In a previous work, we highlighted some of man's greatest enemies. FEAR, ANGER, HARDNESS OF HEART, PRIDE and EVIL-SPEAKING were identified as five of our worst enemies.

FEAR, the lack of confidence in our own selves and lack of faith in God, harms us instantly by destroying our strength and ability to resist the setbacks of our life. It can also indirectly harm our neighbor if, due to our cowardice, we fail to help him in difficult situations, through a good deed, with an assured attitude, or even with a simple brotherly word of guidance, encouragement, and hope.

ANGER, a synonymous of wrath, rage, fury, is a powerful poison that harms our vital organs, our physical and mental functions; it is a manifestation of damaging emotional imbalance. If, manifested externally, when we do not control ourselves, it ends up by also hurting those around us.

HARDNESS OF HEART, the quality that makes our hearts sealed to good feelings, brutalizes us by preventing us from seeing the beautiful side of life; it is an obstacle that we impose on our spiritual progress, and when we judge the faults of others with harshness and rigor, we hurt and offend our journey brothers.

PRIDE is the illness of souls unprepared for the reality of life; it makes us ignore our most degrading moral deformities leading us to the delusion of believing ourselves awarded by virtues we do not possess; it is undoubtedly an obstacle to improvement, an obstacle to the evolution of the Spirit. If, however, an explosion of pride, sometimes associated with selfishness and ambition, goes beyond the limits of consciousness, then it will become pernicious to our peers.

These four issues, strong opponents to perfection, when wrapped around the soul, primarily harm us and occasionally harm others too.

EVIL-SPEAKING, almost always clothed with false naivety, in addition to the emotional maladjustments it promotes, transforms the malicious person into a despicable and underhanded person. Unlike the other offenses already commented, it directly and at once offends the person in question; invariably it reaches the target creatures in full, causing misunderstandings ranging from simple displeasures to harsh scandals and even heinous crimes. Slander involves a person, a family, a group, or even an established organization, and is capable of destroying the reputation and dignity of its defenseless victims.

We thought of showing, through a real or fictitious example, the sad consequences of slander or evil-speaking.

However, we bumped into our deepest difficulties. We lack the imagination and the penmanship of the chronicler. The solution was once again to find in Humberto de Campos the precious resource to solve our impasse. Thus, from his work "Bookcase of Life" dictated under the pseudonym of Brother X to the medium Francisco Candido Xavier, we chose the following story "THE MISUNDERSTANDING", and we will tell it in our own words:

On the bus that brought them back home, Dulce chatted excitedly with her friend Cecilia, confiding that it was impossible for anyone to imagine the love she felt for Dionysus. As Cecilia inquired if she liked Dionysus as much as her husband, Dulce considered that she did not go so far, but confessed that she could not do without both.

Cecilia admitted that this was because they had no children, and Dulce even agreed with her friend’s comment, but she did not agree that her affection for Dionysus was labeled as strange or unacceptable. She also disagreed with Cecilia when she insisted that this attachment was a true psychotic case.

Dulce and Cecilia were so entertained in their conversation, that they did not notice that Mrs. Lequinha, a neighbor to both, was sitting close, listening attentively, and not missing a single word. From their respective bus stops, each one returned carefree to their homes in the suburb. Mrs. Lequinha, however, as soon as she got home she gave wings to her imagination, and began to fantasize. She remembered now that she had seen Dulce at the bus stop with a good-looking young man who promised to call her the next day and suggested her to stay calm and confident.

With her head swarming, sensing great news in the air, she waited for her husband, a colleague of Dulce's husband. At dinner, Mrs. Lequinha let out all her poison. She flatly told her companion that Dulce, with that angel’s face, was involved in a love affair. She had seen with her own eyes a young man, who followed Mrs. Dulce, with that look on his face of a man in love. The shameless woman on the bus confessed to Mrs. Cecilia that she was not able to live without her husband and without the other. That shameless young woman was going to shock the neighborhood, a tragedy!

Mrs. Lequinha's husband, a colleague of the betrayed husband, who could not hide his astonishment, thought that his friend Julius needed to know everything. The next day, in the morning, the two friends talked in a confidential tone. Mrs. Lequinha's husband ventured all his indignation in the name of the companionship long cultivated by them. Despite his embarrassment, he was loyal. He told his friend everything, everything he had been told by his wife. Julius's name was too clean to be disrespected like that.

Dulce's husband heard everything in endless whispers as if a long dagger slowly tore his chest. Shaking and pale, he thanked him. He asked his boss to leave for a few hours. He wanted to go to his wife, find out what was true in that story, and advise her if it such was the case.

In pain, he entered his living room, but suddenly he stopped. Dulce – without any worry at all - was talking on the phone in the bedroom. Dulce held a lively conversation and happily said, "No problem", "Today", "Three o'clock"... "My husband is not supposed to know”…

Julius, like a frightened dog, stepped back. Furious, he left his home and called his work and said that he had been delayed. Later, back home again, he tried to have lunch with his wife, who could not make him smile.

He left once again. He wandered through the nearby streets, mourning a pain known only to great sufferers. He walked idly, head down, martyred at the thought of betrayal, letting himself be consumed in the fire burning in his heart.

A few minutes after three in the afternoon, he sneaked into the house... Very much distressed, he slowly pushed open the bedroom door and saw with deep regret a young man in his sleeves, leaning over his own bed. With his already poisoned mind, he made the worst interpretation of the facts. He quickly left, completely out of control. At night, he was found dead in a small shed in the back of the yard. Unable to bear the pain and despair, that poor man committed suicide and hanged himself.

Only then, touched and moved by Dulce's uncontained and painful crying, could the neighborhood pull the thread of the fateful occurrence and clear the gossip so lightly-hearted made up. Dionysus was only the beautiful Angora kitten that the lady in grief had looked after, exaggerating in her love for this pet; the young man, who had followed her to the bus stop, was the vet responsible for treating the sick animal; the phone call was the confirmation of the delivery of a spring mattress that Dulce had ordered for an affectionate surprise to her husband; the young man seen in the room was, no more and no less, the employee of the furniture shop, who had come to bring the mattress.

The tragedy, however, was consummated and Mrs. Lequinha, in front of the suicide exposed to the visitation, commented softly to her friend on the side:

- What a warm-blooded man! To die for such a foolish thing! We say certain things, just for talking! ...

Recalling this story - brought to us by the brilliant intelligence of Brother Humberto de Campos – made us think and want to ask: How many pains, how many dramas are caused by malicious comments? How many doubts and suspicions were generated by misguided words, full of malice and sourness?

Evil-speaking or slander is, we believe, one of the main issues responsible for the lower evolutionary stage in which mankind still trails; it is present in all of us whenever we fight back - on the same level of emotional imbalance - the offenses, injuries or defamations suffered; it lives with us in our inner world when we make a derogatory reference to our brothers; it is infiltrated in man's mind and heart because he has not yet become a Christian: he only accepted the Christ, received the Christ, but did not live Jesus in his greatness and goodness, he did not understand the sublime Doctrine of Love of the Divine Lamb of God.

Evil-speaking is latent or manifest in all of us. To avoid it, we must control our language by paying attention to its real meanings about things or people. Let us think on what language can cause by analyzing Andre Luiz's wise words offered in the message "The Language" in his book "Life’s Workbooks", received by the blessed mediumship of Francisco Candido Xavier:

"Nevertheless small and light, the tongue is undoubtedly one of the determining factors in the destiny of the creatures.

PONDERED – it favors judgment.

FRIVOLOUS – it reveals recklessness.

JOYFUL – it spreads optimism.

SAD – it sows discouragement.

GENEROUS – it opens the path to enlightenment.

SLANDEROUS – it digs cliffs.

GENTLE – it causes gratitude.

DARING – it attracts resentment.

PEACEFUL – it calms one.

WARM – it establishes confidence.

UNBELIEVING – it sets coldness

GOOD - it always helps.

UNCHARITABLE - it hurts without realizing it.

SAGE – it teaches.

IGNORANT – it complicates.

NOBLE – it creates respect.

IRONIC – it leads to disdain.

EDUCATED – it helps everyone.

UNCONSCIOUS – it causes imbalance.

For this reason, Jesus admonished:

- Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

The tongue is the compass of our soul as we linger on Earth.

While we live in this world, let us guide it towards the Lord, because in truth it is the power that opens the doors of our heart to the sources of life or to turmoil and death".

Our errors are great, our imperfections are countless, and there is no limit for our meanness. How do we correct ourselves? How can we overcome not only the five real enemies mentioned here, but all the defects that clutter the path towards goodness, to infinity?

The solution lies in the Gospel of the Lord, a wonderful code of morality and ethics that needs to be studied, interpreted, understood, followed, and finally fulfilled.

In Matthew, Chapter XXVI, verse 41, we find the remedy that heals all our spiritual ills - the restorer of life which gives us the necessary energy for the physical-mental-spiritual balance: "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation".

To watch is imperative. To watch here means that we must be in a constant state of alert not letting ourselves to be overwhelmed by the fear that numbs the soul, thus becoming brave workers of the good.

To watch is to control, in time, the outbursts of anger that unbalance us and induce us to crime, and through this control we become straight “Harvest” workers.

To watch is to eliminate the hardness of our heart that brutalizes us, and by watching we become gentle and peaceful servants of the Lord.

To watch means to remove our eternal pride, and to become humble workers of the Christian cause.

To watch is to remove too the old tendency of evil-speaking that harms, offends and destroys, and instead use our tongue and language as an instrument of a noble work.

To watch is to avoid living with any kind of imperfection that makes us more sinful so that one day we may reflect victoriously the brightness of the purified Spirits.

To watch is to stop neglecting our duties towards God, our neighbor and to ourselves, rescuing with our work the debts of our guilty past, and the debts assumed in our present earthly life.

To watch is not to allow the weeds to grow and bloom in the grooves of our heart, together with the wheat patiently sown by Jesus, through the ages.

To pray is essential and cannot be postponed. To pray with purity of soul is to weave luminous links that bind us to the higher spirituality and through which we see invigorating effluvia to endure with strength and resignation the setbacks of life.

Pray - with faith and humbleness – asking for shelter, help, guidance, and for the important strength so that we do not hesitate in our vigilance.

Pray compassionately and ask  for all those who suffer and are in need, with no material food and no spiritual bread; for all the afflicted and discouraged, sometimes forgotten and despised, who need a word of comfort and hope; for all those who wander and live in the streets, alone and cold, without a home, without a coat to warm them; for all those who persecute and those who are persecuted -shame, they still have not become aware of the law of forgiveness; for all those who are sick, moaning and weeping, in hospitals waiting for a lenitive, a visit, a consolation; for all those who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs, and who long for a miracle, a solution that will save them from all their misery.

Pray with a feeling of brotherhood for all the rich of material goods so that, touched by the gaze of the sweet Nazarene, they do not carry with them pride, ambition, usury, and know how to give to the less fortunate a little of the much they possess and offer them an opportunity for growth by means of honest work.

To pray with sincerity of purpose for all those who hold in their hands the reins of power so that their consciences are illuminated by the glare of the High and thus remain free of arrogance and prejudice by directing their subordinates with a sense of justice and equity.