De vera sapientia quaerenda apud Deum
The Marks of True Wisdom
True wisdom is characterized by a life of virtue, humility, and the interior peace that comes from a clean conscience.
Blessed is the person who finds wisdom. Seek the true wisdom that Christ taught and showed by His own example. The truly wise person hates wickedness, speaks the truth, and does what is just. Whoever lives soberly, purely, piously, humbly, and devotedly, and guards against the dangers of temptation, is truly wise and pleasing to God. Such a person has a good reputation, keeps a good conscience, drives away sadness, and possesses peace; they frequently receive from God a joy of heart that the world does not know and cannot taste.
The Vanity of Worldly Wisdom
Worldly wisdom is revealed as a deceptive path that leads only to spiritual death and eventual punishment.
The wisdom of the world is vanity and is considered foolishness before God; it deceives those who love it, and in the end, it torments those who rejoice in it. But the wisdom of the flesh is death to the soul; it suddenly carries off those who drink wine and cling to pleasures alike. For after the foul pleasures of the flesh come grief and punishment.
Wisdom Found in Christ
True wisdom is found by imitating the life and teachings of Christ through detachment and the practice of virtue.
True wisdom, however, comes from the hidden words and sacred acts of Christ, who urges us to reject the world, flee from its pleasures, tame the flesh, endure pain, undergo labor, and love the virtues.
Read the original Latin
Beatus vir qui invenit sapientiam. Quaere veram sapientiam quam Christus docuit: et exemplo suo ostendit. Verus sapiens odit iniquitatem; loquitur veritatem: et operatur iustitiam. Qui sobrie caste pie humiliter et devote vivit, et pericula temptationum cavet: sapiens is est et Deo placet. Hic bonam famam habet; bonam conscientiam servat: tristitiam fugat, pacem possidet; et cordis laetitiam frequenter a Deo accipit: quam mundus ignorat nec sapit. Sapientia mundi vanitas est et stultitia reputatur apud Deum; decipit suos amatores: et in fine torquet ovantes. Sapientia vero carnis mors animae est: quae subito tollit pariter vina bibentes et deliciis inhaerentes. Nam luctus et poena: post carnis gaudia foeda.
Trahitur autem vera sapientia de occultis verbis et sacris actibus Christi: qui suadet spernere mundum, fugere delicias; domare carnem, pati dolores: subire labores, amare virtutes.
The Little Garden of Roses & The Valley of Lilies companion
Fourteen readings down. The other 39 chapters are waiting.
Chosen Portion serves the complete Little Garden and Valley of Lilies — plus the Imitation — as daily portions.
These treatises were composed as brief daily counsels for a community's rhythm of reading, and Chosen Portion delivers them the same way: one short chapter each morning.
- All 53 chapters of both treatises in modern readable English
- A new short reading delivered every morning, no deciding what's next
- Complete both treatises in under two months at one chapter a day