Expositio in Proverbia Unit 4 opening

Foolishness: for by these things one becomes heartless and unable to acquire wisdom. In every matter, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, for the Lord opposes the proud. And the one who twists the learning of God’s things will fall into evil concerning judgment. Here he speaks of the beloved Christ, who, because of his love for humanity, became human. No longer do I call you servants, he said to the disciples, but friends. And in every season, may Christ abide with you as a friend. But if those who are children of Christ are mutually friends, then the gentle and the righteous are also brothers to one another, being born of the Spirit of adoption. For this reason they are begotten by wisdom, so that they may lead people from wickedness to virtue and from ignorance to the knowledge of God. This is the fickle person, easily turned from virtue to wickedness, yielding to evil reasonings. Here he calls God Father, and his love for humanity Mother, who has begotten him in the flesh and made him endure suffering for our sake. But our God and Father does not rejoice over a son adopted yet untaught in God’s wisdom and knowledge, but rather over one who abandons himself to wickedness and malice. However, a wise son brings joy to his mother, the love of God, who draws us to God and the Father as weaned sons, longing for the spiritual, solid nourishment, so that just as the Son of God, Jesus Christ, has become our brother by likeness, we too may conduct ourselves in deed and word. Moreover, our mother is the Church, whom God and the Father have joined to himself by the Holy Spirit as a wife; for she continually bears sons and daughters for him. And indeed, over those who are being instructed in God’s knowledge and wisdom, both our Father God and the Mother Church rejoice; but over the uninstructed, she deeply grieves and sorrows, as if we were unwilling to turn back and be saved.

But rather to persist in wickedness. Here the face of contemplation is spoken of: for contemplation is the understanding of an intelligent man, wisdom and knowledge and righteousness; but the intellectual eyes of the foolish, and within the body in the extremity of wickedness and depravity. Wrath is sent forth against the foolish son by God and the Father on the day of judgment; but to the Church which has begotten by the Spirit, and to the choir of the holy, grief will certainly be upon the destruction of the foolish son; and that whereas the wise son has both begetter and mother, the foolish has only the begetter; for the mother and the begetter are one, but the begetter is not always also a mother; for if the begotten perishes in wickedness and ignorance, the begetter remains, but the mother does not; because even the begotten has not partaken of the Spirit of adoption; likewise also concerning sensible mothers it will be thought, and concerning the death of the sensible: we shall call the mother and the begetter, but no longer the mother of the dead child. One transgresses by taking away the righteous man’s due, or by perverting his disciples toward injustice, and sins; for having possession of them, he has suffered loss; for they do not seek our things, but us; and he calls powerful those who reign in Christ. The one led by the foolishness of demons has no need of God’s wisdom or knowledge; for he has loved darkness more than light; and even if he rejoices in foolishness, he thinks he needs no wisdom. As water makes plants grow, so the word of a man established in virtues refreshes the virtues, and bears aloft toward God those who wish to become wise; and he speaks of a river leaping forth, the ineffable grace of the wisdom of the all-holy Spirit, the ever-flowing wisdom of the triune divine unity. The one who receives and acts upon the existing wickedness of the devil, in contemplation and speech, whose persons he admires as the face of the impious; but the just in judgment, and in word concerning bodies, it is not good to reject the holy.