1. What causes these fights and quarrels among you? Is it not your inner longings which make war within your own selves?

2. When you long for something you cannot have, you kill for it and when you do not get what you desire, you squabble and fight. The fact is, you do not have what you want because you do not pray for it.

3. You pray for something and you do not get it because you pray with the wrong motive of indulging your pleasures.

4. You adulterers! Don't you know that making friends with the world makes you enemies of God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be the world's friend becomes God's enemy.

5. Surely, Scripture is not wrong when it says that our spirit tends towards excess.

6. But God has something better to give, and Scripture also says, God opposes the proud but he gives his favor to the humble.

7. Give in, then, to God; resist the devil and he will flee from you.

8. Draw close to God and he will come close to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you doubters.

9. Recognize your distress, be miserable and weep. Turn your laughter into tears and your joy into sadness.

10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will raise you up.

11. Brothers and sisters, do not criticize one another. Anyone who speaks against or condemns another, speaks against the Law and condemns the Law. If, however, you condemn the Law, you are no longer an observer of the Law but a judge of it.

12. There is only one lawgiver and one judge: he who has the power to save or condemn. So you, who are you to judge your neighbor?

13. Listen now, you who speak like this, "Today or tomorrow we will go off to this city and spend a year there; we will do business and make money."

14. You have no idea what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? No more than a mist which appears for a moment and then disappears.

15. Instead of this, you should say, "God willing, we will live and do this or that."

16. But no! You boast of your plans: this brazen pride is wicked.

17. Anyone who knows what is good and does not do it, sins.





“O temor e a confiança devem dar as mãos e proceder como irmãos. Se nos damos conta de que temos muito temor devemos recorrer à confiança. Se confiamos excessivamente devemos ter um pouco de temor”. São Padre Pio de Pietrelcina