Warning Against Educated Pride

Francis grieved very much if anyone neglected virtue and instead sought after study which causes pride in oneself, especially if anyone did not persist in the vocation to which he was called from the beginning.  He was given to say, “My brothers who are led by the desire of learning shall find their hands empty in the day of tribulation.  I desire that they be strengthened in virtues, that when the time of tribulation will come they will have the Lord with them in their troubles.  For a time of tribulation is to come, when books will be of no use and will be hidden in closets and cupboards.”  He did not say this because the reading of Holy Scriptures displeased him, but only that he might withdraw some from too much care of learning.  For he wished them to be good by charity than by pieces of truth through the desire of knowledge.  He understood ahead of time the time that was to come in which he already knew ahead of time that prideful knowledge would be an opportunity to be ruined.  At one point, he appeared after his death to one of his brothers too intent on the study of preaching, and he reproved and prohibited him and ordered that he should study to walk the path of humility and simplicity.

                        -Section IV, Chapter 69

Study is profitable, but only if it helps us accomplish the desire of God.  To obtain more and more education for its own sake is a constant temptation for some of us.  It is an accomplishment, and it is often mistaken for wisdom.   Education is not an end in and of itself.  God save us from counting the books we read or from trying to impress others with our degrees.  Wisdom only comes through loving action.  Education can be a tool in accomplishing that, as a surgeon, to save lives, must spend years in hard study.   But the education isn’t the end—saving lives and souls is all that really counts.

"Of the making of books there is no end,

And much study wearies the flesh" -Ecclesiastes 12