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I Lent Friday – Proverbs 3: 19-34
19 God by wisdom founded the earth, and by prudence he prepared the heavens. 20 By understanding were the depths broken up, and the clouds dropped water. 21 My son, let them not pass from thee, but keep my counsel and understanding: 22 that thy soul may live, and that there may be grace round thy neck; and it shall be health to thy flesh, and safety to thy bones: 23 that thou mayest go confidently in peace in all thy ways, and that thy foot may not stumble. 24 For if thou rest, thou shalt be undismayed; and if thou sleep, thou shalt slumber sweetly. 25 And thou shalt not be afraid of alarm coming upon thee, neither of approaching attacks of ungodly men. 26 For the Lord shall be over all thy ways, and shall establish thy foot that thou be not moved. 27 Forbear not to do good to the poor, whensoever thy hand may have power to help him. 28 Say not, Come back another time, to-morrow I will give; while thou art able to do him good: for thou knowest not what the next day will bring forth. 29 Devise not evil against thy friend, living near thee and trusting in thee. 30 Be not ready to quarrel with a man without a cause, lest he do thee some harm. 31 Procure not the reproaches of bad men, neither do thou covet their ways. 32 For every transgressor is unclean before the Lord; neither does he sit among the righteous. 33 The curse of God is in the houses of the ungodly; but the habitations of the just are blessed. 34 The Lord resists the proud; but he gives grace to the humble.
Congratulations, we have arrived at the final weekday of Clean Week. Let’s take a break from St. John Chrysostom today and learn from two Latin Fathers, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome. Since today is a bookend, so to speak, for the week, we’ll talk about the two bookend verses in today’s passage, nineteen and thirty four. The former teaches a theological truth, and the latter gives us a moral instruction.
“God by wisdom founded the earth…” St. Ambrose of Milan, upholding the Nicene confession of the homoousios, the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, states that this verse means that God the Father created the universe along with the Son. The saint begins by referring to Hebrews 1:10, in which St. Paul calls the Son “Lord” and the creator of the earth and the heavens:
Paul declares that it was said of the Son, “And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” Whether, therefore, the Son made the heavens, as also the apostle would have it understood, while He Himself certainly did not alone spread out the heavens without the Father; or as it stands in the book of Proverbs, “God by wisdom founded the earth, and by prudence He prepared the heavens,” it is proved that neither the Father made the heavens alone without the Son, nor yet the Son without the Father. (On the Christian Faith).
We see here again the universal teaching of the Scriptures and the Fathers that the Wisdom of God is the Son, one of the Holy Trinity. When we are united to Christ, the more we acquire the mind of Christ, the more we understand not only Who God is, but the meaning of everything. This is why we are able to chant in the dismissal hymn of St. Basil the Great, that “…thou hast made manifest the nature of created things…” Both St. Basil and St. Ambrose wrote a Hexameron, a commentary on the Six Days of Creation in Genesis. Because they had acquired the mind of Christ, because they were so closely united in spirit to the Logos and Sophia of God, they were able to teach accurately about that which the Father created according to His Logos by the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no true knowledge, no true science, regarding the created universe, apart from the knowledge of God. Atheist science is a contradiction in terms. If someone tells you, “Follow the science” just reply: “I do. I follow Christ.”
Verse thirty four is, or should be, well known to all of us: “The Lord resists the proud; but He gives grace to the humble.” St. Jerome, who often openly confessed his own struggles with his intellectual pride, says the following:
Candidly, I say, to you, God hates all sin without exception: lying, perjury, theft, robbery, adultery, fornication; and if anyone should be caught in any of these acts, he would not be able to raise his eyes, and we would look upon him as one accursed. Yet, the proud man commits a far worse sin than adultery, and still we continue to converse with him. The fornicator may say, “My flesh overcame me; youth was too much for me.” I am not advocating that you yield to such a sin, for God hates that as well as any other; but, in comparing evils, I maintain that whatever other wrong a many may commit, theft, for example, he can always find an excuse for it. What excuse does he give? “I committed the theft because I was in need, I was dying from hunger, I was sick.” What can the proud man say? Realize how evil pride is from the very fact that there is no excuse for it…I am saying all this lest you consider pride a trifling sin. What, in fact, does the Apostle say? “…lest [being lifted up with pride] he fall into the condemnation of the devil (I Timothy 3:6).” The one who is puffed up with his own importance falls into the judgment of the devil. (Homily on Obedience).
The only sin for which there is no excuse, and we all have it! That is awful. Pride, simply put, is the irrational conviction of the heart that I am the source of my own existence – I am, in short, God. This is the sin of Lucifer, which is why it incurs the condemnation of the devil. Every human being is born with this, because we get it from our First Parents. Pride entered their hearts when they accepted the lie of the devil, and we are all born with this heart damage, for this damage is inherently a part of our psychosomatic inheritance from Adam and Eve. There is no denying this primordial doom of our fallen existence. Faith and baptism free us from it, and a life of repentance maintains this freedom. When we are not repenting, we fall back into it. So we had better keep on repenting, or we will incur the condemnation of the devil.
The best advice I have seen for fighting pride is given by the author of Unseen Warfare in chapter two, which is entitled “One should never believe in oneself or trust oneself in anything.” The author offers a lifesaving insight, which is that not only are we proud, but we don’t understand how proud we are; we don’t see it. So we have to ask to see it first, before we can even ask to get rid of it:
…if you wish to receive [the consciousness of your human weakness], you must first implant in yourself the conviction that not only have you no such consciousness of yourself, but that you cannot acquire it by your own efforts; then standing daringly before Almighty God, in the firm belief that in His great loving kindness He will grant you this knowledge of yourself when and how He Himself knows, do not let the slightest doubt creep in that you will actually receive it.
So let us celebrate the end of the First Week of Great Lent by begging God, confidently, to grant us this great grace, the grace of humility, for “The Lord resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.” Amen.