State super vias et videte et interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona et ambulate in ea et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris

4 Sept 2025

A Healthy Mind

...et invenerunt hominem sedentem, a quo daemonia exierant, vestitum ac sana mente.

In continentia sapientiae. Mens enim est quae rerum rationes et veritates mensurat. Sana autem tunc est, quando id perfecte facere potest. Continentia autem, ut dicit Aristotcles, virtus est quae facit homincm permanere in mensura mentis, ita quod non abducitur violentia passionis et tentationis. Jerem. xvii, Sana me, Domine, et sanabor: salvum me fac, et salvus ero: quoniam laus mea tu es. Psal. cii: Qui sanat omnes infirmitates tuas. Ilaec sanitas mentis perficitur per continentiam passiones mensura sanae mentis refraenantem. Eccli. xv: Qui continens est justitiae, apprehendet illam, et obviabit illi quasi mater honorificala. Cibabit illum pane vitae et intellectus. Firmabilur in illo, et non flecletur: et continebit illum, et non confundetur.

Sanctus Albertus Magnus Commentarium In Evangelium Lucam, Caput VIII

Source: Here p572
'...and they found the man from whom the demons had been expelled, sitting and clothed and with a healthy mind. 1

A mind healthy in the continence of wisdom. For the mind is that which reckons the reason and the truth of things. A mind is healthy, then, when it is able to do that without fault. Continence, as Aristotle says, is a power which allows a man maintain the reckoning of his mind, 2 and thus it is not dragged off by violent passions and temptations. In the seventeenth chapter of Jeremiah, 'Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me and I shall be saved, because you are my praise.' In the fifty second Psalm, 'He who heals all your infirmities.' 3 The health of the mind is fashioned by continence restraining the passions from the reckoning of a healthy mind. In the fifteenth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, 'He who is continent by righteousness, he apprehends wisdom, and she comes to meet him as an honourable mother, who shall feed him with the bread of life and understanding. She shall be strengthened in him and not be bent, she will make him continent and he will not be confounded.' 4

Saint Albert The Great, Commentary On The Gospel of St Luke, Chapter 8

1 Lk 8.35
2 Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1145b
3 Jerem 17.14, Ps 52.3
4 Sirach 15.1-4

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