Advent at the School of St. Bernard (3)

Source: FSSPX News

Annunciation - Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi

O my Brothers, flee, free pride with all your strength, I beg you!

Pride is the beginning of all sin; and it quickly darkens and overshadows with eternal obscurity this Lucifer, who once shone as the brightest and beautiful of the heavenly spirits.

It is he, I say, who changed from not only an angel, but the first of angels, into a hideous demon! Wherefore, envying man’s happiness he brought forth in him the evil which he had conceived in himself by persuading man that if he should eat of the forbidden tree he would become as God, having a knowledge of good and evil.

O wretched one, what hopes do you give, what do you promise to man, when it is only the Son of the Most High who has the key to knowledge, or rather when it is only He who has “the key of David; He that openeth, and no man shutteth?” (Apoc. 3:7). It is in Him, “whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3); will you steal them to give them to man?

Annonciation - Simone Martini et Lippo Memmi

Illustration :

Annunciation - Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi

Date: 1333

Place: St. Ansanus Chapel in the Cathedral of Sienna