Proverbial Piety

Published in The Compass, December 1, 2009, vol. 4, issue 14

            This feature of the Compass offers some brief reflections on the spiritual life, taking as it’s parting point, each time, some verse in the scriptures, especially from the book of Proverbs. The translations are my own, from the Greek Septuagint; you may find some differences with the English Bible you use at home, and this is the reason why.

Thoughtful and Lawless Sons (second of two parts)

10:5 A thoughtful son is brought safely through burning heat,
            but a lawless son becomes a ruinous wind in harvest time. 

            Last month we already began considering this verse. We looked at the two types of sons discussed here, and said that this month we’d meditate on that term, “harvest,” and the expression in which it is embedded. Well, the time as come, so here we go; this meditation will help us be of one mind, and not duplicitous, in serving God.

            The “ruinous wind” is said to come during harvest time. What is the harvest of the spiritual life? There is the harvest of souls, and of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. The evil man destroys these. First, in himself; and this happens, because when God calls him to grow in the spiritual life, he is not governed by God’s law, but by sin, and he stunts his own spiritual growth. This is why Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange calls such souls “retarded souls,” because of their stunted growth. And naturally, they destroy such things in the souls of others; and again Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange asserts that retarded souls often reveal their spiritual misery by the symptom of ridicule of spiritual things; and by their ridicule, they ruin the harvest of souls.

            Or again, the Lord says in a parable, “the harvest is the end of the world” (Mt 13:39). Here, sinners will serve the Antichrist with ferocious fervor, and persecute the holy ones. Those sinners even who wear clerics and pectoral crosses will also serve the Antichrist, and be the most pernicious of all those who ruin this harvest. But the angels will avenge the Saints, and throw the “weeds” into the “fire” (Mt 13:40), for the weeds here are the lawless sons of Satan, and it will cost them no effort, and no weed will be able to resist their avenging power.

            Finally, the “harvest” is the great number of souls whom God will bring to himself in eternal life (cf. Jn 4:35-37). The evil man leads others to sin, and so he is not only ruinous, he is ruinous for the harvest. He may be ruinous because he is too lazy to work, and so the good fruit will go to spoil; that is, the souls entrusted to his apostolic work will turn back to the things of this world out of neglect. This is the case of lazy, worldly priests, and careless parents. He may be ruinous because of his impurity, for he ruins the innocent with thoughts of atheism, sins of the flesh, greed, ambition for power and hatred of authority; this is often the case of those who in different ways and offices stand as teachers, especially teachers of the faith.

            The law is intrinsically good, for it is an order of reason established for the moral good. It is a fruit of prudence, which is the virtue by which such an order is discerned and deliberated.  A man without a law is an evil man.

            Yet all men are tempted to put aside law, as if they were shackles which compromised his freedom; when they are actually a channel to give discipline to his caprice and weakness. Many men walk with one food in grace and the other in sin. They have not really decided to live good lives. They consider holiness of life as some extreme, or as some exaggeration; and they consider the sinful ways of the world as “normal,” the loss of their children’s innocence as “maturation,” worldliness as “realism”; they regard modesty as “prudishness,” faith as “fundamentalism,” and God as someone whom they dislike but whom they must placate by showing up at Church from time to time.

            This duplicity of mind and heart is what St. James the Apostle referred to when he wrote, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleans your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you of two minds. Begin to lament, to mourn, to weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (Jam 4:7-10).