De non attrahendo res exteriores.
Dying to the World
The soul must be dead to earthly things, guard its peace, avoid disputes, and rest in God's judgment.
Son, you must be ignorant of many things and regard yourself as dead to the earth, one to whom the whole world is crucified.✦ You must also pass many things by with a deaf ear, and think more on what makes for your peace. It is more useful to turn your eyes away from things that displease you and to leave each person to their own opinion than to devote yourself to contentious arguments. If you have stood firm with God and have looked to his judgment, you will more easily bear the burden of sustaining yourself.1
The Lament of Neglect
A cry to the Lord exposes how temporal losses consume us while spiritual harm is ignored, as the soul flows outward and forgets what matters most.
Lord, how long must we wait? See how a temporal loss is wept over: for a small profit people labor and rush about, and spiritual harm passes into oblivion, and scarcely is it turned back to, even late. What is of little or no benefit gets attention, and what is most necessary is passed over carelessly, because the whole person flows outward toward external things, and unless he quickly comes to his senses, he lies willingly in those externals.
Read the original Latin
Fili, oportet te in multis esse inscium et æstimare te tamquam mortuum super terram et cui mundus totus crucifixus sit. Multa etiam oportet surda aure pertransire et quæ tuæ pacis sunt magis cogitare. Utilius est oculos a rebus displicentibus avertere, et unicuique suum sentire relinquere, quam contentiosis sermonibus deservire. Si bene steteris cum Deo, et ejus judicium aspexeris facilius te victum portabis.
O, Domine, quousque venimus? Ecce damnum defletur temporale: pro modico quæstu laboratur et curritur et spirituale detrimentum in oblivionem transit, et vix sero reditur. Quod parum vel nihil prodest, attenditur et quod summe necessarium est, negligenter præteritur, quia totus homo ad externa defluit, et nisi cito resipiscat, libens in exterioribus jacet.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Gal.6.14 — But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Notes
- 1 ↩cum Deo rendered as 'with God' (accompaniment); the temporal/causal nuance is left open.