the sight of the ruin a soul brings upon itself by committing a mortal sin, they would do nothing else but weep.
9. But where lies the greatest folly of all? It lies in this: that, by living in sin, these wicked men lead an unhappy life; for all the goods of this world cannot content our heart, which was created to love God, and outside of God can never find peace. What are all the grandeurs and delights of this world but “vanity of vanities”? (Eccles. 1:2). “Vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccles. 4:16). Vanity of vanities—that is, mere vanities, lies, and deceits. So speaks Solomon, who had experience of them. And he adds: “and vexation of spirit”: such goods not only fail to content the soul, but afflict it; and the more of them there are, the more they afflict it. Sinners hope to find peace in their sins; but what peace, what peace! “There is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord” (Isa. 48:22). I forbear to dwell longer on this point of the unhappy life of sinners, for I shall treat of it elsewhere of set purpose. For now it is enough to let you know that peace is a gift God gives to the souls who love him, not to those who despise him; who, instead of being the friends of God, choose to make themselves slaves of the devil—a cruel tyrant, who seeks to afflict us without mercy. Crudelis est et non miserebitur—“He is cruel and will not show mercy” (Jer. 6:23). And if he promises us some delight, he does it, says St. Cyprian, not for our good, but to have us as companions of his punishment and of his Hell: Ut habeat socios poenae, socios gehennae—“That he may have companions in punishment, companions in Hell.”
Second Point.—The saints are truly wise.
10. Let us understand that the truly wise are those who know how to love God and to gain Paradise for themselves. Happy the man to whom the Lord gives the science of the saints! Dedit illi scientiam sanctorum—“He gave him the knowledge of the saints” (Wis. 10:10). Oh, what a beautiful science it is to know how to love God and to save one’s soul! St. Augustine said that he counted that man happy “who knows God, even though he is ignorant of all else.” He who knows how to know God, the love he deserves, and how to love him, has no need to know anything more: he will be wiser than all the learned who know many sciences but do not know how to love God.
One day Brother Egidius, the Franciscan, said to St. Bonaventure: Father Bonaventure, happy are you, who know so many fine things and so can make yourself holier than I, who am a poor ignorant man! Listen, the saint answered him: if a poor ignorant old woman knows how to love God more than I do, she will be more learned and more holy than I am. At this Brother Egidius began to cry out: “O old woman, old woman, hear what Father Bonaventure says—if you love God more than he does, you can make yourself holier than he!”
11. This was the very thing that St. Augustine envied, and that made him ashamed of himself. Surgunt indocti, et rapiunt coelum—“The unlearned rise up and seize Heaven,” he cried. Alas, he said, the unlearned rise up and bear away Heaven, and what are we, the learned of the world, doing? And in truth, how many of the rude and unlettered, who cannot read but know how to love God, are saved; and how many of the wise of the world are damned! Oh, what great wise men were a St. John of God, a St. Felix the Capuchin, a St. Paschal—poor Franciscan laymen, ignorant in human sciences, but learned in the science of the saints! But the wonder is that even worldlings themselves know this truth well, and do not fail to praise those who live detached from the world to live for God alone; yet in practice they do the very opposite.
12. Tell me, my brethren: to which company do you wish to belong—to the wise of the world, or to the wise of God? To help us choose well, St. John Chrysostom counsels us: Proficiscamur ad sepulchra—“Let us go to the tombs.” Oh, what fine schools are the graves of the dead, for learning the vanity of the goods of this world and the science of the saints! For my part, said the saint, nihil video, nisi putredinem, ossa et vermes—“I see nothing but rottenness, bones, and worms.” As if to say: among these corpses I cannot tell who was noble, who rich, who learned; I see them all become rottenness and bare bones, so that all their grandeur and glory have ended, with death, like a dream.
13. What, then, are we to do? Here is the counsel of St. Paul: “This therefore I say, brethren: the time is short: it remaineth that…they that use this world be as if they used it not; for the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor. 7:29–31). This world is a scene that passes and ends in a little while: “the time is short.” In the days that remain to us to live on this earth, let us strive to live as wise men—not of the world, but of God—by attending to the salvation of our souls, and by putting into practice the means of saving them: by fleeing dangerous occasions, by making our prayer, by frequenting our confraternity, by frequenting the sacraments, by reading some spiritual book every day, by hearing Mass every day when we can, or at least by visiting Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament upon the altars, and the most holy Mary in some devout image of her. Thus we shall become truly wise, and shall find our contentment in this life and for all eternity.
Points for Reflection
1. “God has not created us, nor does he preserve our lives, that we may labor to grow rich, to gain earthly honors, or to take our pleasures, but that we may love and serve him in this world, in order to go and love and enjoy him for eternity in the next” (§4)
2. “To attain this end is the one business necessary for us: miss this, and all is missed. And what is this end? It is to obtain eternal life” (§7)
3. “In the days that remain to us to live on this earth, let us strive to live as wise men—not of the world, but of God—by attending to the salvation of our souls, and by putting into practice the means of saving them” (§13)