Prayer of the wise: Let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me; do not give me up to shameless desires. Ben Sira 23:6

In his sapiential book, the Master of Wisdom Ben Sira wrote a prayer to God requesting His guidance and wisdom, because the Lord is the creator of all things, the very source of all goodness and perfection. Because there are two paths, righteousness and sin, and it is proper for a sensible man to reject what goes against that which gives order and harmony to the universe.
In this prayer, the wise man made a special request not to enter into the path of error and to be subjected to that benevolent discipline that emanates from wisdom. This is why the master of wisdom wrote: "Who will set whips over my thoughts, and the discipline of wisdom over my mind, so as not spare me in my errors, and not overlook my sins?" Ben Sira 23:2.
And then he continued with the teaching and affirmed: "Remove evil desire from my heart" Ben Sira 23:5. With this, the wise man implied that sin, with its fleeting desires and passions, leads to an uncertain and dark path, and those who follow it surrender their lives to chance, because it is true that in certain situations sinners with inteligence achieve their goals, but the vast majority who embark on this path fail, destructive unforeseen events, the famous stumbling rocks, cannot be avoided, and thus everything tends towards chaos. Ultimately, this prayer is a rejection of the life that Cain, in the Book of Genesis, chose.
Finally, the wise man ended his prayer with these words: "Let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me; do not give me up to shameless desires" Ben Sira 23:6. And this request has a very clear meaning because lust was the sin for which the greatest sage of his time, King Solomon, fell into disgrace in the eyes of God, Solomon took many beautiful foreign women as wives and allowed them to bring idolatry to the kingdom of Israel. Lust and gluttony are the most visible sins, those who are least able to hide, and those most related to bodily needs. This is a teaching that shows the opposition between the spirit and the carnal, a teaching that Christianity would later take up, hand in hand with the teachings of the Kingdom of God, the empire or government of the divine perfections.

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