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I Lent Thursday – Proverbs 3: 1-18
1 My son, forget not my laws; but let thine heart keep my words: 2 for length of existence, and years of life, and peace, shall they add to thee. 3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; but bind them about thy neck: 4 so shalt thou find favour: and do thou provide things honest in the sight of the Lord, and of men. 5 Trust in God with all thine heart; and be not exalted in thine own wisdom. 6 In all thy ways acquaint thyself with her, that she may rightly direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own conceit; but fear God, and depart from all evil. 8 Then shall there be health to thy body, and good keeping to thy bones. 9 Honour the Lord with thy just labours, and give him the first of thy fruits of righteousness: 10 that thy storehouses may be completely filled with corn, and that thy presses may burst forth with wine. 11 My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 12 for whom the Lord loves, he rebukes, and scourges every son whom he receives. 13 Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who knows prudence. 14 For it is better to traffic for her, than for treasures of gold and silver. 15 And she is more valuable than precious stones: no evil thing shall resist her: she is well known to all that approach her, and no precious thing is equal to her in value. 16 For length of existence and years of life are in her right hand; and in her left hand are wealth and glory: out of her mouth proceeds righteousness, and she carries law and mercy upon her tongue. 17 Her ways are good ways, and all her paths are peaceful. 18 She is a tree of life to all that lay hold upon her; and she is a secure help to all that stay themselves on her, as on the Lord.
This passage is so rich and so beautiful, one hesitates to choose which verses about which to speak. But let us try.
“My son, forget not my laws; but let thine heart keep my words.” There are two ways we can understand the word “heart” as used here. One is simple: it means the mind. Recall that in the Scriptural understanding of human nature, the heart is not the seat of the emotions, but of the mind. (The seat of your emotions is your gut, your bowels). “Forget not my laws / let thine heart keep my words” is a synthetic parallelism: that is, he is saying the same thing twice. He is saying, “Memorize what I tell you and do not forget it.”
The malicious atheists who have been purposely destroying education for the past seventy years have convinced teachers and parents that memorizing things is not necessary, that forcing a child to memorize poetry and names and dates and multiplication tables and so forth “stifles creativity.” The opposite is true, of course: If they are taught properly, children love to memorize things, and if they have not received and internalized the genuine treasures of our received culture on which to base their own creations, the stuff they produce is actually uncreative and boring, no matter how much a parent or teacher may praise it in order not to hurt their feelings.
We need to apply this insight to spiritual life. If we want to learn how to pray, we need to memorize prayers and spiritual texts, so that, to use the apt expression of St. Ignaty Brianchaninov, they become the “exact property and possession of the soul.” The sacred texts cannot remain something outside of ourselves, something in a book somewhere (or, worse, on a website!). Sacred words have to become part of us. Our minds are made for this, and, though the power of memorization fades as we grow older, the struggle to memorize remains one of great benefit; it is one way of staying young! One resolve we can make for Lent is to pick a psalm or Scripture passage or prayer from the prayer book or service books, and memorize it. And Lent is forty days long – perhaps we have time to memorize two, or three, or several! They will become a part of us, and they will always be ready at hand when we need them, even if we do not have the book. That may come in handy one day if someone puts us in prison for being a Christian and denies us any books.
The deeper understanding of the word “heart” goes beyond the obvious faculties of the mind like memory, imagination, and discursive reason; it signifies the spiritual intellect, the faculty of higher intuitive and synthetic understanding that grasps spiritual realities directly. Our First Parents deadened this highest human power when they fell through sin, and they passed this deadness on to us. In the Old Testament, only rare souls like the prophets were given grace to ascend to this higher level of understanding, and then only dimly, seeing as in a mirror, which is why all of their theological expressions are in figures and types. In the New Testament dispensation, the grace of Baptism enlivens this power once more, and we can use it, if only we do not damage ourselves permanently with un-repented sins. This is the subject of the Holy Fathers’ entire science of the spiritual life, involving the cleansing from the passions and the ascent to spiritual knowledge.
No matter how much we study or pray, however, we will not grow better but rather worse if our new attainments make us conceited. Verse seven says, “Be not wise in thine own conceit; but fear God and depart from all evil.” St. John Chrysostom writes, “ [St.] Paul makes the same recommendation, as does Isaiah: ‘Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever by their own standards.’ As Scripture says, ‘Do not justify yourself,’ and Christ says ‘In all you do, say, “We are unprofitable servants.”’ Likewise, in the case of this virtue as well, do not convince yourself that you are wise, but that you have need of others and of help from God. Nothing is worse than a person’s thinking he is sufficient to himself. This way leads to ignorance; such people cannot bear to learn from anyone, they are conceited and feel superior to everyone else.”
Notice the second half of the verse: “…fear God and depart from all evil.” Someone who really fears God strenuously fights the delusion that he knows everything; he is terrified of such an idea and flees it like fire, because it is an insult to God; it is a blasphemy. The more one grows in the fear of God, the more one knows that one actually knows very little. And, far from being depressing, this thought becomes consoling, for it means that there is so much yet to learn, which is exciting, and it also means that you are not responsible for knowing everything, which is a tremendous relief.
May Christ the Wisdom of God grant us the grace to implant His law deep in our hearts, and may He deliver us from the conceit that we are wise. Even Socrates discovered that God only is wise (see the Apology). Surely we Christians can do as well as that old pagan did.