XLI. De poenitentia ob scurrilitatem

XLI. De poenitentia ob scurrilitatem

And I saw and understood these things. And from that living light, I heard a voice speaking to me again: "What you see is true, and as you see it, so it is." Therefore, if people who indulge in foolishness try to escape from the great spirits that suggest to them to flee from themselves, and if they want to avoid the punishments of such folly, let them discipline themselves with fasting and scourging according to the commands of their presiding authority, and then let them strive for silence with the care of a rightly ordered temperament. Regarding the fault of scurrility, 67. Scurrility is filled with the offense of God, and it seeks to tear apart the truth with deceitful words, for it is like a foul mist that withers all fruits. For it does not take root in honesty, nor is it covered by the cloak of modesty through discipline; rather, it tries to uproot all that is true, like a shadow playing with words. This, in fact, acts like a serpent according to its nature, and with blasphemous words that are against God and humanity, it entangles itself in a most wicked habit, mocks the established law, and like a moth destroys a garment, deceiving a person by deriding them, and thus invades them through death. But whoever wants to love God with a pure heart and a disciplined mind should cast off this mocking spirit, so that later they don’t begin to weep when they desire to have joy. These things are said about the souls of the penitent, to be purified and saved, and they are faithful, so let the faithful pay attention to them and consider them in the memory of good knowledge. I also saw spirits from the same multitude, and I heard them crying out: "Our Lord is Lucifer, who passes through all things and knows all that exists." These show people the wandering life and persuade them not to love stability. I saw a great expanse of wandering souls, who were being punished for their waywardness. And I saw a great swamp, full of putrid and foul filth, from which a terrible mist arose, surrounding the entire swamp. In this state, those souls were punished who, while living in this world, had labored in wandering, so that they had become accustomed to moving from place to place as vagrants. For because of the wandering in which they had sinned, they were in the filth of this swamp; and because of the delight they had taken in it, they felt its stench; and because of the variety of its novelties, they were covered by the same fog. I saw and understood these things. xuin. Regarding the need for repentance due to wandering, And from that living light, I heard again a voice saying to me: "What you see is true, and as you see it, so it is." Therefore, people should strive to overcome their wandering spirit by fasting and scourging themselves, and they should punish themselves with kneeling and sighs for the excesses they commit.