Lessons from the Proverb IV
Some parts of the Book of Proverbs are very familiar to priests because they so frequently occur in the Liturgy. The portrait of the Valiant Woman, which ends the Book, is often read as an Epistle at Mass, and the beautiful personification of Wisdom in the eighth chapter forms the lessons of the First Nocturn on feasts of our Blessed Lady. There are many other parts which ought to be just as familiar, and a little garnering here and there may perhaps induce some readers to make a deeper acquaintance with this inspired Book.
THE DRUNKARD
Who hath woe? Whose father hath woe?
Who hath contentions? Who falls into pits?
Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?
Surely they that pass their time in wine,
And study to drink off their cups.
Look not upon the wine when it is yellow,
When the color thereof shineth in the glass.
It goeth in pleasantly,
But in the end it will bite like a snake,
And will spread abroad poison like a basilisk.
Thy eyes shall behold strange women,
And thy heart shall utter perverse things.
And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea,
And as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost.
And thou shalt say:
"They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain;
"They drew me, and I felt not.
"When shall I awake, and find wine again?" (xxiii. 29-35).
With a little patience and perseverance the whole Book of Proverbs may be copied out in this way, and the gain will be immense. The personal labor required will beget in us a familiarity with the Sacred Text, and then a love for it. If the work is done in such a way that mere scholarship and erudition for their own sake are disregarded; if we so occupy ourselves with the Sacred Scriptures, that on six days of the week we devoutly read them and meditate on their teaching and on one day of the week study them, as was the rule of Blessed Peter Julian Eymard; if we make the fifth chapter of the First Book of the Imitation of Christ the model of our dispositions in reading the Scriptures then our hearts will gradually become attuned to the word of God. The Holy Spirit, who speaks by the Scriptures, will produce a divine harmony in our souls, and, when we preach, it will be the echo of that harmony. which will charm the ears of our hearers, and persuade them to obey our words.
