Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
CHAPTER THREE.
SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER.
The happiness and glory of the just whom the wicked persecute, especially of the martyrs, is described, as well as the unhappiness of the wicked, and particularly their barrenness in begetting offspring, or their wickedness, namely that they have senseless and adulterous wives, and therefore adulterous and most wicked children; whereas on the contrary the pious and chaste have chaste and upright spouses and offspring.
1. But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. 2. In the sight of the foolish they seemed to die: and their departure was considered an affliction: 3. and their going from us, destruction: but they are in peace. 4. And if before men they have suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. 5. Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God tested them, and found them worthy of Himself. 6. As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust He received them, and in due time there shall be regard for them. 7. The just shall shine, and shall run about like sparks among the reeds. 8. They shall judge nations, and shall rule over peoples, and the Lord shall reign over them forever. 9. They that trust in Him shall understand the truth: and they that are faithful in love shall rest in Him: because grace and peace are for His elect. 10. But the wicked shall receive punishment according to what they have thought: who have neglected the just, and have departed from the Lord. 11. For whoever rejects wisdom and discipline is unhappy: and their hope is vain, and their labors without fruit, and their works are useless. 12. Their wives are senseless, and their children most wicked. 13. Cursed is their creation, because happy is the barren woman: and the undefiled, who has not known a sinful bed, she shall bear fruit at the visitation of holy souls: 14. and the eunuch, who has not wrought iniquity with his hands, nor thought wicked things against God: for to him shall be given the special gift of faith, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God. 15. For the fruit of good labors is glorious, and the root of wisdom never fails. 16. But the children of adulterers shall be brought to ruin, and the seed of an unlawful bed shall be destroyed. 17. And if indeed they be of long life, they shall be counted as nothing, and their last old age shall be without honor. 18. And if they die soon, they shall have no hope, nor speech of comfort in the day of judgment. 19. For the end of a wicked nation is dire.
1. THE SOULS OF THE JUST (
the Arabic has, the blessed soul) ARE IN THE HAND OF GOD, AND (that is, therefore) THE TORMENT OF DEATH SHALL NOT TOUCH THEM (the Syriac, does not approach them, or does not come near them). - The connection of this chapter with the preceding is easy and obvious: for there he described the bitter hatreds with which the wicked persecute the just even to death and the most shameful death; lest therefore anyone should think the wicked happy as masters of things, and the just unhappy as oppressed by them, here he shows the contrary, from the fact that the souls of the just after death pass to the blessed life, where they dwell in the house, indeed in the hand of God, while on the contrary the souls of the wicked after the first death of the body pass to the second death of hell, and that eternal, where they are in the house, indeed in the hand of the devil. By the just understand here all just persons, but especially those suffering for justice, namely the martyrs; whence the Church reading these words in the Divine Office applies them to the martyrs. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Death, undergone by martyrs for Christ, does not afflict them, but delights them. They do not grieve in their departure, nor shudder in their passing, nor...
envy brought into the world, they propagate it by sinning and envying in themselves and others, while they consent to his wicked suggestions, just as Adam consented; they die, therefore, because they follow the impulses of the devil, who is the author of death. But the just, because they follow God and God's inspirations, are gifted by Him with eternal life and happiness; whence it follows: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them."
For "imitate" the Greek has peirazousi, that is, "they tempt": for he who imitates, tempts and experiences that thing which he wishes to imitate, says Jansen.
Hence secondly, very fittingly, thus with St. Basil, Homily On Envy, St. Augustine, book IV On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter viii, and Christopher a Castro you may explain: They tempt him, or imitate, or attempt to imitate him, who are on his side; that is, the devil, moved by envy, brought death into the world and destroyed our first parents, and all who follow his faction attempt to imitate him by killing the children of God, just as he killed Adam, God's most beloved son; but they will attempt or strive in vain, because "the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them."
This interpretation pleased the Fathers: Tertullian, in the book On the Good of Peace, chapter v: "For what had plunged Adam and Eve into death, taught their son also to begin with homicide." Cyprian in his epistle On Jealousy and Envy, when he says: "Thenceforth envy rages on earth, when one about to perish through jealousy obeys the master of perdition, when, as imitator, he imitates the devil who is jealous, as it is written, Wisdom II, 23: By the envy of the devil, death entered the world; they imitate him therefore who are on his side. Hence, finally, the first hatreds of the new brotherhood began, hence unspeakable fratricides, when the unjust Cain was jealous of the just Abel; and that Esau was an enemy to his brother Jacob, jealousy was the cause; and that Joseph's brothers sold him, the cause of selling descended from rivalry. Saul the king also, that he hated David, what else provoked him but the sting of jealousy? And not to make a long business of reviewing them one by one, did not the Jews perish from this, preferring to envy Christ rather than believe in Him?"
This is what Christ said to the Jews, John VIII, 44: "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you wish to do. He was a murderer from the beginning," as if to say: Just as the devil killed Adam, so you his children wish to kill Me.
Others translate the Greek parazousi properly as "they experience," as if to say: The wicked experience death (for thanatos, that is death, in Greek is of the masculine gender) who are of his party and lot, namely of the devil, who indeed imitate the pride, envy, and crimes of the devil, from whom death was introduced; and thus the meaning comes back to nearly the same thing: so Osorius, Jansen, Vatablus.
Whence aptly the end of the chapter is connected with the beginning of the next: for it follows by way of antithesis:
25. BUT THEY IMITATE HIM WHO ARE ON HIS SIDE.
as if to say: First, the wicked imitate the devil, as their parent, so that they may propagate the death which he himself by his envy brought into the world, by sinning and envying in themselves and others, while they consent to his wicked suggestions, just as Adam consented; they die, therefore, because they follow the impulses of the devil, who is the author of death.
probable and confirms it with many arguments. Finally, Caesarius of Arles, homily 23, asserts that a man is occupied by as many demons as he has vices. He who is proud, he says, is full of the devil; and that he who is envious cannot be without a demon, Scripture declares, Wisdom II, 24: By the envy of the devil, death entered the world; and they imitate him who are on his side.
St. Chrysostom indeed, in homilies 22 and 47 on Genesis, says envy is a diabolical invention, a most pernicious plague, the foulest of vices, a wicked beast devastating our salvation above all things.
Whence St. Basil wisely concludes, in the Homily On Envy: "Let us therefore flee, brethren, from this intolerable evil; it is the serpent's precept, the devil's invention, the enemy's sowing, the pledge of punishment, the impediment of piety, the road to hell, the privation of the kingdom of heaven: for the envious themselves confess this vice with their own mouths; their gaze is dry and dark, their cheek somewhat sad, etc., their soul suffused with the very disease, having no foresight in discerning truth or in managing affairs."
And St. Chrysostom, homily 45 to the People: "Let us flee, I beg, the plague of this vice, for of all vices this is the most pernicious, and it devastates our very salvation above all things: for it is the invention of the wicked devil; and therefore the Wise Man was saying, Wisdom II, 24: By the envy of the devil, death entered the world."
And the Nyssen above: "Envy, the chief of evils, the mother of death, the first gate of sin, the root of vices," etc. And Cyprian, in the book On Jealousy: "What a great evil is this, brethren, by which the angel fell, by which that lofty and illustrious sublimity could be circumvented and overthrown, by which the very deceiver was deceived?"
Finally, St. Augustine, sermon 83 On the Seasons: "And therefore, he says, let us guard, brethren, against the onset of this vice, lest perhaps we be found partakers of the devil's work, and be condemned by the same sentence with him, as it is written, Wisdom II, 24-25: By the envy of the devil, death entered the world: and they imitate him who are on his side. This evil harms somewhat even those against whom it is directed; yet more grievously and perniciously it afflicts first those from whom it proceeds: for as rust consumes iron, so envy destroys and consumes that very soul in which it dwells; and just as they say vipers are born by tearing and bursting open that maternal womb in which they were conceived: so also the nature of envy consumes and destroys that very soul by which it was conceived. What a moth of the soul this is! What a plague of thoughts in the breast! What great corruption, to be jealous of God's gift in a man, and to turn the good things of others into wicked reproach, to make the glory of others one's own punishment, to apply as it were certain executioners to one's own breast, to employ torturers upon one's own thoughts and senses, who may lacerate one with internal torments!"
25. BUT THEY IMITATE HIM WHO ARE ON HIS SIDE.
To this Cantacuzenus adds: "For no one, he says, participates more in the malice of death than he who has rendered himself entirely worthy to be on its side." This author, as also others, refers the phrase 'on his side' to death: for from the Greek it can indeed be referred to death; but better it is referred to the devil.
Both are true, for the wicked are of the party and lot of the devil as much as of death: for in the kingdom of death the devil is king and rules; hence St. Bonaventure explains, as if to say, "They imitate the devil, who are on the side of death," that is, destined for death, namely those who are death's portion and food.
CHAPTER THREE. SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER.
The happiness and glory of the just whom the wicked persecute, especially of the martyrs, is described, but also the unhappiness of the wicked, and particularly the barrenness or wickedness in begetting offspring, namely that they have foolish and adulterous wives, and therefore adulterous and most wicked children; whereas on the contrary the pious and chaste have chaste and virtuous spouses and offspring.
1. But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. 2. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure was taken for misery: 3. and their going away from us, for utter destruction: but they are in peace. 4. And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. 5. Afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God has tried them, and found them worthy of Himself. 6. As gold in the furnace He has proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust He has received them, and in time there shall be regard had to them. 7. The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds. 8. They shall judge nations, and rule over peoples, and their Lord shall reign forever. 9. They that trust in Him shall understand the truth: and they that are faithful in love shall rest in Him: because grace and peace are for His elect. 10. But the wicked shall be punished according to their own devices: who have neglected the just, and have revolted from the Lord. 11. For he that rejects wisdom and discipline is unhappy: and their hope is vain, and their labors without fruit, and their works unprofitable. 12. Their wives are foolish, and their children most wicked. 13. Cursed is their offspring, because happy is the barren: and the undefiled, who has not known the sinful bed, shall have fruit in the visitation of holy souls: 14. and the eunuch, who has not wrought iniquity with his hands, nor thought wicked things against God: for the faithful gift of election shall be given to him, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God. 15. For the fruit of good labors is glorious, and the root of wisdom never fails. 16. But the children of adulterers shall be brought to nothing, and the seed of the unlawful bed shall be destroyed. 17. And if they live long, they shall be nothing regarded, and their last old age shall be without honor. 18. And if they die quickly, they shall have no hope, nor speech of comfort in the day of trial. 19. For the end of the wicked generation is grievous.
1. THE SOULS OF THE JUST ARE IN THE HAND OF GOD, AND THE TORMENT OF DEATH SHALL NOT TOUCH THEM.
The Arabic has 'blessed soul.' The connection of this chapter with the preceding is easy and obvious: for there he described the bitter hatreds with which the wicked persecute the just even to death and the most shameful death; lest anyone therefore consider the wicked happy, as masters of affairs, and the just unhappy, as being oppressed by them, he here shows the contrary, from the fact that the souls of the just after death pass to the blessed life, where they dwell in the house, indeed in the hand of God, whereas conversely the souls of the wicked after the first death of the body pass to the second death of hell, and that an eternal one, where they are in the house, indeed in the hand of the devil.
By 'the just' understand here any just persons, but especially those suffering for justice, namely martyrs; whence the Church, reading these words in the Ecclesiastical Office, applies them to martyrs. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Death, undergone by the martyrs for Christ, does not afflict them but delights them. They do not grieve at their departure, nor shudder in the passage, nor
are they put to shame in the sight and judgment of the Lord, which is the threefold torment of death for the wicked. From this passage St. Epiphanius, book II Against the Heresies, chapter xxxvi, proves that the soul of man is immortal, and likewise the resurrection of bodies: for the soul does not perish in death, but survives, lives, and dwells in the hand of God, so that He may reunite it with the body at the end of the world, raise it up and make it blessed.
Again, Theophylactus, on Matthew chapter viii: The soul, he says, having departed from the body, does not wander or roam in the world, as the pagans supposed: "For the souls of the just are in the hand of God;" but the souls of sinners are likewise led away from here into hell, like the soul of the rich glutton. Theophylactus borrowed this, as is his custom, from St. Chrysostom, homily 29 on Matthew.
THEY ARE IN THE HAND OF GOD.
St. Augustine, on Psalm 148, says that many read, 'in Your hands,' namely, O God. 'In the hand,' that is, in the special care, providence, protection, defense, preservation, strengthening, direction, reward, beatification and glorification of God, as if to say: God protects, preserves, and strengthens the souls of the just and of the martyrs in this life and in their very torments, so that they may overcome them and keep the faith given to God, and much more after death He endows and crowns them with eternal glory. This latter meaning is more proper and genuine to this passage.
Morally, the just person is carried in the hand of God: first, as a child in the hand of its mother or nurse, according to that passage, Hosea xi, 3: "And I was like a foster-father to Ephraim, I carried them in my arms, and they did not know that I cared for them." Second, as paper is in the hand of the writer, to write and paint on it whatever he wishes, according to that passage, Isaiah xlix, 16: "Behold, I have inscribed you on my hands: your walls are always before my eyes." So Christ crucified inscribed His beloved ones on His hands, not with pens but with nails, not with ink but with blood, to testify His extraordinary love for them, and to confirm and strengthen them in grace, according to that passage, John x, 28: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish: and no one shall snatch them (my sheep) from my hand."
Whence just as the Holy Spirit is called the finger of God the Father, Luke xi, 20: so consequently the Son is to be called the hand of God the Father, because He mediates between the Father and the Holy Spirit, just as the hand is between the arm and the finger. Third, as a ring is on the hand of a king: for equally precious is the soul of the just person in the hand and eyes of God: see Jeremiah, chapter xxx, verse 24; Ecclesiasticus, chapter xlix, verse 16; Haggai, chapter ii, 24, and what I have annotated in those passages.
Whence Isaiah, chapter lxii, verse 3: "You shall be, he says, a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God." Fourth, as a sick or weak person is in the hand of the one who strengthens, according to that passage, Ezekiel iii, 14: "The spirit also lifted me up and took me away: and I went in bitterness in the indignation of my spirit: for the hand of the Lord was with me, strengthening me." Fifth, as lilies, roses, and flowers
are in the hand of one who smells them: so also holy souls breathe forth a fragrant odor into the nostrils of God, and are pleasing to God as a sweet savor: "For we are the good odor of Christ unto God," II Corinthians ii, 15. Sixth, the souls of the just are in the hand of God, as material or an instrument is in the hand of a craftsman, so that He may polish them with blows, pressures, patience, and every virtue and grace; and as a sword is in the hand of a soldier for slaying the enemy; whence St. Chrysostom, in his homily on these words of the Wise Man, 'The souls of the just,' etc., which is found at the end of volume I: "In your battle, he says, the Lord engages, the Lord fights, the Lord wages war, and the victory is ascribed to you. Your struggle is God's struggle, your battle is Christ's battle. Why do you tremble, why do you fear, as if you would conquer by your own strength? Take up arms, advance into battle, fight bravely, so that He who knows not how to be conquered may assist you as you fight."
And after a few more words: "For after one battle the Lord keeps some for other victories, others He now crowns at the completion of their martyrdom, others He retains as victors for an example, others already perfected He sends to heaven, others He frequently desires to see fighting, others already having merited through suffering He places in the heavenly kingdoms triumphant, so that the condescension of the Emperor Christ may be praised by all, who in His own people conquers the enemy both once and frequently, and will reward each one according to how He has seen them fight; only let the spirit be roused against the enemy, let virtue be exercised and devotion prepared, so that the soldier advancing to battle may either be crowned in the first battle, or honored with frequent trophies by the number of his palms."
Seventh, the souls of the just are in the hand of God, who namely places crowns upon them, and breathes into them light, life, and glory; whence Theodore, patriarch of Alexandria, at the Second Council of Nicaea, session iii: "The saints, he says, are the storehouses of God, and the pure dwelling-places of Christ, and the spotless mirrors of the Holy Spirit; moreover, their souls are in the hand of God, as it is written, Wisdom chapter III, 1: For God is life itself; since therefore the saints are in the hand of God, it is necessary that they exist in life and light."
And Damascene, book IV On the Faith, chapter xvi: "That the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and that death does not touch them, divine Scripture says, Wisdom iii, 1: for the death of the saints is sleep rather than death; they labored also in the present age, and they live forever. Psalm 115, 13: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints; and what is more precious than to be in the hand of God? For God is life and light: those who are in the hand of God exist in life and light."
The just souls, therefore, says Damascene, are in the hand of God, "sleeping in sweet slumber with watchful mind," as a child sleeps securely in the bosom of its mother, according to that passage, Isaiah li, 16: "In the shadow of my hand I have protected you;" and Deuteronomy xxxiii, 3: "He loved the peoples, all the saints are in His hand."
St. Ambrose excellently, on Psalm 118, octonary 3, expounding that passage of Lamentations iv, 20: In Your shadow we shall live:
"Christ, he says, is life, and he who lives in the shadow of Christ is in the shadow of life. Jesus spread out His hands for us, to overshadow the whole world; how are we not in the shadow, we who are protected by the covering of His cross? How are we not in the shadow, we whom the Crucified One defends from the wickedness of the world and the burning heat of the body?" The saints therefore in dangers, in torments, in death and martyrdoms do not tremble, but rejoice, and like fearless lions they say with the Psalmist, Psalm 26, 1: "The Lord is my light and my salvation (from the Hebrew you may translate, The Lord is my light, that is my sun, and my Jesus) whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?"
AND THE TORMENT OF DEATH SHALL NOT TOUCH THEM.
For 'torment of death' some read 'malice': neither word is in the Greek, which has thus, 'and suffering shall not reach them': so also the Syriac and Arabic. Our translator therefore added 'of death' to the word 'torment,' because torments lead to death and kill the martyrs: for he alludes to that speech of the wicked, chapter ii, verse 19: "Let us examine him with insults and torture;" that is, as they soon explain, "let us condemn him to a most shameful death:" for the greatest torment is an ignominious death.
The sense is, as if to say: Because the souls of the just are in the mighty hand and protection of God, hence even if they are afflicted and tortured by the wicked, yet they either do not feel these torments, as many martyrs did not feel their sufferings and pains; or certainly they overcome and transcend them with a brave and lofty spirit, so that they rejoice and exult in them, and regard them not as pains but as favors of God. In death itself they do not feel its agony and torment, because their soul is already as it were separated from the body by the desire with which they yearn for heaven and God, so that they wish and long to be dissolved and to be with Christ: much less does the torment of the second death in hell touch them. Therefore the anguish of dying, the dangerous conflict with the devil, and eternal damnation are far from the just person, nor is he confounded when he speaks with his enemies in the gate, says St. Jerome, epistle 34.
Again, the torment of death is that by which the wicked torture the just and drive them to death, as if to utter destruction and the supreme evil: for they think the soul perishes with the body, as if to say: We will torment the just both with the torments of life and with the torment of death, so that in death they may grieve that they spent their life in pains, punishments, and penances, and at the same time that in death all their life, hope, and pleasure must end, without any further hope or reward of life: which indeed, if it were true, would be an immense torment, and truly the torment of death: for "if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable," says the Apostle, I Corinthians xv, 19. But this torment does not touch the just, because they believe and firmly hope for another life and eternal glory: wherefore they say with even greater right what Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, when by his command he was being pounded in a mortar: "Pound, pound Anaxar-
chus's bag, for Anaxarchus (his soul) you are not pounding," as Cicero reports, Tusculan Disputations II. Whence, explaining, he adds: "In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die, but they are in peace."
The torment of death therefore signifies five things: first, the fierce and deadly torments, or those equal to the agony of death, such as tyrants inflicted upon the just; but these did not touch them in their full effect, that is, they did not penetrate them, did not torment them; but rather made them cheerful, strong, and glorious. So Christ rising again said to Magdalene, John xx, 17: "Do not touch Me," that is, do not linger here touching Me: but go, announce to My apostles that I have risen. Second, the very agony of death, when the soul is separated from the body: for this is a great torment for the wicked, but not for the just because of their hope and passage to a better life. Third, the very death and destruction of the soul, which the wicked think they inflict upon the just, but they err. Fourth, the torment of hell, which is the second and eternal death. Fifth, the torment of a bad conscience, which is called 'of death,' because it is most bitter, and because in death, on account of the impending judgment and hell, it most severely torments the dying person and will torment them for eternity.
Hear St. Bernard, book V On Consideration: "This is, he says, the worm that does not die, the memory of past things. Once introduced, or rather inborn through sin, it has clung firmly, never to be torn away thereafter. Nor does it cease to gnaw the conscience, and fed on it, on food indeed that cannot be consumed, it perpetuates its life. I dread the biting worm, and the menacing death. I dread falling into the hands of a living death, and a dying life. This is the second death, which never fully kills, but always kills. Who will grant them to die once, so that they may not die forever? Those who say to the mountains, Luke xxiii, 30: Fall upon us, and to the hills, Cover us, what do they wish but to end or escape death by death's benefit? Finally: They shall call upon death, says Apocalypse ix, 6, and it shall not come."
The same Bernard excellently, sermon 41, among the shorter sermons: "The death of sinners, he says, is the worst: evil in the loss of the world, because they cannot be separated without pain from what they love. Worse in the dissolution of the flesh, from which their souls are torn away by evil spirits. Worst in the torments of hell, when body and soul are consigned together to everlasting fires. On the contrary, the death of the good is the best, since there comes rest from labor, there comes delight from newness, there comes security from eternity." The same elsewhere: "There is, he says, in the death of the wicked, pain in the departure, horror in the passage, shame in the sight of God. But certainly, says Holcot, these things shall not be in the death of the just; rather, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints; whence a certain saint says: Death is nothing other than the departure of the soul from prison, the end of exile, the completion of labor, the arrival at port, the conclusion of pilgrimage, the laying down of a most heavy burden, the dismounting from a wild horse, the liberation from a ruinous house, the termination of all sicknesses,
the escape from all dangers, the destruction of all evils, the breaking of all bonds, the payment of nature's debt, the return to the homeland, the entrance into glory."
leads away, not from good things, and death is not a destruction taking away and effacing everything, but a kind of migration and change of life, which for illustrious men and women is usually a guide to heaven." Hence the Syriac translates, 'and their departure from us is as it were a crushing'; Guarinus, 'and their departure is judged a calamity'; Vatablus, 'their departure is considered disastrous, and their going from us fatal, while they enjoy happiness.'
2. IN THE SIGHT OF THE UNWISE THEY SEEMED TO DIE, AND THEIR DEPARTURE WAS TAKEN FOR AFFLICTION.
For 'affliction' the Greek has kakosis, that is malice, that is misery, distress, affliction; the Syriac and Arabic, 'damages or injuries were attributed to them (the wicked),' as if to say: Just as the entrance of the pious into life was miserable, so also was their departure: they were born in misery, they lived in misery, they died in misery. Their whole life therefore was nothing other than continual misery; their whole being and existence was wretched, so that they seem to have been born and made for nothing but miseries: so the foolish reason, but foolishly.
Hear St. Bernard, sermon 2 On Peter and Paul: "How many do we believe were present while the apostles were suffering, who would by no means have envied their precious deaths; for they seemed to die in the eyes of the foolish, and their departure was considered an affliction, and thus indeed they seemed to die in the eyes of the foolish. But to me, says the Prophet, Psalm 138, 17, Your friends are exceedingly honored, O God, their principality is exceedingly strengthened. Brethren, the friends of God seem to die in the eyes of the foolish; but in the eyes of the wise they are judged rather to be falling asleep. Indeed, Lazarus too was sleeping, because he was a friend: and when He has given His beloved sleep, behold the inheritance of the Lord, Psalm 126, 2. Let us strive, brethren, to live the life of the just, but let us much more desire to die their death."
For 'destruction' the Greek has syntrimma, that is crushing, breaking, the metaphor being drawn from earthen vessels, which, once they are broken to pieces by a fall, cannot be repaired or restored again, according to that passage, Jeremiah xxx, 11: "Thus I will crush this people and this city, as a potter's vessel is crushed, which cannot be restored." So the death of the just appears to worldly people, who know only present things and are ignorant of eternal things, as a most miserable crushing, a most dreadful end, and a virtually irreparable destruction. But the blind err most grievously. "For we know that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," II Corinthians v, 1; hence in the Martyrology the day of death of the saints is called their birthday, on which, having died to this life, indeed to death, they were reborn to blessed immortality, and from this life, as from a dark womb, they fly forth into the region of the living, says Origen, book III on Job.
Indeed even the Brahmins, according to Strabo, book XV, said that death is a birth to the true and happy life. See how different, indeed how contrary, is the judgment of the wise, even of the pagans, and of the foolish or wicked, concerning life and death: for Plato in the Gorgias cites that saying of Euripides: "Who knows whether to live is to die, and to die is to live?" And Maximus of Tyre the Platonist, sermon 25, says: "What men call death is itself the beginning of immortality, and the procreation of the future life." And Nazianzen, in the oration On Human Life: "I do not know, he says, whether this life of ours should rather be called death, and death on the contrary should be called by the name of life, although it commonly seems otherwise."
3. AND THEIR GOING AWAY FROM US, DESTRUCTION: BUT THEY ARE IN PEACE.
read thus with the Roman and Greek editions; wrongly therefore in some editions it is read 'exterminii,' although the sense comes to the same thing, as if to say: The departure of the just from this life, which is like a journey by which the just have gone from us, that is from the society of men, was deemed by the wicked to be destruction, namely utter ruin and extinction, by which they would be completely exterminated and annihilated; although this departure is for the just an entrance into peace, that is into rest and eternal life: for, as St. Augustine says, XIII On the City of God, 1, God has granted such grace to faith, that death, which is known to be contrary to life, becomes the instrument through which one passes to life.
See here the paradox: "Death for the just is the beginning and gate of life;" whence for 'journey' the Greek is poreia, that is departure, migration, as if to say: Death is nothing other than a departure to the blessed life; hence Themistius, quoted in Stobaeus, sermon 120, thinks thanatos, that is death, is so called because it transfers a man departing from life ano thein, that is upward to God and to the divine seat; and Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book I: "From evils, he says, death
BUT THEY ARE IN PEACE.
The Hebrews by the name of peace signify every good and every happiness; eternal life therefore is peace, in which the just fully rest, free from all misery, sorrow, and danger, and full of all happiness, joy, and security; whence they say and jubilate perpetually, Psalm iv, 9: "In peace itself, I will sleep and rest." So Isaiah, chapter xxxii, verse 17, describes the blessedness of the just through peace and the comforts of peace: "And the work of justice, he says, shall be peace, and the worship of justice, silence and security forever; and my people shall sit in the beauty of peace, and in the tabernacles of confidence, and in wealthy rest."
Add that before Christ, when this book was written, the entrance into heaven to see God had not yet been opened to the just; but their souls had descended into the limbo of the fathers, namely into Abraham's bosom, and there quietly awaited Christ, who would open heaven. This quiet place is therefore rightly called peace, both because the just pass from the war which they waged in this life against concupiscence and against wickedness and the wicked, to peace; and because death puts an end to all the labors, miseries, and sufferings of this life, and so establishes men in quiet tranquility; and because it leads the just to the bosom of Abraham, in which there was great peace, joy, and gladness of the holy patriarchs, especially on account of the hope of future blessedness to be given through Christ.
Hence the name 'kingdom of heaven' is not found in the Old Testament, says St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on Mark; but St. John the Baptist first named and preached it, saying, Matthew iii, 2: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Nevertheless, under other names the same thing was known to the ancients: for they believed and hoped in the holy and blessed resurrection of the dead, as is clear from Job xix, 25; Isaiah xxvi, 19; Daniel xii, 2; II Maccabees vii, 9, and elsewhere.
4. AND THOUGH IN THE SIGHT OF MEN THEY SUFFERED TORMENTS, THEIR HOPE IS FULL OF IMMORTALITY.
The Greek has kolasthosin, that is punished, chastised, disciplined, afflicted with evils. Vatablus: 'for when they are tortured in the sight of men, they nourish a hope full of immortality.' He speaks of the just who suffer tribulations and persecutions, but especially of the martyrs: for in their torments the hope of glory sustains and strengthens them, which hope soon afterward turns into the reality itself. Torments therefore consecrate the martyrs, and sanctify them in the very trial of their passion, says St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, chapter xii; such things the Maccabees suffered from Antiochus, and the Jews under Ptolemy Lagus, who was the first to succeed Alexander the Great in the kingdom of Egypt, and who oppressed the neighboring Jews, according to Josephus, in whose times this book seems to have been written. To their sufferings and martyrdoms therefore he here alludes.
THEIR HOPE IS FULL OF IMMORTALITY.
First, hope can be taken metonymically for the thing hoped for, namely for the reward and prize, as if to say: The reward of the afflicted just and of the martyrs, which in this life they hoped for and now possess in heaven, is the fullness of immortality, riches that do not perish, an abundance of goods that do not fail, says Joannes Alba, Selecta, chapter 133.
Hear St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, chapter xii: "What hope and reward awaits the martyrs, after the struggles and sufferings of this time, the Holy Spirit showed and proclaimed through Solomon, saying, Wisdom iii, 4: And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality." This is what Job says, chapter xi, verse 17: "Like the noonday brightness it shall rise for you at evening: and when you think yourself consumed, you shall rise like the morning star." And the Apostle, Hebrews xi, 35: "Others were stretched out, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection: and others were stoned, were cut asunder, were tempted, were put to death by the sword," etc.
Second, hope can be taken in its proper sense, as if to say: The martyrs both in life and in death, and much more after death, the victory having been already won, hope for full immortality: for the just of that age, having completed their lives, hoped they would shortly obtain this through the coming of Christ.
Hence it is clear that in the souls of the fathers in limbo, as well as in those who are in purgatory, hope remains, even though they are certain of their salvation. Francis Suarez proves this, treatise On Hope, disputation 4, section viii, assertion 3. First, because faith and charity remain in them; therefore also hope, which is between faith and charity. Second, because they do not yet possess blessedness; therefore they hope for it. Third, because there is no cause in them for the corruption of hope, nor are they in such a state as to be incapable of hope. You may object: For them the attainment of blessedness is not arduous, for they rather judge it to be necessary, and judge it impossible to lose it, nor do they properly fear this. The answer is that it is not necessary for hope that the attainment of the good hoped for be apprehended as difficult, that is, doubtful, or as one that can be impeded, but it suffices if it be apprehended as exceeding the perfection of nature, and in this way also the attainment of blessedness is offered as arduous to the souls in purgatory. Whence it is not of the nature of hope that it must always have joined to it servile fear properly so called with anxiety: therefore if in this life God were to reveal to someone His grace and perseverance therein, he could nevertheless truly and properly hope, although he could not fear in that way.
Hence it follows that in the fathers of the Old Testament true hope remained until the coming of Christ: this is clear from the reason given, and because they particularly hoped for the coming of the Messiah; whence it is said of them in verse 4: "Their hope is full of immortality." And these things are so certain that there is no disagreement about them. Thus far Suarez, who also adds that in the souls already blessed in heaven the habit of hope also remains, indeed even the secondary act, because they actually hope for the resurrection and glory of the body.
This hope stirred up the martyrs, so that they not only offered themselves to torments, but even sought them and demanded greater ones. Hear St. Ephrem, in his Encomium of all the holy martyrs, at the beginning: "For thus the holy martyrs surrendered themselves to God with their whole heart and soul, so that from then on they despised death itself and all the hostile plots of tyrants, ready to endure blows and the constraints of tortures and the various sufferings of the entire body. They gave their backs to the lashings of whips, and to the various cuttings of sinews and marrow."
And after a few more words: "Moreover, they savagely broke their bones; and therefore they received strength from God, so that they might bravely endure all sufferings; and as if deprived of the sense of pain, they bore themselves against whatever assaults, as though they were suffering in bodies not their own; indeed they even boldly mocked the magistrates and judges themselves, and provoked them to greater anger, saying: If you have more severe torments, apply them to us: for these are of no account. Wherefore those, even more inflamed and boiling with rage, roared against them like the most savage beasts, and calling the executioners, they took care to have the holy bodies of the brave champions beaten and torn apart more vehemently. But they in turn said to the prefects and judges: Where are your threats of punishment? For your fire appears cold, and your torments ineffective, your beaters weak, and your swords rotten wood; you have nothing that matches our readiness and eagerness; we stand prepared to endure more and greater things."
Do you want examples? Take these. Animated by this hope, St. Quirinus the martyr, father of St. Balbina the virgin and martyr, under Pope Alexander I, intrepidly said to Count Aurelian: "If you wish to kill, if to beat with rods, if to burn with fire, do as you please; for we are all prepared to undergo death for Christ, no differently than the hungry are prepared for bread."
St. Sabina the martyr constantly reproached Antiochus the governor who was harassing St. Seraphia: "You rabid dog of Asia, do not in your own ruin afflict the holy virgin of God and your mistress with injuries." St. Hesteria, virgin and martyr of Bergamo, said to the governor: "Behold, my neck is ready, rage against it; this I willingly surrender for the faith of Christ my Lord."
St. Silverius, Pope and martyr under the Emperor Justinian, relegated to the island of Pontia, writing to Bishop Amator: "I am sustained, he says, by the bread of tribulation and the water of anguish, and yet I have not abandoned nor do I abandon my office...."
St. Genesius, a martyr from among the actors under Diocletian, while he was suspended on the rack, torn with hooks, and burned with torches, kept saying: "There is no God except Christ, for whom even if I should be killed a thousand times, you will not be able to take Him from my mouth or from my heart."
Sts. Eusebius, Pontianus, Vincentius, and Peregrinus, Roman martyrs under the Emperor Commodus, when they were being tortured on the rack and beaten with sinews and rods, declared to their torturers: "Do not relent: for your time will run out sooner than our spirit of suffering for Christ." And when the governor Vitellius, admiring their constancy, said they were endowed with magic and were rejoicing in their torments, Vincentius responded: "Not
we rejoice except in the Lord Jesus Christ." St. Achatius the centurion and martyr under Diocletian said to the governor: "Behold, my body is most ready for the lash; use it as you please, but certainly neither you, nor the emperor, nor all the malice of demons will be able to make me sacrifice to the impure ones, that is, to demons. Among the seven Maccabee brothers, who underwent the glorious contest of martyrdom under Antiochus, the third in order, when asked for his tongue, quickly put it forth and firmly extended his hands, and said with confidence: From heaven I possess these, but for the sake of God's laws I now despise them, since I hope to receive them back from Him." By this same hope the remaining brothers encouraged themselves for martyrdom, II Maccabees chapter vii, 11 and following.
Finally, the Apostle, Hebrews xi, 1: "Faith, he says, is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," where throughout the entire chapter he brings forward the ancient heroes of faith, who animated by this hope performed heroic deeds of virtue, and consecrated themselves and their name to immortality.
5. AFFLICTED IN FEW THINGS, IN MANY THEY SHALL BE WELL REWARDED.
The Greek has elegantly, oliga paideuthentes megala euergetethesontai, that is, 'chastised in small things, they shall be benefited with great benefits or felicities,' as the translator of Clement of Alexandria renders it, book IV of the Stromata. Our translator seems to have read combinavia, that is 'they shall be well composed,' or 'well disposed,' because the fitting and just reward is that those who here were afflicted and badly treated should be most well off in heaven, and most well disposed.
The Syriac: 'He tested them a little, and they shall inherit much.' The Arabic: 'and because they have been tested with few trials, He will benefit them with many blessings.' Vatablus: 'lightly afflicted, they shall obtain ample rewards.' Pagninus and Arias: 'in many things they shall be blessed with good.' Others: 'moderately disciplined,' or 'undergoing little discipline, they shall be heaped with great benefits.' Understand 'discipline' as the correction of morals, which God imposes, or a superior, or even an enemy. Cantacuzenus: 'these are not properly torments, he says, but chastisement; nor is it heavy, but light; afflicted in few things, not indeed in respect of the cruelty of the torturers, but of the hope and reward of those who were being tortured.' Jansen: 'corrected as children or pupils by a parent or teacher.'
Properly from the Greek you may translate 'instructed and taught': for the effect of the tribulation of the just is their education, according to that exhortation of Paul to the Hebrews, Hebrews xii, 5, from Proverbs iii, 11, and Job xvii, 4: "My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord: nor grow weary when you are corrected by Him." Hence II Maccabees vii, 32, the martyr says: "For we suffer these things for our sins: and if our Lord God has been somewhat angry with us for our rebuke and correction, yet He will be reconciled again with His servants." And verse 36: "For my brothers, having now endured a brief pain, have come under the covenant of eternal life." And verse 38: "But in me and my brothers the wrath of the Almighty, which has been justly brought upon our whole race, shall cease."
These words St. Jerome, epistle 4 to Marcella, exhorting
her to the endurance of labors and tribulations: "The Lord, he says, has placed you among the labors of men, and has visited you with the saving scourge of paternal love, so that, having been afflicted in a few things, He might dispose you well in many."
The Wise Man speaks properly of martyrs; consequently, however, also of any just persons who bear and overcome serious things through patience, fortitude, continence, or another virtue: for each virtue has its own contest and its own martyrdom; whence St. Gregory Nazianzen, oration 20 in praise of St. Basil: "Without blood, he says, a martyr, and without wounds he obtained the victorious crown."
St. Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula to Eustochium: "Your mother, he says, has been crowned with a long martyrdom: for not only is the shedding of blood counted as confession, but also the spotless service of a devout mind is a daily martyrdom." St. Gregory at the end of homily 3 on the Gospels: "Although the occasion of persecution is lacking, he says, yet peace too has its own martyrdom: because, even if we do not submit the neck of our flesh to the sword, yet with the spiritual sword we slay carnal desires in the mind."
St. Bernard, sermon 30 on the Song of Songs: "It is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit; milder indeed in horror than that by which the limbs are cut with the sword, but more troublesome in its duration." The same, sermon 1 on the feast of All Saints: "What does it mean that the same promise was made to the poor and to the martyrs, unless that voluntary poverty is truly a kind of martyrdom?" etc. The same in the Sentences: "Bloodless martyrdom is threefold: frugality in abundance, which David and Job had; generosity in poverty, which Tobias and the widow exercised; chastity in youth, which Joseph practiced in Egypt."
St. Jerome, epistle to Demetrias: "Preserved chastity also has its own martyrdom." St. Ambrose, book I On Virgins, concerning Blessed Agnes: "In one sacrifice you have a double martyrdom, of modesty and of religion." Blessed Peter Damian, On St. Alexius: "A new kind of martyrdom presents a new spectacle for admiration: for the martyrs, prison was their punishment, chains their oppression; but for this man, his own house adorned with gilded dining rooms was the matter of his temptation: them the armed hand of executioners tortured; him the daily sight of his parents' love punished more severely," etc.
The same at the end of the sermon On St. Apollinaris: "Do you wish to know plainly how in the peace of Holy Church you may find martyrdom? etc. Ascend the tribunal of the mind, and drag yourself to the judgment of examination. Let thought accuse, let the soul judge, let the penitent conscience strike like an executioner, let tears burst forth like a wound: so through the likeness of martyrdom you shall arrive at the true dignity of the martyrs."
St. Lawrence Justinian, sermon On St. Martin: "He was, he says, a colleague of the saints and a companion of the martyrs, whose soul, although the sword of the persecutor did not take it away, yet did not lose the palm of martyrdom, etc. Great is this kind of martyrdom, to willingly expose oneself to dangers for the honor of Christ." And after a few words: "As many times as he opposed the enemies of the faith in debate, so many times did he earn the palm of martyrdom." Then: "And this too was a singular martyrdom, that he was weak together with the weak, etc. Hear a martyr without the sword, dying from charity alone: I die daily (says Paul, I Corinthians xv, 31) for your glory." At the end: "Rightly should the crown of martyrdom not be denied to this saint, who, bearing the care of the churches and zealous for the salvation of his neighbors, neither feared to die nor refused to live."
An illustrious example of martyrdom was given by Martinianus with his companion martyrs, who on account of heroic works of faith and the apostolate, cruelly tortured by the Arian King Gaiseric, remained strong in their torments through the hope of the crown. Hear Victor of Utica, book I, Persecution of the Vandals: "He (Gaiseric) orders the servants of God to perish with their feet tied behind running chariots, dragged among the thorny places of the forests, so that, dragged back and forth, the bodies of the innocent might be torn by the thorny barbs of the trees; binding them in such a way that they might see each other's end. When from nearby they caught sight of one another as the Moors were running, each one said farewell to the other in the straits of their flight, saying: Brother, pray for me. God has fulfilled our desire; in this way one arrives at the kingdom of heaven. And so, praying and singing psalms, to the joy of the angels, they sent forth their pious souls, where to this very day our Lord Jesus Christ does not cease to work great miracles."
BECAUSE GOD HAS TRIED THEM, AND FOUND THEM WORTHY OF HIMSELF.
God does not tempt, that is, does not solicit anyone to sin: for this is the work of the devil: "For God is not a tempter of evils," says St. James, Epistle I, 13; yet He is said to tempt, that is to test and examine the faith and virtue of men, when He sends or permits to be sent upon them poverty, disease, disgrace, persecution, death, and martyrdom: for even though He Himself foreknows their faith and virtue, yet He wills that they themselves exercise it and make it known to others, as I showed on James I, 13.
So St. Gregory, XXIII Moralia, chapter xviii: "Behold, he says, amid adversities the strength of faith shone forth more powerfully: behold, the integrity of the flesh was cut to pieces, but the bones of their virtues were laid bare; hence it is said of them through Wisdom, chapter iii, verse 5: God tried them, and found them worthy of Himself. They were indeed tested by the adversity of blows, but they were found worthy by the stripping bare of their bones: for that testing of theirs which is applied through scourges is openly declared there, when it follows in the same passage, verse 6: As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust He received them."
Receive elegant symbols of this matter. The anthracite stone, fiery and like a coal, if thrown into fire, is extinguished as if among the dead; but on the contrary, when drenched with water it blazes forth, says St. Isidore, book XVI of the Etymologies, chapter xiii. The jet stone is kindled by water and extinguished by oil, says Pliny, book XXXVI, chapter
xix: so the just, anointed with the oil of pleasure, grow sluggish, but sprinkled with the water of tribulation, they blaze forth in virtue, and become more pleasing and worthy to God. The Dionysian stone is dark, sprinkled with reddish marks: the same, if ground mixed with water, gives off the fragrance of wine, and what is marvelous in that scent is that it resists intoxication, says Solinus in the Polyhistor. So indeed virtue puts forth its powers amid adversities, for as the common proverb has it, 'things undertaken tend to be things feared,' according to that verse of Ovid, Tristia, book IV, elegy iii:
Fill up the sad material with your virtues;
Glory goes its way by a steep and precipitous path.
Who would have known Hector, had Troy been fortunate?
The public road of virtue is made through evils.
So our Caussin, book XI of Parabolic History, chapter xxxii and following.
AND HE FOUND THEM WORTHY OF HIMSELF.
With His grace, friendship, inheritance, kingdom, and heavenly glory; hence it is clear that the just merit heavenly glory not only in a congruous way but also in a condign way: for although works considered in themselves nakedly, for example giving alms to a poor person, do not merit such great glory, according to that passage, Romans viii, 18: "The sufferings of this time are not worthy of the future glory," yet insofar as they flow from the grace of God and from a man pleasing to God, to that extent they are condign of such great glory: for grace is proportioned to glory, and is as it were its seed and beginning.
He here assigns the purpose for which God sends or permits tribulations and martyrdoms upon the just, namely to test them, exercise them, and render them worthy of His kingdom. Hear Lucifer of Cagliari, treatise That One Must Die for the Son of God: "That martyrs are strengthened by torments, he says, and crowned by the very suffering of their trial, the Holy Scriptures thus reveal, Psalm 115, 15: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; afflicted in few things, in many they shall be well rewarded: because God tried them and found them worthy of Himself," Wisdom III, 5.
Hear also Eusebius of Emesa, in the homily On the Holy Martyrs Epipodius and Alexander, where he movingly introduces the martyrs speaking and exhorting thus: "Does not the living voice of kindred blood cry out to our heart? Learn, he says, from us to acquire faith by seeking, to cultivate it by living, to preserve it by dying; learn to fear sin more than the sword; learn for the sake of life to love justice more than life, and faith and the fear of God. What we have preserved in the midst of the tribulation of war, take care lest you lose in peace or in the security of peace. Beware lest the anchor of hope and religion, which we guarded in the storm, you lose in the harbor. Beware lest, if you ever see a good life subject to afflictions, you judge it miserable. Beware lest in the arena of the world, into which we were sent to undergo contests, you expect some happiness. Blessedness can be suffered for here, it cannot be acquired here. Do not seek here what not even Christ found here. If the world had peace, the martyrs would not have glory; if examination did not precede, the occasion of tribulation would perish."
Hear also St. Paulinus, epistle 4, where citing that passage Song of Songs iii, 11: His head is the finest gold: "This gold, he says, is the form of the saints, who shine as lights at the head of the body, and are gold refined by fire for God: because, namely, He found them tried through the examinations of suffering in the furnace of this world (as it is written) worthy of Himself, and on them He stamped the sacred coin of His image, impressing on their hearts and tongues the word of His truth, and establishing those same persons as money-changers, so that according to His form they might strike coins acceptable to the Lord, and, the image of Caesar having been abolished from us, Matthew xxii, they might stamp the living coin of the eternal King, and inscribed with the spirit of redemption, with necks now free from the yoke and our foreheads fortified with the title of salvation, we might sing, Psalm iv, 7: The light of Your countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us. Let us therefore strive with all our might to so prepare ourselves that we may deserve to be the hair and gold of the divine head (which for us by the grace of God is Christ)."
6. AS GOLD IN THE FURNACE HE PROVED THEM.
as if to say: Just as gold in the furnace is purged of dross and shines more brightly, so God through tribulations and martyrdoms purges the just from the dregs of venial sins, and makes them stronger and more brilliant in patience and virtue; whence Hugh of St. Victor, treatise On the Daughter of Jephthah: "Imitating this, he says, many thousands of martyrs fought for the truth even unto death, and were sacrificed by raging enemies; of whom Scripture says, Wisdom iii, 6: As gold in the furnace He proved them."
The first to use this maxim was holy Job, chapter xxiii, verse 10, saying: "He (God) knows my way, and He has tested me like gold that passes through fire." Then David, Psalm 65, 10: "You have tested us, O God: You have tried us by fire, as silver is tried, etc. We have passed through fire and water, and You have brought us into a place of refreshment." Third, Solomon, Proverbs xvii, 3: "As silver is tried by fire, he says, and gold in the furnace, so the Lord tests hearts." Fourth, Isaiah, chapter xlviii, verse 10: "Behold, he says, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of poverty." Fifth, Daniel, chapter xi, verse 33: "And some of the learned shall fall (in the persecution of Antiochus and of the Antichrist) that they may be smelted, and chosen, and made white." Sixth, Zechariah, chapter xiii, verse 9: "I will lead the third part through fire, and I will burn them as silver is burned, and I will test them as gold is tested." Seventh, Malachi, chapter iii, verse 2, says of Christ: "For He is like a smelting fire, and like a fuller's herb: and He shall sit smelting and cleansing silver, and He shall purge the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold and as silver." Whence shall come to pass what follows: "And they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice," as being now fully purified and justified. Eighth, Ecclesiasticus, chapter ii, verse 5: "For gold and silver, he says, are tested in fire: but men acceptable (to God) in the furnace of humiliation."
Behold for you so many testimonies of the prophets, by which God in every age has confirmed this maxim through oracles as well as examples. It is an eternal law established by God that all the just are to be tested, purified, and perfected by tribulation as by fire; no one is excepted from it, as Judith shows at length, chapter viii, verse 21, and Mattathias, I Maccabees ii, 52. Do not therefore seek to be excepted yourself, lest you equally fall from justice. Tertullian excellently in the Scorpiace, chapter vii: "For hear, he says, God speaking also elsewhere, Proverbs xvii, 3: I will burn them as silver is burned, and I will test them as gold is tested, that is, through the torments of fires and punishments, through the martyrdoms that test faith."
and St. Augustine, on Psalm 61: Nevertheless, be subject to God, O my soul: for from Him is my patience: "My tribulation comes, he says, and my patience also comes, and my purification. Does gold shine in the furnace of the craftsman? It will shine in the necklace, it will shine in the ornament; let it endure the furnace, however, so that purged of its impurities it may come to the light. This furnace: there is chaff, there is gold, there is fire; the goldsmith blows upon it; in the furnace the chaff burns and the gold is purified; that is turned to ashes, from its impurities this is stripped. The furnace is the world, the chaff the wicked, the gold the just, the fire is tribulation, the goldsmith is God. What the goldsmith wills, therefore, I do; the craftsman places me there, I endure; I am commanded therefore to endure, He knows how to purify. Let the chaff burn to set me on fire and as it were to consume me; it is turned to ash, I am free from impurities. Why? Because my soul will be subject to God: for from Him is my patience."
Tribulation therefore is a furnace that tests men; for the strong and holy emerge from it constant and shining like gold; but the fainthearted remain like dross. Memorable is what Victor of Utica writes, book I, Persecution of the Vandals: that Gaiseric the Arian king, when he had condemned to death a distinguished hero of faith named Masculan, secretly ordered that if at the moment of death he should deny the faith, he should be killed; but if he persisted in the faith, he should be released: "For if you kill him with the sword, he said, the Romans will proclaim him a martyr."
hear Victor: "He (Masculan), remaining strong and unconquered, the king ordered him to undergo the death sentence; yet the crafty one secretly instructed that if at that hour he should fear the blow of the brandished sword, they should rather kill him, lest he make a glorious martyr; but if they saw him strong in confession, they should hold back the sword. But he, made strong like an immovable pillar with Christ strengthening him, returned glorious. And if the envious enemy did not wish to make a martyr, yet he was unable to violate our confessor." How foolish and unhappy Masculan would have been had he fallen from the faith at death! For he would have lost both body and soul, and from the present death would have passed to the eternal; but now, remaining constant in the faith, he preserved both for both lives, and won eternal glory both in heaven and on earth.
Victor adds the trial of Saturus, steward of the house of King Huneric, who, when most fiercely tempted to deny the faith both by the royal ministers and by his wife, intrepidly responded: "You speak like one of the foolish women; I would be afraid, wife, if the bitter sweetness of this life were the only thing. You serve, O spouse, by the devil's artifice. If you loved your husband, you would never drag your own husband to the second death. Let them take away the children, separate the wife, seize the property; secure in the promises of my Lord I will hold fast to His words, Luke xiv, 26: If anyone has not left wife, children, fields, or house, he cannot be my disciple. What more? When his wife departed with their children, rejected, Saturus was strengthened for the crown; he was examined, stripped, ground down with punishments, dismissed as a beggar. Access to go out was forbidden him; they took everything from him, yet the robe of baptism they were unable to take away."
The same author, book III, relates that Huneric craftily offered this oath to the Catholics: Swear, he said, that you desire my son Hilderic to succeed me in the kingdom, and I will restore you to your churches. The wiser ones, suspecting the deceit, refused to swear, saying that swearing was forbidden them in the Gospel, Matthew v, 34: the simpler ones swore. Then the king said to these: Go into exile, because you have sworn against the Gospel. Likewise to those who did not swear he said: Because you do not desire the kingdom of my son, therefore you refused to swear; for which reason I command you to be banished to Corsica. The demand of this oath was therefore serpentine and fox-like; and horned on both sides, so as to certainly pierce and destroy all the orthodox.
Mystically, Philo of Carpathus in his commentary on the Song of Songs, volume I of the Library of the Holy Fathers, page 664, takes the gold as the glory of divinity and happiness: "As gold in the furnace He proved them, etc. They are compared to gold, he says, on account of the testing of their faith, and the most firm proof of their sufferings and temptations: for in each of these and in the individual souls of the elect, gold shines forth, as He shows them the contemplation of the power of His divinity, from which, while the beauty of heavenly joys is shown a little, it is as if there were a golden couch for the elect, upon which, contemplating even in this mortal light, they may refresh themselves and rest."
AND AS A VICTIM OF A HOLOCAUST HE RECEIVED THEM.
The Greek has 'as a holocaust of sacrifice.' St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, chapter xii, and Lucifer of Cagliari, Apology for St. Athanasius, read 'as a holocaust victim.' Vatablus: 'He received it as a complete sacrifice.' Anastasius of Nicaea, Question IX on Sacred Scripture, reads 'and as an offering of sacrifice.' All the just who patiently endure adversities out of love of God are His holocausts, but especially the martyrs, who offer themselves entirely to God as a holocaust.
The sacrifice or victim of the Jews was threefold, as stated in Leviticus I, 2 and 3: namely, the sin offering, the peace offering, which was offered for the peace and salvation of someone, and the holocaust, which was entirely burned to God: for this is what the Greek holokarpoma signifies, whereas from the other sacrifices only the fat and blood were given to God, while the rest went to the priest and to the laypeople offering the sacrifice. Therefore the penitent are like a sin offering, because they offer to God the mortification of the flesh for their sin; the innocent are like a peace offering, because they consecrate to God the purity of their mind; but the martyrs are like a holocaust, because they dedicate to God through martyrdom both the mortification of the flesh, and the purity of the mind, and their life, and everything they have.
Whence Themistius, quoted by Stobaeus, sermon 120, says these three things are close and cognate: namely, teleutai, that is 'to die,' and teletai, that is 'sacrifices,' and teleisthai, that is 'to be initiated into sacred rites.' This holocaust of martyrdom St. Ignatius sought for himself; whence, in his epistle to the Tarsians, he openly and ardently declares: "I am prepared for fire, for beasts, for swords, for the cross, only that I may see Christ my Savior and my God, who died for me." And in his epistle to the Romans: "If the beasts will not devour me, I will compel them, I will urge them. Pardon me: I know what is good for me."
St. Ambrose in many more words in the same place testifies to the same ardor, in the Exhortation to Virgins: "How good the Lord is, he says, for whom even injuries are sweet and death is welcome! And well may it be welcome, since it acquires immortality." Blessed Peter Damian, sermon On St. Peter the Apostle: "He loves strongly who, when it is necessary, exposes body and soul to torments for the faith of the Savior. This is the fruit of the work, the consummation of the labor, the proof of love," etc.
In a similar way, mystical martyrs, equally holocausts, are the religious, who devote themselves entirely to God: namely their external goods through the vow of poverty, their body through the vow of chastity, their soul and will through the vow of obedience, as St. Thomas beautifully shows, II-II, Question 188, article 7, and our Hieronymus Platus, book II, On the Good of the Religious State, chapters xiii and xv.
Furthermore, all the faithful are sacrifices and holocausts of God, if they refer everything to His law and honor: for, as St. Augustine says, book X, On the City of God, chapter vi: "When we chastise our body through temperance, if we do this as we ought for the sake of God, so that we do not present our members as weapons of iniquity to sin, but as weapons of justice to God, it is a sacrifice. The Apostle, exhorting to this, says, Romans xii, 1: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. If therefore the body, which the soul uses as an inferior instrument, as a servant or as a tool, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice: how much more the soul itself, when it refers itself to God, so that, kindled by the fire of His love, it may lose the form of worldly concupiscence, and, being subject to Him as to an unchangeable form, it may be reformed; hence, pleasing to Him because of what it has received from His beauty, it becomes a sacrifice.
For what does the Apostle add consequently, verse 2: And be not conformed, he says, to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." See St. Gregory, homily 22 on Ezekiel, where he teaches that the faithful person is the temple of God, the mind and heart are the altar, and the victim is the body: for the faithful person through three kinds of good works dedicates all his possessions to God, namely through almsgiving he offers his external goods, through fasting he offers his body, through prayer and devotion he offers his soul and will. So St. Thomas, II-II, Question 85, article 3, reply to 7. Wherefore those who thus work the things of God, yet do not leave behind certain things of the world, offer God a sacrifice indeed, but not a holocaust, says St. Gregory, homily 12 on Ezekiel.
Note that for 'holocaust' the Greek has holokarpoma, which our Castro thinks signifies an offering of fruits, as when a sheaf of grain was burned to God on the second day of the Passover, while a holocaust is of animals, namely oxen, sheep, and doves, which were entirely burned to God. But the sacrifice of these animals too, that is, the holocaust, is called holokarpoma by the Septuagint, as is clear from Leviticus I and following. Therefore holokarpoma is the same as 'holocaust,' so called because the whole thing passed through fire and smoke into karpon, that is fruit, use, and worship of God, as I said on Leviticus I.
AND IN TIME THERE SHALL BE REGARD HAD TO THEM.
And, that is 'therefore,' as if to say: Because the just, especially the martyrs, have proved their constancy in torments to God, like gold in the furnace, and have offered themselves to God as a holocaust, therefore there shall be regard for them, in Greek episkope, that is visitation, inspection, observation, regard; that is, God will visit them with His benevolence, rewarding them with the crown of glory due to martyrdom, and especially adorning their bodies, which endured such atrocious torments, with the endowments of immortality, which he soon specifies. Hence the Greek connects this maxim with the following and reads thus: 'in the time of their visitation they shall shine,' as if to say: On the day of judgment, when God will visit and examine the deeds of each person, then He will endow the patient and the martyrs with wondrous glory, so that they may shine like stars in heaven; then therefore God will regard those whom the world now despises.
In a similar phrase, verse 13, it is said of the virgin or celibate: "She shall have fruit in the visitation of holy souls;" and chapter iv, verse 15: "And regard for His elect." Regard therefore here means retribution, reward, the prize which in view and regard of good works, especially patience, is given to the just and to the martyrs; whence some translate 'in the time of their preferment they shall shine.' Hence, explaining further, he adds: "They shall judge nations and rule over peoples."
Again, this visitation and regard can be referred to the present life: as if to say, for a time the just are hidden and oppressed; but en kairo, that is when the opportune time comes, God will cause them to be publicly seen and celebrated: so He brought it about that the fortitude and sanctity of the martyrs, shining forth in their torments, was celebrated throughout the whole world, indeed even by the very pagans and torturers.
Whence again some explain it thus: in the time of visitation, that is of examination, temptation, patience, and their martyrdom, God will cause the patient and constant to shine with great virtue, praise, and the glory of their fortitude.
7. THE JUST SHALL SHINE, AND SHALL RUN TO AND FRO LIKE SPARKS AMONG THE REEDS.
"They shall shine" like stars, indeed "like the sun in the kingdom of their Father," as Christ, alluding to this, explains and testifies, Matthew xiii, 43: for the stars in heaven are like sparks among the reeds, as regards their similar splendor, color, multitude, beauty, efficacy, glory, variety, and swiftness. Hence that saying of the Poet, Aeneid II, verse 144: "You eternal fires," that is, you eternal stars; see the commentary on Daniel xii, 3, and I Corinthians xv, 41. In the Greek, 'they shall shine' is connected with the preceding sentence, in this manner: In the time of their visitation, or regard, they shall shine.
Hence St. Athanasius, Apology for His Flight, explains these words of the present life, not the future, and refers them to the just who flee persecution, who by this flight shone more brightly like sparks, and taught the peoples, and obtained a notable distinction and glory of fortitude, as he himself obtained, as their chief, through his continuous flight of 46 years.
Following him, our Castro explains these and the following words thus, as if to say: In the time when there shall be regard, or visitation of them, that is when they shall be tested by tribulation, like gold in fire, they shall shine, becoming brighter, as gold drawn from the fire gleams: for their virtue and supreme constancy shines forth, and becomes celebrated and admirable to all; and just as sparks catch chaff and easily run among reeds, so they among the wicked, the light-minded, and the inconstant lift up their head, and touch by the envy their excellence arouses, and impose silence upon them: so they shall condemn by their virtue the weakness of the nations, and by their constancy the fickleness of those who torture them, and they shall lift their head above all peoples, as much as a city set on a mountain stands out, and a lamp placed on a lampstand. They shall therefore be kings of the peoples, and the Lord shall be their king. That this sense is true he proves by experience with these words that follow: "For those who trust in Him shall understand," and experience this truth. So he says.
But others more fittingly and genuinely refer these and the following words to the future life and heavenly glory, not to the present: for this is clearly what the words signify, and this is also entirely demanded by what he says in verse 2: "In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure was taken for affliction, and their going from us, for destruction; but they
are in peace." For these words cannot be taken except of the dead and the blessed; so judge Clement of Alexandria, book IV of the Stromata, chapter vi, St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, chapter xii, St. Bonaventure, Lyranus, Dionysius, Francis Suarez, III part, volume II, disputation 48, section i and following, and many others, who hold that by the word 'they shall shine' the endowment of clarity is signified; by the word 'they shall run to and fro,' the endowment of agility; which will be in the bodies of the blessed, especially of the martyrs, who by the darkness of their prisons merited this clarity, and by their chains this agility.
Moreover St. Bonaventure, in IV Sentences, distinction 49, part II, article 2, question i, holds that the four endowments of the glorified body are signified by these words, where it is said: The just shall shine, and like sparks among the reeds they shall run to and fro: "For in shining, he says, is signified clarity; in justice, impassibility, because justice is perpetual and immortal; in the spark, subtility; in the running to and fro, agility." He then adds subtly that the number of these four endowments can be derived from a twofold cause, namely formal and material: first, from the formal, because, he says, since in our body there is a twofold nature and form, namely the elementary, which now dominates, and the celestial, which is the nature of light, which will be like the formal and completive principle of the glorified body, this will dominate in the resurrection. Therefore, because light has these four properties, as is evident in a ray of light, namely clarity, because it illuminates; impassibility, because nothing corrupts it; agility, because it goes instantaneously; penetrability, because it passes through transparent bodies without corrupting them: so also the glorified body, in which the nature of light dominates, has four endowments.
In the second way it is taken according to the material cause thus: Our body is composed of four elements, and because the elements are imperfect, it has from them a fourfold deficiency: from water, which is the moist and passible element, it has passibility and corruption, whence watery moisture corrupts the body; from earth it has darkness, because earth is an opaque element; from fire, animality, because heat continually consumes, and therefore continually needs the nourishment of food; from air it has weakness, for air is most easily changed and yields to anything that pushes it. Since therefore these four defects must be removed by their opposite goods for the body to be made perfect with complete perfection, there are accordingly four endowments: against corruption, impassibility; against darkness, clarity; against animality, spirituality, that is agility; against weakness, strength or penetrability, that is subtility. And this last derivation is the most fitting of all, because it corresponds to both authority and reason: to the authority of the Apostle, for so the Apostle takes it, I Corinthians xv, 42: "It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption" -- there is impassibility; "it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory" -- there is clarity; "it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power" -- there is penetrability, that is subtility; "it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body" -- there is agility. Whence the Apostle derives the endowments by comparison with those four defects which they remove. Similarly St. Augustine, On the City of God, book XXII, chapter xix: "Every deformity, he says, shall be absent from our bodies, every slowness, every weakness, every corruption: every deformity through clarity, every slowness through agility, every weakness through subtility or penetrability, every corruption through impassibility." Thus far St. Bonaventure.
The word 'they shall shine' can also be referred to the posthumous fame of the martyrs, by which glory, miracles, feasts, temples, images, worship, and invocation they shine on earth as well as in heaven: "for great, says St. Cyprian, On the Praise of Martyrdom, is the brightness, to adorn the life of eternal salvation with the honor of suffering; great the sublimity, before the face of the Lord and in the sight of Christ, not to shrink from human power's torments, but to despise them. So Daniel conquered the king's threats and the rage of roaring lions by the constancy of his faith."
Finally, for 'they shall shine,' the Greek has analampsousi, that is 'they shall gleam from above,' they shall be illuminated from on high with wondrous brightness, they shall be set aflame with splendor received from heaven, and like the most brilliant lamps they shall radiate: because, namely, from Christ and Christ's glory, like the sun illuminating from above, the martyrs shall draw and seize the rays and splendors of their own brightness; for ana in composition signifies 're-' or 'upward.'
LIKE SPARKS AMONG THE REEDS THEY SHALL RUN TO AND FRO.
The Arabic: 'the just shall shine like the course of sparks among the reeds.' The Greek has en kalame, that is 'in stubble,' for this throws off more frequent sparks than a reed; whence that passage of Ovid, Fasti IV:
And soon through the blazing heaps of ruling stubble,
You shall leap your nimble limbs with swift foot.
The sense is, as if to say: Just as dry stubble or reeds, caught by fire, immediately break into sparks and fly away most swiftly, and flash in every direction; so likewise the radiant bodies of the just and the martyrs, like certain lightning bolts, shall most nimbly run to and fro this way and that at will, and like sparks they shall flash forth and fly.
Tropologically, St. Jerome (or whoever the author is: for the style differs from the style of St. Jerome), epistle 7, On the Perfect Man, volume IX: "The reed-bed, he says, represents the faithless, among whom the just in this world do not stop, nor fix their foot and mind, but as pilgrims yearning for heaven they shall run to and fro. What does it mean, he says, that compared to the stars they shall move through the reed-beds, and in the form of starry splendor they shall pass through the most wretched roots of the earth, when there is such incongruity in mixing either splendors with reed-beds, or reed-beds with splendors?" And he answers: "Understand that through the images of the reed-bed, faithless and unbelieving men are represented, and their bodies, pleasing on the surface but inwardly void of virtues, which when first the spirit of vani-
ty has inflated them, they hear the hissings of the serpent, and obey, as the offspring of vipers, producing healthy births. 'Sparks,' he says, 'in the reed-bed': the saints therefore are among those who penetrate, because not all flesh is the same flesh. 'In the reed-bed,' he says, that is, bodies empty of light and destined to burn with alien fires, for whom the future brightness of the saints will be a punishment: because God is a consuming fire, and the just shall come in the image of the Deity."
And St. Gregory, XXXIII Moralia, chapter iii: "He calls the reed-bed, he says, the life of worldly people, who in the manner of reeds through temporal glory seem outwardly to advance to heights, but inwardly they are emptied of the solidity of truth." Again, St. Bonaventure, Hugh, and Isidore of Pelusium, book I, epistle 5: The wicked person, they say, is a reed, because the reed grows in mud, yields to the wind, is hollow, unstable, noisy, light, cheap, weak, and fit for fire; such precisely is the wicked person. Among the wicked therefore the just run to and fro like sparks, on account of their subtility, smallness, agility, proceeding from a great fire, and great kindling of other things (namely their neighbors), either by converting them through charity, or by setting them ablaze through the zeal of justice with the shame of confusion (and the pain of hell), when together with Christ the sentence of damnation is thundered, which will blast and strike them like chaff and reeds, like a hurled thunderbolt. So the apostles, like sparks running through the reed-beds, indeed the thorn-thickets, of all the nations, set them all ablaze with the fire of divine love.
8. THEY SHALL JUDGE NATIONS, AND RULE OVER PEOPLES.
All the just at the universal judgment shall judge the faithless nations and the wicked peoples with a judgment not properly so called, but metaphorical and comparative: because, namely, by the example of their life and virtues they shall silently condemn the criminal life of the wicked, which they shall also reproach with a living voice and declare worthy of hell. So Christ says, Luke xi, 31: "The queen of the south shall rise in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, more than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, more than Jonah is here."
For this reason many of the Fathers understood the judgment of the saints in this way, as St. Jerome on Isaiah chapter l: "One judges, he says, with the Lord not by the authority of a ruler, but by comparison of virtues, just as the apostles also judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba judge the people of the Jews." Whence St. Augustine, piously and movingly, in the Meditations, chapter iv: "Before as many judges, he says, I shall stand helpless as have preceded me in good works; by as many accusers shall I be confounded as have given me examples of good living; by as many witnesses shall I be convicted as have admonished me with profitable words and gave themselves to be imitated by their just deeds."
But the apostles, and apostolic and religious men, especially the martyrs, who left all things for Christ, and even offered their life as a holocaust for Him, shall properly judge at the judgment as assessors of Christ, approving and confirming His sentence: for this is what Christ promises them, saying Matthew xix, 28: "Amen, I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the seat of His majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
Wherefore at the judgment the martyrs shall judge and condemn their former kings and judges, by whom they were unjustly judged and killed: for example, the Maccabees shall judge Antiochus, Sts. Peter and Paul shall judge Nero, St. Lawrence shall judge Decius and Valerian, St. Sebastian shall judge Diocletian, etc. Whence St. Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, chapter xii: "When therefore, he says, you consider that you are to judge and to reign with Christ, you must exult, and by the joy of future things trample upon present judgments." And Tertullian to the Martyrs, chapter ii: "The judge is awaited, he says, but you are to judge those very judges."
AND THEIR LORD SHALL REIGN FOREVER.
The pronoun 'their' does not refer to 'the Lord,' but to 'shall reign,' as if to say: The Lord God shall reign as theirs, that is, He shall reign over them, or in them, as Vatablus translates. It is a Grecism, for in Greek it is basileusei auton, that is, 'as a king He shall rule over them.' It signifies therefore that the king of the just and of the martyrs will not be Antiochus, Nero, or Decius, as he was once in this life; but God Himself, who shall reign in them through love and through glory, breathing into them and communicating to them all His joy, all His riches, all His kingdom, all His happiness, making them kings of the entire universe, according to that passage, Daniel vii, 27: "The kingdom and power shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High." Therefore then God shall be all in all, I Corinthians xv, 28.
9. THEY THAT TRUST IN HIM SHALL UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH: AND THEY THAT ARE FAITHFUL IN LOVE SHALL REST IN HIM. BECAUSE GRACE AND PEACE ARE FOR HIS ELECT.
The Greek has pepoithotes, which is a past participle, as if to say: Those who had previously trusted in God.
He has celebrated up to now the fortitude of the just in adversities, and the constancy of the martyrs in their torments; now he shows who and what kind of people they are, namely those who trust in God and are faithful in love: by which he also declares by what path and by what means one arrives at that fortitude and constancy, namely by confidence in God and by faithful love toward God. The sense therefore is, as if to say: These are the patient just, who on account of their patience shall shine, and like sparks shall run to and fro, shall judge nations, and shall reign forever with God -- namely those who had previously trusted wholly in God and had placed all their hope in Him: for strengthened from this hope by God (for God hears, consoles, and strengthens those who hope in Him and invoke Him in adversities), they bravely endured every adversity and torment. These therefore, illuminated by God, shall understand the truth of what I have said, namely that the souls of the just do not perish with the body, but are in the hand of God, and are comforted by Him,
corresponds to it, which he explains by adding: "For he who rejects wisdom and discipline is unhappy."
ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY THOUGHT
that is, first, according to the merit of their wicked thoughts and desires, for from these proceed wicked words and wicked deeds, as St. Bonaventure, Lyranus, and Dionysius say. Or second, as if to say: They will be reproved and punished, just as they themselves, with conscience dictating while they sinned, thought, that is, foreboded and presaged; the punishments they feared will actually befall them; they will fall into the evils they dreaded, according to Job 3:25: "For the fear which I feared has come upon me." For a great part of punishment is the foreboding, anguish, dread, and constant terror of it hanging over one's head, as it says in Proverbs 10:24: "What the wicked fears will come upon him, and the desire of the just will be granted."
AND THEY DEPARTED FROM THE LORD
to the devil, like apostate, treacherous, and sacrilegious traitors. Hence the Greek reads, καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου ἀπόσταντες, as if to say: Apostatizing from the Lord and rebelling against Him, because having spurned justice they gave themselves entirely to injustice and wickedness. He speaks especially here and throughout the whole book about tyrants and unjust judges, who, in order to fully indulge their ambition, greed, lust, and tyranny, finally apostatize from the faith and from God, and become heretics or atheists, of whom we have seen many in this age. Hence Cantacuzenus reads, who neglected the Lord; and departed from justice: for, he says, the first thing is that the Lord is neglected, and one withdraws from His glory and worship; then His precepts also come to be despised.
11. FOR HE WHO REJECTS WISDOM AND DISCIPLINE IS UNHAPPY: AND THEIR HOPE IS EMPTY: AND THEIR LABORS ARE WITHOUT FRUIT, AND THEIR WORKS ARE USELESS. — "D
iscipline," in Greek παιδείαν, that is, instruction, education, the chastisement of children, by which the childish frivolity, insolence, and desire of men are reproved and corrected. Hence the rod itself, or the whip, and the flogging itself, is commonly called discipline. Again, all adversities by which God instructs, purges, and perfects the just person are the discipline of God. Hear the Apostle, Hebrews 12:5: "My son, do not neglect the discipline of the Lord, and do not grow weary when you are reproved by Him. For whom the Lord loves, He chastises; and He scourges every son whom He receives. For what son is there whom his father does not correct? Now all discipline in the present indeed seems not to be of joy, but of sorrow; but afterward it will yield the most peaceful fruit of justice to those exercised by it." For, as St. Cyprian says at the beginning of his book On the Discipline and Habit of Virgins, "Discipline is the guardian of hope, the bond of faith, the guide of the way of salvation, the fuel and nourishment of good character, the teacher of virtue; it makes one remain always in Christ and live continually for God, and arrive at the heavenly promises and divine rewards. To follow it is salutary; to oppose and neglect it is deadly."
Discipline, therefore, is the instruction and formation of morals toward all honesty and virtue. He who rejects it (in Greek ἐξουθενών, that is, despising, scorning, making nothing of it, who neglects to learn what he ought to do, or if he knows, does not carry it out in practice) "is unhappy," ταλαίπωρος, that is, wretched, miserable, calamitous, because he will fall into many miseries with God or man as avenger, according to Psalm 2:10: "And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in Him with trembling. Embrace discipline, lest the Lord become angry and you perish from the just way." On the other hand: "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom," as Solomon says and describes at length, Proverbs 3:13 ff., and Sirach 1:19 ff. Wisely St. Leo, Sermon 7 On the Epiphany: "The whole discipline of Christian wisdom consists not in abundance of words, nor in the cleverness of disputing, nor in the desire for praise and glory, but in true and voluntary humility." St. Augustine (or whoever the author is, for the style differs from St. Augustine's style) reads and explains it somewhat differently, in the treatise On the Good of Discipline, chapter 5, where he says: "Behold the Prophet says, Psalm 1:6: He who spurns discipline hates his own soul. And truly as he said, so it is, for he is an enemy and foe of his own soul who, having spurned the warnings of discipline, is occupied with diabolical works. Some say that discipline is established with rather harsh laws. Let those miserable enough speak thus, whom the devil, the author of death, invites to every crime, whose minds insatiable gluttony possesses, over whom drunkenness reigns, whom base lust holds captive, and from whom ungrateful pride never departs. But for those who are zealous to keep faith with honest continence, to serve humility and piety, the burden of discipline is sweet, and the yoke of the Lord is light, which does not weigh down any but the lost or those about to perish."
THEIR HOPE IS EMPTY
of the foolish, that is, of the wicked, since the hope of the wise and just "is full of immortality," as he said in verse 4. The reason a priori is that the wicked person lacks grace and charity, which is the principle and source of all condign merit. Therefore, even if the wicked person prays, fasts, gives alms, etc., he does not through these merit eternal life and heavenly glory. His works therefore, even if otherwise good and meritorious, are as if empty and devoid of reward in him. Again, "their hope is empty" because the riches, glory, and happiness they hope for, they do not attain. Hence "labors without fruit," in Greek ἀνόνητοι, that is, they are without utility and value, indeed harmful and destructive, because they labor and serve sin and the devil, unto their own eternal damnation. Some read ἀνόητοι, that is, the labors of the wicked are foolish, stupid, senseless, because they themselves are senseless and stupid. Hence also "useless works," indeed pernicious, because impious. Hugo, Holcot, Dionysius, and the Gloss incorrectly read "uninhabitable works," and explain it thus: In which God does not dwell, or which are repugnant to the habitation, association, and society of men; or which exclude them from the dwelling of the Church, both militant and triumphant, that is, from heaven. But all these are beside the point, for in Greek it is ἄχρηστα, that is, useless. Therefore both the pious and the wicked labor, but the pious will receive a great reward for a small labor, namely the eternal weight of glory, as the Apostle says, 2 Corinthians 4; but the wicked will receive no reward for a great labor, but an immense punishment, both present and future, namely the fires of hell. How wise, then, are the pious, and how senseless and foolish the wicked!
12. THEIR WIVES ARE SENSELESS (
ἄφρονες, that is, witless, foolish), AND THEIR CHILDREN ARE MOST WICKED (in Greek πονηρά, that is, depraved, worthless, par excellence, that is, most wicked) — as if to say: Among the other lots and punishments of the foolish, that is, the wicked, this is the first: that they have wives and children similar to themselves, namely foolish, that is, depraved, criminal, and impious. For the husband, as head of the household, rubs and instills his foolishness, that is, his vices, into the whole family by word and example, according to the saying: "From a bad crow, a bad egg," and that of Seneca in Hippolytus: "The race returns to its authors, and degenerate blood reproduces the original stock." And that of 4 Esdras 9:17: "As the field is, so also are the seeds; and as the flowers are, so also are the dyes; and as the workman is, so also is the creation; and as the farmer is, so also is the farming." Second, by "senseless" he properly means adulteresses, and consequently by "most wicked children" he means illegitimate and adulterous offspring. As if to say: This is the punishment of the wicked, that since they themselves are unfaithful to God, they likewise find their wives unfaithful and adulterous, who foist and substitute upon the husband as his own the offspring conceived from another man, namely an adulterer. For about adulterers and adulterous offspring the following verses treat, as Jansenius notes. Hence learn that men who violate the faith given to God and live impiously, by God's vengeance bring it about that neither is fidelity rendered to them by their wives, nor honor by their children. The Apostle teaches this, Romans 1:21: "Because," he says, "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, etc. Therefore God gave them over to shameful passions: for their women exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature." Hence among heretics and their preachers there are so many adulteries, fornications, and incests, though hidden. For he who does not keep faith with God, how will he keep it with man? He who believes or teaches that chastity is impossible to observe, how will he observe it, indeed how will he believe it possible for himself?
Morally, let husbands learn here that if they want to have virtuous and chaste wives and children, they themselves should lead them by the example of virtue and chastity. For the wives will follow this, and God is accustomed to reward the husband's virtue with this fitting reward of his family.
we should find our wives, and they should find us, and if we seek them untouched, let us be untouched ourselves. For this reason that man Job, upright and fearing God, said in chapter 31, verse 9: "If my heart has been deceived by a woman, and if I have lain in wait at the door of my friend, let my wife be the harlot of another, and let others bow down upon her." And Aesop in Planudes likewise admonishes his son Ennus: "Always cling to your wife, lest she wish to try another man." Here also belongs that saying, Hosea 4:14: "I will not punish your brides when they commit adultery, because you yourselves were consorting with harlots," as if, that is, adulterous women are in some way excused on account of their husbands' adulteries. Hence Seneca, Epistle 94 to Lucilius: "He is shameless," he says, "who demands chastity from his wife while he himself is a corrupter of other men's wives." Finally St. Augustine, in the treatise On the Good of Discipline: "If the husband is the head," he says, "he ought to live better and go before his wife in all his deeds, so that she may imitate her husband." For, as Pacatus says in his Panegyric to the Emperor Theodosius: "Correction that is commanded exasperates; but it is most gently commanded by example."
For if the husband is depraved and unchaste, he will have a depraved and unchaste wife and children. Again, if the mother is immodest, the daughter will learn immodesty from her. We commonly see this happen, even though sometimes the contrary occurs through the extraordinary providence of God. Hence St. Ambrose, in Book III On Virgins, speaking of Herodias: "What," he says, "can the daughter learn from an adulterous mother, except the loss of modesty?" And therefore Ezekiel the prophet, chapter 16, verse 44: "As the mother," he says, "so also is her daughter." And to this point the Gloss on the chapter Si quis cum militibus, Question VI, 1, adduces the popular verse: "The daughter lightly follows her mother's path." Whence also Virgil in the Bucolics, Eclogue 1: "So I knew puppies to resemble their parents, and kids their mothers." On whose authority Columella, Book 11 of Rural Economy: "There is no doubt," he says, "that nature itself has willed offspring to be similar to the mother." And he writes certain other things on this point, extending it even to vineyards. Diogenes the Cynic, as Laertius attests, when he saw a drunkard in the forum, said: "His father was a drunkard." Horace, Book IV of the Odes, ode 24, sings thus: "A great dowry is the virtue of one's parents."
Furthermore, that the wives of adulterers are often adulteresses is evident both from experience and from reason. For a husband's adultery makes his wife immodest: partly because he gives her an example of lust (for the husband's morals are a mirror for the wife to imitate); partly because he suggests to her a way of avenging herself. For the wife, seeing that the fidelity pledged to her by her husband is not kept, likewise does not keep hers to him, and in order to avenge the injury inflicted on her through adultery, she inflicts a similar injury through adultery. Ovid, in the Art of Love, gives the example of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra: "While Atrides was content with one," he says, "she too was chaste; she was made wicked by her husband's vice." And shortly after: "And Tyndaris avenged her wickedly sinning husband."
Wherefore Aristotle, Book I of the Economics, chapter 4: "First," he says, "let the laws of a husband toward his wife be such that injury ceases, and thus he himself will not suffer injury. For the injury of the husband (as he writes a little further on) is intercourse with other women." And as Seneca writes to Lucilius, Epistle 93: "The gravest kind of injury to a wife is to have a mistress." Wherefore Lactantius wisely admonishes the husband, Book VI: "The wife must be taught by the example of continence to conduct herself chastely; for it is unjust to demand what you yourself cannot provide." And shortly after he writes that the wife of one who is occupied with corrupting other men's wives, incited by the example, either thinks she is imitating him or avenging herself. And this is what St. Augustine similarly in the chapter Si dicturi, Question XXXII, 6, was warning: that as they wish-
"For the chosen gift of fidelity will be given to her, and a most acceptable lot in the temple of God," which is given not to married women but to virgins. Therefore, "who knew not the bed in sin" is the same as "who knew not sin (namely adultery, fornication) in bed," that is, in the couch — which applies both to the married woman through conjugal chastity, but more properly to the virgin through virginal chastity. And so he says not "who knew not sin in the bed," but "who knew not the bed in sin," as if to say: The virgin is so far removed from and so abhors the sin of adultery and fornication that she does not even know the bed or couch of intercourse itself, by which one can sin and by which one customarily sins. As if to say: The virgin is ignorant of all intercourse, all coupling.
The plain and full meaning, therefore, is this: Cursed is the generation, that is, both the parents and the adulterous and wicked offspring of the impious, because on the other hand blessed and happy is the generation and stock of the pious. For happy is the undefiled wife, and therefore sterile as to bodily offspring, who is ignorant of absolutely every bed and intercourse by which sin is customary; for she will have abundant fruit in the visitation of holy souls. Here the Wise Man digresses into a censure of lust and a praise of chastity and virginity, because chastity and virginity are the companion, indeed the sister, of wisdom. Hence St. Gregory Nazianzen, as Rufinus attests, appeared to him in a vision in the double form of a woman and a virgin, and when the one turned away from him and averted her face, he heard from them: "Do not be troubled, O young man, by our appearance, for we are sisters and familiar to you; one's name is Wisdom, the other's Chastity; we have come to visit you, because you have prepared for us a pleasant dwelling in your soul." Wherefore the love of wisdom guards chastity, and chastity in turn incites to the study of wisdom. In the past I gave this counsel to many religious, and I still give it: if they wish for purity of soul and the good of religious life,
13. CURSED IS THEIR OFFSPRING, BECAUSE HAPPY IS THE BARREN AND UNDEFILED WOMAN, WHO HAS NOT KNOWN THE BED IN SIN; SHE WILL HAVE FRUIT IN THE VISITATION OF HOLY SOULS. — T
he Syriac reads: cursed is their progeny, because better is the barren woman who is not defiled, who knew not the bed of fall or ruin. The Arabic reads: cursed is their condition, because the barren woman who has no stain is blessed in herself, who knew not the bed in ruin.
He contrasts the offspring of the pious with the offspring of the wicked, as if to say: "Offspring," in Greek γένεσις, that is, generation and progeny — namely sons and daughters — are cursed, that is, wicked and criminal. This is partly because parents transmit their vices of body and likewise of soul to their children in begetting them, for the seed of the parents is infected on both sides. Hence we see that if the parents are subject to kidney stones, gout, epilepsy, drunkenness, lust, or adultery, the children too are liable to the same diseases and vices. It is also because impious parents raise their children impiously and daily set before their children the examples of the vices to which they are subject. For what can a son learn from a parent whom he sees quarreling, swearing, and getting drunk every day, except to quarrel, swear, and get drunk himself? For a father's and household's example is powerful and effective upon the souls of the children; therefore he leaves them heirs of his own vices. On the other hand, "happy is the barren and undefiled (woman) who has not known the bed in sin," that is, who is ignorant of the couch and bed of adultery and fornication, that is, who is free from adultery and fornication. For although she is barren, she will not lack her fruit and offspring at the judgment, when God will visit, judge, regard, and reward chaste and holy souls. He therefore prefers a virtuous and chaste woman, even if barren, to a wicked and unchaste one, even if fertile and abounding in children, because
the former would beget, raise, and form impious offspring; while the latter will obtain an illustrious reward for her chastity from God. Hence Budaeus in his commentary on the Pandects translates: "Execrable is their offspring, since blessed is the barren woman not defiled." For he does not call every barren woman blessed, says Jansenius, but one who is undefiled, just as in the following verse he does not call every eunuch blessed, but him who has not wrought iniquity and has not thought wicked things against God. Hence also St. Jerome, on Isaiah chapter 56 and Hosea chapter 9, reads: "Blessed is the barren woman, immaculate, who has not known the bed in sin, or the couch in transgression," namely in adultery, for this on account of its enormity is called antonomastically "the sin" or "the transgression." Vatablus translates: "Indeed blessed is the barren uncontaminated woman, who has not known intercourse in crime; she will receive fruit in the examination of the cause of souls."
By "barren woman" some understand a married woman who preserves conjugal chastity and the immaculate bed in matrimony. So Hugh and St. Thomas, and our author a Castro, who aptly and by way of contrast explains it thus: Cursed is the offspring, that is, the children of the wicked, as born from adultery. As if to say: Unhappy is that wife who, because she does not bear children from her own husband, herself also commits the crime of defiling her husband's bed, and begets abominable children. Far happier is the childless woman who, content with her lack of children, has not suffered to stain or defile her bed with sin — namely because she did not know the bed or couch in sin, standing for "she did not commit sin in the bed," by hysteron proteron, that is, illicit intercourse. For she preferred God to children.
Better, however, and more fully and perfectly, others understand by "the barren undefiled woman" the virgin. For she alone is undefiled, that is, uncorrupted, not wilted, who preserves the untouched flower of virginity. For shortly after, in chapter 4, he digresses into praises of virginity, since a married woman in the Old Testament, if she were barren, was considered not so much blessed as cursed, as lacking the common gift of that age, namely fertility. So the Church applies this passage to the virgin in the Office for the Common of Virgins, as does St. Jerome in the place already cited, and St. Ambrose, Book I On Virgins, where he reads: "Better is barrenness with virtue." So also Holcot, Dionysius, and our Gabriel Vasquez, whom hear: "Not to know the bed in sin" does not mean not to violate the bed through adultery, but the same as being without a wife, with whom one could lie in the same bed, because one is a eunuch or barren, and yet to be full of good works. Just as conversely, the fertile man who has children, even from a legitimate marriage bed, yet does not keep the law of God, is said to know the bed in sin, that is, to know the bed and have the fruit of marriage, and at the same time to sin against the law of God. So Vasquez, Part III, volume II, disputation 124, number 47. The same is evident from the following verse, where what he said here about the woman, he says about the man, and calls him a eunuch, who can be nothing other than a virgin. The same is demanded by the eminent reward promised to both in verse 14.
a perfect and flourishing example of chastity; and in this I am not troubled that I have not known carnal pleasure, but rather I delight in being bound by inviolable purity, knowing I will never know it. Therefore let your knowledge, or rather concupiscence, be of good and evil, by which momentary sweetness of intercourse you rage with the madness of lust and lose life and being for eternity." Having said this, they departed from each other.
SHE WILL HAVE FRUIT IN THE VISITATION (
in Greek again it is ἐν ἐπισκοπῇ, that is, in visitation, inquiry, examination, regard) OF HOLY SOULS — that is, when the merits of each will be visited, judged, and rewarded, as St. Jerome reads and explains, on Isaiah chapter 56. The word "holy" is not in the Greek, but is understood, for souls will not be rewarded unless they are holy. Therefore the Vulgate added this to narrow the meaning of "visitation," so as to signify the rewarding of holiness. The meaning therefore is: Chaste women and virgins, even though they are barren, that is, lack offspring, will nevertheless have their fruit, that is, their reward in the future age, namely on the day of judgment, when Christ will visit, that is, examine, judge, and crown all words and deeds. Second, with Peter Nannius, by "fruit" can be understood offspring, for this reward aptly corresponds to barrenness, as if to say: The virgin, even though she is barren and does not beget bodily children, will nevertheless not lack her spiritual offspring — offspring, I say, of the virtues flowing from chastity, in the way that the offspring of chastity is prayer, meditation, abstinence, almsgiving, etc., and the glory and aureole corresponding to these in heaven. Again, the offspring of virgins are other saints whom virgins by their word and example have impelled to holiness and virginity; for these are children of the spirit, not of the flesh. In which expression St. Ambrose, in the book On the Ark and Noah, chapter 4: "The race of a proven man," he says, "is the lineage of virtue; and just as the human race consists of humans, so the race of souls consists of virtues." He alludes to Isaiah 56:3: "And let not the eunuch say: Behold, I am a dry tree, etc. I will give them in my house and within my walls a place, and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, which shall not perish." On which I treated at length there; therefore I will add nothing more here.
Note here that before Christ, in the Old Testament, there already existed the praise and evangelical counsel of celibacy and virginity. For even though these things can be understood prophetically of the New Testament, where they are seen to be most truly fulfilled, nevertheless the Wise Man speaks generally about all the chaste, even of his own age, as is evident. Hence St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians, records that in the Old Testament, Elijah, Elisha, Joshua, Jeremiah, Melchizedek, and John the Baptist were virgins; the sons of the prophets, frequently mentioned in the books of Kings, were also virgins. St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Poem on Virginity, gives these magnificent praises:
"Virginity is a thing admirable in every age.
The love of virginity lifts minds to the stars."
"The first virgin is the Most Holy Trinity."
"The first Trinity is a virgin.
Virginity is the illustrious portion of the great Christ.
Virginity is the most ready path to heaven,
Clinging to the wise counsels of God.
Virginity (of Daniel) was able to lull the tawny lions to sleep.
Virginity is the life of the Angels.
Virginity is adorned with Christ as spouse."
they should introduce into it, together with piety, the study of letters, especially of theology and Sacred Scripture. For through this, first, idleness is removed, which is the cause of all evil; second, the mind is elevated from the flesh and carnal pleasures to the knowledge and taste of divine things; third, one becomes learned, so as to be able to teach others and instruct them toward perfection. Wherefore experience confirms that nothing so reforms religious life and monastic discipline as the study of letters joined with piety. Indeed, in our Society many marvel that these three seemingly contradictory things are joined together: such great humility with such great learning, such great obedience with such great prudence, such great chastity with such great youth. But the cause, after God's calling and grace, is the constant study of wisdom: for we are always learning and teaching, which brings it about that we are chaste, and either do not feel the temptations of the flesh or overcome them through God's grace, according to that saying of St. Jerome: "Love the knowledge of the Scriptures, and you will not love the vices of the flesh." Let students of wisdom only take care, above all, to study the knowledge of God and of themselves,
so that they may revere God most highly and despise themselves most deeply. For otherwise, "knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up," as the Apostle says.
The truth of this saying is represented by Cyril, Book IV of the Moral Apologues, chapter 7, through the remarkable apologue of the phoenix and the viper, sprinkled with golden maxims like gems: "The viper," he says, "finding the phoenix reclining alone, greeted her and said: Why do you sit alone? Where is the friendly company of your kind? She replied: Indeed, I am alone in my kind, nor is there any distinction of sex in me; I am but one and unique in the world. Hearing this, the viper said with great wonder: Was nature so illiberal only to you, when for all other creatures there is the sweetest joy of generation and the most welcome blessing of offspring? What good is this beauty to you, since you are deprived of the sweetness of conjugal life and the pleasure of union? Surely if you are to die, you will wholly perish; and if you are immortal, you will be eternally sad. Why say more? In this chastity of yours, with eyes shut and blocked, you will never perceive or know what is evil and what is good. To this the phoenix, not unaware of the disgust of carnal pleasures and not ignorant of the joy of purity, replied without the least disturbance: There is the supreme and joyful company where there is the intimate unity of the whole species. Therefore, since I am unique in my kind and likened to the heavenly beings, I rejoice most intensely; I exult in being whole and not partial. For the whole reality, the whole power, is in me alone; and all the goodness of my kind is manifest. And if I do not enjoy the charm of generation, neither do gold, sapphire, star, orb, and spirit generate, nor do they therefore consider themselves less precious. For nature, which has been elongated from the first source of goodness through dissimilarity and therefore could not always remain in its own unity, is consoled by the division of successive generation — but why not also by its toil and torment? For although the offspring is conceived in one instantaneous pleasure, it is nurtured with loathing, carried with labor, guarded with fear, born with pain, brought forth with peril, fed with stench, raised in servitude, loved with anxiety, and lost in an instant with the greatest tribulation. Perhaps you alone may rejoice in generation; you will learn by experience: for you will conceive with pleasure but give birth lethally; when you have nurtured your offspring, then in losing yourself for its sake you will lose it too. And so you prepare for yourself, dear one, the food of death. Tell me, what grace does the hen have who nurtures hatched chicks with such a rush of love? Is she not
disregarded by them once they have grown up?" From which, congratulating herself and those like her on their chastity, she concludes: "This therefore is my joy: to generate myself; my consolation is to nurture myself, while without division and staining, by purifying fire, I generate myself. And when I fail, weighed down by old age, I rise again renewed, and so I more truly live forever. For the ashes of my dissolution are the life-giving seed of new life. Do not say that I have corrupted or purified nature in vain, since I am a gem-"
would overcome the love of children and the reproach that at that time arose against the barren. For this is shown by what he says: "Happy is the barren woman, immaculate, who knew not the bed in sin," and happy is the eunuch, "who has not wrought iniquity." But unhappy are the wicked, who beget children from adultery, for such children will be profane and will be destroyed as born from an unlawful bed. Therefore he speaks about such eunuchs here. For although "eunuch" properly means one who cannot be a husband, being impotent for conjugal intercourse, it can be extended to the childless man who cannot beget children for another reason. All these things aim at preferring the lack of children with virtue over an abundance of children with vice. Hence in the next chapter, verse 1, the Greek reads: "It is better to be without children with virtue."
14. AND THE EUNUCH (in Greek, eunuch) WHO HAS NOT WROUGHT INIQUITY WITH HIS HANDS, NOR THOUGHT MOST WICKED THINGS AGAINST GOD (repeat from the preceding verse: is happy; he gives the reason): FOR THE CHOSEN GIFT OF FIDELITY WILL BE GIVEN TO HIM. — He praised the virgin woman; here he equally praises the virgin man, and pairs and equates him with the virgin woman, as if to say: Just as I said that the barren and undefiled woman, that is, the virgin, is happy, so likewise I declare that the virgin man is happy — namely, he who through a resolution or vow of chastity, as if a eunuch, has castrated himself for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, according to Christ's counsel, Matthew 19:12 — that is, he who out of love for purity has forbidden himself all use of lust, and therefore "has not wrought iniquity with his hands," namely pollution, immodest touches, and other sins, both of lust and of other vices; "nor has he thought most wicked things against God," in Greek πονηρά, that is, evil and depraved things. As if to say: He who has sinned against God neither through acts of the hands nor through wicked thoughts of the mind; who has restrained his hands from forbidden work and his mind from evil thought, especially carnal thought (for through this one often sins even among the continent, through the interior lingering pleasure of lust, even if the external act is absent, indeed is held in horror); rather, with his hands he has done many good works, and with his mind he has thought and resolved many pious things. This is litotes, for virgins, being free from the burdens of marriage, devote themselves entirely to God and to pious thoughts and works, and therefore-
FOR THE CHOSEN GIFT OF FIDELITY WILL BE GIVEN TO HIM, AND A MOST ACCEPTABLE LOT IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. — I
n Greek: for the chosen grace of fidelity will be given, and a more acceptable, more pleasant, or more agreeable lot in the temple of the Lord; or, as St. Jerome reads on Isaiah 56, delightful. In Greek it is θυμηρέστερος, that is, more pleasing to the soul, from θυμῷ ἀρέσκω, that is, I please the soul. Some read θυμηδέστερος, that is, more delightful to the soul, from θυμὸν ἥδω, that is, I delight the soul. But the meaning comes to the same thing.
You may ask, what chosen gift of fidelity is here promised to the voluntary eunuch, that is, to the virgin? First, Lyranus understands the gift of fidelity common to all the elect. Second, St. Bonaventure and Vatablus understand faith, not just any faith, but efficacious and eminent faith, which beatifies in hope though not yet in reality, and is given by God's election, and makes men perfect. Third, Cantacuzenus understands placement at the right hand of Christ on the day of judgment, for this is the proper and outstanding gift of the elect. Fourth, Dionysius understands the gift of interior purity and inward progress. Fifth, more plainly and genuinely our author a Castro explains it, as if to say:
to be secure and blessed for eternity, so that in heavenly glory they may shine like suns and rule like kings over unfaithful and impious peoples. Again, the just who are steadfast, enduring every tribulation — these are those who are faithful in the love and charity of God. For these will rest in Him, in Greek προσμενοῦσιν αὐτῷ, that is, they will remain with Him, that is, they will firmly adhere to Him in this life and obey His worship and law. Hence one of them said, Romans 8:35:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
He adds the reason: "Because there is a gift and peace for God's elect." So also St. Augustine reads in the Speculum, and the Vatican Codex, as if to say: The just are so trusting in God and so loving of God, and therefore so steadfast in adversities, because they know that God never abandons His elect friends, but is present to them and helps them, and therefore communicates to them His gift of manifold grace and virtue, and His peace, that is, every good, and especially eternal rest in heaven, according to Romans 8:29: "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?"
Furthermore, the Greek text now reads differently and adds some things: "Because," they say, "grace and mercy are upon His saints, and His visitation, or regard, upon His elect." These words more clearly express the meaning already given, as if to say: God gives to His saints the grace of patience and constancy in this life, and glory to His elect in the future. Moreover, these words are found in the Vulgate at the next chapter, verse 15, and from there they seem to have been transferred here into the Greek, as Jansenius astutely observes.
10. BUT THE WICKED, ACCORDING TO WHAT THEY THOUGHT, WILL HAVE REPROOF; THEY WHO NEGLECTED THE JUST ONE AND DEPARTED FROM THE LORD. — H
e transitions from the just to the wicked, and by antithesis compares, contrasts, and subordinates the lot of the latter to the lot of the former: just as the lot of the former is most happy, so the lot of the latter is most unhappy, even in this life. The meaning therefore is: Just as the pious will receive glory according to their thoughts and sufferings of patience, so the wicked will receive reproof, in Greek ἐπιτιμίαν, that is, a fine and punishment. Vatablus translates: they will be fined; others: they will be punished, according to their thoughts and persecutions of injustice and wickedness, by which they despoiled, harassed, and killed the pious. Hence, explaining further, he adds: "Who neglected the just one," that is, treated him as worthless and despised, heaping upon him every insult and evil. This is litotes. Or "they neglected the just" in the neuter gender, that is, they violated justice, trampled underfoot every right and law, and this-
Mary chose for herself, which shall not be taken from her." The chosen grace of virgins, therefore, is the angelic life and conversation, in which, free and unburdened by care for spouses, children, and servants, they lead a quiet life in the service and worship of God, where they frequently experience the multitude of the Lord's sweetness, the delights of charity, the glory of conscience, the peace and joy of the spirit — which is the unction that teaches about all things, and the hidden manna, which no one knows except the one who receives it, according to the saying of the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 7:34: "The virgin thinks about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; but she who is married thinks about the things of the world, how to please her husband." And shortly after he sets forth the fruit and reward of virginity: "That she may have the opportunity of praying to the Lord without impediment," or, as others read, of observing Him, which is indeed a chosen gift, and even an angelic one, which merits the highest praise and glory in heaven. Hence Holcot and Lorinus understand by the chosen gift the particular crown of virgins, which is called the aureole. For this will be given to their fidelity, by which, spurning all earthly husbands, they gave and kept the pledge of chastity to Christ alone as their spouse, according to 2 Corinthians 11:2: "I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." Hence again, fidelity can be properly understood here; for virgins who practice continence their whole life and vigorously fight for chastity by mortifying the constant assaults of the flesh, merit the chosen gift of fidelity, that is, an extraordinary knowledge, love, sense, and taste of heavenly things that we believe by faith, as I have already explained. Finally, the chosen gift of fidelity can be attributed not only to virgins but also to childless married couples, for he opposes and prefers both to adulterers abounding in adulterous offspring. For the chosen gift of marriage and married couples is threefold, namely fidelity, offspring, and the sacrament. Fidelity is the faithfulness and conjugal love that compensates for the lack of children, whence Elkanah said to Anna his barren wife, 1 Samuel 1:8: "Am I not better to you than ten sons?" The sacrament, because marriage in the new law is a sacrament and confers grace. But the chosen gift more properly and fully belongs to virgins.
AND A MOST ACCEPTABLE LOT IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. — W
hat is this lot promised to virgins? Some interpret this lot as the special care and singular patronage of God. But this is a mystical interpretation of the lot. The literal meaning, therefore, is what I have said, namely the special grace given to virgins, that they desire and delight to serve God entirely, and therefore to go from virtue to virtue, to perfect their souls, that they may fully please their Spouse, God and Christ — which is the most holy, as well as the most tranquil and most joyful lot and life of Magdalene, as I have already explained. He alludes to natural eunuchs, for these, as if castrated, mutilated, and half-men, were barred from the Mosaic Church, Deuteronomy 23:1, just as even now they are barred from the priesthood by canon law. The meaning is, as if to say: Eunuchs by nature are barred from the temple of God; but I will place eunuchs by virtue and grace in my temple, that is, in my Church, both militant and triumphant, in the first and best place, as foremost. For in the Church militant, by Christ, the apostles, and the Fathers, virgins are preferred to widows and married people. Hence by Tertullian, in the book On Modesty, by St. Cyprian, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Chrysostom in the treatise On Virginity, the state of virgins is called: the flower of morals, the honor of bodies, the beauty of the sexes, the integrity of blood, the faith of the race, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgment of every good mind, the flower of the Church's budding, the joy of the prophets, the glory of the apostles, the life of the angels, the crown of the saints, a blessed appearance worthy of God, to which nothing can be compared, an angelic crown, perfection above man. Of Constantine the Great, Eusebius reports, Book IV of his Life, that he all but worshipped the choir of virgins, considering that they possessed the God to whom the maidens had devoted themselves.
He alludes to Isaiah 56:5: "I will give them (eunuchs, that is, virgins) in my house and within my walls a place," in Hebrew yad, that is, a hand, meaning a separate and chosen lot, rank, and place; "and a name better than sons and daughters." Which St. Jerome and Cyril, and St. Basil in the book On Holy Virginity, interpret to mean that the chaste not only dwell in the house of God, but are also distinguished by a glory and excellence of dignity that far surpasses all the splendor that the procreation and succession of children could have provided. Indeed, as St. Augustine teaches, On Holy Virginity chapter 25, they possess a certain proper and excellent glory above other saints, which by the scholastics is called the aureole. Our author a Castro adds that formerly eunuchs and chaste men were assigned to certain principal ministries in the temple, as Jeremiah affirms of the Rechabites for a similar holiness, chapter 35, verse 19. Celibate men therefore seem to have excelled among the Levites and priests in honor and dignity, and especially among the singers — just as today we see eunuchs and castrati in churches surpassing others in voice and song. This is indicated in verse 16, as I shall show there. Again, among the Jews in the temple there was a gynaeceum, that is, an honored place for virgins, among whom the Blessed Virgin was presented and educated. Hence those women are said to keep watch at the door of the tabernacle, Exodus 38:8; 1 Samuel 2:22; 2 Maccabees 3:19. For there they devoted themselves to prayer, fasting, mortifying the passions, holiness, and perfection, as well as to manual labor — weaving, mending, and adorning the vestments and furnishings of the temple. Likewise, among Christians no one is admitted to the ministry of the temple, to be bishop, priest, or deacon, unless he professes chastity as a virgin or celibate. In monasteries, which are the seminaries and temples of God, a solemn vow of chastity is taken by all, to whom consequently marvelous honor has been paid by kings and princes in every age. To pass over others, St. Helena the Empress, mother of Constantine the Great, as Rufinus attests, Book II of his History, chapter 8, the virgins whom she found in Jerusalem consecrated to God-
these consecrated virgins, having invited them to a meal, she attended to with such devotion that she deemed it unworthy to employ the services of maidservants; instead, with her own hands, girded in her garment, she set food before them, offered them the cup, and poured water on their hands.
Hear St. Bernard, Epistle 42 to Henry, Archbishop of Sens, chapter 3: "What is more beautiful than chastity, which makes what was conceived from unclean seed clean, makes a domestic friend from an enemy, and finally makes an angel from a man? The chaste man and the angel indeed differ from each other, but in happiness, not in virtue; and even if the angel's chastity is happier, this man's is recognized as stronger. Chastity alone, in this place and time of mortality, represents a certain state of immortal glory. It alone, amid the solemnities of marriage, claims the custom of that blessed region where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, providing on earth, as it were, an experience of that heavenly conversation." And shortly after: "This ornament of such great beauty I would rightly say honors the priesthood, because it makes the priest beloved of God and men. For his memorial is not in the succession of the flesh but in spiritual blessing, and renders one like unto the glory of the saints, even though still established in this region of dissimilarity."
Again, in churches of old (as is still done at Rome and throughout all of Italy) there was a separate place for women, and in the first place within it resided the virgins. St. Clement is a witness, Book II of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 21: "Young women," he says, "if there is a place, should remain apart, etc.; virgins, widows, and old women should be first of all, whether standing or sitting." St. Gregory Nazianzen in the Dream of Anastasia: "Holy virgins," he says, "together with dignified matrons, from their elevated seats inclined their most chaste ears to my discourses." More clearly and vigorously, St. Ambrose, To the Fallen Virgin, chapter 6: "Should you not," he says, "have remembered that place separated by screens in which you stood in church, to which devout and noble matrons eagerly ran, seeking your kisses — they who were holier and better than you? Should you not have remembered those precepts which the inscribed wall itself presented to your eyes? 'A wife and a virgin who is unmarried thinks about the things of the Lord, how she may be holy in body and spirit,' 1 Corinthians 7:34; but you, turning the saying to its opposite, thinking and acting so that you were holy neither in body nor in spirit: in body by fornicating, and in spirit by pretending virginity." Tertullian says splendidly, On the Dress of Women, chapter 1: "Since we are all a temple of God," he says, "with the Holy Spirit brought in and consecrated in us, the priestess and custodian of that temple is modesty, which allows nothing unclean or profane to be brought in, lest God who dwells within, offended, abandon His polluted seat."
The chosen gift of virgins, therefore, especially of religious men and religious women, and their most acceptable lot in the temple of God, is the noblest and most worthy occupation: namely, to contemplate continually God and their Spouse, Christ, to love God perfectly, to cut away desires, to imbue and strengthen the soul with every virtue and holiness, so that they may be superior to temptations, demons, and the entire world, and may rule over them — because "they will judge nations and will rule over peoples." These, therefore, are the elect and beloved, whom God loves uniquely as perfect, and therefore most dear children; whom the Blessed Virgin loves as most beautiful offspring; whom the holy Church loves as most precious gems, by which she is illustrious and splendid,
and beautiful, she advances and holds dear. They are, finally, better and more beautiful than the other children of the Church, because they adorn the court of God, build the palace of the eternal King, and constitute the nobility of the Church. See how perfection is the closest union with God, which makes perfect men not merely children of God but the dearest children of God, most similar and most closely united to the Father. As children of God and heirs of the heavenly kingdom, they are clothed with all virtues as with royal garments, nourished with the most delicate foods of holy desires and pure thoughts, surrounded by angels as by royal ministers, delighted with their Father's occupation, namely divine contemplation, and seek nothing else but to be like God and in all things to show themselves as children and servants of God for the sake of the divine honor. So says our author Alvarez de Paz, Book IV On the Dignity of Perfection, Part I, chapters 8 and 9. So also St. Jerome on Isaiah chapter 55, and the commentators on this passage. In the Church triumphant, virgins will follow the Lamb most closely wherever He goes, and they sing a new song which no one can sing except a virgin, Revelation 14:3. Hence it says of them: "These were purchased from among men, the first fruits to God and to the Lamb." See what I said there.
Finally, by the chosen gift of fidelity and by the most acceptable lot in the temple of God, can be understood the children of barren parents, whom God gave to those parents on account of the merit of their chastity and holiness, and made them glorious and outstanding, as His ministers, as it were, in the temple — as He did with Samuel, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ, and others of whom I shall speak at verse 16. Hear St. Gregory, Part III of the Pastoral Guide, chapter 29: "For eunuchs are those who, having suppressed the movements of the flesh, cut off in themselves the inclination to evil deeds. And the place they hold with the Father is shown by the fact that in the Father's house, namely in the eternal dwelling, they are preferred to children. Let them hear what is said by John, Revelation 14:4: 'These are they who have not been defiled with women: for they are virgins, and they follow the Lamb wherever He goes.'"
Moreover, because "the life of the saints is the interpretation of the Scriptures," as St. Jerome says, learn from the life of St. Emeric (which Surius described from Bonfinius and others on November 5) how bright and beautiful chastity is in the temple of God — which not only makes those who possess it, but through them also makes others, dark and impure, beautiful and resplendent before God. For St. Emeric,
Emeric, the son of St. Stephen, the first king of the Hungarians, while praying at night in the Church of St. George and pondering what most pleasing gift he could offer to God, behold, with a heavenly radiance a voice came from heaven: "Virginity," it said, "is a glorious thing. Therefore I require from you the virginal integrity of mind and body: offer this to God, and persevere in it with a firm purpose of soul." He obeyed and resolved to remain a virgin. But when his father commanded him to marry a wife most distinguished in beauty, lineage, and character, who would bear children as heirs to the kingdom, he obeyed, but lived with his wife as with a sister in perpetual virginity. This was a rare example of purity in the flower of youth and amid royal pleasures; but he tamed his flesh with fasting, lest it become wanton. It happened that a certain Conrad, who had perpetrated the foulest and most enormous crimes, repenting of them, by the command of the pope bound an iron breastplate to his naked body, together with a paper on which his crimes were written, and visited the tombs of various saints, until the breastplate should be loosened and the writing obliterated. Having visited various tombs in vain, he came at last to the tomb of St. Stephen, where, praying, he heard from him: "Rise, friend, and go to the monument of my son Emeric, which is nearby.
He, who for preserving the integrity of the flesh has merited extraordinary grace with God, will obtain forgiveness for your crimes: for he is among the number of those who have not defiled their garments and follow the Lamb wherever He goes, and sing a new song before the throne of God." The man immediately awoke, went to the chapel of Blessed Emeric, poured forth prayers, and more quickly than expected the iron bonds sprang apart, and the opened paper bore no trace of writing. Hearing this, Ladislaus, king of Hungary, had the body of St. Emeric honorably raised and had him inscribed in the Catalogue of Saints on the 5th of November.
15. FOR THE FRUIT OF GOOD LABORS IS GLORIOUS, AND THE ROOT OF WISDOM DOES NOT FAIL. — G
lorious, meaning that which procures glory lasting not only for the present time but for eternity before God and the angels. The labors of virgins are glorious, and therefore produce glorious fruits of rewards (as a symbol of which, among the ancient Romans access to the Temple of Honor was not open except through the Temple of Virtue, as Plutarch attests in the Moralia). These labors are constant struggles with the flesh, prayers, fasts, almsgiving, study, teaching, preaching, and zeal for souls, to which virgins devote themselves because they are not occupied with earthly affairs, etc. Hence Christ assigns to virgins the hundredfold fruit, to widows the sixtyfold, and to married persons the thirtyfold, Matthew 13:23. Hence too, Christ did not wish to command virginity, as being so difficult a thing, but only to counsel it, Matthew 19:12: "He who can receive it," He says, "let him receive it." For as St. Augustine says, Sermon 230 On the Seasons: "The battles of chastity alone are harder, where the fight is daily and victory rare." Hence the chaste bed of Solomon is surrounded by sixty of the strongest of Israel, Song of Songs 3,
7. Indeed, the ancients depicted Pallas, the goddess of virginity and wisdom, armed. And astronomers place the sign of Virgo in the heavens midway between Libra and Leo, to indicate that virginity requires the fortitude of a lion and the balanced temperance of the scales. See St. Gregory, Book VI, on 1 Kings, chapters 1 and 2. Moreover, the fruits of virginity are its rewards and aureole, which I enumerated in the preceding verse.
AND THE ROOT OF WISDOM DOES NOT FAIL — I
n Greek: and the root of wisdom that cannot fall (that is, it is firm and stable). He gives the reason why the fruit of good labors is glorious and perennial: namely, because the root of those same labors is wisdom, which never fails or withers, but always alive, green, and vigorous, puts forth these fruits. By wisdom, understand not speculative but practical wisdom, namely prudence and virtue, especially chastity and celibacy; for these continually produce the fruits of prayer, mortification, almsgiving, and other good works. He contrasts and prefers this fruit to the fruit, that is, the offspring, of the wicked and the lustful, who begot children from other men's wives or from foreign women (which was forbidden by the old law). Hence of them he adds: "But the children of adulterers will be in incompletion." Moreover, the root of wisdom can be understood as wisdom itself, as I have already said, just as the virtue of chastity is chastity itself; or precisely, the root of wisdom, that is, of virtue, is the fear of God, according to Sirach 1:16: "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord" — see what I said there. For this fear does not fall or perish, but remains forever. Our author Lorinus takes a different view, understanding by the root of wisdom the knowledge of God and of oneself, namely knowing that one is nothing and cannot be chaste by one's own powers, but that this is a gift of God, as all other things are. For to know this practically is the root and cause of chastity, as the Wise Man teaches in chapter 8, verse 21. And he adds aptly: He rightly spoke first about chastity, which is σωφροσύνη, and said its root is φρόνησις. For the greatest prudence and wisdom are required for chastity, and these are its root, as it were. Conversely, chastity and temperance σώζει, that is, preserve and guard, prudence and wisdom. Hence the saying of the Apostle, which we read in Romans 12:3: "To be wise unto sobriety," εἰς τὸ σωφρονεῖν. St. Jerome, Book II Against Jovinian, translates it "unto chastity"; although St. Augustine, Epistle 47, reads it "unto temperance"; and Irenaeus, Book V, chapter 20, "unto prudence."
Second, by the fruit of good labors can be understood the offspring of the barren. For this is directly contrasted with the offspring of adulterers, as if to say: The children that God from time to time gives to barren parents who are chaste and pious, because they did not wish to seek offspring from other men's wives or foreign women, since this was forbidden by law — these are the glorious fruit of their chastity and piety. And therefore God is accustomed to elevate them and make them prophets, pontiffs, or outstanding and glorious saints. Thus to Abraham and Sarah, who were barren, He gave the son Isaac the patriarch, from whom descended
Jacob and all the patriarchs and Israelites, and Christ Himself, who was therefore rightly called by God "Isaac," that is, laughter and joy of His parents and of all posterity alike. Thus God gave to Manoah and his barren wife the son Samson, who was the strength and avenger of Israel, Judges 13:24. Thus to the barren Anna He gave the son Samuel, who was judge of Israel and served God in the temple under Eli, 1 Samuel 1, 2, and 2:18. To Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were barren, He gave the son John the Baptist, who was the forerunner and herald of Christ, and therefore lived in the desert as in a temple, like an angel among angels. Thus finally, to the Blessed Virgin, barren not by nature but by her vow of virginity, He gave the son Christ Jesus, who was the savior and redeemer of the whole world. See therefore how God rewards chaste and holy barrenness with fruit, that is, with holy and glorious offspring, who continually stand before God as in a temple, serve and obey Him, as all those already named did. Note here that all who were born from barren parents turned out to be outstanding and glorious men, given as a gift of God to their parents and to the world for its salvation. And therefore God imposed a proper name on each of them, which prefigured their office and glory. And this is "the chosen gift of fidelity, and the most acceptable lot in the temple of God," of which he spoke in verse 14. Against these he now contrasts the fruit, that is, the offspring, of the wicked who, since they do not have children from their own wives, or have deformed ones, seek against right and law other beautiful women, to beget beautiful sons from them. Of these therefore he says:
16. BUT THE CHILDREN OF ADULTERERS WILL BE IN INCOMPLETION (
so it should be read with the Greeks and Romans, not "in completion," as many read, though not absurdly, for the meaning is, as if to say: They will quickly be completed, that is, consumed and die). — In Greek it is ἄτεκνα ἔσται, which has two meanings: first, they will be incomplete or imperfect, they will not reach completion or perfection, whether of body, or of age, or of prosperity; second, they will not be initiated or sacred, but profane. Hence the Zurich Bible translates: the children of adulterers will be barred from sacred rites. So also Osorius. The meaning is, as if to say: The children of faithful and chaste parents are usually complete and perfect, both in nature and in grace, and therefore sacred and, as it were, priests of God. But the children of adulterous parents, not always but frequently, are imperfect both in nature — so that they do not reach full and perfect age, and therefore live wretchedly as weaklings, sickly or maimed, and being short-lived die quickly — and in grace and virtue, and therefore are profane and hateful to God, as the illegitimate and impious children of adulterous parents. Thus the son born to David from adultery with Bathsheba was struck by God with swift death, 2 Samuel 12:18. Er and Onan, the lustful sons of Judah, begot no children, and were themselves punished by God with swift death, Genesis 38:7 ff. Abimelech, the illegitimate son of Gideon, killed seventy of his brothers and made himself tyrant of Israel, and therefore shortly afterward was
killed by a woman, Judges 9:53. The cause is twofold: the first is divine, namely that God fittingly punishes adulterers with this penalty, so that they are punished in the very area in which they sinned, namely in the begetting of children. The second is natural: adulterers and other lustful persons exhaust their spirits and strength through frequent use of sexual intercourse, and thus weaken their generative power. This causes them to beget languid and feeble children, as well as vicious ones, similar to themselves.
That this is the meaning is clear, because the Wise Man explains himself when he adds: "And from the unlawful bed the seed will be exterminated," as if to say: Children born from adultery, or from marriage with foreigners forbidden by law, will not grow to full and perfect age, will not arrive at an honored and stable state and rank, but will die prematurely and disgracefully. Theognis gives the reason:
"For indeed," he says, "from a squill neither a rose nor a hyacinth is born,
Nor from a slave-woman a freeborn son."
Again, they will be exterminated from the congregation of the Lord, according to the law, Deuteronomy 23:2: "A mamzer, that is, one born of prostitution, shall not enter the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation." So says a Castro. Thus, to pass over others, in this century Henry VIII, King of England, since he could not have male offspring from his wife Catherine, repudiated her and married Anne Boleyn, and begot Elizabeth from her; but in her all his stock and progeny failed, even though he had married six wives in succession. Likewise, princes who are mystically adulterers, that is, apostates — namely those who, falling away from the faith and the Church, become heretics or idolaters — often have no offspring, or none that are long-lived, which fail in the second or third generation, as happened to Zimri, Hosea, Jehu, and other idolatrous kings of Israel. Read
Books III and IV of Kings. We have seen the same thing happen in our century in the most noble families. Wherefore Optatus of Milevis, Book IV Against Parmenianus: "The children of adulterers are incomplete. This," he says, "was said about heretics, among whom there are false marriages of the sacraments, and in whose beds iniquity is found, where the seeds have been corrupted unto the destruction of the faith. While Valentinus contends that the Son of God existed in phantom and not in flesh, he corrupted the faith of himself and his followers. The seed of their birth has been exterminated, because they did not believe that the Son of God was born in the flesh from the Virgin Mary and suffered in the flesh."
Furthermore, Gratian, distinction 56, canon 12 of Le Mans, reads thus and explains: the children of adulterers, being vicious, ought not to be initiated into sacred orders according to the canons. For he says: "That the vice of origin is denied to be imputed to the seed seems to be contrary to this statement: 'The children of adulterers are an abomination to the Lord.' But, just as was said above about the children of priests, so also this about the children of adulterers should be understood: those are said to be an abomination to the Lord to whom their fathers' crimes descend by hereditary succession." Hence in the same chapter 9, St. Boniface the martyr writes to the king of the English that the vices of adulterers are sown into their offspring: "If the English nation," he says, "having spurned lawful marriages, by committing adultery and living in luxury, has led a foul life after the manner of the people of Sodom, it must be reckoned that from such a mixture of harlots degenerate, ignoble, and lust-crazed peoples will be begotten, and ultimately the entire people, declining to worse and baser things, will in the end be neither strong in secular warfare, nor stable in faith, nor honorable among men, nor beloved by God — as happened to other nations of Spain, and Provence, and the Burgundian peoples, who, departing from God in this way, committed fornication, until the Avenger of such crimes allowed punishing retribution to come and rage through those ignorant of God's law, that is, through the Saracens."
St. Justin objects, Question 78 to the Orthodox, on what grounds this statement is true, since the genealogy of Christ is traced from David the adulterer. He replies that David repented and married the widow left by the deceased Uriah, whom he had previously violated while her husband was alive, and that God wished to honor David's repentance in this way too, by having explicit mention made of the former wife of Uriah. St. Ambrose, however, On John the Baptist, Sermon 65, interprets the children of adulterers as "not initiated" (as he likewise reads), meaning base, illegitimate, and infamous. For he writes vigorously against those who keep concubines: "But someone says: 'I do not have a wife, therefore I have taken a slave-woman as companion.' Hear what Scripture says to Abraham, Genesis 21: 'Cast out the slave-woman and her son, for the son of the slave-woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.' If therefore the son of the slave-woman is not an heir, then neither is he a son. Why then is such a union sought, from which the son that is born can be heir neither of the succession nor of the bloodline? For he cannot have a share in the inheritance who does not have the privilege of legitimate birth. Why, I say, is such a cohabitation sought, from which those born are not sons of matrimony but witnesses of adultery? Why are such adulterous offspring received who bring shame, not honor, to the father? Scripture says, Wisdom 3:16: 'The children of adulterers will be in completion, and from the unlawful bed the seed will be exterminated.' If your woman, therefore, has such morals as to deserve your partnership, let her also deserve the name of wife. Grant your concubine the freedom and name of a wife, lest you be an adulterer rather than a hus-
band." St. Jerome, on Hosea chapter 9, reads: from unlawful intercourse the seed will perish. Vatablus translates: from illegitimate intercourse the seed will be abolished. Osorius and the Carthusian say: married adulterers will be deprived of the fertility of offspring, or if any offspring is born to them, it will live unhappily and perish prematurely. This often happened in the past and still happens, though not always, on account of other secret judgments of God.
Furthermore, this statement is true not only of adulterous children but also of legitimate ones. For often, by this law of barrenness laid down by God against adulterers, it happens that he who seeks children from another's bed does not even receive them from his own. Thus Genesis 20:18: "The Lord had closed every womb of the house of Abimelech, on account of Sarah, the wife of Abraham," whom Abimelech had claimed for himself. Therefore, if a king is an adulterer, his posterity will be cast down from the kingdom; if chaste, his offspring will be established in the kingdom. This not infrequently happens.
17. AND IF INDEED THEY LIVE LONG, THEY WILL BE COUNTED AS NOTHING (
as if to say: The wicked and illegitimate children of wicked adulterers, if they should happen to live longer and be long-lived, will nevertheless be of no value, base and abject), AND THEIR OLD AGE WILL BE WITHOUT HONOR — as if to say: The longer they live, the more unhonored and disgraceful they will be. This is partly because their wickedness and infamy grow with age; partly because, since according to the law, Deuteronomy 23:1, they are repelled as infamous from the Church and society of the other Israelites, the longer they live, the longer and greater will be their disgrace, infamy, and reproach — especially because old age itself, burdened with so many miseries, is by nature customarily despicable and contemptible. If to this is added the ignominy of birth and likewise of morals and life, a double, indeed triple and quadruple shame and infamy arises. For they besmirch the silver brightness, as it were, of gray hair with lead, indeed with the mud of disgrace. Hence St. Jerome on Hosea chapter 9 reads thus: "when they have been of long duration, they will be reckoned as nothing, and their old age in their last days will be ignoble." Truly Sirach 25:3: "Three kinds my soul hates," he says, "and I am greatly burdened (I am nauseated and indignant) at their souls: a poor man who is proud, a rich man who is a liar, and an old man who is foolish and senseless" — in Greek, an old adulterer diminished in understanding, such as were those old men whom Jeremiah rebukes, chapter 30, verse 22, and those lying in wait for Susanna, Daniel 13:40.
St. Fulgentius treats this maxim excellently, Epistle II, chapters 3 and 4, where he consoles Galla on the death of her young husband: "Such persons," he says, "however long-lived they may die, are plunged in a bitter death, and although their age may appear mature in body, nevertheless the deadly love of the world retains the bitterness of an immature mind in the heart. But the Christian who has lived in the fear of God, at whatever age of body he dies, is not plunged in a bitter death, but supported by a maturity pleasing to God, he is transferred. For we read in the same book of Wisdom, chapter 4, verse 9: 'For old age
is honorable, not because it is of long duration, nor counted by the number of years; for the gray hair of man is understanding, and the age of old age is an immaculate life.' And further: 'For just as a wicked life, the more it has been prolonged in time, the more it multiplies punishment for sinners, so a good life, even if ended here in a short time, acquires great and everlasting glory for those who live well. A wicked life, therefore, plunges immature and bitter old men into hell; but a good life leads the deceased young, who are truly mature, to the kingdom.'"
18. AND IF THEY DIE RATHER QUICKLY, THEY WILL HAVE NO HOPE
of a better, more honored, and happier life, because since they lived impiously and infamously during life, they can hope for no other reward after death except everlasting punishment and disgrace in hell, according to Isaiah 66:24: "Their worm will not die, and their fire will not be extinguished; and they will be a spectacle unto satiety for all flesh."
NOR IN THE DAY OF RECOGNITION (
in Greek διαγνώσεως, that is, of judicial examination, discernment, investigation, punishment, condemnation — namely, on the day of judgment, when the case of each person will be known and judged, and each will be condemned according to his merits) WILL THEY HAVE A CONSOLING WORD. — In Greek παραμύθιον, that is, consolation. As if to say: The wicked will have no address on the day of judgment by which they might either excuse their crimes, or plead against their punishment, or console themselves in their miseries. For neither will they themselves be able to speak for themselves, nor will anyone else dare to speak for them. But all will fall silent and stand stupefied. For they will be utterly abandoned by all men and creatures, indeed hated and despised by all, and therefore in the utmost desperation. For every creature will rise up against the wicked to avenge the injury done to their Creator, according to chapter 5, verse 21: "The whole world will fight with Him against the senseless." Great will be this affliction of the damned, when they will receive neither from Christ, nor from the Blessed Virgin, nor from angels, nor from friends, nor from parents, nor from any mortal, not even a single gentle word of address or consolation. Thus "address" is taken for consolation and the soothing or remedy of grief by Seneca in the Troades:
"It befits other parents to address the bereaved."
See our Delrio there, who adduces many more testimonies of this meaning. And by Catullus in the Hendecasyllables to Cornificius:
"With what address you have consoled me."
Furthermore, St. Fulgentius, Epistle II, chapter 3, reads "of greatness" instead of "of recognition" (I do not know from where), and explains it piously and movingly: "They will not have hope, nor in the day of greatness a consoling address. But what is the day of greatness, if not the day on which the Lord will come not to be judged, but to judge? For now, when He came to be judged for us, it was not a day of greatness but of diminishment, in which He was made a little less than the angels. But then it will be a day of greatness, when according to John's testimony in Revelation 6:17, all the wicked will desire to hide in the caverns of the mountains, saying to the mountains and rocks: 'Fall upon us and hide us from the face of the Father sitting upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, because the great day of Their wrath has come, and who will be able to stand?' In this day of greatness, the wicked will not have a consoling address, but a rebuke. For they will not hear, Matthew 25:34: 'Come, you blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' But it will be said to them, verse 41: 'Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.'"
19. FOR THE CONSUMMATIONS OF A WICKED NATION ARE DIRE
that is, the ends are dire, the outcomes are dire. As if to say: The ends and outcomes of the wicked are most bitter, most sorrowful, most deadly, because with Christ thundering the sentence of damnation, they will go into present and eternal death, that is, into hell and eternal fire. Some codices less correctly read: "for wicked nations are of dire consummation," although the meaning comes to the same thing. Add that adultery is punished with death by most nations, even heretical ones, and even by unbelievers, as Tiraquellus shows, law 13 on marriage, number 6 ff.
Moreover, of all these threats and punishments here directed against the wicked and adulterers, an illustrious example is found in the sons of Eli, whom God punished, together with their father Eli, with these penalties on account of their incestuous lusts, adulteries, and sacrileges, 1 Samuel 2:32: "Behold, the days are coming," He says, "and I will cut off your arm, and the arm of your father's house, so that there will be no old man in your house. And you will see your rival in the temple, in all the prosperity of Israel; and there will be no old man in your house for all time. Nevertheless, I will not utterly remove a man of yours from my altar, but so that your eyes may fail and your soul waste away; and a great part of your house will die when they reach manhood. And this will be a sign to you, which will come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: In one day they shall both die."