19Wisdom strengthens a wise person
more than ten rulers who were there in a city.
20Because there’s no righteous person on earth
who does good
and does not do wrong.
21Also do not give your heart
to all the things that people say,
so that you don’t hear your servant cursing you,
22because your heart also
knows that many times you too have cursed other people.
Lord, you have given me so much,
I ask for one more thing –
a grateful heart.
George Herbert
15I’ve seen everything in my mere-breath-life:
There’s a righteous person who dies in their righteousness
and there’s a unrighteous person who keeps on going in their unrighteousness.
16Don’t be greatly righteous
and don’t be greatly wise: why should you be devastated?
17Don’t be greatly unrighteous and don’t be a fool:
why die when it’s not your time?
18It’s good that you take hold of this one
but also not let go of your grasp of the other,
because someone in awe of God will escape with both of them.
Be thou a bright flame before me,
Be thou a guiding star above me
Be thou a smooth path below me
Be thou a kindly shepherd behind me
Today – tonight -forever
Amen.
St Columba
8The end of something is better than its beginning ,
patience of spirit is better than the pride of spirit.
9Don’t be quick in your spirit to be exasperated,
because anger settles in the bosom of fools.
10Don’t say, ‘How is it
that the earlier days were better than these’,
because it’s not out of wisdom that you ask this.
11Wisdom is good, like an inheritance,
and something valuable to people who see the sun.
12Because as wisdom shades,
so silver shades.
But the value of knowledge
is that wisdom keeps its masters alive.
13See God’s activity,
because who is able to straighten what he has twisted?
14In the day of good, be in the good things,
and in the day when things are bad, see:
God made both this one as well as that one,
with the result that a person cannot find out
anything (that comes) after them.
O Love, O God who created me, in your love recreate me.
O Love, who redeemed me,
fill up in me whatever part of your love
has fallen into neglect within me.
O Love, O God, who first loved me,
grant that with my whole heart,
and with my whole soul,
and with my whole strength,
I may love you.
Gertrude the Great
5It is better to listen to the reprimand of a wise person
than to be listening to the song of fools,
6because like the sound of thistle twigs under a pot
is the laughter of fools
and this too is mere breath.
7because (surely?) oppression
can make a mockery out of a wise person,
and a gift can destroy the heart.
Teach us, good Lord,
to serve thee as thou deservest;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
St Ignatius
7 A good name is better than good oil,
so is the day of death than the day of birth.
2It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting ,
For it (death) is the end of everyone
and the living person should take it to their heart.
3Vexation is better than laughter,
because in sadness of face there is good for the heart
4The heart of the wise is in a house of mourning,
the heart of the fool is in a house of rejoicing.
Grant, Lord,
that we may hold to you without parting,
worship you without wearying,
serve you without failing;
faithfully seek you,
happily find you,
and forever possess you,
the only God,blessed now and for ever.
Amen
St Anselm
10What has happened already its name is called
and what a human person is was known.
And a person is not able to argue with One who is stronger than them,
11because the more the words are, the more is mere-breathiness.
What’s the advantage for a person?
12Because who knows what is good for a person in life,
for the number of the days of his breathy life?
A person spends them, like a shadow,
so who can tell them
what will happen under the sun after them?
Thank you, dear Jesus,
for all you have given me,
for all you have taken away from me,
for all you have left me.
Thomas More (c.1478-1535)
7All a person’s labour is for their mouth,
but their appetite /soul doesn’t get full.
8Because what’s the value for the wise person
over the fool?
– and the humble person,
who knows how to walk in front of the living?
9The eyes seeing are better
than the appetite/soul walking
This too is mere breath, a chasing of wind.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, union;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy,
For your mercy and for your truth’s sake. Amen
Photo by Ed Leszczynskl on Unsplash
There is something wicked
which I saw under the sun,
and it is heavy on human beings:
2a person to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honour,
and who has no lack regarding their appetite
for anything that they desire,
but God doesn’t empower them to eat of it,
and a stranger eats it.
This is a mere breath and a bad sickness.
3If a man fathers a hundred (children)
and lives many years,
and the days of their years are great,
and their appetite (soul) is not satisfied from the good things:
and also they have no burial,
I say the stillbirth is better off than them.
4Because it comes in a mere breath
and it goes in darkness,
and its name is covered in darkness;
5though it doesn’t see or know the sun,
that one is more settled than the other one.
And if they live a thousand years, twice over
and do not see good things
– Do they not go to the same place?
O Lord Jesus Christ,
stay beside me to defend me,
within me to guide me,
before me to lead me,
and above me to bless me,
that with you and in you,
I may live, and move and have my being,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
(unknown)
18 Look! – at
what I saw myself was good:
that it is beautiful (for someone)
to eat and drink
and to see good
in all their labour –
(as they labour under the Sun,)
– for the number of days
that He has given them,
because that is their share.
19Also, each person to whom God gives wealth and possessions
and whom he empowers to eat some of them,
to take up their share
and to rejoice in their labour – this is God’s gift.
20Because they will not remember (much) the days of their life,
since God busies them with the joy of their heart.
Eternal God and Fatther,
you create us by your power,
and redeem us by your love,
guide and strengthen us by your Spirit,
that we may give ourselves in love and service
to one another and to you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
13There is a bad-fortune
that I saw under the sun:
wealth kept by its owner
to their bad-fortune,
14and that wealth perished
through a bad business;
and they had a child
but there’s nothing in their hand.
15As they left their mother’s womb,
naked they again go,
(as they came);
they carried nothing of their labour
in their hand when they went
16This too is bad-fortune.
As they came, so they went,
and what’s the value to them
that they laboured for the wind?
17Further, all their days
in darkness
they eat
with much anger,
with illness, and fury.
O Lord, in whom is our hope,
remove far from us, we pray thee,
empty hopes and presumptuous confidence.
Make our hearts so right with thy most holy and loving heart,
that hoping in thee we may do good;
until that day when faith and hope
shall be abolished by sight and possession,
and love shall be all in all.
Christina Rossetti (1830-94)