LXXVIII. Quod voti violator pagano assimilatur.
LXXVIII. Quod voti violator pagano assimilatur.
Whoever offers themselves to God but then looks back, embracing the world they left behind, is like a pagan who worships idols instead of God, because they hold their own will above God’s. For just as Pharaoh does, who, having released the people of God, sought to capture them again and was submerged in the Red Sea, so too is this person who, having left behind the ownership of his own will for the sake of God, now retracts it and is submerged in a cruel death; for just as life could not exist under the old Law, so this person cannot attain life through this transgression.
Read the original Latin
Qui enim Deo se obtulerit, et post tergum respexerit, saeculum quod reliquerat amplectendo, pagano assimilatur, qui idola, et non Deum adorat, quia propriam voluntatem suam pro Deo habet.
Nam sicut Pharao facit, qui populum Dei quem dimiserat persecutus, capere voluit, et in mari rubro submersus est, ita et iste qui proprietatem voiuntatis suae, quam propter Deum reliquerat, et denuo retrahit, crudeli morte submergitur, quoniam sicut vita in veteri Lege esse non potuit, sic iste in transgressione hac vitam promereri non poterit.
Liber Vitae Meritorum (Book of the Rewards of Life) companion
Examination is a habit, not an event
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Hildegard's rhythm of naming a vice and answering it with virtue continues as short daily examen-style devotionals in the Chosen Portion app
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