The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus 2:12 Ulasan

When we come to the grace of baptism, renouncing all the other gods and masters, we confess one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But confessing this, if “we do not love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul” and do not adhere to him “with all our strength,” we have not become the Lord’s portion. Rather, like those who sit on the fence, on the one side we allow to continue the very offenses we were fleeing to remain in our lives, while on the other we do not appease the Lord to whom we fled because we do not love him with a complete and honest heart. The prophet cries over us because of this, because he sees a similar fickleness in our fluctuating when he says, “Woe to the double-minded,” and again: “How long will you limp on both of your knees?” But the apostle James also says, “The double-minded person is inconsistent in all his ways.” So, we who do not follow our Lord with an upright and perfect soul and who are removed from foreign gods stand, as it were, on the fence. On the one hand, we are treated like deserters by those foreign gods who cut us down, on the other, we are not defended by our Lord because we are unstable and hesitant.

If … one dies to whom one of these superstitious remedies has been given—and how many have died with remedies, and how many have lived without them!—with what confidence does his spirit go forth to God? He has lost the sign of Christ, receiving instead the sign of the devil. Perhaps he may say that he has not lost the sign of Christ. Can you have, then, the sign of Christ along with the sign of the devil? Christ does not want cooperative ownership. He desires to have sole possession of what he has purchased. He bought it at such a high price in order that he alone may possess it. Would you make him the partner of that devil to whom you have sold yourself by your sin? “Woe to the double-hearted,” to those who in their hearts give a portion to God and a portion to the devil. Angered that the devil has a portion there, God leaves and the devil takes possession of the whole. There is a reason why the Apostle admonishes, “Allow no place for the devil.”