Sirach 30:24
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
23 A joyful heart is life itself, and rejoicing lengthens one's life span. 24 Have pity on your own soul, pleasing God, and contain yourself: gather up your heart in his holiness: and drive away sadness far yourself. 25 Indulge yourself and take comfort, and remove sorrow far from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and no advantage ever comes from it. 26 Jealousy and anger shorten life, and anxiety brings on premature old age. 27 Those who are cheerful and merry at table will benefit from their food.
Date: 195-175 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Augustine City of God 10.6
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Patristic
Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate. Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God. For this is a part of that mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, Have mercy on your soul by pleasing God. Our body, too, as a sacrifice when we chasten it by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not yield our members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but instruments of righteousness unto God.
Date: 426 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Notes and References
"... Within early Christianity, the Letter of Barnabas echoes Sirach 5:12–14 about the danger of a double tongue, as well as the warning in Sirach 4:31 against an ungenerous attitude (Barnabas 19:7–9). Origen (d. 254 ce) quotes Ben Sira as scriptural when commenting on several Old Testament passages (Genesis 12:5; Joshua 15:6; Jeremiah 16:6). Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 CE) quotes about eighty Sirach verses, while John Chrysostom (d. 407 CE) includes about three hundred citations from the book. Augustine (d. 430 CE) not only cites Sirach about 300x, but also preached sermons on Sirach passages. Rabanus Maurus (d. 856 CE), abbot of Fulda in Germany, composed the earliest surviving Latin commentary on Sirach ..."
Corley, Jeremy
"Sirach" in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha
(pp. 284-305) Oxford University Press, 2021
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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