The advantages of wisdom: and the evils from which it delivers.
“Because the Lord giveth wisdom: and out of his mouth cometh prudence and knowledge.” (Proverbs 2:6)
Everyone who seeks wisdom must ask of the Lord, for all wisdom comes from the Lord.
“Students of these revered writings should be advised not only to learn the kinds of expressions in the holy Scriptures, to notice carefully how they are customarily expressed there, and to remember them but also to pray that they may understand them, and this is chiefly and especially necessary. Indeed, in these books which they are studying earnestly, they read that ‘the Lord gives wisdom; and out of his mouth comes prudence and knowledge.’ It is from him that they have received that zeal for study, if it is endowed with piety.” (4) St. Augustine of Hippo
Good counsel shall keep you on the right path to eternal life.
“We read in sacred Scripture, dearly beloved, that holy counsel should keep those who are solicitous for their soul’s salvation, as the divine Word puts it: ‘Holy counsel shall keep you.’ If holy counsel keeps a soul, that which is unholy not only fails to keep it but even kills it. Perhaps someone says, Who can always be thinking of God and eternal bliss, since all people must be solicitous for food, clothing and the management of their household? God does not bid us be free from all anxiety over the present life, for he instructs us through his apostle: ‘If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.’ The same apostle repeats the idea with reference to himself when he says, ‘We worked night and day so that we might not burden any of you.’ Since God especially advises reasonable thought of food and clothing, so long as avarice and ambition which usually serve dissipation are not linked with it, any action or thought is most rightly considered holy. The only provision is that those preoccupations should not be so excessive that they do not allow us to have time for God, according to the words: ‘The burdens of the world have made them miserable.’ Since bodily necessities are satisfied with little, while ambition is never appeased even if it obtains the whole world, let us reject wicked thoughts which spring from the poisonous root of passion. Let us, on the other hand, love only those which will help us obtain an eternal reward, so that what was said before may be fulfilled in us: ‘Holy counsel shall keep you.’” (4) -St. Caesarius
“That thou mayst walk in a good way: and mayst keep the paths of the just.” (Proverbs 2:20)
Our sins and worldly desires lead to the path of destruction; whereas, the smooth and straight path of Our Lord’s, is the one that leads to eternal life.
“It is clearly we, I say, who make rough the straight and smooth paths of the Lord with the wicked and hard rocks of our desires, who very foolishly abandon the royal road paved with apostolic and prophetic stones and made level by the footsteps of all the holy ones and of the Lord himself, and who pursue byways and brambly roads. Blinded by the seductions of present pleasures, we crawl along the dark and obstructed trails, our feet lacerated by the thorns of vice and our wedding garment in tatters, and we are not only pierced by the sharp needles of thorny bushes but also brought low by the stings of the poisonous serpents and the scorpions that lie in wait there.” (4) -St. John Cassian
Women's Prayer Group In Christ 