Thursday, May 19, 2011

Forgot what it was, I mean i was.

Lazy man falls prey to poverty

Ridiculously indolent[1] and lover of sleep,[2] the lazy man sees lions all over the street[3](overestimating the difficulty of getting a job or working). ; his desires ″kill″ him[4] because ″his hands refuse to labour″,[5] and his path becomes a ″hedge of thorns″[6] ... while he is wiser than seven sensible men in his own eyes.[7] .... His household becomes a real ruin[8] and he falls prey to his ″want″(scarcity) coming like an armed man and in the end to poverty, coming upon him like a robber.[9] The sluggard (lazy man) will share this fate with the talkative persons, with dreamers that ″watch the wind″ or ″regard the clouds″[10] and with those who ″chase fantasies″ (follow worthless pursuits).


The lazy man leaves God's gifts unused

The wicked,[20][21] worthless servant.[22] that buries his talent in the ground, instead of investing the money with the banker, i.e. one who disregards God's gift, leaving it unused, is also lazy.[23] His talent will be taken from him and will be given to the one who has 10 talents and the worthless servant is thrown into the darkness of hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [24] (the entire parable of the talents here)


Despair

Despair (Latin, Tristitia) In this context, is the precipitating cause of suicide. Feelings of hopelessness, despondency, pessimism and impending doom, were not the same as the condition, melancholy. "If the man be bereft, give him solace. If he be in physical torment, give him medicine. If he be to the desire of death, give him hope. Reason, encouragement, and faith bring hope, therefore, use them liberally." (Francis of Assisi). Since sadness often results in acedia, Pope Gregory's revision of the list subsumed Despair into Acedia.


Acedia (Latin, acedia) (from Greek ακηδία) is the neglect to take care of something that one should do. It is translated to apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is similar to melancholy, although acedia describes the behaviour, while melancholy suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a wilful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created; by contrast, apathy was considered a refusal to help others in time of need.

When Thomas Aquinas described acedia in his interpretation of the list, he described it as an uneasiness of the mind, being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love.


Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as "rage", may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. Wrath, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of anger can manifest in different ways, including impatience, revenge, and vigilantism.

Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest (although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy, closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite". In its original form, the sin of anger also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of hatred directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.

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