Sabedoria 1:4 Comentário

The soul whose life is in God will find its pleasure in none of those things that are deceptively presented as something good. If that soul allows its heart to be defiled by one passion, at the same time it breaks the covenant of its spiritual marriage. And, as it says in Scripture, “Wisdom cannot enter the soul that does evil.” It may, in a word, be truly said that the good spouse cannot come to live with a soul that is irascible or full of malice or that harbors any other similar defect.

Do ye not see that malice is blind? Have ye never heard, that he that diggeth a pit for his neighbors, diggeth it for himself? How, it may be said, ought we not to fear a soul full of tumult? If indeed we are to fear the bitter in the same way as we fear evil spirits, and fools and madmen, (for they indeed do everything at random,) I grant it myself; but if we are to fear them as men skillful in the conduct of affairs, that never. For nothing is so necessary for the proper conduct of affairs as prudence; and there is no greater hindrance to prudence than wickedness, and malice, and hollowness. Look at bilious persons, how unsightly they are, with all their bloom withered away. How weak they are, and puny, and unfit for anything. So also are souls of this nature. What else is wickedness, but a jaundice of the soul? Wickedness then has no strength in it, indeed it has not. Jacob was a guileless man, yet he overcame the treacherous Esau. "For into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter." "Let all bitterness be put away from you." Let not even a remnant remain, for it will be sure, if stirred, as if from a smouldering brand, to turn all within to an entire blaze.

“The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” The apostle declares that the bodies of those who have been abandoned by the Holy Spirit are dead because of sin, yet their experience of death does not touch him, that is, the Spirit. In fact, the Spirit of God does not know how to sin: he is given for justification and to justify by his help. Because he does not know how to sin, he is life, and he certainly cannot die, given that death is a result of sin. It is for this reason that the sinner harms himself, but not the Spirit whom he has received. The Spirit certainly cannot be affected—he whose purpose it is to justify. Thus, the sign of a person’s justification consists in this: that through the one who lives in him, the justified one shows himself to be a child of God. In fact “not in a false person or in a body enslaved to sin” can the Holy Spirit live, as Solomon says. Certainly, if one returns to a carnal life, abandoned by the Holy Spirit, he will die in his unrighteousness.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit come and go in their own, incomprehensible way. One cannot speak of a “change of locality” of the Father or of the Son or of the Holy Spirit. They come and go in such a way that, physically, they neither go to a place nor depart from it. Consequently, this coming of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit does not demonstrate the mobility of God but his piety. It is said in fact that the unique divinity of the Trinity, who fills all things and contains all things, comes to the one to whom he deigns to manifest himself, and he distances himself from the one to whom he hides the light of his love. But this does not mean a local absence, when he justly abandons one who is unworthy; nor does he make himself present in a place if he visits with his mercy one whom he has made worthy. Therefore, even though God says, “I fill heaven and earth,” of some it is said, “God is not with them.” And though the Father fills all things, the book of Wisdom says, “Perverse thoughts separate human beings from God.” And if it also says of the Son—that is, of the wisdom of God, “she reaches from end to end with power and orders all things well,” the same Wisdom says of itself, “The perverse will seek me, but they will not find me.” And again, “Wisdom does not enter a soul who does evil or dwell in a body enslaved to sin.” And of the Holy Spirit, of whom it is said that he is immense in every way, it is said, “The Holy Spirit flees from deceit and departs from foolish speech.”