Be Mindful Of Your Creator When You Are Young

"Rejoice, young man, in your youth and direct well your heart when you are young; follow your desires and achieve your ambitions but recall that GOD will take account of all you do.

Drive sorrow from your heart and pain from your flesh, for youth and dark hair will not last.

Be mindful of your Creator when you are young, before the time of sorrow comes when you have to say, 'This gives me no pleasure,'

and before the sun, moon and stars withdraw their light, before the clouds gather again after the rain.

On the day when the guardians of the house tremble, when sturdy men are bowed and those at the mill stop working because they are too few, when it grows dim for those looking through the windows, and the doors are shut and the noise of the mill grows faint, the sparrow stops chirping and the bird-song is silenced, when one fears the slopes and to walk is frightening; yet the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper is fat and the caperberry bears fruit that serves no purpose,

because man goes forward to his eternal home and mourners gather in the street,

even before the silver chain is snapped or the golden globe is shattered,

before the pitcher is broken at the fountain or the wheel at the mill,

before the dust returns to the earth from which it came, and the spirit returns to GOD who gave it.

Meaningless!  meaningless!  the Teacher says all is meaningless!" - Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8 

(Be mindful of your Creator when you are young.  It will not be the time to turn to GOD when our strength and pleasures are over: "the beautiful woman has no more lovers, she has entered a convent."  Why remember our Creator?  Because this remembering, which little by little will become a presence for us, is one of the conditions of our joy.  The bitterness of old age does not affect those who have chosen GOD in their youth; at the end of their life, they can repeat the words of the psalm: I shall go towards GOD, the joy of my youth [cf. Psalm 43:4].)

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