People talk a lot about human miseries. They talk even more about economic misery.

        But apart from material miseries there are all kinds of moral miseries, which are a much more serious subject.

        Vanity is only one of these miseries. It gets mixed up with all human actions and stains the most delicate thoughts. It penetrates both the heart and brain.

        Just like a weed suffocates other plants in a garden, so vanity suffocates goodness.  All its qualities are killed by poison.

        It makes men forget God, Who signifies only help in difficult times.

        Vanity is an obstacle to humanity’s moral progress, and when it is put together with power, it becomes really menacing.

        When Galilee’s dirty roads were still marked by the humble sandals of the Sublime Galilean, a singular lesson was printed in History through a dialogue between Christ and a Roman senator.

        As Jesus was speaking about humility, the Roman was consumed with power and transitory glory, and, driven by his pride, he wondered:

        Humility? What credentials had the prophet to talk to him about those things, he, a senator from the Roman Empire, who had so much power in his hands?

        He thought about the city of the Caesars, covered by triumphs, glories, and all its monuments that, at the time, he believed eternal.

        Jesus, who new about the eternal and immutable Laws of life, realizing what the senator was thinking about, answered with serenity and strength:

        All the powers of your empire are quite weak and all your treasures are miserable…

        The magnificence of the Caesars is a transient illusion, because all wise men, as well as all warriors, at the right moment will be called to justice by My Father who is in Heaven.

        One day, all your powerful eagles will succumb into a handful of ashes. Your science will be transformed by the efforts of workers more worthy of progress.

        Your unfair laws will drown in the dark abyss of the centuries, because only one Law exists and will survive men’s agony: The Law of love, instituted by My Father, from the beginning of times...

        In these thoughts, Jesus gives us a singular lesson:  the transitoriness of human ostentations built under the imposition of vanity.

        And Jesus was right. Two millennia later, not much of that said eternal empire has remained. Today only ruins remain, and they will also be extinguished sometime.

        However, time will not destroy the huge legacies left to Humanity by the Roman citizens that dedicated themselves to building imperishable patrimonies that were not under material laws.

* * *

        Before putting Humankind on Earth, God decorated it with natural beauties, covering it with all necessary elements and resources to our well-being.

        To illuminate the day, He gave us the sun, glorious radiation. To illuminate the night He sprinkled it with stars, as if they were gold flowers.

        And what about us, what do we have to offer to God, if not our hearts?

        But far from decorating them with joy, virtue and hope, we only allow God to penetrate them when sorrow, bitterness and deception visit or hurt us.

        Let’s leave vanity on the side and offer our painless hearts to God.

        Let’s offer them like upstanding men, not as slaves on their knees. Let’s think of God even when we are happy and full of joy.

Spiritist Moment Team based on the chapter V, pt. 1, from the book Há dois mil anos, by the Spirit  Emmanuel, psychography of  Francisco Cândido Xavier. Publishing house: Feb.
May 09 2008.