¹ Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?

² You want something and you lack it; so you kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. It is because you do not pray that you do not receive;

³ when you do pray and do not receive, it is because you prayed wrongly, wanting to indulge your passions.

⁴ Adulterers! Do you not realise that love for the world is hatred for God? Anyone who chooses the world for a friend is constituted an enemy of God.

⁵ Can you not see the point of the saying in scripture, 'The longing of the spirit he sent to dwell in us is a jealous longing.'?

⁶ But he has given us an even greater grace, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he accords his favour to the humble.

⁷ Give in to God, then; resist the devil, and he will run away from you.

⁸ The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers.

⁹ Appreciate your wretchedness, and weep for it in misery. Your laughter must be turned to grief, your happiness to gloom.

¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

¹¹ Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who slanders a brother, or condemns one, is speaking against the Law and condemning the Law. But if you condemn the Law, you have ceased to be subject to it and become a judge over it.

¹² There is only one lawgiver and he is the only judge and has the power to save or to destroy. Who are you to give a verdict on your neighbour?

¹³ Well now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we are off to this or that town; we are going to spend a year there, trading, and make some money.'

¹⁴ You never know what will happen tomorrow: you are no more than a mist that appears for a little while and then disappears.

¹⁵ Instead of this, you should say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we shall still be alive to do this or that.'

¹⁶ But as it is, how boastful and loud -- mouthed you are! Boasting of this kind is always wrong.

¹⁷ Everyone who knows what is the right thing to do and does not do it commits a sin.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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