Dura lex, sed latex

The expression above includes a phrase attributed to the great writer and journalist Fernando Sabino, said in a comment he made about the Latin expression "dura lex sed lex", that is, "the law is hard, but it is law."

The meaning of the Latin expression is that, however hard a law may be, it must be fulfilled, whether demands great sacrifices.

It was written by the late writer:

“For the poor it is dura lex, sed lex. The law is hard, but it is law. For the rich, it's dura lex, sed latex. The law is tough, but it stretches.”

Sabino thus criticized the Brazilian judicial system, whose performance up to that time signalled that the wealthiest people were treated more benignly than the poorest, even though their crimes were more lenient than those of rich and wealthy.

Recent developments in our country give us some encouragement that this state of affairs is changing, and therefore the powerful no longer have, as before, certainty that impunity will continue to benefit them.

The Latin expression can, indeed, be ignored - and it has certainly been countless times - in the plane in which we live. In the world of politics, history clearly shows that one has always observed what is known as saying: "To friends, everything. To the enemies, the law."

It is different, however, what happens when we refer to divine justice.

It is taught as one of the basic principles of Spiritism, the law of cause and effect was no stranger to early Christians, who certainly knew the warning contained in the episode below reported by the evangelist Matthew:

"And, behold, one of them that were with Jesus stretched forth his hand, and drew the sword, and smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him: ‘Sheath your sword; for everyone who takes the sword will die by the sword’."(Matthew 26: 51,52).

Our comrade José Lucas, one of the collaborators of our magazine, based in Portugal, reported opportunely in an article entitled And where do the politicians go? a fact that shows clearly how divine justice is applied naturally according to the laws of God.

He says that the well-known teacher and speaker José Raul Teixeira, when he went to lunch in a restaurant with a group of spirit friends, saw in a nearby corner a ragged woman looking for food in a trash lying on the sidewalk. The scene caused him such an impression, that he lost the will to eat, although the need to do so. As he tried to recover mentally, already in the restaurant, thinking about that person who had nothing, appeared to him, through the phenomenon of spiritual clairvoyance, a friendly spirit that accompanies him in his doctrinal task. The spiritual benefactor soothed him, explaining that even if he gave clean food to that lady, she would refuse it. And he told him, in brief brushstrokes, the story of that woman, who was in previous existence the reincarnation of a famous Brazilian politician, who is still highly respected and because he had harmed so much the people, had reincarnated in a miserable condition, complex of guilt that he did after the death of the body, in the spiritual world returning in that condition to learn to value what he had despised so much in existence: the financial difficulties of the next.

It was not, of course, a divine punishment, but a consequence of the law of cause and effect, according to which each one reaps according to their acts, thoughts and feelings.

To this type of law - the divine law - the Latin expression dura lex, sed lex applies fully, whether we believe it or not. Fernando Sabino would certainly agree with our conclusion.