Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, he teaches that the guilt of sin must be avoided, so that you may escape its punishment; secondly, verse 4, he teaches that public office should not be sought; thirdly, verse 13, he treats of moderation of the tongue; fourthly, verse 15, he teaches how a man should conduct himself toward himself; toward friends, verse 20; toward his wife, verse 21; toward servants, verse 22; toward cattle, verse 24; toward sons and daughters, verse 25; toward parents, verse 29; toward priests, verse 31; toward the dead and the sick, verse 37. Finally, verse 40, for the right performance of all these things he assigns an efficacious means, namely, the remembrance of the last things.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiasticus 7:1-40
1. Do not do evil, and evil will not overtake you. 2. Depart from the wicked, and evils will cease from you. 3. Son, do not sow evils in the furrows of injustice, and you will not reap them sevenfold. Do not seek leadership from the Lord, nor the seat of honor from the king. 5. Do not justify yourself before God, for He Himself is the knower of the heart; and in the presence of the king do not wish to appear wise. 6. Do not seek to be made a judge, unless you have the strength to break through iniquities: lest perhaps you fear the face of the powerful, and you place a stumbling block in your equity. 7. Do not sin against the multitude of the city, nor cast yourself into the people. 8. And do not bind upon yourself double sins: for you will not be immune even in one. 9. Do not be pusillanimous in your spirit. 10. Do not despise praying and giving alms. 11. Do not say: God will look upon the multitude of my gifts, and when I offer to God most high, He will accept my offerings. 12. Do not mock a man in the bitterness of his soul: for there is One who humbles and exalts — God who sees all things. 13. Do not plow a lie against your brother; nor do the same against a friend. 14. Do not consent to tell any lie: for the habit of it is not good. 15. Do not be verbose in the multitude of elders, and do not repeat your words in prayer. 16. Do not hate laborious works and farming created by the Most High. 17. Do not count yourself among the multitude of the undisciplined. 18. Remember wrath, for it will not delay. 19. Humble your spirit greatly; for the punishment of the flesh of the impious is fire and the worm. 20. Do not transgress against a friend who delays payment: nor despise a most dear brother for the sake of gold. 21. Do not depart from a sensible and good wife, whom you have obtained in the fear of the Lord: for the grace of her modesty is above gold. 22. Do not harm a servant who works faithfully, nor a hired worker who gives his life for you. 23. Let a sensible servant be dear to you as your own soul: do not defraud him of liberty, nor leave him destitute. 24. Do you have cattle? Attend to them: and if they are profitable, let them remain with you. 25. Do you have sons? Educate them and bend them from their youth. 26. Do you have daughters? Guard their bodies, and do not show a cheerful face to them. 27. Give your daughter in marriage, and you will have done a great work, and give her to a sensible man. 28. If you have a wife after your own heart, do not cast her off, and do not entrust yourself to one who is hateful. 29. Honor your father with all your heart, and do not forget the groans of your mother. 30. Remember that you would not have been born except through them: and repay them as they have done for you. 31. Fear the Lord with all your soul, and hold His priests in reverence. 32. With all your strength love Him who made you, and do not forsake His ministers. 33. Honor God with all your soul, and honor the priests, and purify yourself with the arms of sacrifice. 34. Give them their portion, as it has been commanded you, of the firstfruits and of purification: and for your negligence purge yourself with a few offerings. 35. You shall offer to the Lord the gift of your arms, and the sacrifice of sanctification, and the firstfruits of holy things. 36. And stretch out your hand to the poor, that your propitiation and blessing may be perfected. 37. A gift has grace in the sight of every living person, and do not withhold grace from the dead. 38. Do not fail those who weep in consolation, and walk with those who mourn. 39. Do not be reluctant to visit the sick: for by these things you will be strengthened in love. 40. In all your works remember your last end, and you will never sin.
First Part of the Chapter: On Fleeing Sin
1. DO NOT DO EVIL, AND EVIL WILL NOT OVERTAKE YOU.
1. DO NOT DO EVIL, AND EVIL WILL NOT OVERTAKE YOU. — "Evil things," namely, as the Complutensian Greek adds, although the Roman edition reads in the singular: and evil will not seize you. There lurks a metonymy in the word "evil"; for the first instance takes "evil" as evil of fault, that is, sins; the second as evil of punishment, which are born from the evils of fault as their effects and offspring. The meaning is: Do you wish to escape the evil of punishment? Then do not commit the evil of fault. So we say to the thief: Do you wish to escape the gallows? Avoid theft. And: "If there were no sins, there would be no scourges."
The Syriac: Do not do what is evil, and evil will not find you; Vatablus: Do nothing evil, lest evil befall you; others: Do not commit evil, and evil will not seize you. For evil, or malice, has its own kingdom and dominion over all who do evil, against whom it accordingly sends forth its evils of punishment and scourges, like its own lictors and torturers. For evil is so barbed and noxious that if you touch it, you are immediately seized and afflicted by it; just as those who touch or tread upon the points of needles or nails are immediately wounded by them springing forth. Such a needle's point is evil and sin. This is what the Comic poet says:
Punishment follows the guilty head.
And:
Rarely has punishment on limping foot
Deserted the villain who goes before.
Sin therefore is like pitch, glue, thistles, and thorns: if you touch them, you are immediately caught, pricked, and defiled by them. Whence that saying: "He who touches pitch is defiled by it."
Understand "evils" as referring both to those of the present life, such as poverty, diseases, persecutions, infamy, death, etc., and to those of the future life in hell. For often God does not punish sinners in this life, so that He may punish them more harshly in the next, where, as Blessed Peter Damian says to Blanca, chapter 12: "for the wretched there is death without death, an end without end, a failing without failing; because death lives, the end always begins, and the failing knows not how to fail." St. Augustine gives the reason in Epistle 49 to Deogratias: "The will is punished," he says, "which wished to have eternal enjoyment of sin; and therefore it will find eternal severity of vengeance." See St. Gregory, Moralia IX, chapter 39, on those words of Job chapter 10: "Where no order dwells, but everlasting horror."
2. DEPART FROM THE UNJUST, AND EVILS WILL CEASE FROM YOU.
2. DEPART FROM THE UNJUST, AND EVILS WILL CEASE FROM YOU. — There is here a twofold meaning. The first is: Depart from the unjust person, and you will depart from iniquity and malice, because the unjust draw their companions into their own iniquities. So the Arabic: Do not mingle, it says, with the unjust; distance yourself from him, and he will distance himself from you. He gives the method of avoiding sins, namely by avoiding bad company and wicked companions; for nothing is more pernicious than these. Whence St. Augustine, seduced by his companions to steal pears, exclaims in Book III of the Confessions, chapter 9: "O exceedingly hostile friendship, inscrutable seduction of the mind, etc., when it is said: Let us go, let us do it; and one is ashamed not to be shameless!" For wicked companions are like scorpions, which, as Pliny attests (Book XI, chapter 25), pour out venom like milk; for like milk it pervades the inmost parts, infects them with poison, and so kills. For thus companions with their flatteries penetrate the heart of a person, and with their wicked counsels defile and destroy it. Hence also those who administer poison to enemies mix it in milk or wine, both to conceal the crime and so that the poison may pervade the inmost parts together with the milk, attack the heart, and kill. Wicked companions do something similar when they introduce their villainies with flatteries, so that they may more sweetly pervade and destroy the entire soul.
The second meaning is: Depart from an unjust thing, that is, from fault or sin; and the evils of punishment will likewise depart from you. The Syriac favors this latter sense: Depart from evil, and it will distance itself from you; as if saying the same thing as verse 1, but in other words. The Greek favors the former sense: Withdraw from the unjust, and sin will turn away from you. For "sin," although it metonymically signifies the punishment due to sin, properly denotes the fault of sin. Moreover, the Complutensian reads τὸ ἁμαρτία, that is "sin," although the Roman edition deletes this; for the Roman reads: Depart from the unjust, and it will turn away from you. Where the word "unjust" can be taken either masculinely of an unjust person, or neutrally of an unjust thing. If you take it of a person, the sense will be: Depart from the unjust person, and he together with his iniquity will depart from you. If you take it of a thing, the sense will be: Depart from the unjust thing, that is, from iniquity, and it likewise will depart from you, so that it may not touch you, neither with its fault nor with its punishment. And thus the Greek reading, as well as the Syriac, will favor the latter sense, which better corresponds to the preceding and following verse; for there follows:
3. MY SON, DO NOT SOW EVILS IN THE FURROWS OF INJUSTICE, AND YOU WILL NOT REAP THEM SEVENFOLD.
3. MY SON, DO NOT SOW EVILS IN THE FURROWS OF INJUSTICE, AND YOU WILL NOT REAP THEM SEVENFOLD. — The Greek reads: Do not sow evil seeds in the furrows of injustice, and you will not reap them sevenfold. The Syriac: Do not sow upon the tillage of sin, lest you reap it sevenfold. Vatablus: My son, do not commit seed to the furrows of injustice, lest you thereby produce a harvest seven times greater. To sow in the furrows of injustice is to sow in a furrowed and plowed field of injustice, that is, it is to sow the seed of injustice; for in the field of injustice nothing is sown but the seed of injustice. Our field is our heart, our mind, our will; in it we draw furrows of justice or injustice, when we impress upon it good or bad habits and inclinations; and in these we sow, when we cast into them thoughts, volitions, intentions, desires, and purposes both good and evil. The meaning therefore is: Do not carve into your field, that is, your heart, furrows of injustice, that is, inclinations toward injustice; nor sow in them the seeds of injustice, namely wicked thoughts and schemes. He alludes to Hosea 10:11: "Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh, etc. Judah shall plow, Jacob shall break his furrows. Sow for yourselves in justice and reap according to the measure of mercy, break up your fallow ground anew, etc. You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of lies." See what I discussed at length on this passage there.
AND YOU WILL NOT REAP THEM SEVENFOLD. — He alludes to that saying about the murder of Cain: "Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain" (Genesis 4:24); where the Septuagint translates: he shall pay seven punishments; Aquila: sevenfold. On which Procopius says: "The number seven denotes the perfection of punishment," according to Psalm 78:12: "Repay our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom;" and Psalm 30:24: "He will abundantly repay those who act with pride;" and Leviticus 26:28: "I will chastise you with seven," that is, many, "plagues;" and Job 5:19: "In six tribulations He will deliver you, and in the seventh," that is, the greatest and most severe, "evil will not touch you."
Now this passage can be taken in two ways, namely of a twofold harvest: first, of the harvest of fault, meaning: One injustice begets seven others, like the hydra. For malice is so fertile that, like tares, it sows itself abroad, and from one, seven, that is, many others, sprout forth. Second, of the harvest of punishment, meaning: You will be punished most severely. For one act of injustice is punished with seven, that is, many and copious punishments — not that it is punished more heavily than it deserves (for God punishes less than what is deserved), but because its malice is so great that it cannot be adequately satisfied by a single punishment. For mortal sin, even a single one, inasmuch as it offends God and is a crime of injured divine majesty, is so grave and enormous that it cannot be equaled by any punishments of this life, but deserves all the torments and fires of hell, and those eternal. Therefore every fault has sevenfold punishment: both because in this world it is chastised by God with many punishments, and because in the next it is compelled to endure the totality of all punishments. For even a single punishment of hell takes the place of all the punishments of this life; just as the single happiness of eternal glory takes the place of all the pleasures of this life, even as the manna contained every flavor and every sweetness of taste.
This latter sense is the stronger and more genuine, both because the harvest of fault is an abundance of punishments; because the discussion of the harvest of punishments preceded; and because it alludes to the sevenfold punishment of Cain, and to Hosea 10:4: "Judgment has sprouted like bitterness upon the furrows of the field;" for the bitterness of judgment is the bitterness of punishment, which the wicked furrows germinate in the field of injustice. Hugo enumerates in detail the seven plagues of sin: The punishments of sin, he says, are three in the soul, namely sorrow, anger, and darkening; but in the body there are four, namely from the four elements: for the earth will punish the wicked on the day of judgment by swallowing them; water, by freezing; air or wind, by driving them from punishment to punishment; fire, by burning. Sin therefore is a seven-headed hydra: for it bears seven heads, both of capital faults and of punishments, as I have just said. For the poets invented the hydra as a serpent of many heads in the swamp of Lerna, of which when some were cut off, just as many immediately grew back; wherefore it was slain and burned by Hercules with arrows and fire. The fable arose from the fact that the species of serpents, under which the hydra is included, is exceedingly fertile, and unless its offspring were burned up by fire, there would be no resisting their fertility, says Sipontinus from Pliny, Book XXIX, chapter 4. Just so the fertility of sin is marvelous; for from one sin there is a fall into another and another without end, unless it is burned up at the root by the fire of sharp censure, chastisement, and the love of God.
Moreover, this sevenfold punishment is not sevenfold in proportion to the malice and demerit of the fault — for in that proportion it is single and less than single, as I have already shown — but in proportion to the pleasure which the sinner experiences in sinning. For this pleasure is brief and slight; but the punishments that follow it are sevenfold, that is, manifold. Truly Job 20:5 says: "The praise (that is, the jubilation, song, exultation) of the wicked is brief, and the joy of the hypocrite is like a point." This "point" can be understood both as a point of a line and of time, that is, a moment. St. Gregory there takes it as a point of a line: "At a point," he says, "the stylus is lifted as soon as it is placed; nor is any delay allowed for it to be drawn along to express a line; so the hypocrite loses the joys of the present life the moment he touches them." He touches them, then, just as a globe or sphere touches the earth at a point. Again, as St. Bonaventure says, just as a point, being indivisible, has no length, no breadth, no height, no depth, so the pleasure and glory of the wicked has no length, because it lasts only a brief time and, as it were, only a moment; no breadth, because it is narrow and small; no height, because it is not heavenly, but earthly and base; no depth, because it does not penetrate the depths of the heart, nor does it satisfy. Conversely, the punishment of the hypocrite is very long, because eternal; very broad, because it occupies all the senses, members, and powers of soul and body; very high, because it deprives him of God, heaven, and eternal happiness; very deep, because it tortures the inmost parts of the soul and thrusts it down to the deepest place of hell. Whence the Septuagint translates: The joy of the wicked is a great ruin; and the gladness of the iniquitous is perdition. On which words St. Chrysostom aptly says: "If their joy is a great ruin, and their gladness is perdition, what shall we say their actual destruction is? Tell me, I ask you, what is their sorrow, what is their anguish of soul?"
Second Part of the Chapter: On Not Seeking Public Office
4. DO NOT SEEK FROM THE LORD (so the Greek, the Roman, and the Syriac; therefore some incorrectly read "from man") LEADERSHIP (that is, rule; for a prince is the leader of the people, because he is bound to lead and govern them), NOR FROM THE KING A SEAT OF HONOR
4. DO NOT SEEK FROM THE LORD (so the Greek, the Roman, and the Syriac; therefore some incorrectly read "from man") LEADERSHIP (that is, rule; for a prince is the leader of the people, because he is bound to lead and govern them), NOR FROM THE KING A SEAT OF HONOR — that is, an honorable position, such as that of a bishop, a teacher, a judge, or a prince, just as the sons of Zebedee asked Christ to sit at His right and left hand in His kingdom (Matthew 20). The Syriac: Do not seek rule from God, nor an honorific gift from the king; Vatablus: Do not ask the Lord for sovereignty, nor a magnificent seat from the king.
The reason is, first, because to seek these things is the vice of ambition and pride; second, because those who seek them are subject to the envy, detraction, and calumny of many, whence they are cast down, indeed hurled into great calamities; third, because where there is honor there is also a burden — for example, in the episcopate there is the burden and care of the souls entrusted to one, for which God will demand an exact accounting from the bishop. He therefore admonishes us not to seek rule, whether secular or ecclesiastical, especially the episcopate, to which the chair of teaching is attached. Whence St. James, deterring the faithful from this same ambition, says in chapter 3:1: "Do not become many teachers, my brethren, knowing that you will receive a stricter judgment; for in many things we all offend." See what was said there, and 1 Timothy 3:1. Most true is that saying of St. Bernard in Book III of On Consideration: "Ambition is the cross of the ambitious." Artemidorus in his Interpretation of Dreams, Book II, chapter 31, says that a dream of reigning portends death for the sick, but for the healthy, the loss of relatives: "To dream of reigning," he says, "predicts death for the sick; but for the healthy it portends the loss and separation of all relatives and companions; for sovereignty is unsociable." You may call this dream mere dreaming; yet it does sometimes happen. For Joseph, dreaming that he was a prince, lost his brothers' favor, his freedom, and nearly his life (Genesis 37 and following). St. Cyprian in Book IV, Epistle 3 to Antonius sets forth an illustrious example of this in St. Cornelius, Pope and Martyr, of whom he writes: "He neither desired nor sought the episcopate, etc.; but quiet and modest, and of the kind that those who are divinely chosen for this office customarily are, out of the modesty of his virginal conscience and the humility of the bashfulness innate in him and carefully guarded, he did not, as some did, use force to become bishop; but he himself suffered compulsion, so as to accept the episcopate under coercion."
The philosophers held and urged the same view. Ovid, in Book III of the Tristia:
Believe me, he who has lain hidden has lived well, and each man
Ought to remain within his own fortune.
Horace, Book II of the Odes, ode 10:
More often is the tall pine shaken by the winds,
And lofty towers fall with heavier crash,
And lightning strikes the highest mountains.
Again Ovid:
Live without envy, and pass your gentle years in obscurity,
And join to yourself friendships with your equals.
Boethius, Book II of The Consolation of Philosophy, meter 4:
Remember to fix your house
Upon a humble rock.
Though the wind roars and mixes
The seas with ruin,
You, sheltered in the strength
Of your quiet rampart,
Will lead a serene life,
Laughing at the raging skies.
Finally, there is the maxim of Pythagoras: "Abstain from beans, that is, avoid the administration of public affairs. For in ancient times magistrates were elected by votes cast with beans," says Plutarch in his book On the Education of Children.
Cyril, in Book II of his Moral Fables, chapter 6, entitled Against the proud who wish to make themselves equal to God, presents this maxim vividly through an entertaining fable of the ape and the fox, as if placing it before our eyes. "The ape," he says, "seeing an agile sailor quickly climbing the mast, attempted to imitate him. A crow, noticing this, said: Stay in your place, dear one, lest being raised to a foreign region you perish by a heavy fall of your body. But she, scorning his words and climbing, immediately at the sight of the great depth below, her weak brain confused in imagination, fell headlong, and with her neck broken could never again lift her face. Then, when she saw the king sitting on his throne, she began to desire the same, and in his absence sat on the throne like another prince. Seeing this, a little fox came to the throne, and having greeted the mock king, ironically demanded orders as a dutiful minister. The ape said: I command only this, that you joyfully behold my glory. But the fox replied: I advise you rather to descend from there as quickly as possible. But since the ape, thirsting for vain likeness, paid no heed, she was immediately thrown down from there to be torn by the teeth of dogs. Then, brought to her senses by her pains, she said: Woe is me, because I scorned the counsels of the wise! I did not know that where there is no counsel, safety is lacking. When the fox heard this, she approached and said: From now on I see that you have been restored to your senses by your affliction." Then she presses her further with another clear argument, by which she demonstrates her own ugliness and folly: "But why, when all other animals are by nature subject to Adam, do you alone, refusing the common yoke, try to make yourself his equal? The ape answered: An innate desire moves me to this; am I not formed more conformable to the human body than all other brutes? Then the fox argued: Although indeed in figure you are more conformable to man than all others, yet because this resemblance is perverted in you, your form is found to be all the more deformed. For what is uglier than a snub nose? Or more misshapen than a finger-like haunch?"
5. DO NOT JUSTIFY YOURSELF (that is, do not defend and display yourself as just, so as to wish to excuse all your deeds before God) BEFORE GOD, FOR HE HIMSELF IS THE KNOWER OF HEARTS, AND BEFORE THE KING DO NOT WISH TO APPEAR WISE.
5. DO NOT JUSTIFY YOURSELF (that is, do not defend and display yourself as just, so as to wish to excuse all your deeds before God) BEFORE GOD, FOR HE HIMSELF IS THE KNOWER OF HEARTS, AND BEFORE THE KING DO NOT WISH TO APPEAR WISE. — The Syriac: Do not justify your soul before God, and before the king do not be foolish, because the proud are fools, and the pride by which you wish to appear wise before the king is foolishness. The Greek, like the Syriac, does not have the phrase "for He Himself is the knower of hearts"; but rather: Do not sell yourself before the Lord as just, for He Himself thoroughly knows the heart of each one; nor display your wisdom before the king. He gives the reason why rule should not be sought from God, nor a seat of honor from the king: because, namely, if you seek rule from God, you must acknowledge and commend yourself before Him as just. For a prince, inasmuch as he is greater than his subjects, ought to be better and more just than they. Whence it is said of King Saul: "There was no man among the children of Israel better than he" (1 Kings 9:2). But to display oneself as just before God is arrogant and foolish. For God, who knows the secrets of hearts, knows that no one is so just that He cannot convict anyone of some sin, either present or past, as St. John teaches in his First Epistle, chapter 1, verse 10: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." Whence Job, though modestly and truthfully defending his innocence, was rebuked by God and heard in chapter 38:2: "Who is this that wraps up sentences in unskilled words? Gird your loins like a man, and I will question you, and answer Me." Wherefore Job, acknowledging and lamenting his fault, says in chapter 42:3: "I have spoken foolishly, and things that exceeded my knowledge beyond measure." Whence Eliphaz says to Job, chapter 15:15: "Behold, among His saints no one is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in His sight; how much more abominable and useless is man, who drinks iniquity like water!"
Moreover, kings give a seat of honor to no one except to the wise. If therefore you advertise and display your wisdom to the king in order to obtain a seat, the king, through himself and his counselors, by proposing to you the most difficult questions, will be able to expose your ignorance and offer it up for others to ridicule. Again, even if you are wise, it is nonetheless vicious and ambitious that you should wish to appear wise; and though you may conceal and disguise this sore of ambition, the king and courtiers, accustomed to such things, will shrewdly sniff it out, reject it, and laugh at it as foolishness, as the Syriac translates.
Hence gather these axioms: He who is chosen as a prince should be just before the Lord. And he who wishes to obtain a seat from the king must be wise; otherwise he will both sin, and bring infamy upon himself, and expose himself to many dangers. For when a fool is promoted to a higher rank, he demonstrates all the more his foolishness, which was previously unknown, through foolish acts. "Just as the ape, the higher it climbs, the more it displays its ugliness," says Lyranus.
Here the fable of the peacock and the jackdaw in Faernus is fitting: "When the birds were holding an assembly to elect a king, the peacock sought the kingship, saying that because of his outstanding beauty he was more worthy of it than all others. When he seemed about to receive everyone's votes, the jackdaw said: If, however, this one becomes king and we should have the eagle as an enemy, what help or assistance will he be able to bring?" The moral: "In choosing a king, the qualities of the mind are more to be regarded than those of the body."
Therefore the first reason why you should not wish to appear wise before the king is the disgrace of ambition and pride, which all men, but especially kings, abominate. For just as lions hate fire and smoke, as Aristotle attests in Book IX of the History of Animals, chapter 44, and Pliny in Book X, chapter 21, so also kings hate ostentation and boasting: for they know that this is great vanity and falsehood. For just as logs that produce much smoke give little heat and fire, because the matter that should be turned into fire passes off into smoke, so generally those who boast greatly can do the least: for "the wise conceal their wisdom" (Proverbs 10:14).
The second reason is that kings fear a wise man, especially a foreigner, lest he betray, disturb, or overthrow the kingdom. So Saul persecuted David on account of the slaying of Goliath, when the people acclaimed: "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands;" for he feared lest David take the kingdom from him. And the nobles of King Achish accused David, a fugitive from Saul, of treason; whence David, feigning madness, escaped the danger to his life (1 Kings 21:11).
The third reason is that kings wish to appear the wisest, strongest, and most excellent of all, and wish everything to be attributed to themselves; therefore they consider it a diminishment of their own honor and glory if they see or hear of anyone wiser or more distinguished than themselves. So Philip of Macedon, says Demosthenes, "wished all glorious deeds to appear to be his own; and he was more indignant at generals and officers who had conducted something successfully and laudably than at those who had acted unsuccessfully and ignobly." Following his father Philip, his son Alexander "indeed wished enemies to be conquered, but was indignant that Antipater had won the victory: esteeming whatever had redounded to another's glory as taken from his own," says Curtius, Book VI.
Memorable is what Xenophon writes in Book IV of the Cyropaedia about Gobryas going hunting with the king of the Assyrians: "When a bear was encountered," he says, "and both were pursuing it, the king, having thrown his javelin, missed the mark; but Gobryas, hurling his spear, brought down the bear. The king bore this with difficulty and resentment, and secretly harbored his envy. Then a lion also appeared, which the king likewise pursued with futile effort, and Gobryas again dispatched it. Thereupon the king, muttering to himself, etc., seized a lance from an attendant and pierced Gobryas's chest, and so deprived the young man, whose valor he had regarded with jealous eyes, of his life." We have seen similar examples in our own age. He who therefore deals with kings should deal with them modestly and reverently, yield everything to them, not display his wisdom and gifts but rather conceal and hide them: thus he will retain his life and the king's favor.
Furthermore, this maxim applies most of all to the ostentation of wisdom in governing. For if anyone should wish to teach kings the art of ruling, or to criticize and correct their manner of governing, he will certainly be punished. Even wise men sin in this matter, who criticize the actions of kings, fault them, and brand them with the mark of imprudence, when they do not know their secrets and all the circumstances of the matter — which, if they knew, they would not disapprove but rather approve. I recall Alexander Farnese, the illustrious prince of Parma, when he was governing Belgium, was advised by certain very wise men to seize a certain fortress very harmful to Belgium; and they suggested the manner of seizing it. He immediately demonstrated with arguments evident to the eye that it was impossible, and so convinced them that they seemed like children before him; namely: One thing, he kept saying, is to be skilled in books, another in arms." Except if kings desire to be instructed, or to learn someone's wisdom, so as to know whether he is suitable to be chosen as a counselor, bishop, or governor; for then wisdom must be brought forth, as the seventy-two translators of Holy Scripture brought it forth when asked by Ptolemy about the method of governing rightly, as Aristeas attests.
6. DO NOT SEEK TO BECOME A JUDGE, UNLESS YOU ARE ABLE BY STRENGTH TO BREAK THROU
6. DO NOT SEEK TO BECOME A JUDGE, UNLESS YOU ARE ABLE BY STRENGTH TO BREAK THROUGH (that is, to shatter, crush, and scatter: for the Greek is exarai, that is, to remove, overthrow, uproot) INIQUITIES. -- St. Augustine in his Mirror reads: "Do not seek to become a judge, if you are not able by strength to break through iniquities." For great is often the force of iniquity, which must be overthrown by the greater force of judgment and equity. The Greek-Roman text: Do not seek to become a judge, lest perhaps you be unable to remove iniquities. And so St. Jerome reads, in his commentary on Isaiah chapter 3, explaining verse 6: "Be our prince; but let this ruin be under your hand. He will answer: I am no physician, do not make me ruler of the people." The Syriac: Do not seek to become a judge, unless you have the power to destroy iniquity; the Tigurina: Do not strive to become a judge, lest you be unable to match wicked deeds, namely either in punishing them in others or in enduring those committed against yourself, says Vatablus. Now Rabanus explains it thus, meaning: If you wish to become a judge, first crush all iniquities in yourself: "Because," he says, "he who is weighed down by the burden of his own faults ought not wish to become a judge of others' faults." But others generally understand this of others' faults, not one's own. For in a judge there is required not only wisdom and justice, but also strength, that is, fortitude and power, both internal and external -- such as the favor of citizens and powerful friends -- to break through and crush the iniquities even of the powerful and of princes, so as to purge the city and province of crimes. For this is the chief duty of a judge and prince, who is the judge of judges. Indeed the iniquities of the people surround and bind the judge like chains; he therefore needs great strength to break them apart. For this is good, both for the republic and for the private individual who acts unjustly. For as Boethius says in Book IV of the Consolation: "The wicked when punished are happier than when unpunished," because their punishment is a great good, both by reason of justice, which when violated it restores, and because it removes the scandal they have given and safeguards against future scandal.
Bede says admirably in his Sentences: "Laws are as strong as kings wish (indeed, will) them to be. What cannot be healed gently must be cut away surgically." St. Gregory Nazianzen decrees the same in his Sentences: "Whoever has undertaken to defend the laws, banish all fear from your soul. For everyone to whom the guardianship of the laws has been entrusted ought to be free from fear." As a symbol of this, Samuel at the feast from the sacrificial victim reserved the shoulder for Saul, as the future king and judge of the people (1 Kings 9:24) -- for Saul, I say, who from the shoulder and upward surpassed all others in stature. For Saul is chosen as king because he excels in shoulder and arm, namely in virtue and strength of soul for breaking through iniquities; for the shoulder is a symbol of strength and fortitude, and therefore was deliberately reserved both for the king and for the priest (Exodus 29:27), namely to signify the virtue of kings and prelates for strenuously performing their duty and bearing the burden of the people. For as Nazianzen says in his Couplets: "As the rustling of leaves frightens hares, so the shadows of things frighten the timid and cowardly." Whence St. Ambrose, Book IV, Epistle 29 to Florianus: "Beware of honors," he says, "which you cannot hold without fault." Indeed Seneca also, in his book On Tranquility, chapter 4: "The modesty of some people," he says, "is poorly suited to civil affairs, which require a firm front. For these, quietude is more useful than business." The same author in his Sentences: "He harms the good who spares the wicked. Closest to the good of justice is severity. As thunderbolts fall to the peril of few but the fear of many, so the punishments of great powers frighten more widely than they harm." And Plato, Book II of the Laws: "A prince," he says, "and any magistrate ought to be both prudent and brave: prudent, lest he depend on the judgment of the ignorant crowd; brave, so that he may steadfastly execute what is wholesome." The same author in Book VI: "A judge," he says, "in a certain way represents the person of God." Let him therefore imitate the equity and fortitude of God.
Finally, the divine Isidore of Pelusium, Book I, Epistle 220: "The strength and stability of governments," he says, "is the friendship of God. From which it follows that he who governs powerfully is a friend of God. For, says Scripture, Your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored: their rule is exceedingly strengthened. Therefore if you strive to be a friend of God, govern powerfully, that is, dispensing justice neither through bribes nor through favoritism, but through dignity and merit."
On this matter, St. Bernard, admonishing Pope Eugene in Book III of On Consideration, chapter 5: "The faults of subordinates," he says, "are to be attributed to none more than to idle and negligent rulers." And further on: "Impunity is the offspring of negligence, the mother of insolence, the root of shamelessness, the nurse of transgressions." And in Book IV, chapter 6: "Let another dispense other things; you attend to discipline; entrust that other matter to a name. If a rather insolent word is uttered in your presence, or a rather insolent bearing is displayed, let your hand be upon such a person; you avenge the injury done to you. Impunity breeds daring, daring breeds excess." And in chapter 6, he says, "The Pontiff ought to be a rod upon the powerful, a hammer upon tyrants, a father of kings, a God unto Pharaoh." And he adds: "Where power is joined to malice, something above the merely human must be taken upon yourself. Let your countenance be set against evildoers. Let him who fears no man and dreads no sword fear the spirit of your wrath; let him who has despised admonition fear your prayer. Whoever incurs your anger, let him think that it is God, not man, who is angry with him. Whoever does not listen to you, let him fear that God will hear, and tremble at the consequences."
LEST PERHAPS YOU FEAR THE FACE OF THE POWERFUL, AND PLACE A STUMBLING BLOCK IN YOUR EQUITY. — So the Roman and Greek editions read. Therefore Rabanus, Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, and Jansenius wrongly read "in your agility" instead of "in your equity." Lyranus explains it thus: Lest you offend others by your agility, that is, your fickleness and inconstancy. Jansenius, however, explains: "Lest you place a stumbling block," that is, an obstacle in your agility, that is, your dexterity, so that out of fear you do not dare to use your customary dexterity and readiness to defend the oppressed innocent. For action makes one agile, movement makes one vigorous, spirit makes one brave, and the body makes one robust, says Cornelius Fronto. In this sense St. Augustine in his Mirror reads "in agility"; Abulensis wrongly reads in chapter 20 of Judges, Question 26, "in your malignity"; the Syriac: Lest perhaps you fear from the face of the rich, and make a stain upon your fear; the Tigurina: Lest perhaps you shrink from the face of the powerful, and place a stumbling block before your integrity; others: And place a stumbling block in the straight path by which you were walking rightly along the way of justice.
The sense therefore is: Lest perhaps you stand in awe (for this is the Greek word) and fear the face of the powerful, and through this reverence and fear place for yourself a stumbling block, that is, an occasion of falling and collapsing in your equity, or on your straight path, so that on the straight path of justice along which you used to walk, you collapse through fear and deviate from rectitude and justice, and do not dare to pronounce or execute a right and just sentence, but rather condemn the poor to please the powerful, or allow them to be oppressed by the powerful. For this will be your stumbling block and ruin -- both into the fault of injustice and into the punishment and vengeance decreed for it, whether by the law or by God.
An example is King Ahab, who, because he spared the impious Ben-hadad whom he had captured in war, heard from God: "Because you have let go out of your hand a man whom I had devoted to destruction, your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people" (3 Kings 20:42). So also Saul, sparing the impious Agag, king of Amalek, paid for this excessive clemency with his death (1 Kings 15). Wherefore Totila, king of the Goths, wisely, when asked to pardon someone for the violation of a virgin, replied: "It is the mark of the same character to bind oneself to crime and to prevent the punishment of crimes; but it is absolutely necessary either that this man pay the penalty or that the Gothic state perish." So Sigonius in his work On the Western Empire. For just as when foundations are not laid level, the house resting upon them gapes, cracks, and falls, so also if judgments are not equitable, the state falls; for its base and foundation is justice.
Note: "Scandal" in Greek, from the verb meaning "I bend, incline, limp," refers to the peg that is set up in mousetraps to support the bar, which the mouse, entering and striking against it, overturns upon itself with a sudden collapse. Hence "scandalon" is called an obstacle, a stumbling block, a barrier, and whatever brings about the cause of a fall and ruin -- such as here, reverence and fear. So says Pollux, and St. Jerome in Against Pelagius: "Scolon and scandalum among the Greeks received their name from stumbling and falling." It is therefore the part of a wise man to know himself and his own passions and weaknesses, and to take care not to give them an occasion for falling into sin. For example, one who excessively reveres and fears a certain person, and has found from experience that through this fear he has fallen into some sin, should take care not to deal with such a person who customarily inspires this fear in him. One who feels himself driven by excessive love for some thing or person should flee that person's presence, lest allured by the sight of the one present he be snatched away and fall. One who knows himself inclined to wine and gluttony should flee banquets and drinking companions. This is the prudence of the cautious and the holy, by which, providently foreseeing the dangers that will befall them, they take precautions against them and fortify themselves. Apply the same principle to whatever state, office, or manner of life.
Hence, secondly, some take "scandal" here not in the passive sense just described, but in the active sense, meaning: Lest by favoring the powerful out of fear, your equity become iniquity, and thus give scandal to others. For everyone is scandalized when they hear that a judge favors a guilty powerful person, and therefore awards him the case and condemns the innocent poor. For just as in an eclipse the blemish of the failing sun is noticed by all, so also the stain and deficiency of an unjust judge, who is like a sun of justice, is observed and condemned by all. Such a judge is therefore like the heliotrope, which turns itself toward the sun and rotates and bends with it; and like chaff, which is snatched and tossed about by the wind; and like the crescent moon, which shows an unequal face: for to us it shows its horns, but to the heavenly beings its full orb. So also the judge gives more than is fair to the powerful, and less than is fair to the powerless. This is the respect of persons condemned by both divine and human law, in which the powerful person is regarded more than the poor, and power more than innocence and justice. This is the scandal that draws some to grief and others to imitate the crime.
For as St. Chrysostom says in Homily 1 on the words of the Apostle: "Just as in the body, when some member is damaged, the loss is not great; but when the eyes are injured or the head crushed, the whole body is rendered useless: so also he who has been placed on a high watchtower of virtue, as it were, with great distinction, and held in admiration by all -- when he falls, he causes a great ruin and loss, not only because he fell from a height, but because he becomes matter for scandal to the many others who look upon that very thing." Hence in the scandal of Baal-Peor, God says to Moses (Numbers 25:4): "Take all the leaders of the people and hang them against the sun on gibbets, that My fury may be turned away from Israel."
But if the Roman people should perchance ask me why
I do not enjoy the same judgments as I do the same porticos;
Nor follow, nor flee, what he himself loves or hates;
I shall reply what once the cautious fox
Answered the sick lion: Because the footprints terrify me,
All facing toward you, none turning back.
You are a beast of many heads.
To this are added three expositions of Paul a Palacio: The first is, do not sin on account of the people's favor, as Absalom by the people's favor drove his father David from the kingdom, 2 Kings 15; the second, do not sin to please the people, as Saul sinned on account of the people by not killing Amalec, as God had commanded him, 1 Kings, ch. 15; the third, meaning: O judge, O prince, if sin is to be committed, do not sin publicly: do not teach your subjects to sin, do not set yourself before the people as an example of sin: for that sin is twofold, that is, manifold and grave; and if a simple sin is not free from punishments, how will one so grave go unpunished? O how grievously Jeroboam sinned, who was the cause of Israel's sin! Therefore, let no judge or prince (for it is of these he speaks) sin before the multitude and the people. If he wishes to relieve himself, let him enter a cave with Saul, where he may leave the burden of his bowels; and let him not think himself safe even there: for David is present as witness. Let the prince be warned that his sins are public; for just as a bishop who lays hands on too quickly shares in the sins of the one ordained, so he who sins before the people shares in the sins that the people will commit by his example. Thus Palacio.
7. DO NOT SIN AGAINST THE MULTITUDE OF THE CITY, NOR CAST YOURSELF INTO THE PEOPLE.
This sentence can be explained in three ways. First, "against the multitude" may be taken, by a Hebraism and Graecism (whereby εἰς is often used for ἐν), to mean "in the multitude," and it forbids anyone from accommodating himself to the multitude of the common people and the mob of the populace, especially when it is in tumult, resists the magistrate, or attempts to break or obstruct the judge's sentence: which often happens when citizens try to snatch their relatives or dear ones, though guilty, from the death penalty or other punishment to which they have been lawfully condemned; or when the common people strive to abolish useful laws enacted by the magistrate because they find them burdensome. So this is another reason why no one should seek the office of judge, namely lest fear, just as it drove him to yield to the powerful, also compel him to yield to the mob of the people: for the force of an assembled, rioting, and raging populace is great.
The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not sin in and with the multitude of the sinning city and common people, and therefore do not cast yourself into the rioting or sinning populace, lest you be swept away by it as by a rapid torrent into crime; but rather keep yourself at home, or withdraw, until that tumult or fervor of the people passes and subsides. For the latter part of this verse seems to point in the same direction as the former. The Syriac favors this sense: Do not condemn your soul (or yourself) in the congregation of the city, and do not expose your soul to its judgments. And the Greek, which instead of "do not cast yourself into the people," has: καὶ μὴ καταβάλῃς σεαυτόν ἐν ὄχλῳ, that is, and do not let go, or throw down, or destroy, oppress, ruin, kill (for καταβάλλω signifies all these things) yourself in the mob, or into the mob of the rioting people. And the Tigurina: Do not abjectly surrender yourself to the crowd.
Second, another sense is, as if to say: Do not become a judge or prince, lest you expose yourself to the danger of offending the multitude and the people, who, as they are easily irritated, are with difficulty appeased, and often strip of life and goods those by whom they are offended. Therefore Jansenius says: Do not sin against, that is, against the multitude of the city, injuring it; nor rashly cast and throw yourself into the people, whether to govern them, or rather to settle quarrels and contentions stirred up by the people: for both are dangerous, namely lest you be torn apart by a raging populace. And the former is also a grave sin, and all the graver because it is sinned against an entire people. Thus we must say that two precepts are given here: first, that one should not sin against the people; second, that one should not involve oneself in their quarrels. This sense better fits the Vulgate Latin version. Thus the foolish Rehoboam sinned against the people of Israel who asked that the burdens imposed by Solomon be lessened, by saying: "My little finger is thicker than my father's back, etc. My father beat you with whips; but I will beat you with scorpions," 3 Kings 12:11: and therefore, stripped of the kingdom of Israel by the people, he ruled only over the tribe of Judah with Benjamin.
Third, the easiest and plainest sense will be obtained if you take "sin" here not in the theological sense, but in the civil and political sense, as "offense," as if to say: Do not sin, that is, do not offend the multitude of the city, whether by a sentence of judgment, or by a law that is hateful and odious to them, or, as follows, by casting yourself into the rioting and raging populace. He therefore warns that the office of judge and prince should be avoided, lest one be forced to offend the multitude repeatedly, or unknowingly and imprudently offend them, with danger to oneself and one's family. In this sense the former part of the verse coheres perfectly with the latter. This sense likewise reconciles the Greek, Latin, and Syriac readings, all of which favor and require it. The maxim of Pythagoras applies here: "Yield the path to a flock moving forward, that is, do not oppose yourself to the multitude."
8. NOR SHALL YOU BIND DOUBLE SINS; FOR NOT EVEN IN ONE WILL YOU BE FREE.
First, as if to say: Do not become a judge or prince, lest you double your sins: for besides your own, the sins of others will be imputed to you, namely, those of the people, either because of the bad example you gave them, or because you neglected to correct those sins (as you were bound to do by your office). Second, as if to say: Do not sin against the multitude of the people, because these "sins," being committed against many, are "double," that is, manifold. Third and genuinely, as if to say: If you have once sinned against the multitude, or against justice and equity, do not repeat this sin, and by heaping sins upon sins, as it were bind them into a bundle, thinking: I have already sinned, I have already lost God's grace; therefore I will give myself over to vices and pleasures. Let it suffice to have sinned once, let it suffice to have inflicted one wound upon yourself; do not add wound to wound, blow to blow. One blow can easily be healed: many are often lethal and incurable. This sense is required by the Greek: Do not bind sin twice; the Syriac: Do not repeat sins, because you are not justified in the former ones; Vatablus: Beware of doubling sin. For from repeated sins, as from multiplied and twisted threads, a thick rope is made that cannot be broken, according to the saying: "The wicked is bound by the cords of his own sins," Proverbs 3:22; and: "Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with a cart rope!" Isaiah 5:18. See what was said there.
He adds the reason: "For not even in one will you be free," namely, from deserved chastisement and punishment. Vatablus: Since you will not escape even one unpunished, as if to say: If you double the fault, you double the punishment for yourself: therefore, that the punishment may be simple for you, let the fault also be simple. Wherefore in chapter 21:1: "My son, he says, have you sinned? Do not add to it again."
9 AND 10. DO NOT BE FAINTHEARTED IN YOUR SPIRIT: DO NOT DESPISE ENTREATING GOD AND GIVING ALMS.
This verse depends on the preceding one, as if to say: If you have sinned, do not be fainthearted so as to repeat it and heap sins upon sins; do not despair of pardon or lose confidence; but do not neglect to entreat God for it and to appease Him with alms. For prayer relieves and removes both faintheartedness and sins, according to the words of St. James, ch. 5:13: "Is any one of you sad? Let him pray." See what was said there. Following Sirach, Cato in his Distichs decrees thus:
In adverse circumstances, do not lose heart:
Hold on to hope; hope alone does not abandon a man even in death.
The Greek Seventy join "entreat" with "fainthearted"; for thus they have: Do not be fainthearted in your prayer, and do not despise giving alms. For one must pray with great confidence of obtaining what we ask: and this confidence is, as it were, the soul and sinew of prayer, which gives it strength and efficacy. But the sense comes to the same thing.
St. Bernard beautifully teaches that a fainthearted spirit, on account of the remembrance of sins or passions, is unfit for the praise and jubilation of God, and therefore must pray that God may elevate it to that praise. For thus he says in Sermon 9 on the Song of Songs: "The mind that is fainthearted and of little faith is constrained by the slenderness of its own resources, nor can it, on account of its poverty, rise up to attend to the divine praises, or to contemplate those benefits which produce praises. And if at any time it does try to rise, it is immediately called back to its own affairs by the pressing cares of domestic necessities, and is compelled by its own poverty to be confined in hope."
The Syriac approaches the Greek: Do not be saddened (for sadness is the companion, and now the daughter, now the mother of faintheartedness) in the words of your prayer, and do not delay in giving alms; the Tigurina: Do not be of a relaxed spirit in making your prayers; Vatablus: Do not lose heart in your prayers; or: Do not lose heart so as to pray less; nor neglect to show yourself kindly compassionate; Vatablus: Do not fail to give to the poor, according to Daniel's admonition to Nebuchadnezzar, ch. 4:24: "Redeem your sins with alms, and your iniquities with mercy toward the poor." See what was said there. The illustrious proverb of the Arabs applies here, Century 1, nos. 79 and 80: "He who does good will not be deprived of its reward. The generous man is a neighbor of God, a neighbor of men, a neighbor of paradise, far from the fire of hell." Origen reads and understands it somewhat differently in Homily 1 on Ezekiel, namely thus: "My son, do not be fainthearted under the discipline of God," which he explains by adding: "Nor faint when corrected by Him."
Palacio takes these words more broadly, as if to say: If evils oppress you, especially the threats of the powerful to adjudge lawsuits in their favor, do not lose heart; but pray, and give alms. This is the sum of all life: Pray to God, love your neighbor. These are the most important things in any law. These attract all good things and repel all evil things. These are the laws by which all mortals will be examined on the day of judgment. So also some others refer this back to verse 6: "Do not seek to become a judge," as if to say: Do not seek to become a judge; but nevertheless, if against your will you have been compelled or made a judge, do not be fainthearted so as to fear the faces of the powerful; but with a great and lofty spirit resist them, and for the sake of equity and the oppressed poor, render a just sentence. Imitate David who said in Psalm 100:8: "In the morning (that is, promptly, swiftly) I put to death all the sinners of the land, that I might destroy from the city of the Lord all who work iniquity." For the powerful are like the animal called the ant-lion, that is, the ant-lion, or leonine ant, about which Job 4:11 says: "The tiger perished because it had no prey;" where the Septuagint translates "tiger" as "ant-lion." This is a small animal hostile to ants, as the lion is to other animals, which hides itself under the dust, kills the ants carrying grain, and devours them once killed. Whence mystically St. Gregory takes it to signify the devil: for the devil is timid and ant-like toward the pious and steadfast, but terrible as a lion toward the impious and timid. St. Nilus, however, takes the ant-lion to signify the perturbations of the soul, such as fear and faintheartedness, which at first arise from slighter causes and creep in secretly like ants; but once they have established themselves, their onslaught is so monstrous that they pose no less danger than a lion to anyone who encounters them. Thus concerning Modestus, the prefect of the Emperor Valens, who was trying to drag St. Basil into Arianism, Cyrus Theodorus sings:
Modestus, you are beneath Basil the Great:
You are truly an ant, though you roar like a lion.
For there is a kind of lion in Pseudocasia that are called ants, says Strabo in book 16. Let the judge and every wise person imitate St. Basil; for if he shows himself constant in defending justice and virtue, the powerful will humble themselves like ants; but if he fears them, they will rise up against him like lions.
11. DO NOT SAY: GOD WILL LOOK UPON THE MULTITUDE OF MY OFFERINGS, AND WHEN I OFFER TO GOD MOST HIGH, HE WILL ACCEPT MY GIFTS.
In the preceding verse he forbade diffidence in prayer; here he forbids the contrary presumption, as if to say: Do not be fainthearted in prayer so as to distrust that you will obtain what you ask; but neither be presumptuous so as to heap sins upon sins, saying that you will expiate all these things through sacrifices. For the sacrifices of the old law were not propitiatory and did not expiate sins by the work performed (ex opere operato), but only by the work of the one performing it (ex opere operantis), namely, by the devotion and contrition of the one offering. The Eucharistic sacrifice of the new law, although it has power by the work performed, nevertheless requires equally the work of the one performing it, namely the contrition of the penitent, in order to expiate guilt. He says this against the common crowd of sinners of ancient times (as well as modern), who thought all sins were expiated through sacrifices, even if someone persevered in the will and purpose, indeed in the very act of sin. Whence the Greek and Syriac immediately subjoin this sentence to verse 8, in this manner: "Neither bind double sins, etc., nor say: God will look upon the multitude of my offerings," as if to say: Do not double, triple, and quadruple your sins with this presumptuous confidence that you will offer sacrificial victims for them, and God, looking upon these, will pardon them.
Moreover, the remedy for mockery is compunction, by which one, thinking of one's own sins and the last judgment, does not look at others' faults. Hear St. Antiochus, Homily 48: "He who mourns his own sins has no room left to mock another, or to sprinkle him with ridiculous sneers and provoke a brother." For hear what the wise man of Proverbs says: "Do not mock
12. DO NOT MOCK A MAN IN THE BITTERNESS (affliction, pain, sadness, distress) OF HIS SOUL; FOR THERE IS ONE WHO HUMBLES AND EXALTS, THE ALL-SEEING GOD.
The Syriac: Do not mock people whose palates (of the heart, and consequently of the mouth, that is, who are sad and mourning: for to these, as if with an infected palate, all things seem tasteless and insipid) are bitter, because there is One who exalts and One who humbles; Vatablus: Do not mock a man laboring under the bitterness of his spirit: for there is One who casts down and the same One who raises up, God the observer, as if to say: Do not mock the afflicted, mindful of fortune and the lot of human life, which God balances and tilts at His nod, so that He now prospers the wretched, now afflicts the fortunate, according to the saying of Isocrates to Demonicus: "Reproach no one for their calamity; for fortune is common to all, and the future is unforeseen," as if to say: No one knows what will happen to him.
The mind of men is ignorant of fate and future lot.
Second, more precisely and rather, as if to say: Do not mock the wretched, because God is accustomed to cast down, afflict, and expose to the same mockery the proud, especially those who mock the wretched, according to the law of retaliation: "With what measure you measure, it shall be measured back to you." Thus when Francis, King of France, captured by Charles V, had inscribed on the wall of his cell: "Today for me, tomorrow for you," mindful of the lot and vicissitudes of human life, Charles wrote beneath it: "I am a man; I consider nothing human foreign to me." Pliny says beautifully, book 16, ch. 15: "Just as in nature, he says, the things that bloom most splendidly wither most quickly, such as roses, lilies, violets, while other things endure: so in human life, the most flourishing things are most quickly turned to their opposite," namely prosperity into adversity, health into sickness, strength into weakness, favor into hatred, honor into contempt, friends into enemies, life into death. Accordingly the Chaldean kings, as Herodotus testifies in book 1, carried a scepter on which a rose or similar flower was carved: and the rose, because it is cold, resists drunkenness. Therefore on the scepter, which intoxicates and maddens men with arrogance, they carved a rose, which, though most beautiful, suddenly withers, so that thinking how their scepters would likewise soon perish, they might lay aside arrogance and put on modesty. For "all power is a short life," as we shall hear in chapter 10, verse 11. Add this: the wretched, when mocked, tend to groan before God; and God hears their groans and avenges them: for the misery of the wretched demands pity, not laughter. This is what the Psalmist prays in Psalm 68: "Add iniquity upon their iniquity." Why? "Because they persecuted the one whom You struck, and added to the pain of my wounds." a man in the bitterness of his soul." And after some things: "It is far more profitable to be mocked yourself than to mock another. For the just are accustomed to being held in derision and ridicule, but not to mocking. For they are handed over into the hands of sinners, according to blessed Job's words; and that melodious singer of hymns, Psalm 68: Those who sat in the gate spoke against me; and those who drank wine sang songs about me, etc. The reproaches of those reproaching You fell upon me." Furthermore, the remedy for mockery is to reflect that God mocks the mockers, according to the law of retaliation, Proverbs 3:34: "He Himself will delude the deluders;" Isaiah ch. 51:7: "Do not fear the reproach of men, etc.: for the worm will eat them like a garment, and the moth will devour them like wool," as if to say: Reproach and mockery are like a moth and worm, which, born from wool and clothing, erode and consume the very thing from which they came: for the impious produce mockery, on account of which they are mocked and consumed by God.
Third Part of the Chapter: On Guarding Against Lying and Garrulity
13. DO NOT PLOW FALSEHOOD AGAINST YOUR BROTHER, NOR DO LIKEWISE AGAINST A FRIEND.
Certain half-learned men wrongly, not understanding what "to plow falsehood" means, corrected "plow" (arare) to "love" (amare), which consequently crept into the Complutensian and several other codices. For the Greek and Roman texts consistently read "plow." Now "to plow falsehood" is to fabricate, contrive, and embellish a lie and calumny. Whence the Syriac translates: Do not devise evil against your brother, likewise also against your neighbor; Vatablus: Do not machinate falsehood against your brother, nor contrive the same against a friend; the Arabic: Do not impute a mark of evil to your said brother, nor to your friend. The reason for this phrase is that the Hebrew חרש charas (whence the Latin aras, "you plow") means both to plow and to fabricate. The Greek and Latin translators wished to imitate this, and therefore take charas, that is, "to plow," in the sense of "to fabricate"; whence Psalm 128:3: "Upon my back sinners have wrought"; others translate: "Upon my back plowmen have plowed." For thus the Jews furrowed the back of Christ, and persecutors excavated the backs of Martyrs with whips and hooks, as if they had drawn furrows by plowing upon them.
He alludes to Hosea 10:13: "You have plowed impiety, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of falsehood." Where the reason for this metaphor is revealed, namely that, just as a plowman plows the earth and sows in it, so that he may reap a harvest like the seed: so he who contrives iniquity and falsehood will reap falsehood and false fruits, as I said there. Thus Samson, proposing a riddle to the Philistines, when they had discovered its solution by questioning his wife Delilah and announced it, said: "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle." Where "to plow" is taken to mean to track down, devise, and search out; "heifer" stands for a girl or bride, on account of her youthful wantonness, imprudence, and inconstancy: for he persists in the metaphor of plowing, since in former times, as even now, they plowed with heifers, that is, with cows and oxen; for just as a plowman by digging, as it were, searches and probes the earth: so he who investigates or devises some secret searches and probes that very thing by his art and diligent meditation. The plowman of falsehood, who is the subject here, does the same: and this is the third reason and analogy for this phrase.
Again he alludes to Proverbs 3:29: "Do not plot evil against your friend, when he has confidence in you;" where for "plot," the Hebrew has the word חרש charas already mentioned. Whence the Septuagint translates, do not fabricate.
He names "brother" and "friend" because the malice is all the more cruel toward them, the greater the kinship and bond, and consequently the trust, and therefore the greater the treachery. Whence Clement of Alexandria, book 6 of the Stromata, near the beginning, celebrates that saying of Alcmaeon: "It is easier to guard against an enemy than a friend." And that saying of Sophocles: "What greater wound than a bad friend?" St. Maximus, Sermon on Friendship, relates that Antigonus daily prayed to the gods while sacrificing, that they might protect him from false friends; and when asked why he so earnestly made this request, he replied: "Because when I recognize my enemies, I guard against them."
Note here the beautiful metaphor by which the tongue in speaking is said to plow. For first, just as a plowman by plowing works the earth, so a talkative person by speaking works his tongue. Second, just as a plowman with a plow tears open clods, so a talkative tongue tears apart the reputation of others. Third, just as a plowman by plowing furrows a field, so the tongue furrows the air, the palate, the lips and teeth. Fourth, just as a plowman plows in a field, whether clean or thorny, so the field of the tongue — the clean one, in which it properly plows, is truth; the thorny one, in which it plows wrongly, is falsehood. Fifth, just as a plowman from a clean field gathers a clean harvest, and from a thorny field a thorny one, so he who plows with his tongue in the field of truth reaps true fruits from it; but he who plows in the field of falsehood reaps and gathers deceitful and false ones.
14. DO NOT WISH TO TELL EVERY LIE: FOR ITS HABITUAL PRACTICE IS NOT GOOD.
In the preceding verse he forbade falsehood against a brother and friend: now lest anyone infer from this that any other kind of falsehood is permitted, here he forbids every kind absolutely. Plato erred in teaching, in his book On the Republic, that falsehood is indeed evil in itself; yet it is sometimes useful for avoiding a greater evil, just as we use poisons in making antidotes: therefore falsehood should be used like hellebore. Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Cassian, Bede and others, whom I cited at Exodus 1:19, followed Plato. Against these St. Augustine wrote his book On Lying, and his book Against Lying. But Ecclesiasticus also condemns them in this passage. that falsehood is indeed evil in itself; yet it is sometimes permitted to use it for avoiding a greater evil, just as we use poisons in making antidotes: therefore falsehood should be used like hellebore. Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Cassian, Bede and others, whom I cited at Exodus 1:19, followed Plato. Against these St. Augustine wrote his book On Lying, and his book Against Lying. But Ecclesiasticus also condemns them in this passage. Those men responded, as St. Augustine reports in the cited books, first, that Ecclesiasticus says: "Do not wish to tell every lie"; he therefore forbids only every lie, and so permits some. But St. Augustine rightly refutes this: for among the Hebrews "every" is the same as "none," as if to say: Wish to utter no lie; it is different among Logicians, where "not every" is the same as "some not." Whence the Syriac translates: Do not wish to tell whatever lie; Vatablus: Do not wish to use any lie, whether it be pernicious, jocular, or merely officious: for these are the three species of lying. For lying is in itself and intrinsically evil, so that by no manner, end, or outcome can it be made good and permissible; just as stealing, fornicating, blaspheming, calumniating, cursing, etc., are so intrinsically evil that no circumstance or end can make them good.
They responded second, that Ecclesiasticus says: "Do not wish to lie," as though he forbids only every lie that one utters willingly and voluntarily; but not what one pronounces unwillingly for a greater good. St. Augustine refutes this, saying that Ecclesiasticus adds the word "wish" (velle) so that we may know that not only a lie spoken with the mouth, but also the will to utter it, is evil and sinful. Jansenius adds that "wish" is included because, since by human weakness it either cannot happen at all, or hardly ever, that one never lies — "for if anyone does not offend in word, he is a perfect man," James 3:2 — at least one should take care not to cultivate lying, and not to lie studiously and deliberately. Whence it follows: "For its habitual practice is not good," that is, it is very bad. This is a litotes: for less is said and more is signified. In Greek: it does not tend and lead to good; the Syriac: because its end was not good; Vatablus: for its frequency is never profitable; others: its continuation does not aim at good, as if to say: No lie whatsoever is to be willed; but if at some time a lie should slip from us, its habitual repetition must be guarded against; for this is the worst thing.
The sense therefore of the whole sentence is, as if to say: Do not wish to tell every, that is, any lie; because from one you will come to a second, third, and fourth, and finally to the habitual practice, or custom of lying, which is the worst thing: for this will cause you to lie even to the harm and ruin of another, which is grave and deadly calumny. Therefore, do not say: I lie only in jest or officiously, to benefit or to entertain others: because from the habitual practice of lying and the fluency of the tongue you will sometimes utter a lie without thinking, and it will slip from you when the reputation, goods, and life of your neighbor are at stake, and through habit you will unwittingly defame him, and you will be the cause of his being stripped of goods and even of life. Furthermore, from lying there is an easy fall into perjury: for he who frequently lies and frequently swears, it is impossible that he does not often swear falsely. Whence Cicero in his defense of Roscius the comedian: "He who is accustomed to lying, he says, has grown used to perjury. He whom I can induce to lie, I can easily persuade to commit perjury. For he who has once deviated from the truth is not brought to perjury with any greater scruple than to lying, etc.: therefore the same punishment has been established by the immortal gods for the perjurer as for the liar."
Morally, see here how great is the dignity of truth, so much so that every lie, even the smallest, is a sin because it is contrary to truth. The famous proverb of the Arabs is celebrated, Century 1, nos. 72 and 73: "Truth is magnificence, falsehood is baseness; truth is health, falsehood is sickness. Therefore the mouth is the prison of the tongue." And Century 2, no. 39: "Let a truthful word be the light of all your deeds." And no. 48: "Abandon the lie when you see that it will profit you: for it will harm you. It is also your duty to cling to truth when you see that it will harm you, because it will profit you." And no. 48: "He who is known for truthfulness — even his lie is accepted; and he who is known for mendacity — even his truth is not accepted." For opinion has such power that we believe him who customarily speaks the truth even when he lies; but him who lies more often, even when he speaks the truth, is not believed. Furthermore, Plato, book 2 of the Laws: "It is most disgraceful, he says, for a magistrate or prince (and likewise a citizen) to lie with that very mouth with which he invokes God."
The a priori reason is that God is truth, and essential and uncreated truth: therefore, as much as you approach truth or withdraw from it, so much do you approach God or withdraw from Him: for God loves the truthful as being like Himself, and hates liars as being unlike Himself. Therefore Pythagoras judged that "truth should be honored next to God, inasmuch as it makes men closest to God," as St. Jerome testifies in his book Against Rufinus. Hence God loves Christ infinitely, because He is the adequate and truest Word of the Father. With Christ, the Word of God, therefore, the truthful are associated; for Christ's voice says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life," John 14. For this reason He Himself, being truth itself, established this law of truthfulness: "Let your speech be: yes, yes; no, no; and whatever is more than these comes from evil," Matthew 5:37. He Himself at last died for the truth, namely, that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. So too the Martyrs preferred to lose their lives rather than their faith and truth. Finally St. John, Revelation 21:8: "For all liars, he says, their portion will be in the pool burning with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." For as St. Basil says, Epistle 75: "A lie is the offspring of the devil."
Fourth Part of the Chapter: How One Should Conduct Oneself Toward Oneself and All of One's Own
15. DO NOT BE WORDY IN THE ASSEMBLY OF ELDERS, AND DO NOT REPEAT A WORD IN YOUR PRAYER.
that is, in which you pray to and beseech God; for this is what the Greek προσευχή signifies. He forbade lying; now he forbids wordiness and garrulity, as being the straight path to lying; for those who are wordy, from their much speaking and fluency of tongue, easily fall into falsehood. This wordiness is more serious and unseemly, both "in the assembly of elders," that is, of the senior men: for it befits them to speak, while the young should modestly and reverently listen and be silent, as he will prescribe more fully in chapter 32, verses 9 and following, especially because the elderly, being wise and rich in experience, can easily convict the wordy of lapses of memory, errors, or falsehood; and also in prayer before God: for God is not moved by words, but by the affections of humility, modesty, devotion, desire, and love. What is forbidden here, therefore, is not prolonged verbal prayer, but irreverent tautology and wordy repetition of speech, such as the Jews and Pharisees employed, thinking that, like Cicero, they would persuade God with smooth speech and eloquence to grant their requests. Whence, instead of "be wordy," the Greek has βαττολογεῖν, that is, to babble, to talk nonsense, to speak foolishly, to blurt out whatever comes to mind, with no regard for place, time, and persons.
The Syriac takes it to mean to pretend and dissemble; for it translates: Do not hide your mind (with feigned and dissembled words) in the congregation of princes, and do not vary the words of your prayer; Vatablus: In the assembly of elders do not be wordy, nor repeat a saying in your prayer. This is what Christ enjoins in Matthew 6:7: "And when you pray, do not use many words, as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their much speaking," that is, on account of much speaking, in Greek βαττολογίαν; and battology is foolish talk, a futile pouring forth and repetition of words. For the Gentiles thought they could by this quasi-rhetoric rouse, soothe, and bend the gods. Against them Christ teaches that the essence, efficacy, and power of prayer lie not in the words of the mouth, but in the conversation of the mind with God, whose cause and, as it were, soul is desire and pious affection of spirit; which, however, He does not deny can be expressed and nourished by words, both so that we may praise God outwardly with mouth and tongue alike, and so that by the voice the affection of the mind may be sharpened, aroused, and sustained. Therefore when Ecclesiasticus says: "Do not repeat a word in prayer," understand this as meaning: out of faithlessness, as though it were necessary to repeat words so that God may hear them; or lest you repeat them rashly and without fruit. For otherwise the Church repeats Verses and Antiphons, first from abundance of devotion and to arouse the spirit and prayer, second, to refresh the spirits of those praying; third, for better harmony; fourth, because mystically these Responsories signify that good works must often be repeated. So Amalarius in his Antiphonary, chapter 4, Turrecremata treats in tract 66 on the Rule of St. Benedict, and Suarez in book 4 On Vocal Prayer, chapter 2.
Furthermore, our Emmanuel Sa expounds it thus: "Do not repeat a word in your prayer," as if to say: When you pray, be attentive, lest you repeat words on account of distraction; for this is unbecoming and irreverent before God. Let the scrupulous take note of this, who out of fear of distraction repeatedly repeat the words of their prayers, in which matter they err: both because this fear in the scrupulous is vain and defective; and because this repetition is irreverent; and because by this practice they nourish and increase their fears and scruples; and because by pronouncing the words they have fulfilled the obligation of prayer, and even if they were distracted during it, this distraction in them is often involuntary, and therefore free of sin; but if it had been in some way voluntary, and therefore some sin, that is to be removed not by repeating words, but by contrition. The exposition of Hugo and Dionysius pertains here: The sense, they say, is, as if to say: Let your prayer be so devout and attentive that you have no scruple or doubt whether you have properly or attentively uttered the words, and therefore wish to repeat them; but conscious of your devotion and attentiveness, boldly proceed further.
Mystically St. Gregory, Part 3 of the Pastoral Care, Admonition 31, refers these words to those who relapse into sins that they have bewailed: "The sow, he says, when washed in the muddy mire, becomes dirtier. And he who mourns a sin committed but does not abandon it, etc., renders even his tears foul before the eyes of God. Hence it is written: Do not repeat a word in your prayer; by which saying he by no means forbids us to ask pardon often, but to repeat our faults. As if he were saying openly: When you have wept over evil deeds, do not again do what you would have to bewail again in your prayers." So also St. Chrysostom, tome 1, Homily on Psalm 84, "You will not be angry forever": "What does it mean, he says, do not repeat a word in your prayer? For who does not repeat? Perhaps this is to be understood of what you say to God: I have sinned? Do not repeat the deed; because when you repeat it, that is, when you return to sin, you are repeating your prayer. Therefore the wise should choose to acknowledge their sin and always grieve over it. Past evil deeds long committed, badly thought, most vilely delighted in, disorderly spoken, ought to remain daily in the mind, and always a person should grieve over these things, so that when new temptations come, the enemy may be repelled there by saying: I still grieve over my old sin, how shall I admit a new sin?" The same Chrysostom, at the beginning of Psalm 140, explains it thus: "Do not repeat a word in prayer: however, he does not exhort us not to say the same things twice when we ask and beseech Him: far from it: for we are commanded to persevere in prayers; but that we should not delay when we have promised something to God, and should hasten to fulfill it. And therefore he says elsewhere: Do not delay to pay your vow."
The Syriac favors this sense: Do not vary the words of your prayer.
16. DO NOT HATE LABORIOUS WORKS AND FARMING CREATED BY THE MOST HIGH.
In Greek: Do not hate laborious work and agriculture created by the Most High. In the Syriac this sentence is absent. Vatablus: Do not pursue with hatred laborious work, nor agriculture established by the Most High. The conjunction "and" is exegetical and emphatic, as if to say: Do not hate laborious work, such as agriculture preeminently is. Thus Christ says in Mark ch. 16, verse 7: "Tell the disciples, and (that is, especially) Peter," as the head and chief of all. He commends the love of labor and agriculture for five reasons. The first, because labor excludes idleness, which is the fountain and origin of all evils: therefore, as many evils as you will bear from laziness, so many goods, indeed more, you will gain from labor. For this reason nature gave man two hands, that he might labor with them constantly.
The second, because "man is born to labor, and the bird to flight," says Job ch. 5, verse 7. Hence a certain learned Rabbi said: "Love work, and hate the doctorate," as if to say: Be concerned about substance and work, not about an empty name and title. The reason is what Solomon gives in Proverbs 14:23: "In all work there will be abundance; but where there are many words, there is often want," as if to say: An abundance of goods is produced by working, not by idling and chattering. The Hebrew: In all labor there will be increase, but the word of the lips leads to want; the Septuagint: In everyone who is diligent there will be abundance, but he who is comfortable and free of pain will be in want; the Chaldean: In everything that makes you diligent, there will be profit for you, and superfluous lips will be in want.
Maximus, Sermon 32, celebrates Democritus who, when asked in what respect the laborious differ from the idle, replied: "In the same way the impious differ from the pious, namely in good hope." For those who exercise their body with labors hope for rich rewards of their toils; but the idle always look upon the poverty before them. Therefore the Emperor Severus gave his tribune the watchword, Let us labor; the Emperor Pertinax, Let us serve as soldiers, says Spartianus. Let the faithful man say the same to himself; for as Job ch. 7:1 says: "The life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a hired laborer." It is memorable, what we read in Roman history, that Scipio Nasica, when canvassing for the aedileship, was rejected from it because, handling the hand of his competitor hardened by agriculture, he ironically asked whether he walked on his hands and was accustomed to tread the earth? The Phrygians, moreover, punished with death anyone who stole an ox or any farming implement, as Stobaeus testifies, Sermon 42.
The third, because labor invigorates and strengthens the body as well as the mind. The saying of the Hebrews is: "In whatever one labors, from that he will bear fruit," meaning that industrious men always gather the fruit of their labor; for as a shadow follows the body, so usefulness follows the labor of mind or body.
Therefore, if you seek advantage and strength, do not flee labor; if you wish to eat the kernel from the nut, crack the nut. Therefore Aristotle, book 1 of the Economics, says agriculture is the best of all arts, because it is according to nature, and seeks sustenance not by waging war or trading, as soldiers and merchants do, but by laboring from the earth, which is the mother of all. And Virgil, book 2 of the Georgics:
O all too fortunate farmers, if they knew their own blessings,
For whom the most just earth, far from discordant arms,
Pours forth easy sustenance from the ground.
And further on:
But secure rest, and a life that knows not how to deceive,
Rich in varied resources, etc.; through their lands
Justice, departing the earth, left her last footprints.
For agriculture is "the most innocent of all arts," says St. Augustine. See more in Cato and in Columella's preface to On Agriculture; Pliny, book 18, ch. 5; Xenophon in the Economics; Varro, book 1, ch. 2; Stobaeus, Sermon 54, and others.
The fourth, because labor excludes vices and implants virtues, such as innocence, patience, fortitude, as is evident in farmers. Furthermore, labor begets heroic works. Thus St. Dominic Loricatus, when asked how he had attained such great rigor of life (for besides constant vigils and fasts, he beat himself daily with scourges through an entire psalter), replied: "Labor whets the appetite for labor; vigils beget vigils." For as the Arabs say: "Taste, and you will be fed," that is, taste labor, and it will call you to desire more of it; "approach the rich man, and you will grow rich." It is commonly said: "Fate helps the endeavor, and the Thunderer helps the one who strives. The reward of a precept is a precept," that is, he who labors to observe one precept, to him God, as if by way of reward, grants the ability to observe others as well. Thus Pythagoras, as reported in Stobaeus, Sermon 27, used to exhort his followers "to choose for themselves the best way of living; for although it would be most laborious, by custom it would become pleasant."
The fifth, because agriculture was established by God and entrusted to man in the state of innocence, Genesis 2:15: "The Lord God therefore took man and placed him in the paradise of pleasure, to work it and to guard it." Again, immediately after the sin, God imposed this penance on man: "In toil you shall eat from it (the earth) all the days of your life; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread," Genesis 3.
17. DO NOT RECKON YOURSELF (προσλογίζου, that is, count, associate, join yourself, or permit yourself to be counted and numbered) AMONG THE MULTITUDE OF THE UNDISCIPLINED.
In Greek ἁμαρτωλῶν, that is, of sinners, who do not fear God, nor foresee and dread His vengeance. But you who are faithful and wise,
18. REMEMBER THE WRATH (God's vengeance upon sinners), FOR IT WILL NOT DELAY.
Vatablus: Do not join yourself to the multitude of the wicked; but remember that vengeance will not delay. The Syriac translates the first part differently; for it reads thus: Do not love your soul (yourself) more than the person who is with you; remember that fury does not pass. Take this with a grain of salt, namely, as if to say: Do not love yourself so much that you despise, despoil, or oppress your neighbor in comparison with yourself; for otherwise the order of charity requires that we love ourselves more than others. Whence it follows:
19. HUMBLE YOUR SPIRIT GREATLY, FOR THE VENGEANCE ON THE FLESH OF THE WICKED IS FIRE AND WORMS.
He explains the wrath of God, which in the preceding verse he said would not delay, through fire and worms, so that by its consideration and fear we may humble ourselves and flee pride, for which this fire and these worms have been prepared by God. Whence the Greek transposes these words and orders them thus: Humble your soul greatly. Remember, for wrath will not delay, because the vengeance on the wicked is fire and worms. St. Ephrem, treatise On the Fear of God, reads thus: "Do not be proud, nor puff yourself up; but humble yourself: for the vengeance on the wicked is fire and worms." But he adds and inserts certain things paraphrastically, as it seems, for the sake of explanation. The Syriac again goes another way: Very very greatly humble your spirit, because the end of all men leads upward, as if to say: Because the end of men is lofty, namely, heavenly glory, to which humility leads, inasmuch as it alone exalts. St. Bernard says beautifully in On the Interior House, ch. 28: "He who displeases himself, he says, pleases God; and he who is vile in his own eyes is dear to God." The Arabic: Humble your soul very, very greatly, because the end of men is in dust and corruption.
Note the word "greatly," as if to say: Humble and lower yourself beneath God and the angels, beneath men, beneath all creatures down to hell, just as Fr. Francis Borgia placed himself at the feet of Judas the traitor, indeed beneath Lucifer and the demons; because you have sinned more often, more grievously, and longer than they: for a single mortal sin is the greatest evil that can exist or be imagined in the world; it therefore represents the greatest vileness to be cast into hell, to be punished there with fire and worms, especially the sin of pride. Humble yourself, therefore, and acknowledge yourself a worm, and say with Christ: "I am a worm, and not a man," so that you may escape the worms of hell. Whence St. Bernard in the Formula of the Honest Life: "Keep these three things, he says, always in mind: What were you, what are you, and what will you be? What were you? Foul seed. What are you? A vessel of filth. What will you be? Food for worms. Likewise imagine the punishments of those who are in hell, and that they will never end, and how great the evils they suffer for how brief a pleasure."
Mystically, our farming is the cultivation of the soul, both our own and others'. For our country estate, entrusted to us by God to cultivate, is the soul, according to the words of St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 3:9: "You are God's field." And verse 6: "I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth." For this field all labors must be eagerly undertaken and all pains endured, as St. Paul and the other Apostles undertook and endured them, for the hope of an ample and eternal harvest in heavenly glory, according to Psalm 125:6: "Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds: but coming, they shall come with rejoicing, carrying their sheaves." "Therefore, says St. Ambrose, book 8 on Luke, ch. 16, let us so work and cultivate our field, appointed to this duty of cultivation, that in that higher Jerusalem, where the true observance of the law is celebrated, we may have fine flour from our sheaves, which blessed are those who shall have been able to gather, so that coming they may come with rejoicing bearing their sheaves."
St. Vincent Ferrer, the apostle of his age, in his treatise On the Spiritual Life, writes and prescribes simply but devoutly and forcefully: "He who wishes to flee the snares and temptations of the devil should regard himself as a dead body, full of worms and foul-smelling, and as a corpse which one disdains to look at and behold, indeed over which one closes one's nose because of its most foul odor and stench, and from which one turns away one's face, so as not to see such and such an abomination. So it is necessary, dearest, verse 17. Therefore Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the Patriarchs were farmers. See what was said in the passages cited, and Genesis 9:20. Likewise Romulus, Remus, Camillus, and the first Roman nobles were farmers, and were called from the plow to arms and scepters. Whence Cicero, book 1 of the Offices: "Of all things, he says, from which anything is acquired, nothing is better than agriculture, nothing sweeter, nothing more worthy of a free man." And: "Farmers always live so that they know no profit but the fruit alone which they have produced by their labor." Therefore St. Augustine, Heresies 46, mocks the Manicheans as fools for condemning agriculture: "They do not drink wine, he says, saying it is the gall of the princes of darkness, etc. They think that plants and trees live in such a way that they believe the life that is in them can feel and suffer pain when they are harmed; whence, insane, they accuse agriculture, which is the most innocent of all arts, as guilty of numerous homicides." Finally, Alfonso, King of Aragon, seeing an elderly drunk man saying "wine is the milk of old men," replied: "But the food of kings is honor, which the immortal gods sell not for leisure or luxury, but for fierce labors and much sweat." Witness Panormitanus, book 1 of the Deeds of Alfonso. that you should feel thus about yourself. By placing yourself in so lowly a state, there will be no temptation of the devil that can lead you into sin: indeed you will put every temptation to flight in this way; because the devil, seeing that a lowly person does not wish to accept his temptations, will withdraw in confusion. And this medicine alone is sufficient for overcoming whatever temptations of the devil."
Moreover, consider the words "very, very greatly," as if to say: Some humility is not enough, but very great humility is required; for no one humbles himself sufficiently unless he humbles himself "unto death, even death on a cross" with Christ. See St. Ephrem, treatise On the Fear of God, who has much on this subject. See also St. Basil, book On the True Integrity of Virginity, who writes on this so elegantly that Photius called him the "Attic Bee," that is, the Attic bee, because just as a bee gathers from flowers, so from all authors he drew and composed sweet doctrine.
St. Vincent Ferrer, the apostle of his age, in his treatise On the Spiritual Life, writes and prescribes simply but devoutly and forcefully: "He who wishes to flee the snares and temptations of the devil should regard himself as a dead body, full of worms and foul-smelling, and as a corpse which one disdains to look at and behold, indeed over which one closes one's nose because of its most foul odor and stench, and from which one turns away one's face, so as not to see such and such an abomination. So it is necessary, dearest, that you should feel thus about yourself. By placing yourself in so lowly a state, there will be no temptation of the devil that can lead you into sin: indeed you will put every temptation to flight in this way; because the devil, seeing that a lowly person does not wish to accept his temptations, will withdraw in confusion. And this medicine alone is sufficient for overcoming whatever temptations of the devil." of moderation, namely that in all things one most strictly observe measure and proportion: that is, between too much and not enough, so that nothing in him be superfluous, nothing diminished or defective, nor more than is fitting, nor less than is becoming.
Second, the word 'greatly,' says Dionysius, signifies that we have many reasons and incentives for humbling ourselves: the first is the consideration of sins committed; the second, our own frailty; the third, the imperfection of nature -- for man in the series of rational creatures is the lowest, and nothing lower can be created, as some hold; the fourth, the filth and corruption of the body; the fifth, comparison with the Saints and the Blessed; the sixth, because he has nothing of himself, nor anything his own; the seventh, consideration of the divine judgment; the eighth, consideration of the divine majesty; the ninth, the punishment of pride, which Sirach here assigns as fire and the worm, and fittingly so. For, as Pliny says in Book XI, chapter 32: 'Worms are born in wood wherever there is excessive moisture, and they gnaw the wood.' He adds, in chapter 37, that 'no species of worm has eyes.'
So the proud man has no eyes with which to recognize himself and his own misery; but blind like Tiresias, he thinks himself to be what he is not, because he is filled with an excessive humor of self-love, and as if swollen with dropsy; but this pride will gnaw at him and destroy him.
Third, the word 'greatly' signifies that there are various degrees and acts of humility, through which one must descend in humble disposition in order to grow in humility. St. Benedict assigns these degrees in his Rule: The first, he says, is the fear of the Lord; the second, resignation; the third, obedience; the fourth, obedience even in difficult matters; the fifth, to reveal all evils and other things to one's Superior; the sixth, to consider oneself unworthy of all things; the seventh, to sincerely consider oneself inferior to all; the eighth, to observe the common rule, not to be singular; the ninth, to be silent until asked; the tenth, not to be ready for laughter; the eleventh, to speak few and reasonable words modestly; the twelfth, to bear humility in heart and body.
Furthermore, receive the acts of humility in this order. The first act is contempt of oneself; the second, to consider oneself unfit for all things; the third, not to wish to be esteemed; the fourth, to wish to be held in low regard; the fifth, to grieve at being made much of; the sixth, to consider oneself inferior when comparing oneself with others; the seventh, to resign oneself entirely; the eighth, to subject oneself to all people for the sake of God; the ninth, to embrace what is more humble. Receive another series of them: first, to say nothing from which one might gain praise; second, not to rejoice when praised; third, not to do anything out of human respect; fourth, not to excuse oneself; fifth, to drive vain thoughts far away; sixth, to consider all others as one's superiors; seventh, to welcome occasions of humility.
Moreover, Cassian assigns the signs of humility: first, to be mortified; second, to reveal all things to one's Superior; third, to do all things according to his judgment; fourth, obedience in all things and meekness; fifth, not to inflict evil, and to endure evil inflicted; to do always for myself and for you; but more for myself, because my whole life is fetid, I am entirely fetid, and my body, and my soul, and all things that are within me are most fetid and most abominable with the filth and corruption of sins and iniquities; and what is worse, every day I feel this stench being renewed in me more freshly and more oppressively.' And further on: 'And just as he believes and feels himself to be fetid before himself and God, so let him also believe and feel that not only before the Angels and holy souls, but also before all living people he is abominable and fetid; and that his deeds and words not only do people disdain to see and hear, but that they close their nostrils and turn away their faces, lest they see him; and as a fetid corpse they cast him from their midst, and let him be alienated and separated and cast out, like one worse than a leper, until he comes and returns to himself. And if anyone were to render justice upon him, let him feel concerning his body what is just, and so believe, even if his eyes were to be torn out, his nose cut off, his hands cut away, and his ears, and his mouth, and so with the other bodily senses and members; because with all these he has offended God and his Creator. Likewise, let him desire to be despised and scorned, and let him receive all reproaches, shames, defamations, injuries, blasphemies, and other adversities with the greatest joy and gladness, and bear them patiently. And it is necessary that you distrust yourself entirely, and all your goods, and your whole life, and that you turn yourself entirely and lean upon the arms of Jesus Christ, the poorest and most despised, and reproached, scorned, and dead for you, until you are dead in all your human feelings, and Jesus Christ crucified lives in your heart and in your soul, and entirely transformed and transfigured may He cordially be in you: so that you may never see, nor feel, nor hear, anything except Him alone standing on the cross, dead and hanging for you, after the example of the Virgin Mary, dead to the world and living in faith.' And after some words: 'He ought also to exercise himself in another sevenfold affection concerning himself. First, namely, that he be entirely confounded by his vices and defects. Second, that he bewail and lament his sins as offensive and staining to himself with the sharpest and most bitter grief. Third, by humiliation and trampling of himself with contempt, namely, that with all his strength he despise himself as a most vile and fetid thing, and desire to be scorned, as has been said. Fourth, with the most severe rigor, namely, that he macerate his body most harshly, and desire it to be macerated, as fetid with sin, indeed as a latrine and cesspool and tomb of all filth. Fifth, with implacable anger against all his vices, and against the roots and inclinations of his vices. Sixth, with vigilant and strenuous vigor, namely, that he keep all his senses, acts, and powers always vigilant and attentive to every good with a certain most manly strenuousness. Seventh, with the discretion of perfect modesty, or modesixth, to do nothing without example or rule; seventh, to be content with every lowliness, and to consider oneself a useless worker; eighth, to sincerely consider oneself inferior to all; ninth, to restrain the tongue and speak modestly; tenth, not to laugh easily. Also these: first, not to wish to be praised; second, to be simple in conduct; third, not to acknowledge good things said about oneself, or to fear losing them because they are known; fourth, to think less of oneself than is said; fifth, to see in one's neighbor that he has more than oneself; sixth, to accuse oneself; seventh, not to make excuses, and to accept correction with a willing spirit; eighth, not to know one's own virtues; ninth, to despise worldly things; tenth, to pray for persecutors, and to do good to them.
FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF THE FLESH OF THE WICKED IS FIRE AND THE WORM.
The Tigurina version: Because fire and the worm are the punishments of the flesh of the wicked, that is to say: Because the wicked proudly and luxuriously clothe, nourish, and exalt their flesh, therefore it will be punished with fire and the worm. He joins the flesh and the punishments of the flesh -- fire and the worm -- to humility, threatening, as if to say: Unless you humble yourself, but wish to be proud, by God's just judgment you will fall into lust and the vices of the flesh; for when the spirit is humbled, the flesh too is humbled; but when the spirit grows proud, the flesh also grows proud and wanton. And therefore Cassian, St. Gregory, and others assign humility as the best remedy for chastity. Rabbi Levitat echoes Sirach in Pirke Avoth, chapter 4: 'Walk,' he says, 'with a very bent and lowly spirit, for the expectation of every man is worms.'
Now there is a threefold opinion here: first, some take the worm as well as the fire not as literal, but as metaphorical; second, others take the fire as literal, but the worm as metaphorical, namely the remorse of conscience; third, others most aptly understand both the worm and the fire as literal and real.
It is therefore asked, first, whether the fire of hell, by which demons and the damned are tormented, is real and corporeal, or rather figurative and spiritual. Origen holds it to be figurative and spiritual in Homily 13 on Exodus, where he says that the fire of Gehenna differs from our fire in its very nature, though it is endowed with the power of burning. And in Book 21 of the Periarchon, chapter 11, he asserts that this fire is kindled by the crimes themselves in the souls of the wicked, just as fever is excited by the abundance and conflict of humors in human bodies. And in Homily 9 on Various Passages in Matthew (although some deny it is by Origen), he teaches that this fire, as well as the worm, is metaphorical. St. Jerome agrees in his commentary on Isaiah chapter 66: 'The fire,' he says, 'that is not extinguished is understood by most as the conscience of sinners, which torments those placed in punishments.' Calvin eagerly seizes upon and follows this, when he says that the damned in hell are not tormented by any other fire or punishment than by their apprehension that God is angry and offended at them on account of their crimes; for this apprehension, he says, torments them like fire. But fire and burning are one thing, and apprehension and imagination are another.
But St. Ambrose speaks plainly in Book VII on Luke, chapter 14: 'Therefore,' he says, 'there is no bodily gnashing of teeth, nor any perpetual fire of corporeal flames, nor is the worm corporeal; but these things are so described because, just as from much undigested food both fevers and worms are born, so if anyone does not digest his sins by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but by mixing sins with sins contracts, as it were, a kind of indigestion of old and recent offenses, he will be burned by his own fire and consumed by his own worms.'
And after a few words: 'The fire,' he says, 'is that which the sorrow of sins generates; the worm is that whereby the irrational sins of the soul sting the mind and conscience of the guilty, and gnaw, as it were, the inner parts of the conscience.' Nor does St. Augustine seem to differ greatly from this opinion, in Book XXI of the City of God, chapter 10. For when he was discussing the story of the rich man Dives: 'It could be fittingly answered,' he says, 'that such was that flame as were the eyes which he lifted up and with which he saw Lazarus; as was the tongue upon which he desired a little moisture to be poured; as was the finger of Lazarus, from which he asked that this be done for him: where, however, there were souls without bodies. So therefore that flame which burned and that little drop which he sought were incorporeal, just as are the visions of sleepers, or of those who in ecstasy perceive incorporeal things having nevertheless the likeness of bodies.' Gregory, however, in Book XV of the Moralia, chapter 19 (alias 17), says: 'But on the other hand, the fire of Gehenna, since it is incorporeal, and corporeally burns the reprobate cast into it, is not kindled by human effort nor nourished by wood, but once created it endures unquenchable, and needs no fuel yet lacks no heat.' Finally, Damascene, in Book IV of the Faith, last chapter: 'Sinners shall be delivered,' he says, 'to eternal fire, not material such as exists among us, but such as God knows.' Finally, Nyssen, in his book On the Soul and the Resurrection, takes this fire as mystical and metaphorical, so that it is nothing other than the grief of lost beatitude: 'The privation,' he says, 'of those things that seem good becomes a flame burning through the soul, desiring some drop from the sea of goods with which the Saints abound and overflow, and desiring consolation, yet not obtaining it.'
Reasons can also be offered: first, because this fire acts upon incorporeal demons; therefore it too must be incorporeal, for a body cannot act upon a spirit; second, because the Greeks at the Council of Florence held that in Purgatory there is no real fire by which souls are purified; yet the Latins reproved them for this. Therefore the same must be said of the fire of hell; for theologians commonly hold that the fire of Purgatory and of hell is the same.
But I say that it is certain that in hell there is a true and corporeal fire, by which both demons as well as the souls and bodies of the damned. This is proved, first, from Scripture, which everywhere teaches that the damned are punished by fire in hell. Christ says plainly in Matthew chapter 25, verse 41: 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.' Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 33: 'Topheth has been prepared from of old, prepared by the king, deep and wide. Its fuel is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone, kindles it.' And chapter 33, verse 14: 'Who among you can dwell with the devouring fire? Who among you can dwell with everlasting burnings?' St. Mark, chapter 9, verse 44: 'Their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.' St. John in the Apocalypse frequently teaches that the wicked are tormented by fire in Gehenna, as in chapter 19, verse 20: 'These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.' Chapter 20, verse 15: 'Whoever was not found written in the book was cast into the lake of fire.' He says the same in chapter 21, verse 8. Similar things are found everywhere in St. Paul, St. Peter, and the other Apostles. But the words of Sacred Scripture are to be taken properly, as they sound, not figuratively, unless necessity compels, which here does not appear. Finally, this fire will be the punishment of the flesh of the wicked; therefore it must be corporeal, in order to act upon the flesh.
Second, because it is the common sense of the Church and of the faithful that the damned are tormented by fire in hell, understanding the fire of Gehenna inculcated by Scripture as real and proper, not metaphorical.
Third, because this is the sense of the Greek and Latin Fathers. St. Cyprian in his work On the Praise of Martyrdom says: 'Gehenna, with the great murmuring and groaning of those who weep, and with tormenting flames through the horrible night of dense darkness, ever breathes forth the savage fires of a smoking furnace.' Clement of Alexandria, in Book V of the Stromata, says that the wicked are punished by ekpyrosis, that is, by conflagration and inflammation. St. Justin asserts the same in his Exhortation to the Gentiles. Nazianzen, in his oration On Holy Baptism, compares the fire of Gehenna with the fire of Sodom. St. Chrysostom, in Homilies 44 and 55 on Matthew, and in his homily On the Rewards of the Saints, says: 'They shall be thrust into a river and sea of fire, a sea impassable and most bitter in its vastness, in which fiery waves rise up like mountains.' The same author, in Homily 13 on the Epistle to the Romans and Homily 4 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, says: 'Consider what the evils of the other life will be: the loss of the kingdom of heaven, the branded pain from Gehenna, perpetual chains, outer darkness, the venomous worm, gnashing of teeth, distress and anguish, a river of fire, furnaces never to be extinguished.' St. Basil, on Psalm 28, 'says that fire retains the power of burning but is deprived of light.' St. Jerome teaches the same on Matthew chapter 10; Isidore, in his book On the Highest Good, chapter 21; and expressly St. Augustine, in Book XXI of the City of God, chapter 10, and in On Faith and Works, chapter 15, and often elsewhere. And St. Gregory, in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 49, where he discusses by what means the fire of Gehenna, since it is corporeal, can act upon souls and demons, who are incorporeal.
Fourth, the Scholastic Doctors teach the same with one voice, in the Fourth Book, distinctions 44 and 49, and in the First Part, Question 64, articles 3 and 4.
Finally, unless this fire is established as corporeal, it is most difficult to conceive and explain what is to be understood by the name of the fire of Gehenna, and what that spiritual and metaphorical fire would be.
To the arguments of the contrary opinion I respond. Origen, although he could be excused in the manner of the others, yet I do not trouble myself much about him, both because he had many other errors, and because he tends to be a symbolic interpreter of Sacred Scripture, and therefore, as St. Jerome testifies, he was ill regarded, as one who destroyed the literal sense in order to establish his symbolic concepts. St. Jerome speaks from the opinion of Origen and similar authors, not from his own, as is evident to anyone examining the cited words. St. Ambrose and St. Damascene say that the fire of hell is not material and corporeal, not absolutely, but in comparison with our fire; because, namely, it is far more subtle, sharper, more burning, and more penetrating than ours. Again, because its mode of action is not corporeal, but spiritual and divine. For that fire acts as an instrument of divine power upon the spirits themselves, namely, upon demons and souls. Thus the Fathers sometimes say that Angels are corporeal, not in themselves, but if they are compared with God, who is the purest and most exalted spirit. For they are as distant from the purity of God as bodies are from the purity of Angels, and far more. Finally, the fire is said not to be material because it does not need constant new fuel to nourish it, nor does it consume the bodies it burns, as ours does, nor does it give light, nor can it be extinguished. So Clictovaeus and St. Thomas, in the Fourth Book, distinction 24, Question III, article 2, reply 1, interpret Damascene.
In St. Gregory, for 'the fire of Gehenna, since it is incorporeal,' it should be corrected to 'since it is corporeal'; for there follows, 'and corporeally burns the reprobate cast into it,' as Bellarmine rightly observes in Book II On Purgatory, chapter 11. For he contrasts the fire of Gehenna with our fire, in that ours, since it is corporeal, must be constantly fed with new fuel applied to it; but that fire, although equally corporeal, does not need to be fed, but once created from the beginning it endures unquenchable. For in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 29, he expressly teaches that the fire of Gehenna is corporeal. St. Augustine in the passage cited does not speak of the fire of the damned in Gehenna, but only of the story of the Rich Man in Luke chapter 16, and says that it is narrated parabolically, like a vision, because it mentions a finger, a tongue, a drop, etc., which the soul of the Rich Man and Lazarus lacked; and consequently the fire that is mentioned there was not real, but imaginary, such as is presented to Prophets in a vision, because the tongue of the Rich Man is said to be tormented by this fire. Since therefore it is established that the Rich Man after death did not have a tongue, it follows likewise that his tongue could not have been burned by real fire. Therefore this burning of his tongue by fire must be explained symbolically and parabolically. For otherwise St. Augustine himself, in the same place and in the passages cited shortly before, expressly asserts that the fire of Gehenna is corporeal. For immediately after the words cited he adds: 'But indeed in that Gehenna, which is also called the lake of fire and brimstone, the fire will be corporeal.' Nyssen does not seem to mean anything different: for he is treating of the story and fire of the Rich Man, which, following St. Augustine, he thinks should be taken parabolically: 'For what eyes,' he says, 'does that rich man lift up in hell, who left his fleshly eyes in the tomb? How likewise does he feel flame (in his tongue), which is incorporeal? And what tongue did he wish to be cooled by a drop, when he had no fleshly tongue? And what was that finger that would bring him a drop? And that very bosom of rest, what is it?'
To the first argument I respond that this fire acts upon spirits not naturally, but supernaturally, as an instrument of God's omnipotence. 'For why,' says St. Augustine in Book XXI, chapter 10, 'should we not say that, although in wonderful yet true ways, even incorporeal spirits can be afflicted by the punishment of corporeal fire, if the spirits of men, themselves also certainly incorporeal, both now have been able to be enclosed in corporeal members, and then will be able to be inseparably bound by the chains of their bodies?'
To the second: It is more certain that the fire of Gehenna is true fire than that the fire of Purgatory is, for the reasons already given. Again, it is certain that the fire of Purgatory is true fire, as the Latin Church holds. Yet the Latins were unwilling to contend with the Greeks at the Council of Florence on this matter, because this point itself is not a matter of faith; it sufficed the Latins that the Greeks would confess that Purgatory exists, and that souls are punished and purified in it. For they had other matters of greater importance pertaining to the faith to discuss and persuade the Greeks about. Therefore in the last session, Purgatory is defined to exist, with no mention made of fire.
Morally, learn here how atrocious is the punishment of the damned, namely burning, and burning that is internal and eternal, and justly and deservedly so. If you ask why God torments the damned with fire rather than with another punishment, I respond: first, because fire most fittingly corresponds and is suited to the fire of concupiscence, with which sinners burned and which they indulged in this life, and this is what is signified by 'the punishment of the flesh'; for in the flesh resides the sting of concupiscence. Hence St. Paul, in Galatians chapter 5, verses 17 and 19, and elsewhere, calls the vices and works of the flesh the vices and works of concupiscence. Memorable and horrible is the pronouncement of St. Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, concerning the vice of the flesh and of lust: 'Setting aside children,' he says, 'among adults few are saved because of the vice of the flesh.' If therefore nearly the entire world burns with this infernal fire, what wonder if it is also tormented by fire in Gehenna?
Second, because fire is most fierce and has the greatest power of acting upon and afflicting bodies, and through bodies upon the souls that inform them. Again, there is a great analogy and affinity between the soul and fire; for among the elements and bodies, fire is the most spiritual, whence it comes closest to the soul. Hence the Hebrew word 'ish,' that is, an animated man, is said to be derived from 'esh,' that is, fire, says Eusebius in Book XI of the Preparation, chapter 2.
Third, fittingly the pride of spirits, namely of demons and souls, is punished by a body, namely fire, so that those who wished to exalt themselves above God might be subjected to corporeal fire as to a torturer. This is what Sirach says here: 'Humble your spirit greatly, for the punishment of the flesh of the wicked is fire and the worm.' The fire itself represents this humiliation of proud spirits; for since by its nature it demands to be in the highest and topmost place of the world, to punish the pride of demons and men it is pressed down into the lowest center of hell; and just as it is violently held there, so also are the spirits it punishes.
Fourth, since the fire of Gehenna is incorruptible, it is a fitting symbol and instrument of the punishment of the damned, inasmuch as that punishment is eternal and will endure forever. Again, this fire is a symbol of the empyrean heaven, from which the demons fell; for the empyrean is named from pyr, that is, fire, as if fiery, because it is brilliant like fire; but without the heat and burning that is in the fire of hell. Therefore in the empyrean the flame of fire is, as it were, divided, says St. Basil on Psalm 28. The fire therefore reminds the demons of the empyrean heaven, from which they fell, and so torments them, while they see the empyrean exchanged for the fire of hell.
Fifth, fire most excellently of all things expresses the ardor of divine fury against the damned. Moreover, just as we naturally feel pain in the soul when the body is tormented by fire -- for this torment passes from the body to the soul that is joined to it and informs it -- so supernaturally God by divine power through fire produces in the separated soul such pain and torment as naturally exists in the soul joined to the body, on account of their mutual sympathy.
Finally, that the fire of Gehenna is sulphurous is clear from Psalm 10: 'He shall rain upon sinners snares, fire and brimstone,' etc. Isaiah 30: 'The breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone, kindles it.' St. John teaches the same in Apocalypse chapter 14, verses 20 and 21. The same is confirmed from the fact that Sodom and the neighboring cities were overthrown by sulphurous fire, Genesis chapter 19, of which St. Jude says that 'suffering the punishment of eternal fire, they were made an example' to the world, manifestly indicating that sulphurous fire is eternal; for he speaks of the punishment that was visible to the whole world, which was not eternal; but the sulphurous fire, whose punishment they were suffering, is eternal, although not the same in number. For sulphur is most apt for the punishment of the wicked, both on account of the fiery force with which it easily and vehemently blazes up; and on account of the sharpness of its foul odor, which is suited to the stench of sins; and because sulphur is customarily used in fumigation for the purification of houses, as Pliny says in Book 35, chapter 15. Sinners have defiled their houses, namely their soul and flesh, by sinning while they lived. Hence it is fitting that God should purify and in a sense sanctify these houses with sulphurous fire, as far as is possible; for the punishment of sinners is a kind of expiation and purification. A sign of this too is the fact that an immense quantity of sulphur, partly always burning, partly not burning, lies hidden under the earth, as is evident from the hot springs and burning mountains, which are very numerous throughout the world; for hot springs smell of sulphur, and the fires of mountains are sulphurous. Even thunderbolts, which are symbols of divine wrath, consist of sulphurous fire and smell of sulphur. So our Lessius in his work On the Divine Attributes, under Justice.
Just as mortal sin, for example lust, drunkenness, and pride, is the greatest of evils in the nature of guilt and offense against God, so the fire of Gehenna is the greatest of evils in the nature of punishment and retribution. And this, first, because this fire is sulphurous and internal. Second, because it is most burning, most fierce, and most efficacious. Third, because it burns not only bodies but also souls directly: for in this life the force of fire upon the soul is broken by the body, so that it reaches the soul only in a diminished and, as it were, halved form; but in Gehenna fire will burn the very souls and demons intimately in themselves; and the soul is more sensitive than the body -- indeed the entire power of feeling arises from and resides in the soul. Fourth, because fire will torment the damned not only with its heat, but also with its darkness and its sulphurous smoke and stench. Fifth, because this fire is eternal, so that it cannot be extinguished, nor even diminished. 'Remember these things,' says St. Augustine in Sermon 181 On the Seasons, chapter 18, 'and oppose to the flames of lust and cupidity that now torment you, that fire of Gehenna. The fire that is in this present life consumes everything it receives; but that fire always torments those whom it takes, and always keeps them whole for their punishment. For it is called inextinguishable not only because it itself is not extinguished, but because it does not extinguish or destroy those whom it takes. But no voice will be able to express, no speech will be able to explain, the power of that punishment and that fire, etc. Where the smoke of their torments shall ascend forever and ever,' Apocalypse 14:11.
Alas, wretched and foolish mortals, who, infatuated by a trifling pleasure of the flesh, as if drunk and insane, forgetful of God and heaven, unmindful of eternity, as if in jest you plunge yourselves into the abyss of all miseries, into the immense ocean of eternity, into the everlasting fires of Gehenna! What is it, O immortal God, the eternity of fires, to burn eternally in flames to live? O truly a moment that delights; an eternity that torments! O madness of men more insane than all insanity, who for a paltry joy of the flesh summon upon themselves eternal fires! O eternity of the sulphurous pyre! O Tartarean eternity, most ablaze in flames, most desperate in perpetual desperation! O living death, and death-dealing life! O most atrocious torment of all torments -- eternity! In a moment one drinks, one plays, one fornicates; in a moment pleasure passes, and eternal calamity immediately succeeds. Thus laughing one goes into the perpetual fires, in the perpetual course of eternity, through the ages. One goes, but does not return; for the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end. O end without end! O death without death! When it closes the circle of time, it begins the perpetual circle anew. Eternity, I say, after all time, always as if reborn, begins its circle of perpetuity. The Most Reverend Lord Godfrey, recently Bishop of Bamberg and Wurzburg, whose pious conversation I enjoyed at Wurzburg, used to ponder these things constantly, and continually turning eternity over in his mind, was accustomed to say: At every moment I stand at the door of eternity. Say the same to yourself, O Reader, when the flesh or the devil solicits you to unlawful things: If I do this, I will pay with eternal fires; I stand at the door of eternity; far be it, then, that I should do it; far be it that I should be so insane; I cannot repent at such a cost. Indeed, put your finger into fire, or the flame of a candle, and if you cannot endure it for an hour, how will you endure the eternal billows of sulphurous Gehenna?
It is asked, second, whether in Gehenna there are real worms, or only metaphorical ones. Many hold that they are only metaphorical, namely the remorse and anguish of conscience, which constantly barks at and reproaches the damned: Why did you fornicate? Why did you get drunk? Why did you not foresee these torments? Why did you squander God, heaven, and happiness for such a cheap morsel? Why did you summon upon yourself these eternal fires of Gehenna for so brief and paltry a pleasure? How easily you would have avoided them, if you had thought about these things more often! Now you will pay for your foolishness, your madness, and you will weep with eternal but late and useless repentance. It is done, I am lost, I am damned, I shall burn forever. O wretched me! O insane me! O most miserable and most desperate of all creatures! So St. Ambrose, in Book VII on Luke, chapter 14, whose words I recited a little earlier, takes this worm as the grief and sorrow that, like a worm, arises from the putrefaction of sin; as do St. Jerome on Isaiah chapter 66; St. Thomas in the Fourth Book, distinction 50, Question II, article 3, replies 1 and 2, and there Dominic Soto, and many others, and our Lessius in Book XIII, On the Divine Attributes, chapter 24, number 159.
But St. Augustine, in Book XXI of the City of God, chapters 9 and 10; St. Basil on Psalm 33; Prosper, in Book III of the Contemplative Life, chapter 12; St. Anselm in the Elucidarium; St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Cyril, Hugh of St. Victor, and others whom I cited on Isaiah 66:23, hold that this worm is literal, literal and real. This is proved, first, because in Gehenna the fire is literal, not metaphorical; therefore the worm is similar. Second, because this worm is called 'of the flesh,' as if gnawing the flesh, as St. Augustine notes in the passage cited.
You will object first: The word 'of the flesh' is not in the Greek. I respond that the word 'of the flesh' is in all the Latin versions. That it was formerly also in the Greek is inferred from the fact that St. Augustine reads it; yet he does not usually use St. Jerome's version, which is the Vulgate, since it had not yet been received, but rather another, older version.
You will object second: It does not say 'the worm of the flesh,' but 'the punishment of the flesh is fire and the worm,' so that the sense would be, as if to say: The punishment of carnal works, or the punishment of the flesh, that is, of concupiscence, both of body and of soul, which the wicked indulged, will be fire and a worm gnawing the soul, and consequently also afflicting the flesh. Or 'the punishment of the flesh,' that is, of the soul formerly joined to and devoted to the flesh, will be the worm and fire. So St. Thomas in the passage cited. But these explanations are not satisfactory; for it says 'the worm is the punishment of the flesh' because it will avenge and punish the flesh for the sins committed in it, just as fire will punish and burn the same flesh, not through the soul, but directly and immediately. For otherwise the author would have omitted the word 'of the flesh' and simply said: 'The punishment of the wicked is fire and the worm'; especially because he is not properly treating of lust, which is in the flesh, but of pride, which is in the mind. For he says: 'Humble your spirit greatly, for the punishment of the flesh of the wicked is fire and the worm.' Finally, the same thing is clearly explained in Judith chapter 16, verse 21, where it says: 'He will give fire and worms into their flesh, that they may burn and feel it forever.' I confirmed the same at greater length on Isaiah chapter 66, verse 23.
Tropologically, this worm is the remorse of conscience already mentioned, about which St. Bernard says in Book V of the Consideration: 'This is the worm that does not die -- the memory of the past. It does not cease to gnaw the conscience, and fed upon a truly inexhaustible food, it perpetuates its life. I shudder at the biting worm, and the living death. I shudder at falling into the hands of a living death and a dying life. This is the second death, which never finishes killing, but always kills.'
Movingly, St. Ephrem, in his treatise On Renunciation and the Various Punishments of Hell, near the end of Volume I, represents this worm, namely the grief and lamentation of the damned, where among other things he says: 'Then weeping most bitterly and wailing they will say: O how we spent our time in negligence and torpor! O how we were deceived! O how, hearing the divine Scripture and mocking it, we mocked ourselves! There God was speaking to us through the Scriptures, and we did not attend; here we now cry out, and He turns His face away from us. What will the ends of the earth profit us? Where is the father who begot us? Where is the mother who bore us? Where are our children? Where are our friends? Where are our riches? Where are our possessions and properties? Where are the crowds? Where are the banquets? Where are the various and ill-timed races? Where are the kings and the powerful? How is it that none of them can now save us, nor can we ourselves bring aid to ourselves? But we are utterly forsaken, both by God and by His Saints.' And a little further on: 'What will remain to be said? Farewell, all you just. Farewell, Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs. Farewell, company of Patriarchs. Farewell, army of Monks. Farewell, precious and life-giving Cross. Farewell, kingdom of heaven without any end. Farewell, heavenly Jerusalem, mother of the firstborn. Farewell, paradise of delight. Farewell also to you, O Lady, Mother of God, mother of God the lover of men. Farewell, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters; for we shall see none of you ever again. And then each one will depart to the place of torment prepared for him on account of his previous deeds, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'
20. DO NOT DEAL TREACHEROUSLY WITH A FRIEND WHO DELAYS PAYMENT.
He passes in a fitting order from the care of oneself to the care of a friend, who is another self. Now first, Lyra explains it thus, as if to say: Do not break the old bond of friendship with a friend, if he delays in repaying you money that was lent. For friendship is much more precious than money, as Aristotle teaches in Book VIII of the Ethics. A greater good should not be despised for the sake of a lesser one, but rather the reverse. So too Rabanus, Palacius, and others throughout. But although this sense is suited to the Latin version, it does not, however, suit the Greek. For the Greek word diaphorou, which our translator renders as 'differentem' (delaying), does not mean one who is slow, delays, or postpones the payment of money owed, but something quite different.
Second, Jansen reads from manuscripts: 'Do not deal treacherously with a friend on account of money that is different,' that is, on account of excellent money, or money that is varied and great; for the Greek word diaphorou signifies something outstanding and excellent. But although this sense suits the Greek, it does not, however, suit the Latin; for in Latin 'differens' does not mean something outstanding and excellent, but something other and diverse. Moreover, his reading differs from the reading of the Vulgate of printed Bibles.
Third, others, as is noted in the margin of the Glossa Ordinaria, read: 'Do not deal treacherously with a friend who differs from you in money,' that is, who differs and disagrees with you in a monetary matter, either because he does not have as much as you but is poorer than you; or because the money that you demand from him as though owed to you, or that you insist be given or lent gratuitously, he refuses, or delays to pay. But nearly all codices read 'pecuniam (not pecunia) differentem'; and the sense just assigned does not fit this reading.
Fourth, therefore, and genuinely, the word 'differentem' here means the same as 'diverting,' turning away to another and distracting. For this is properly what 'differre' means, namely to carry in different directions, says Donatus, to take away and transfer elsewhere, and also to disturb. Thus Plautus in the Rudens says: 'A storm carried us with our boat to the right--' version: Do not exchange a friend for the gold of Ophir, that is, for the most excellent gold, such as the region of Ophir produces, or, as the Complutensian and Roman editions read, Sophir or Suphir. For the Septuagint translates Sophir for Ophir or Hophir in 3 Kings 9:28, and chapter 10:11, and 1 Chronicles 29:4, because the aspiration 'h' is often changed to the letter 's,' as hys becomes sus; hyper becomes super; hyle becomes sylva. Now Ophir is either Peru, whence Solomon's gold is called gold of Peruim, as if of the Peruvians, in 2 Chronicles 3:6, in the Hebrew and the Greek of the Septuagint; or, as Gaspar Varrerius says in his book On Ophir, it is the Golden Chersonese, or rather the whole coast that is comprised of Pegu, Malacca, and Sumatra: whence our Maffeus, in Book XVI of his Indian History, relates that the people of Pegu derive their origin and lineage from Jewish exiles, who, condemned by Solomon to the gold mines of Ophir, were the first to occupy those places. The gold of Ophir was the most excellent and most praised. Hence Isidore holds that refined gold (obrisum) is so called as if 'Ophirisum.' See what I said about Ophir and Ophas on Jeremiah 10:9.
21. DO NOT DEPART FROM A WISE AND GOOD WIFE, WHOM YOU HAVE OBTAINED IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD: FOR THE GRACE OF HER MODESTY IS ABOVE GOLD.
From a friend he passes to a wife as the person most closely joined to a man, and says: Just as a friend must not be abandoned, nor exchanged for gold, so neither must a wife, in whom he requires four conditions: first, that she be wise, that is, sensible and prudent; second, that she be good, that is, not vicious, nor obstinate or malicious, but of good and agreeable character; third, that she be modest, and thereby humble toward her husband, and chaste toward outsiders; fourth, that she have the fear of God. For the phrase 'whom you have obtained in the fear of the Lord' pertains both to the wife and to the husband, as if to say: Whom you obtained as one who fears God, and you yourself fearing God, by the merit of the fear of God, according to that saying of chapter 26, verse 3: 'A good wife is a good portion; she shall be given in the portion of those who fear God, to a man for his good deeds,' as Sara was given to Tobias, Rebecca to Isaac, and Abigail to David.
The Greek at this place reads concisely: Do not depart from a wise and good wife; for her grace is above gold. The Syriac: Do not exchange a good and beautiful wife for pearls. The Tigurina: Beware lest you lose a wise and good wife, if you have obtained one according to the religion of the Lord; for her beauty is more excellent than gold; or, as others read, for her grace surpasses gold. Formerly it was permitted for Jews to give their wives a bill of divorce; therefore the Sage here warns that they not give it to their wives, if they have obtained wise, good, and chaste ones. In the new law divorce has been abolished; yet in certain cases separation from bed is permitted; but Sirach advises here that this not be done easily -- indeed, if the wife is wise and upright, it is not lawful to do it.
The reason from a higher principle is that a wise wife wisely governs children and the household, and thus enriches it with peace and all good things, and gives wise counsel to her husband. Hence God said to Abraham: 'In all that Sara says to you, hear her voice,' Genesis chapter 21, verse 12. Such counsel St. Cecilia gave to Valerian, Clotilde to Clocarries in the opposite direction,' that is, transfers and draws away. Tacitus, Book 21: 'The camps situated on the plain were carried away by the force of the river,' that is, were torn apart. Varro, Book I of On Farming, chapter 4: 'Cytisus is sown in well-worked soil, like cabbage seed; then it is carried away (that is, transplanted) and placed at a foot and a half apart.' Terence in the Adelphi: 'Wretched me, I am torn apart (that is, distracted) by pains.' Plautus in the Cistellaria: 'Wretched, I faint, I am carried, I am torn apart, I am snatched away.' The Greek word diaphero means the same, that is, I carry in different directions, I snatch away, I agitate, I tear apart. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do not deal treacherously with a friend so as to break or violate his friendship, on this account, namely that he diverts money, merchandise, and profits away from you, and carries them off elsewhere, that is, diverts and transfers them to himself and his own, or even to others; or that money due to you by right or by friendship he carries off elsewhere and spends elsewhere, and thus delays and postpones paying and settling it with you. Wherefore from this sense the first meaning assigned a little above is derived. See here how our Translator is truly Latin, profound, and skillful.
The reason is that a friend can bring forward just and various causes for this diversion of his, such as that he promised it to another, or that another is more in need, or that he intends to devote it to God and pious works, etc. But even if he can offer no just cause, except that it seems to him that it should be done, and it so pleases him, you should not on that account break your old friendship with him, because friendship is more valuable than all money. For, as Cicero says in On Friendship: 'A friend is the best and most beautiful possession.' The Syriac favors this sense: Do not exchange a friend for money, nor a brother who is to you as the gold of Ophir. And the Greek reads: me allaxes philon heneken diaphorou kata mede hen, that is, do not exchange a friend on account of something different according to anything, namely because he diverts and turns away something from you and carries it off elsewhere. For diaphorou, the Complutensian, Roman, and other editions read the contrary, adiaphorou, that is, indifferent. Whence some translate: Do not exchange a good friend for something indifferent, that is, for adiaphora, namely goods of fortune, which are midway between virtue and vice, neither good nor evil, and therefore to be regarded as of little value; because just as we can use them for virtue, so we can abuse them for vice. Hence the Tigurina translates: Never exchange a friend for a common thing, nor a sincere brother for Ophir gold, as if to say: Despise gold and money as cheap things compared with friendship; do not break friendship for such things, because if a friend were in need, you would give him yours: consider that you have already given it, or are giving it. This is what we will hear in chapter 29, verse 13: 'Lose money for a brother and a friend.' And Solomon in Proverbs 12:26: 'He who disregards loss for the sake of a friend is just.'
Nor should you spurn a Brother (both by nature, that is, a blood brother; and by friendship, that is, a friend who is like a brother) most dear for the sake of gold. Namely, on account of gold that he asks from you, or that he diverts from you, or that he delays to give or pay. In Greek and the Syrivis, Monica to Patricius, etc., when they led them to the faith and to salvation. Again, modesty in a wife blushes and glows more than gold; for its blush is the tincture of virtue, as Diogenes says according to Laertius, and the citadel of beauty as well as of chastity, as Demades says according to Stobaeus, Sermon 72. The same Stobaeus, in Sermon 31, relates that Pythias, the daughter of Aristotle, when asked with what color cheeks should most beautifully be painted, replied: with the color of modesty. Hence St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his oration Against Women Who Adorn Themselves, says: 'One color is lovely in women, namely that blush which modesty produces; which indeed is painted by our Painter (Christ).' And St. Ambrose, in Book I of the Offices, chapter 18: 'Beautiful,' he says, 'is the virtue of modesty, and sweet its grace, which is observed not only in deeds, but also in speech itself.' This blush, therefore, is the purple of honor. It is also proper to modesty what Plutarch writes in his Moralia: 'The moon,' he says, 'when it is joined to the sun, is then darkened and hidden; when it is distant, it shines. On the contrary, a good wife should be most visible when her husband is present, and most hidden and concealed when he is absent.'
22. DO NOT HARM A SERVANT WHO WORKS IN TRUTH, NOR A HIRED WORKER WHO GIVES HIS SOUL.
From the wife he descends to the servant. For 'do not harm,' the Greek has me kakoses, that is, do not afflict, do not treat badly, do not assail with harsh words or blows 'a servant who works in truth,' that is, truly, faithfully, and from the heart, not in pretense and merely when being watched, working for you; 'nor a hired worker who gives his soul,' that is, who does not spare himself or his labor, but devotes all the powers of his soul and body to the work of his master, by whom he was hired, so that he seems from his exertion, effort, and sweat to be constantly breathing out his soul. In a servant, therefore, he requires fidelity; in a hired worker, diligence. Hence the Syriac: Do not afflict a servant who serves in truth; nor a hired worker who makes his soul (that is, himself) labor. The Tigurina: Do not mistreat a servant who works faithfully, nor a hired worker who devotes his whole self to you. Antonius in the Melissa, Sermon 29, reads: 'Do not mistreat a servant who does his work truly.' Here is relevant what Seneca says in Book I of On Clemency, chapter 18: 'To rule servants moderately is praiseworthy; and regarding a slave, one must consider not how much he can endure with impunity, but how much the nature of equity and goodness permits, which commands us to spare even captives and those purchased at a price.' St. Paul gives the reason in Ephesians 6:9: 'And you, masters,' he says, 'do the same things to them (servants), forbearing threats, knowing that both their Lord and yours is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with Him.' See what was said there. Marcus Crassus, who treated and even educated his servants generously, gave the economic reason: 'Because,' he said, 'servants are the living instruments of the household.' Aristotle thought the same in his Economics.
23. LET A WISE SERVANT BE DEAR TO YOU AS YOUR OWN SOUL: DO NOT DEFRAUD HIM OF LIBERTY, NOR LEAVE HIM DESTITUTE.
In Greek: Let your soul love a wise (syneton) servant, that is, a prudent, sensible one; do not defraud him of liberty. The Syriac: Your servant, understood: if you have one, love him as your own soul; and do not prohibit liberty from him, that is, do not deny him liberty. The Arabic: Do not harm a servant acting faithfully, nor a hired worker who makes himself labor, tormenting his soul. Love a wise servant according to the love of your own soul (that is, as you love yourself), and do not prohibit him from liberty. Antonius in the Melissa, Sermon 23: 'Love a prudent servant from the heart.' The Greek therefore teaches that two things are to be provided by a master to a prudent servant, namely, first, love from the heart; second, liberty. The Latin adds a third -- that he not be sent away destitute, according to Deuteronomy 15:13: 'When you grant him liberty, you shall by no means allow him to depart empty; but you shall give him provisions for the journey.' Moreover he says: 'Do not defraud him of liberty,' that is, when he either can and wishes to redeem himself at a price, or when the time of servitude prescribed by law or otherwise expires, as the Hebrews were granted to serve only six years, but in the seventh year to go forth free, Exodus 21:2. Again, in the jubilee year all servants had to be set free, Leviticus chapter 25, verse 41. Otherwise, to grant a wise servant liberty is a matter of counsel, not of precept; for his prudence and virtue deserves rather to act freely than to serve, rather to command others than to obey. It is different with bad and foolish servants: for them servitude is more useful than liberty.
Moreover, many in ancient times adopted their servants as sons on account of their fidelity and services, and thereby at the same time granted them both liberty and inheritance; and some hold that Sirach here implies and recommends this. Thus Plato, in the Fourth Dialogue on the Republic, says that adoption removes servitude, and Plutarch in his Political works recommends that freedmen be adopted, so that servants may learn to comply with their masters' every wish in the hope of similar adoption. For this reason even now the Turks adopt obedient servants as their sons; indeed, some Spaniards too, if a son is lacking, adopt a most dutiful servant as a son. Solomon suggests that the Hebrews did the same, in Proverbs 17:2: 'A wise servant,' he says, 'shall rule over foolish sons, and shall divide the inheritance among brothers.' And so some think that Solomon adopted Jeroboam on account of his strength, who afterwards, becoming more insolent, seized the kingdom of the ten tribes from Rehoboam and claimed it for himself. 'Publius Catienus Philotimus,' says Pliny in Book 7, chapter 36, 'loved his patron so much that, having been made heir to all his goods, he threw himself onto his funeral pyre.' Similarly, servants among the Gauls were burned on the same pyre with their masters, as Caesar attests in Book 6 of the Gallic War. Hence Pomponius Mela, treating of the same people in Book 3, chapter 2, says: 'There were those who gladly threw themselves onto the pyres of their own, as if they were going to live on together.'
Note: The Sage so highly commends servants and maidservants to the master, both because it is the duty of a master to have particular care of his household and domestics -- for this is what economic justice and the order of charity require -- and because this very thing redounds to the honor and advantage of the master; for if servants are kindly and bene-
So it is. Perfection also acquires the riches of the virtues, especially because it draws the soul away from the desire for earthly things, so that, content with the things necessary for the use of life (which are very few), one neither seeks nor covets the rest. For he is rich who desires nothing, who lives happily content with what he has.
24. DO YOU HAVE LIVESTOCK? ATTEND TO THEM.
In Greek, episkeptou auta, that is, inspect, attend to, visit, take care of them; do not entrust them entirely to servants, but you yourself visit them from time to time, to see whether they are properly treated and fed by your servants. "For the master's eye fattens the horse; if they are useful, let them remain with you." But if they are useless, sell them, discard them, or kill and slaughter them for the food and use of the household. The Syriac reads: Do you have a beast of burden? Try it; and if it is true (that is, sound and in every way perfect), keep it. From the care of servants he descends to the care of livestock, which likewise serve the master; hence beasts of burden are called jumenta from juvando (helping).
Furthermore, he commends their care for three reasons: the first is that it is the master's duty to care not only for himself, but for the whole household, to which the livestock belong. Again, the kindness and generosity of a master should extend not only to people, but also to livestock; for just as it is the vice of cruelty to overwhelm beasts of burden with excessive labor, or to deny them their due food, so likewise it is the virtue of clemency to be kind to livestock and to provide for them with pasture, water, and other comforts at the appointed hours, according to Proverbs 12:10: "The righteous man knows (the Septuagint reads 'has compassion on') the souls of his beasts of burden; but the heart of the wicked is cruel." On these words St. Chrysostom, Homily 29 on the Epistle to the Romans, says: "For the souls of the Saints are exceedingly gentle and lovers of humanity, not only toward their own, but also toward strangers; so that they extend this their gentleness even to brute animals. Therefore the Wise Man said: The righteous man has compassion on the souls of his beasts of burden; if therefore on beasts of burden, how much more on human beings."
Second, because by caring for his livestock, the master cares for himself, that is, for his own property, by which he feeds himself and his household. Therefore foolish and unjust to themselves are those cruel masters who by their greed or cruelty so burden their horses, oxen, and donkeys that they collapse; so beat them that they are mangled; so sparingly feed them that they fail in strength. For such masters deprive themselves of the great benefit they would receive from the animals if they treated them properly.
Third, because inhumanity and cruelty toward livestock is a sign and a beginning of cruelty toward people. Accordingly, from the histories it is clear that those who were cruel to people were also savage toward animals. Thus the cruel Nero took delight in the slaughter and butchery of animals, and indeed he himself often killed them with his own hand, and this was his recreation and pleasure. The cruel Domitian spent many hours a day catching and killing flies; for he would pin them with a golden stylus, so that he would leave none alive — hence the proverb: "Not even a fly."
Accordingly, Oppian, in Book II of On Hunting, forbids excessive hunting to kings, and gives the reason: "Lest, delighting in the slaughter of animals, they conceive the idea of slaughtering people also." Xenophon likewise teaches that Cyrus accustomed himself and the Persians to war and the killing of men through hunting and slaughtering animals. For this reason God commanded the Jews to show humanity toward animals — for example, not to plow with an ox and a donkey together, because the donkey is unequal to the ox and is burdened more than is fair under the same yoke with the ox; not to take the mother along with the chicks when robbing birds' nests; not to muzzle the ox while it is threshing; and to let all beasts of burden rest on the seventh day, that is, the Sabbath. "So that more easily," says Tertullian, Book II Against Marcion, chapter 17, "the humanity practiced beforehand on cattle and beasts might be trained for the relief of human beings" — that is, so that the stubborn Jews might learn to be humane toward people, who were compelled by God to be humane toward animals.
Tropologically, livestock are uncultured and dull-witted people, as if to say: If you have people of small brain and mind entrusted to you, have compassion on their dullness and frailty; and do not grow weary of instructing and forming them in Christian doctrine and life, even if you seem to make little progress, mindful of this saying:
A drop hollows a stone, not by force, but by falling often;
So a man becomes learned, not by force, but by studying often.
Thus we read that St. Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, when he was a boy, was of so dull a mind that he could grasp nothing. Therefore, thinking of abandoning his studies, when he stood sadly beside a well, he noticed the grooves that the frequent pulling of buckets had worn into the hard stone, and he reasoned with himself thus: If the repetition and frequency of pulling can hollow out stones, surely the frequency of studying can polish my mind, however dull and hard it may be. Therefore, taking heart, he devoted himself steadfastly to his studies, and became so learned a man that Spain did not see anyone more learned in that age; indeed it owes to him its schools, academies, and learned men, since they were his disciples, or followers and emulators. So his Life relates. Let those who catechize and teach rustic peoples, Indians, Kaffirs, and slaves take note and imitate this — people to whom nature seems to have given only half a mind, as Aristotle says.
Symbolically, livestock are the animal appetites, senses, and sensations of a person; for in these we have something in common with cattle, and we are animals, and we live in an animal fashion. We must watch over these, so that they are useful and serve reason and the mind as their master and lord. But if they resist and rebel, they must be discarded and mortified, according to the saying: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live" (Romans 8:13).
25. DO YOU HAVE SONS? EDUCATE THEM, AND BEND THEM FROM THEIR CHILDHOOD.
In Greek, paideuson, that is, instruct, chastise, form. The Syriac reads: Do you have sons? Correct them, and take wives for them in their youth, lest they run after harlots. The word "educate" pertains properly to the intellect, the word "bend" to the will; for both must be directed and formed in boys and young men, lest they either remain uncultured and unteachable, or unbending and untamed. For in boys there is an innate ignorance in the intellect — this must be removed by education; in the will there is pride and concupiscence — these must be bent and chastised by mortification, according to Proverbs 13:24: "He who spares the rod hates his son; but he who loves him disciplines him diligently." Bend therefore their neck, so that they learn to humble themselves and obey, so that they learn to break their appetites and desires, so that they flee enticements and softness.
Truly Fabius says, Book I of the Institutes, chapter 3: "A soft upbringing breaks the powers of mind and body." And Plutarch, in On the Education of Children: "I have seen," he says, "fathers whose excessive love was the reason they did not truly love." These imitate the apes, which embrace their young so tightly that they sometimes kill them, as Pliny attests, Book VIII, chapter 54. Harsh was that education of children of which Virgil speaks in Aeneid IX:
First we bring our newborn to the rivers,
And harden them in the cruel frost and waves.
See more on this matter in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus; Seneca, Book II On Anger, chapter 22; Alexander ab Alexandro, Book II of the Genial Days, chapter 25. Wisely St. Chrysostom, Homily 9 on 1 Timothy, admonishes parents "not to allow their children to do any of those things that are harmfully pleasant." For, as Clement rightly warns, Book I of the Pedagogue, chapter 7: "A vine grows wild unless it is pruned; so too does a person."
Piously and wisely St. Jerome, in Letter 7 to Laeta, teaches in detail how she should educate her little daughter Paula: "After you have weaned her with Isaac, and clothed her with Samuel, present the most precious gem to the chamber of Mary, and place her in the cradle of the infant Jesus. Let her be nurtured in a monastery, let her be among the choirs of virgins; let her not learn to swear; let her consider lying a sacrilege; let her not know the world; let her live like an angel; let her be in the flesh without the flesh; let her consider all humankind to be like herself." St. Chrysostom recommends similar things, Homily 21 on the Epistle to the Ephesians: "Have you borne a child?" he says, "Imitate Hannah. Learn what she did: she promptly took him away and offered him in the temple. Who among you would not prefer in countless ways that his son become a Samuel, rather than king of the whole world?"
26. DO YOU HAVE DAUGHTERS? GUARD THEIR BODIES.
That is, intact, untouched, chaste, and pure. For in this consists all the honor and dignity of a daughter, especially because her sex and age are fragile and inclined to vice, and many lie in wait for her. You will accomplish this if you keep her at home, if you keep her away from young men, from banquets, from dances, from disreputable entertainments. For thus Dinah fell into sin because she curiously gazed at the Shechemites (Genesis 34). If she always has you or her mother as guide and companion, if the maidservants and menservants are chaste, if she hears no immodest conversation — for evil communications corrupt good manners — and if, finally, the love of modesty and chastity and the horror of immodesty are continually instilled in her. This indeed, among all things, is the most effective medicine and safeguard of chastity. Hear Ovid, Book III, Elegy 4:
Harsh husband, by setting a guard over a tender girl,
You accomplish nothing: each must be guarded by her own character.
Even if you guard her body well, her mind is adulterous;
Nor can any woman be guarded, unless she wills it.
Nor can you guard her mind, though you lock up everything:
With all others shut out, the adulterer will be within.
And a little later:
A hundred eyes on his forehead, a hundred on his neck Argus bore:
And all of these love often deceived.
AND DO NOT SHOW A CHEERFUL FACE TOWARD THEM.
Both so that by the severity of your countenance you may restrain and check their wantonness, levity, boldness, and audacity; and so that by the same you may instill in them a sense of shame and fear of you, lest they dare to offend you; and also lest, by a father's blandishments toward them, they learn to be attracted to men, and become more free and shameless toward them, as Jansenius says. For, as Solomon says: "Anger is better than laughter, because by the sadness of the countenance the mind of the offender is corrected" (Ecclesiastes 7:4). On these words St. Gregory Thaumaturgus says: "Prudent anger is to be preferred to laughter: for by a stern expression of countenance the soul is composed to what is right and honorable; and the souls of the wise are drawn together by sadness, while the souls of fools, puffed up by mirth, are scattered." And Isidore of Pelusium says: "By the sadness that appears on the face, the heart is reminded of its duty" — especially the heart of a woman, which is kept in duty more by fear than by love. The love and familiarity of mothers is enough for daughters: let them not therefore seek also the more indulgent affection of their fathers. Let them believe from their father's stern countenance that men are stern, lest they be easily captured by love for them. St. Bernard, Book IV On Consideration, chapter 6: "Do you have daughters? Do not show them a cheerful face. Yet I do not advise harshness, but gravity. The former drives away the weak, the latter restrains the frivolous. If the former is present, it makes one hateful; if the latter is absent, it makes one contemptible. In all things, however, moderation is best. I would want neither too much severity nor too much laxity. What is more pleasing than this moderation, so that you are neither a burden through severity nor an object of contempt through familiarity? etc. That demeanor is more fitting, if you are indeed severe in action, serene in countenance, serious in speech."
Clement of Alexandria, Book I of the Pedagogue, chapter 9, citing these words, And do not show a cheerful face toward them, says: "Those who speak to please love little; but those who are harsh for the sake of benefit, confer a benefit for the world to come. The Lord looked not to present pleasure, but to future delight."
This advice of the wise man was observed by the Bride, who, though she was beautiful, nevertheless showed herself dark to her companions (Song of Songs 1:5). Explaining these words, St. Bernard, Sermon 28 on the Song of Songs, says: "So that to the lax, the soft, and those who flee from discipline, she might show not the brightness of serenity, but the darkness of severity." She was, of course, imitating her Bridegroom, of whom David says in Psalm 117: "The Lord has chastised me severely, but He has not given me over to death." On these words Clement of Alexandria, Book I of the Pedagogue, chapter 7, says: "To be chastised by the Lord, and to be instructed as by a tutor, is to be freed from death." A lioness, according to Philostratus, Book VII, in order to be tamed, must not be soothed too gently, otherwise she grows insolent and fierce; so too a woman, especially a daughter, whom Cato called an untamed animal. Pearls grow in their shells not under clear skies but under stormy ones, as Dioscorides and the natural philosophers teach. If therefore you want your daughter to be a pearl, that is, pure and a virgin, show her a stern countenance, according to Job 29:24: "When I smiled at them, they did not believe it." "The crocus," says Pliny, Book XXI, chapter 6, "delights in being trampled and worn down by the foot, and by being destroyed it grows better." So too is the crocus-like integrity of daughters. Here is relevant what St. Gregory says, Book XX of the Morals, chapter 2: "He who is in charge should both be feared when smiling and loved when angry; so that neither excessive cheerfulness makes him cheap, nor immoderate severity makes him hateful."
Tropologically, or symbolically, the daughters of God are holy souls. God guards the body of these, that is, the integrity of all their virtues, and therefore He shows them not a cheerful but a stern countenance, when He afflicts them with various tribulations. Hence St. Gregory, Book X of the Morals, chapter 17, applies to them the passage from Job chapter 12, A lamp despised in the thoughts of the rich: "The simplicity of the just," he says, "is both called a lamp and is despised. A lamp, because it shines inwardly; and despised, because it does not shine outwardly. Within, the flame of charity burns; without, no glory of beauty shines. He shines therefore and is looked down upon, who, burning with virtues, is considered worthless." Then he shows that Christ and Paul were such a lamp, and adds: "But the despised lamp, which endures mockery on earth, flashes more brightly from heaven at the judgment. Hence it is aptly added: Prepared for the appointed time."
27. Give your daughter in marriage to a husband when she has reached marriageable age, and do so in good time, before her beauty, fertility, and vigor fade, AND YOU WILL HAVE DONE A GREAT WORK.
The Zurich Bible reads: Give your daughter in marriage, and you will have accomplished a great work. Great, because it is both difficult and very useful — for you, for your daughter, and for the commonwealth. For you, because you free and unburden yourself of the enormous care for her and the troubles and dangers from suitors. Hence the Syriac translates: Send your daughter out, and the burden will depart. For your daughter, because you are looking after her chastity and placing her in an honorable state for her whole life. For the commonwealth, because her marriage will produce offspring who will increase the commonwealth in number, services, and merits. This counsel suited the age of Sirach, when celibacy was not in use and was indeed considered a disgrace. But Christ gave a more divine counsel when He recommended virginity and celibacy. Hear the Apostle,
1 Corinthians 7:8: "I say to the unmarried and to widows: It is good for them if they remain as I am." He gives the reason in verse 34: "The unmarried woman and 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 she may please her husband." For this reason so many monasteries for virgins have been established, for which enclosure has been strictly prescribed by the Canons and the Council of Trent. For a woman needs either a wall or a husband. Give your daughter therefore to a husband, unless she wishes to be joined to a better husband, namely Christ, in the religious life.
Ben Sira agrees, in Alphabet 1, letter Mem: "The waters of a woman who is a young virgin are sweet, and they increase strength" (alluding to Proverbs 5:15: Drink water from your own cistern, that is, enjoy your wife); "but the waters of an old woman are bitter as wormwood, and they weaken strength, like a cistern that had water which the wind drained away by drawing it out," as if to say: An aged woman is worn out, exhausted, barren, and sterile, and therefore unpleasant and tasteless. Hence St. Ignatius, cited by Antonius in the Melissa, Book I, chapter 14: "Younger people," he says, "should contract marriages before they become entangled in illicit loves." Indeed, Plutarch in his Laconic Sayings reports that Lycurgus prescribed a certain time at which girls should marry and young men should take wives. When asked why, he replied: "So that offspring born from mature parents of perfect age may be strong and vigorous." For from premature marriage the bodies of the parents are harmed, and the offspring is born sickly. Finally, younger parents lack the authority with their children that age brings.
AND GIVE HER TO A SENSIBLE MAN (in Greek, syneto, that is, prudent, intelligent; in the Syriac, wise; the Zurich Bible, judicious) — in Greek, doresai, that is, give as a gift; that is, give her, hand her over even without a dowry. Well known is the saying of Themistocles, who gave his daughter to a man of small fortune but wise: "I prefer a man who lacks money to money that lacks a man." Many commit a grave error in this regard: when they seek husbands for their daughters, they seek wealthy and noble ones, and do not much care whether they are prudent and wise, or foolish; hence we see many unhappy and sorrowful marriages of daughters with husbands. Democritus used to say that "he who has found a good son-in-law has found a son; but he who has found a bad one has lost his daughter as well," as Stobaeus reports, Sermon 68. The wisest and happiest are those who procure for their daughters husbands who are wise as well as wealthy and noble — just as Naomi procured for her daughter-in-law Ruth the husband Boaz, distinguished equally for his wealth and for his prudence and uprightness.
Now, civil and canon laws define a woman as marriageable, and mature for matrimony, at the age of twelve, and a man at the age of fourteen; but they do not recommend that marriage be contracted immediately after that age is reached. They only left it written that a daughter may contract a marriage without her father's consent, if her father has delayed her nuptials up to age 25, as if they understood that a woman should be given in marriage within that time. Hesiod, in Book II of Works and Days, set the thirtieth year for a man and the fifteenth for a woman as the age for marriage. Solon, according to Philo in Book II of On the Creation of the World, assigned the fifth seven-year period, that is, age 35, for marriage. Plato, in Book VI of the Republic, says: "Let the time for marriage for a girl be from the sixteenth year to the twentieth, and let that be the longest period for this purpose; for a male, from the thirtieth to the thirty-fifth." See Aristotle, Book VII of the Politics, chapter 16, where he recommends that women be given in marriage at age 18 and men at 36, because a man can beget children up to age 70, a woman up to 50. See also Tiraquellus, Connubial Law 6.
28. IF A WIFE IS YOURS ACCORDING TO YOUR SOUL, DO NOT CAST HER AWAY, AND DO NOT ENTRUST YOURSELF TO ONE WHO IS HATEFUL.
That is, such as your soul desires — one who is easy-going and of agreeable character, and who suits your wishes as well as your temperament and affections. Do not cast her away — do not give her the bill of divorce that was permitted and lawful under the old law. And do not entrust yourself to one who is hateful (on account of stubbornness, talkativeness, and wickedness of character). In Greek, me ekdos seauton, that is, do not hand over or give yourself, namely, as a husband, says Jansenius. But it is already presupposed that she is a wife, and therefore he does not advise casting her away immediately, but rather that the husband should not entrust himself and his secrets to her. For a husband hands over or gives himself to his wife when he trusts himself entirely to her and commits everything to her, and pours out all his affairs into her bosom — as Samson poured himself into the bosom of Delilah, and therefore, betrayed by her, was captured by the Philistines and blinded. And Amphiaraus, revealing his hiding places to his wife Eriphyle, was sold and betrayed by her for the price of a golden necklace, as Statius and Hyginus attest (chapter 73). Hence Dionysius, for do not entrust yourself, reads "do not reveal your secrets" — for a woman is unable to keep silent and preserve secrets. Hence Cleobulus: "With your wife," he says, "neither quarrel, nor confide in her too much." And Cato used to say that he repented of three things; the third was that he had ever entrusted a secret to a woman. This is what Micah says, chapter 7, verse 5: "From her who sleeps in your bosom, guard the doors of your mouth." Hence the Syriac translates: Do you have a wife? Do not dismiss her; and if she is wicked, do not trust her. Vatablus: Have you obtained a wife to your liking? Do not divorce her; nor give yourself over to a hateful one.
Sirach returns to verse 21: "Do not depart from a sensible and good wife," and commends and urges this as something of great importance for peace, harmony, and virtue in the family. Palacius takes "wife" to mean a lawful spouse, and "hateful one" to mean a concubine, as if to say: Do not reject your wife and cling to a concubine and entrust yourself to her, because such a woman is hateful — both because she is a cause of hatred and quarrels between husband and wife, and because you will soon hate her when you see your wealth being drained by her. For formerly polygamy was lawful, and a concubine was called a secondary wife, such as Hagar was to Abraham, and to Jacob
Bilhah and Zilpah. But nothing compels us to restrict "hateful" to a concubine. For he advises that any wife, if she is hateful, should not be trusted.
Note the phrase according to your soul. For by this he signifies that each man should choose a wife who is agreeable in character and who has sympathy with her husband and is compatible in temperament. For the life of a husband is tedious if he must constantly associate with a wife of a temperament and disposition contrary to his own — for example, if a husband of a sanguine and jovial disposition must perpetually deal with a wife who is sad, gloomy, and melancholy. Again, well known is the saying of Pittacus, in Laertius, Book I, chapter 5: "Take a wife equal to yourself." The reason is given by Cleobulus, in Stobaeus, Sermon 3 On Temperance: "For if you marry from a higher family," he says, "you will acquire not relatives but masters." Chilon, in Stobaeus, Sermon 38, said that daughters should be given in marriage "as virgins in age, but matrons in prudence." He likewise considered that a humble wife should be taken with a modest trousseau, lest instead of a spouse you bring a mistress into the house; for a girl comes sufficiently endowed who brings chastity and good character with her. For this reason the Spartans ordained that virgins should marry without a dowry, as Laertius attests, Book I, chapter 4, so that each young man, looking at the girl's character, would make his choice based on virtue and a disposition congenial to his own.
29. WITH ALL YOUR HEART HONOR YOUR FATHER, AND DO NOT FORGET THE GROANS OF YOUR MOTHER.
Which she endured in conceiving you, carrying you in her womb, nursing you, swaddling you, etc. Thus the Latin, Roman, Greek, and Syriac texts connect these words. Therefore Jansenius and others wrongly attach the phrase "with all your heart" to the preceding verse. He commands the son, therefore: "With," that is, from, "all your heart honor" — in Greek, doxason, that is, glorify — "your father." The Zurich Bible reads: Magnify your father with your whole heart, and do not forget your mother's pains. This very thing the dying Tobias taught his son, saying in chapter 4: "You shall honor your mother all the days of your life. For you must remember what and how great dangers she suffered for you in her womb." Moreover, the greater groans of the mother are those by which she groans for a son lost in sins, that he may return to the way of virtue and divine grace — such were the groans of St. Monica for St. Augustine, which he himself recounts in his Confessions.
30. REMEMBER THAT WITHOUT THEM YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN BORN, AND REPAY THEM AS THEY HAVE DONE FOR YOU.
Some manuscripts delete the word "born" and read more pointedly: without them you would not have been, as if to say: Without your parents you would not have existed in the nature of things; you would have been a non-being; you would have been nothing; for everything that you are, you have from your parents. The Greek reads somewhat differently: Remember that through them you were born; and what will you repay them as they have done for you? As if to say: You cannot return like for like. "For to the gods, to parents, and to teachers, an equivalent return cannot be made." Our Latin version is more forceful, and the Syriac agrees with it: Remember that without them you would not exist; and who will repay those who raised you? For although parents properly speaking only give the body to a son, while the soul is created by God alone, nevertheless, because the body thus organized by the parents requires such a soul, and therefore God creates it and by creating it infuses it into the body, parents of the body are also considered parents of the soul, at least mediately, that is, by means of the body. For they are called parents of the whole composite, that is, of this human being, who is made up of soul and body.
Ecclesiasticus seems in this passage to follow the opinion of those philosophers and theologians who hold that the individual — that is, this particular offspring — is determined by secondary causes. For example, the reason this offspring is born and not another is the parents, who by begetting at this place and time naturally determine the generation to this particular child; for supernaturally God can cause the same son to be born from another. St. Thomas seems to follow this view, holding that the cause of individuation is designated matter, that is, matter affected by these particular circumstances and accidents. Gabriel Vasquez holds the same view (III Part, Question 19, Disputation 74, Article 4, Chapter 7), and proves it with three arguments: first, because God is a universal and undetermined cause, who is determined to this or that species (much more to this or that individual) by secondary causes; second, because free acts are determined by the free will, not by God — otherwise, if they were predetermined by God, they would not be free; third, because unless the effect were determined by the secondary cause, the same numerically identical thing could be reproduced naturally; for if the cause is in itself undetermined, as is its effect, no reason appears why it could not reproduce the same thing — and from this it would follow that the resurrection of bodies is natural, whereas it is established that it is supernatural.
St. Chrysostom supports this, in Homily 5 on Penance, where he asks why God did not immediately remove Esau, whom He hated, from the world; and he answers that the reason was so that Job might be born from him, who otherwise would not have been born: "If he had been cut off," he says, "the world would perhaps have lost the greatest fruit of justice. And what fruit? Listen. Esau begot Raguel, Raguel begot Sarah, Sarah begot Job. See what a flower of patience would have withered, if God, acting in advance, had exacted punishment from the root." The same is clear regarding many saints, whose birth their parents obtained by their prayers and merits. Finally, God did not decree that these or those children be born, except because He foresaw that the parents would beget them on such a day or at such an hour. For the effect is not foreseen except from the foreseen cause. I except Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and perhaps certain eminent saints. For Christ was decreed and predestined by God before all other human beings, as the head and redeemer of all. But the Blessed Virgin by her holiness merited that He should be born from her rather than from another woman, as the theologians teach.
The contrary is taught by Fr. Suarez (III Part, Disputation 10, Section 5, and more clearly in the Metaphysics, Vol. I, Disputation 26, Section 5, number 27), and Fr. Salazar (Treatise On the Conception, chapter 24, numbers 24, 30, and following). For they hold that the determination of the effect — for example, of the offspring — as to the individual is made by God, so that any particular effect which is produced by one particular cause could also be produced by another; and consequently the offspring that is begotten by this father could also be begotten by another. And it is determined by God that this particular individual is produced by these parents, and not another from other parents. Therefore God first decreed that such and so many human beings in their individuality would exist in the world; then He decreed that those same individuals would be born from such parents at such a time.
According to this opinion, which indeed has great difficulties, this passage of Ecclesiasticus must be explained thus: "Remember that without them you would not have been born," because, namely, God ultimately predetermined that you would be born from them alone and not from others. But given this ultimate decree of God, it was impossible for you to be born from others, because you cannot be born except as God willed and decreed. Indeed, Fr. Fonseca (Book V of the Metaphysics, chapter 2, Question 14, Section 3) asserts that it comes to the same thing to say that this effect is this one numerically rather than that one because it was produced by this numerically distinct agent, and from this numerically distinct matter, and at this numerically distinct moment of time — as if one were to say: because the divine will determined the natural causes of this particular natural effect at this particular time.
Furthermore, Scotus (in Book II, Distinction 20, Question 2) holds the opinion that in the state of innocence (if Adam had persevered in it) the same individuals who are now predestined would have existed, and no more and no fewer (for there would then have been no reprobates), and therefore those predestined who are now born from reprobates would then have been born from predestined parents. His reason is: Because, he says, predestination was made before the foreseen original sin, and before the foreseen generations of all future human beings — which Suarez also teaches (Book I On Predestination, chapter 12). St. Gregory supports this, Book IV of the Morals, chapter 26 or 28, when he says: "If no corruption of sin had corrupted the first parent, he would in no way have begotten from himself children of hell; but only those who are now to be saved through redemption would have been born as His elect." But St. Gregory could be explained as speaking of election in general, not in the individual, as if to say: If Adam had persevered, only the elect would have been born from him; but those would then have been elect by God's election alone, whereas now all the elect are elect through the redemption of Christ.
But whatever may be the mind of St. Gregory, other theologians commonly teach with St. Augustine that the election was made after the foreseen original sin, because it was made on the merits of Christ, which presuppose this sin. Hence St. Augustine everywhere teaches that the election of the saints was made from the mass infected and corrupted by original sin. Again, predestination presupposes a subject — that is, that the predestined human being already exists in the nature of things, or will exist. For one who does not exist as a human being cannot be predestined to human grace and glory. Finally, what Scotus adds to defend his aforementioned opinion seems scarcely probable, namely that some who are now born in the female sex would in the state of innocence have been born in the male sex, or vice versa; for he presupposes that men and women are now born in unequal numbers, but in the state of innocence they would have been born in equal numbers, so that every man would have his wife, and every wife her husband.
Morally, learn here how much we ought to love and revere our parents, and most of all God, the Father of all. Hence Diogenes said to someone who scorned his father: "Are you not ashamed to despise the one to whom you owe this very thing — that you are pleasing to yourself?" So Laertius, Book VI. And Plato said to a similar person: "Will you not cease to hold in contempt the one by whose favor you desire to be wiser?" So Maximus, Sermon 33. And concerning God, Moses says to Israel: "Is He not your Father, who made you His own, and fashioned you, and created you?" (Deuteronomy 32:6).
31. WITH ALL YOUR SOUL FEAR THE LORD, AND HOLD HIS PRIESTS IN REVERENCE.
In Greek, eulabou, that is, revere, venerate, worship. The Syriac reads: With all your heart fear God, and honor His priests. The fear of God in Scripture means the same as worship, reverence, and veneration of God; for we ought to venerate, worship, and love God with our whole soul. The reason is that God is the soul of the soul. Just as the whole body belongs to the soul, so the whole soul ought to belong to God. The soul, says Aristotle in Book II of On the Soul, is the cause of the living body in a threefold genus of cause — namely, formal, efficient, and final; and God is likewise all of these to the soul itself. Again, God is the soul, that is, the life of the soul — not only the natural life through creation, but also the supernatural life through grace. "Because," says St. Augustine, Tract 10 on John, "the life of the soul is God; just as when the soul is in the body, it gives it vigor, beauty, motion, and the functions of the members: so when God, its life, is in the soul, He gives it wisdom, justice, and charity." The same author, in the book On the Knowledge of True Life, chapter 31: "God is the life of the soul, just as the soul is the life of the body. But just as the body is dead when it does not have the soul, so the soul is dead when it lacks God." Add that the soul, and every created thing, depends on and is sustained by God more than by itself. For God by His continuous influence gives it its being, and thus continually, as it were, creates it. And if God were to withdraw His influence, it would immediately fall back into the nothingness from which it was created by God. Therefore the whole soul ought to love God more than itself, because God is a greater good for it than it is for itself.
Moreover, the soul is the species of species, or the form of forms, says Aristotle in Book III of On the Soul — both because the soul is the noblest of all forms, and because it receives all the species of all intelligible and knowable things. The soul therefore, as the most excellent thing, is owed to God, the most excellent Being, indeed immense in every direction, the supreme, most universal, and most perfect principle of all intelligible things. Wherefore Bede truly says in the Proverbs:
Remaining whole everywhere, He must be worshipped with all one's strength.
What is here commanded, and for what reasons, I have taught at length in Deuteronomy 6:5. To which add that Richard of St. Victor, in his treatise On the Degrees of Charity, assigns seven degrees of the love of God: "The first," he says, "is that the love be inseparable, so that the soul can say with the Apostle: Who shall separate me from the love of Christ? The second, that it be insatiable — for fire never says 'Enough,' and those who are kindled by it never seem to themselves to have done anything, and call themselves useless servants. The third, that it be unconquerable — for love is strong as death, and many waters could not extinguish charity. The fourth, that it be delightful, so that the soul, set ablaze with this love, may say: The king brought me into his storerooms; I remembered God and was delighted. The fifth, that it wound the soul with ardent and manifold desires, by which it wishes that all may serve Him, and strives to draw all to Him. The sixth, that it always thirst for God, always have Him present, and every creature recall the memory of Him. The seventh, that it desire to be joined to and to be with Christ — driven not by weariness of life but by charity, whoever has been inflamed by it."
Let us therefore cry out again and again with the Psalmist, Psalm 17:1: "I will love You, O Lord, my strength; the Lord is my rock and my refuge, and my deliverer. Who is like the Lord our God, who dwells on high and looks upon the lowly in heaven and on earth? What have I in heaven, and what do I desire on earth besides You? Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and Your glory above all the earth."
Again, virtue, says Aristotle in Book I of On the Heavens, text 1, chapter 16, and from him our own Alvarez de Paz, Book III On the Spiritual Life, Part II, chapter 21, "is that
32. WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH LOVE HIM WHO MADE YOU.
For "strength" in Greek is dynamei, that is, power, capability. Vatablus reads: with all force, and, that is therefore, so that you may show that you love God with all your strength and force, hold His priests in reverence. The Syriac reads: With all your heart honor your Creator. He cites Deuteronomy 6:5, according to the Septuagint: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Where for "strength," the Hebrew has with all your "very" (exceedingly); the Septuagint, with all your virtue; which St. Luke, chapter 10:27, renders as with all your powers and with all your mind. Vatablus reads: with all your manly effort, that is, with all your capacity and capability, with all your worth and vigor, most powerfully and valiantly, and if possible, exceedingly (for this is what the Hebrew word meod signifies) — love God, according to Psalm 118: "You have commanded that Your commandments be kept exceedingly."
St. Bernard, Sermon 29 on the Song of Songs: "Not to be led astray by blandishments," he says, "nor to be seduced by deceptions, nor to be broken by injuries — this is to love with all the heart, all the soul, all one's strength." The reason is that God is every good, indeed an immense ocean of all good things; therefore He must be sought and loved with all our powers.
Furthermore, what he adds — "Hold His priests in reverence" — means: regard them as holy, as persons consecrated to God; honor, help, and sustain them. In Greek the word means "admire," as if to say: So great is the excellence, consecration, and holiness of priests and of the priesthood, that all ought to admire it, and in admiring, to venerate and revere it. Hence let priests learn to lead a life worthy of the priesthood, so that they may be heavenly men, angels of God, wonders of the earth: "Let them live as divinities, speak as oracles" — so that in speech as well as in life they may be admirable, and excite admiration of themselves among the laity. The reason is given by St. Ignatius, Letter 10 to the Smyrnaeans: "The priesthood," he says, "is the summit of all goods that exist in the world; whoever acts against it brings disgrace not upon a man, but upon God." And St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 21: "The priest," he says, "is to be numbered among the order and rank of Angels; he will celebrate God with the Archangels; he will transmit sacrifices to the sacred altar, and at the same time will exercise the priesthood together with Christ; he will restore what was fashioned, present the image to the Creator, and act as the artificer for the world above; and — what is greater, I will say — he will be God, and will make others gods."
Therefore Christ honored even the Mosaic priests, when He sent the lepers He had cured to them, saying: "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And He wished them to be honored by kings, when He called the three Magi by the guidance of a star to worship Him in Bethlehem, to show that the priesthood is more excellent than kingship. For "the purple makes emperors, not priests," says St. Ambrose, as cited by Theodoret, Book V of the History, chapter 7. And Philo, Book III of the Life of Moses: "The miter," he says, "is placed on the head instead of a diadem, because as long as the priest exercises his honor and ministry, he is superior not only to private individuals, but even to all kings." And St. Chrysostom, Homily 4 on the words of Isaiah, I saw the Lord: "To the king," he says, "bodies have been entrusted; to the priest, souls. The king remits the stains of bodies, but the priest remits the stains of sins. The former compels, the latter exhorts; the former by necessity, the latter by counsel; the former has visible weapons, the latter spiritual weapons; the former wages war against barbarians, the latter's war is against demons. This principate is greater; therefore the king submits his head to the hand of the priest, and everywhere in the Old Scripture the priests anointed the kings." Accordingly, the fire sent by God upon the priests Nadab and Abihu, because they had offered strange fire, struck them down and killed them; yet it did not dare to touch their garments, because they were priestly vestments — so that by this miracle He might establish the dignity of the priesthood (Leviticus 10). the supreme and most excellent thing to which the force or power of anyone can reach. For if someone could carry a hundred talents, his force is sufficient for carrying fifty or eighty, but his virtue reaches to carrying a hundred. And if he could walk and run swiftly, his force is for walking, but his virtue is for running at the greatest speed. "That this is the true meaning of the name is confirmed by the word vir (man), from which (as Cicero attests in Tusculan Disputations II) it was derived." For vir (as Lactantius says, in the book On the Workmanship of God, chapter 12) was so named because in him there is greater force than in a woman, and hence virtue received its name. The sacred Scriptures do not depart from this meaning either, using this name more than once for strength, power, and fortitude: "Lord, Lord, the strength of my salvation" (says David, Psalm 139), "You have sheltered my head in the day of battle;" and Psalm 17: "God, who has girded me with strength and made my way blameless;" and again Psalm 32: "You have girded me with strength for war, and overthrown those who rise against me beneath me." Hence the stars are called virtues, because by their motion and influence God governs lower things and accomplishes great and wonderful things. For by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of His mouth all their power. Hence also the virtues — both moral, intellectual, and theological — received this name, because they incline our faculties or powers, which are exposed to both good and bad works, toward the best activity, and dispose them for the most excellent functions.
Virtue, therefore, if we attend to its original meaning, is the striving and effort and impetus of a thing doing all that it can, and reaching for the highest and most excellent thing possible to it. Accordingly, we love God with all our virtue when we arouse the will to love God with every effort, and we raise up our other powers or faculties, so that they may direct themselves not sluggishly, not drowsily, but energetically and diligently toward the service and will of God."
Hence St. Thomas, Opusculum 61, chapter 23, expressing this meaning, says: "You love the Lord not only with force, but also with virtue, when in loving and laboring you experience the utmost of your power. And if at this highest and ultimate point you were always to continue the act of love, then you would love not only with virtue, but with all your virtue. But since in mortal life it is not possible for anyone to apply the utmost effort in all their good actions, we must consider how this precept may be accommodated to the life of the just who are still on pilgrimage, so that they may somehow observe it and love God with all their virtue. Those are certainly said to love with virtue who are diligent lovers of God, who love God fervently, and who actively and energetically guard against every defect and imperfection (as far as they can), and zealously, carefully, and diligently perform the works of virtue pertaining to their state and office. For some (as Bernard, Sermon 3 On Pentecost, most aptly observed) receive the Holy Spirit, the spirit of charity, for salvation; while others receive it for fervor. Those receive it for salvation who return to the Lord their God with all their heart, who bid farewell to every sin, and cleansed by the spirit of contrition, receive grace and charity. Those receive it for fervor when — to use the words of the most holy Father — breathing more vehemently in the hearts of the perfect, He kindles a powerful fire of charity, so that they glory not only in the hope of being children of God, but even in tribulations, counting insult as glory, reproach as joy, contempt as exaltation."
For, as St. Chrysostom says, Sermon 6 On the Passion of the Lord: "Love is proved by adversity, affection is weighed by dangers, love is tested by punishments, and perfect charity is indicated by death. Rightly therefore does Bernard reserve the highest degree of love for the heavenly homeland — namely, when a person loves himself purely for the sake of God, and in a certain way loses himself, as though he did not exist, and no longer feels himself at all, and is emptied and annihilated from himself — yet he dares with good reason to concede it in this life to the Martyrs alone. Do we suppose (he says) that the holy Martyrs attained this grace, even in part, while still established in those victorious bodies? Truly a great force of love had seized those souls inwardly, who were thus able to expose their bodies to wild beasts and to despise torments."
Furthermore, St. Thomas, Opusculum 61 On the Love of God, chapter 23, distinguishes somewhat more subtly between virtue and fortitude: "Virtue is the supreme effort of our powers for acting, while fortitude is the supreme effort for enduring." St. Augustine agrees, Book I of On the Morals of the Church, chapter 22: "Love," he says, "which ought to be inflamed with all holiness toward God, is called temperate in not desiring these things, and courageous in losing them." And further: "There is nothing so hard and iron-like that it is not overcome by the fire of love. When the soul snatches itself up to God with this love, it will fly free and admirable above every torture, on the most beautiful and unblemished wings, by which chaste love presses toward the embrace of God." And in Book I of On the Morals of the Manichaeans, chapter 15, he says, "fortitude is love easily bearing all things for the sake of God. Therefore, to love with all one's virtue is to love God in such a way that one neither yields to temptations, nor succumbs in tribulations and threats, whether launched by the devil or by people — as happened to David, who took another man's wife against law and right; to Peter, who denied Him; to the disciples, who fled. And it has happened to many others, who for a time believe with living faith, and in the time of temptation fall away. Paul recalls this love from all fortitude, when he declared the strength and firmness of his love: Who, he says, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? And immediately: I am certain that neither death, nor life," etc. (Romans 8). Such love the Bride had when she said in Song of Songs 8: "Love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as hell." tion, this one thing must be constantly and vehemently striven for: that you obey Me alone, and observe My will alone. In order that you may accomplish this, it is necessary that through a mental concept and estimation of your mind you construct for yourself a dwelling vaulted on every side, built from the material of My will alone; and that you enclose yourself in it and always dwell therein, so that wherever you go, you never leave it; wherever you look, you never look beyond it; but let My will always surround your senses of mind and body, and let you speak, think, or do nothing except what pleases Me and what you believe to be My will, and thus the Holy Spirit will teach you whatever must be done."
St. Catherine of Siena wrote, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a brief but rich and golden dialogue, On Consummate Perfection, in which she teaches that perfection consists in the constant and full conformity of our will with the divine will; and that this conformity is achieved through love of God with the whole heart and all one's strength, which requires three things, and God describes them to her thus: "First, that you completely remove, separate, and purify your will from every earthly and carnal love and affection, so that in this life you love nothing transitory, nothing perishable, nothing temporal except for My sake — yourself for My sake, and your neighbor for My sake. For divine love cannot endure the companionship of earthly affection or any other love. Hence, to the degree that you infect it with the contagion of earthly things, to that degree you will sin against My love and lose of your perfection. For in order that the mind be pure and holy, it must despise all that the body feels. Therefore see to it that nothing of those things which My goodness has provided for your use hinders you from loving Me; but let all things help, kindle, and inflame you. For I granted them to you in creating them, so that recognizing more broadly the generosity of My goodness from these things, you would pursue Me with ever more abundant love."
"Second, that you direct all your thoughts, acts, and works solely to My honor and glory, and being always most zealous for My praise alone, strive through prayers, words, and examples, and however you can, that not only you but all others together with you be equally and in the same manner disposed, and that all may know, love, and worship Me alone; and this pleases Me more than the first, because it more fully accomplishes My will. The third, which remains — if you have attained it, know that you lack nothing and that you have achieved consummate integrity. It is this: that with the greatest desire you seek, strive, and endeavor to reach this disposition of mind, that you be so united to Me, and your will be so similar to and conformed with Mine (which is most perfect), that you will not only evil, but also any good that I Myself would not will, and that whatever He wills may come to pass, and from wherever He wills in the misery of this life, whether in spiritual or temporal matters, your peace be not in the least broken, nor the repose of your mind disturbed; but that with unshaken faith you always hold that I, your God almighty, love you more than you love yourself, and that I have the most diligent care of you, and far more diligent than you yourself. The more you thus commit and give yourself to Me, the more I will help you and will always be present to you, and you yourself will more clearly know and more abundantly feel My sweetest charity toward you. But this perfection cannot be reached except through steadfast constancy and absolute renunciation of one's own will."
And further on: "If then you wish to reach this, you must persist in the deepest humility, and from a true and intimate knowledge of your misery and want
And after some things: "But when these things have been gathered in the mind through firm faith and meditation, you will know that tribulations, temptations, difficulties, pains, infirmities, and all adversities come under My governance for no other reason than for the sake of your benefit and salvation, so that through those things which seem evil to you, you may be corrected from wickedness and led to virtue, by which one goes to the true and highest good unknown to you. You will know besides, illuminated by this light of faith, that I your God am more able, more knowing, and more willing of your good than you yourself, and that you can neither be able, nor know, nor will it without My grace."
By this method the Saints become perfect, easy, joyful, and unperturbed by any events. "For they perceive with a clear and most purified eye of the mind that from Me, the supreme Governor of the universe, administering all things with wonderful wisdom, charity, and order, nothing but good can proceed, and that I provide for them and their affairs better and more usefully than they themselves can know, are able, or will; and thus in all things that happen and that they endure (whatever they may be), considering Me as the author and not their neighbor with firm resolve, they are so strengthened by a certain unconquered and impregnable patience that they endure not only with equanimity but with a willing and joyful spirit, tasting in all things, whether they come from within or from without, the sweetness of My ineffable charity. Which is to think of Me in goodness, in all (I say) tribulations and difficulties to attend, believe, and with a joyful and grateful mind to meditate that I dispose all things sweetly, and that all things proceed from the deep fountain of My love. And the greatest good of this last consideration and most holy composure, nothing else corrupts, hinders, and destroys except your own will and love of yourselves, which if they were taken from you, hell too would be taken from you: both that one prepared with eternal torment of mind and body for the accursed; and that one which in mortal life you endure with manifold agitation of soul and various turmoil of cares — indeed, with error."
Furthermore, ascetics and those devoted to contemplation love God with all their strength so much that not only do they observe each of His commandments, resign themselves and all their possessions to His will, and strive to conform themselves to those in all things: but they also eagerly seek to unite all the powers and faculties of their soul to Him, and through love to pour themselves into Him and be transformed, so that they may constantly think of and love Him alone, with wonderful joy and jubilation of mind, so that they may be immersed and absorbed in Him as in an abyss of wisdom, beauty, glory, pleasures, and all goods; and they do this through various modes and acts. "The first is that by which you rejoice in God for those perfections which He possesses, out of ardent love, and you are so glad that if any were lacking to Him and it were in your power, you would most generously bestow it upon Him; the second, by which you esteem those perfections above all things, despise all things in comparison with God, and renounce all things and yourself, that you may enjoy that One alone, that you may please that One alone, who is infinitely more than all things that are and that could be in infinite worlds; the third act is that by which you desire to love Him with the highest affection on account of His perfections, which are each infinite and worthy of infinite love, and you wish for the affections of all creatures, which you could pour forth into God with your whole heart, and love Him with all your strength; the fourth, by which you rejoice in all that God has done and does, especially because they proceed from the hand and work of Him who is most powerful, most wise, and most good; the fifth, to rejoice in the honor and glory with which the Angels in heaven surround Him, and to wish that men and all creatures would praise and honor Him; the sixth, to desire to be united to God through knowledge and love, and to enjoy and rest in that union by which He is joined to every creature through His essence, presence, and power." So says our Antonius Sucquet, book III of The Way of Life, chapter 20, in which book he teaches the way of perfection elegantly, learnedly, and piously.
Therefore those who thus insatiably desire God, constantly sigh and yearn for Him, and say: If the whole world were mine, full of holy Angels, I would resign them all to You from my heart, Lord, because You are my love; if I had the affection of all mortals, every spirit of Angels and Saints, I would embrace You with it, in You I would live, move, and be. Would that I could bear all the punishments of the wretched, so that all might know, worship, and love You. For all pain is brief and light for one whom Your love intoxicates and transforms. "O ocean of holy love and sweetness, my God, come and give Yourself to my soul. Grant that with whole heart, full desire, and flaming affection I may constantly aspire to You, most sweetly breathe in You, prefer You to every creature, renounce for Your sake every passing delight, O my true and highest joy. Feed me, Lord, Your hungry beggar, with the constant influx of Your divinity: this I ask, this I desire, that vehement love may wholly penetrate, refresh, and transmute me into itself. Grant, most kind Redeemer, that ablaze with love of You I may wholly fail from myself, delight in You alone, that
You alone I may know and feel. O overflowing abyss of divinity, draw and immerse me in Yourself, so seize the entire affection of my heart and so apply it that it may be utterly lifeless toward all other things." These and more from Dom Louis de Blois in his Aspirations. See St. Bernard, sermon 1 and following on the Canticle, Bonaventure in the Itinerary of the Mind, and Father Alvarez de Paz, book III already cited.
AND HIS MINISTERS (Greek leitourgous, that is, sacred ministers, namely priests and Levites, who perform sacred functions and offer to God the holy liturgy of sacrifice) do not abandon, but with firstfruits, tithes, and offerings nourish and sustain them, so that they may minister to God and carry out the liturgy.
33. Honor (Syriac, praise) God with your whole soul.
33. Honor (Syriac, praise) God with your whole soul. — Three things are owed to God: first, fear as toward God, of which he spoke in verse 31; second, love as toward a father, of which he spoke in verse 32; third, honor as toward the supreme Lord of all, which he treats here. "A son, says Malachi chapter 1, verse 6, honors his father, and a servant his lord; if therefore I am Father, where is My honor? and if I am Lord, where is My fear?" Add: And if I am every good, where is My love?
AND GLORIFY (Greek doxason, that is, glorify; the Zurich Bible, magnify) priests. — Honor in Scripture comprises three things, namely, veneration, obedience, and sustenance. Hence we are commanded to render these three to our parents, if they are in need, when we are commanded to honor them. The same we owe to priests. Moreover, the honor due to a priest is more august and divine, because he is God's vicar, mediator, and interpreter among men. This is what the Greek glorify signifies.
Thus Alexander the Great worshipped Jaddus the high priest, or rather God in the high priest. See Josephus, Antiquities XII, chapter 8. Thus Constantine the Great honored the priests and bishops of the Council of Nicaea. "This was shown, says Eusebius, book III of the Life of Constantine, by his lowered eyes, the blush on his face, the becoming movement of his gait, blended with gentleness of manners and the meekness of imperial clemency, etc.; and when a certain modest seat had been placed, he did not sit until he received a nod of assent from the bishops." And further on: "He honored each one of them with magnificent gifts according to each one's rank." He adds that Constantine refused to examine libellous pamphlets offered to him against certain bishops, but immediately handed them over to be burned in the flames. Thus the Emperor Theodosius honored St. Ambrose, in that when Ambrose ordered him to leave the sanctuary of the temple, he immediately obeyed, and humbly accepted the penance imposed upon him for the massacre of the Thessalonians. Thus Charlemagne honored the Roman Pontiffs, traveling to Rome four times at their invitation, and freed the City and all Italy from the tyranny of the Lombards. St. Louis, the wise and holy king of the French, wonderfully venerated priests and Religious. Wherefore among the golden counsels that he gave his firstborn Philip as he lay dying, these stand out: "Always be devoted and dedicated to the Roman Church, and show yourself obedient to its Pontiff, just as to a spiritual father. Confess your sins frequently, and choose for yourself wise confessors who can instruct and teach you what to do and what to avoid, and so conduct yourself before them that they dare to reprove you sincerely and point out your faults to you."
The Emperor Basil of Constantinople, in his Exhortation to his son Leo (found in volume V of the Library of the Holy Fathers), chapter 3: "Hold in highest honor, he says, your mother the Church, who nursed you in the Holy Spirit, and placed the crown of empire upon your head for the praise of God through Christ, etc. Therefore honor the Church of God, that you in turn may be held in honor by God; and revere her priests as spiritual fathers and intercessors for us before God. For the honor given to priests is referred to God. And just as it is right for you to hold your own ministers in honor: so also it is holy to esteem highly and hold in great value the priests of God. But just as the honor rendered to them pertains to God: so their disgrace and contempt provokes His wrath far more gravely."
AND PURGE YOURSELF WITH ARMS. — This sentence is now absent from the Greek and Syriac. Five manuscript codices read: And fight with arms, and so Jansenius judges it should be read, as if to say: Defend and fight for the priests of God with your arms and weapons, O layman. But in the Old Law priests defended themselves with their own arms and did not need others' arms, as Judas Maccabeus and his brothers were pontiffs and at the same time war leaders and champions of the people. Again, all printed codices with Rabanus (who reads purga, purge) read, and purge yourself with arms, which can be taken in two ways: first, as if to say, by the offerings of your arms, that is, which you offer with your arms and hands, and which you have acquired by the labor of your arms (for the arm is a symbol of labor, says Pierius, book XXXV), purge and expiate your sins. So Rabanus, Palacius, and Lyranus. Second, as if to say, purge your sins by offering the right arms, that is, the right shoulders of victims, to the priest. For these together with the breast of the victim were due to the priest in the peace offering, by the law of Leviticus VII, 32; and in Hebrew these are called scoc iamin, by the Septuagint brachiona dexion, that is, right arms, as is clear from Leviticus chapter VII, verse 33, and chapter VIII, 25, and chapter IX, 21. For although the peace offering did not primarily purge sins, but was only offered for peace, that is, for the welfare and safety of a household or commonwealth, yet concomitantly and secondarily it was also offered for the purgation of sins: for we cannot have the peace and welfare of God unless we have His grace; and we cannot have grace unless we are purged and expiated from sins.
Tropologically, "purge yourself with arms," as if to say: Expiate your sins not only with the heart and mouth, but also with works; not only with confession, but also with satisfaction, exercising works of penance and charity with your arms. The symbol of this is in nature: for physicians report that the left branch of the greater artery extends from the heart to the left arm; by which nature silently admonishes us to extend the love enclosed in our heart into our arms, that is, into works, according to that saying of the bridegroom to the bride in Canticles chapter VIII, verse 6: "Place me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm," that is, the love by which you love me in your heart, exercise outwardly through your arms and convert into works. So St. Gregory and Theodoret on the same passage.
34. GIVE THEM A PORTION, AS COMMANDED TO YOU, OF FIRSTFRUITS (as if to say, give them firstfruits, which are a part or portion owed to the priests by law; under firstfruits include also tithes) and of purgation
34. GIVE THEM A PORTION, AS COMMANDED TO YOU, OF FIRSTFRUITS (as if to say, give them firstfruits, which are a part or portion owed to the priests by law; under firstfruits include also tithes) and of purgation — that is, tithes, says Lyranus. But tithes were not for the purging of sin, but owed for the sustenance of the Levites. Jansenius better understands by purgation the victims prescribed by the Old Law for the purification of a leper, a menstruating woman, or one otherwise unclean. Third, fittingly, the portion of purgation is the portion of victims which the law ordained to be offered for the purgation of sin. Note here: Sin in Leviticus VII, 1 and following, is distinguished from a trespass, and different victims are prescribed for the expiation of a trespass: for sin in Hebrew chattat, Greek hamartia, was the name for a crime committed knowingly and deliberately; whereas trespass in Hebrew ascham, Greek plemmelia, was the name for a crime committed ignorantly through forgetfulness or imprudence.
He says therefore: "Give them a portion of purgation," that is, give them the victims for the purgation of sin ordained in Leviticus.
AND FOR YOUR NEGLIGENCE (Greek, peri plemmeleias, that is, for a trespass committed in ignorance) purge yourself with few. — This can be taken in two ways. First, as if to say: Bring few companions or witnesses when you offer a victim for the purgation of your trespass, both to protect your reputation and modesty — for in the sacrifice a confession of the trespass had to be made, and a particular one, as I showed in Numbers V, 7 — and so that you might be an example to others, lest you scandalize them by confessing your trespass and invite them to imitate it. Second, as if to say: Purge yourself with few victims and at little expense, if you are poor and do not have many great things to offer. So Emmanuel Sa. Hence Rabanus: "He shows, he says, that an offering which is made to God from a humble mind and pure love, even if it be small in quantity, purges the negligences of many transgressions, of which it is written: Charity covers a multitude of sins," 1 Peter IV, 8. And Jansenius: "It is signified, he says, that if anyone cannot offer the sacrifice of the wealthy, let him at least offer those few small things that are required of the poor."
35. YOU SHALL OFFER TO THE LORD THE GIFT OF YOUR ARMS, AND THE SACRIFICE OF SANCTIFICATION, AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE HOLY THINGS.
35. YOU SHALL OFFER TO THE LORD THE GIFT OF YOUR ARMS, AND THE SACRIFICE OF SANCTIFICATION, AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE HOLY THINGS. — The Greek is, as usual, concise here. Therefore these two verses, namely 34 and 35, they render thus: Give to him (the priest) a portion, as commanded to you, firstfruits and for trespass, of which I spoke in verse 34, "and the gift of arms, and the sacrifice of sanctification, and the firstfruits of holy things," of which in this verse. The Syriac: Give them what is owed to them, as that which is commanded: the bread of offerings and the firstfruits of hands; Vatablus: Give them their portion, as you are commanded, firstfruits and lustrations and piacular gifts, as well as shoulders to be offered and lustral sacrifices and firstfruits of sacred things. Therefore, "the gift of arms" is "the gift of shoulders;" for, as I said a little above, in the peace offering only the right shoulders together with the breast were to be given to the priest, and therefore the shoulder was called the shoulder of separation and elevation, because it was separated and elevated as a gift given to God in the person of the priest. "The breast of the elevation offering, and the shoulder of the separation offering, I have taken from the children of Israel out of their peace offerings, and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons by a perpetual statute from all the people of Israel," Leviticus VII, 34.
"The sacrifice of sanctification," first, with Denis the Carthusian, can be taken as the holocaust; for this was entirely holy, that is, consecrated and offered to God, because it was entirely burned in honor of God, so that just as in the preceding verse he commanded that sin offerings be given, and here through "the gift of arms" that peace offerings be given: so through the sacrifice of sanctification he commands that a holocaust be given: for this was the threefold offering and threefold sacrifice prescribed for the Jews, Leviticus I, II, and III. Second, Jansenius understands by "the sacrifice of sanctification" the sacrifice that the Nazirites offered for their special sanctification, Numbers VI. For Nazirite in Hebrew means the same as separated, holy, consecrated to God, because by shaving his hair, abstaining from wine and strong drink, he dedicated himself entirely, as it were, to God. For most of the more devout Jews used to make this vow, and Sirach tacitly exhorts to this here, that those zealous for holiness should take the vow of Religious life. Third, by "the sacrifice of sanctification" can be understood a votive sacrifice, or one offered by vow, which, namely, you vowed and sanctified to the Lord; for a vow, because it is voluntary and dedicated to God, is called and is a sanctification that sanctifies the one who vows, especially the vow of cherem or anathema, by which a thing promised to God by vow had to die, either naturally or civilly, and thus be, as it were, immolated to God, as I explained in Leviticus XXVII. Fourth, the Zurich Bible translates lustral sacrifices, by which, namely, one was purified from legal impurity and legally sanctified, of which Numbers XIX. Fifth, Lyranus understands peace offerings, so that the Septuagint's "gift of arms," that is of shoulders, is explained by "the sacrifice of sanctification." But these last two interpretations seem less apt and rather forced.
AND THE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE HOLY THINGS. — Greek, and the firstfruits of holy things. The word sanctorum (of holy things) is neuter, not masculine, as if to say, of holy things. What are these? First, Vatablus translates holy firstfruits; therefore any firstfruits whatsoever, because they are holy, are to be understood here in this sense. But he ordained these in the preceding verse. Second, Lyranus says: "the firstfruits of holy things," he says, that is, the sanctifications of men are firstfruits, tithes, and all the other things mentioned, as if he recapitulates all the things already said in this single word and briefly encompasses them. To this the exposition of Denis the Carthusian is similar: "The firstfruits of holy things," he says, are the chief things that have been sanctified, that is, consecrated to God; for the Greek arche (whence aparchai, that is, beginnings or firstfruits) signifies both beginning and chief. For God had commanded that the chief and best things be offered to Him. Third, more genuinely Jansenius, distinguishing these from the preceding: "the firstfruits of holy things," he says, is that portion of tithes which the Levites were obliged to pay to the priests from all the tithes they received, namely the tithe of tithes, which was to be rendered before all else and from the best, and therefore is called "the firstfruits of holy things." For firstfruits are called holy because they are consecrated and owed to God by the law of Numbers XVIII. But by this reasoning Sirach would be speaking only to the Levites.
Fourth, therefore, add that "the firstfruits of holy things" comprises tithes of any kind, especially the first tithes, which the Jews were obliged by the law of Numbers XVIII to pay annually to the Levites, and through them to the priests; for to these the Levites paid a tithe of tithes, as I have already said. For three kinds of tithes were prescribed for the Jews by the law. The first were of all produce, flocks, and herds, which were given entirely to the Levites. The second were those which the Jews set apart from the remaining nine parts, so that going to the tabernacle they might feast there with the Levites and priests. The third were those separated every three years and given to the poor, widows, orphans, and Levites as a form of alms, about all of which I spoke on Deuteronomy XIV, 22. Therefore the first and common tithes are called "the firstfruits of holy things" because they were the firstfruits of the other tithes, namely the second and third; for all tithes were holy, because they were sanctified and offered to the Lord by law: therefore the first were "the firstfruits of holy things." Again, any tithes whatsoever, even the second and third, can be called "the firstfruits of holy things" because they themselves were sanctified to God, and through them all other goods, of which these were the tithes, were considered as offered and sanctified to God through their own portion and firstfruits, as it were. Moreover, the second tithes were "the firstfruits of holy things" because they were tithes of things already offered and sanctified to God through the first tithes; and likewise the third were "the firstfruits of holy things" because they were tithes of things which through the first and second tithes had been, as it were, offered and dedicated to God. Hence to the third tithes pertains what follows: "And stretch out your hand to the poor, that your propitiation and blessing may be perfected." Therefore here Sirach encompasses four kinds of things owed to the priest, namely first, firstfruits; second, sacrifices and victims; third, the sacrifice of sanctification, that is, vows; fourth, the firstfruits of holy things, that is, tithes.
Fifth, most plainly and most fittingly, by the firstfruits of holy things, you may understand gifts and offerings for the temple, namely for its repairs, decoration, vessels, furnishings, bread, oil, etc. For the Holy Place, or in the plural the Holy Things (on account of its eminent holiness) is the name of the tabernacle or temple. Again, the Hebrews call beginnings, or firstfruits, every offering and every gift that is offered to God; just as therefore in the preceding verse he ordained firstfruits (under which he also understands tithes) owed to the priests by law, so here he ordains firstfruits, that is, offerings to be made for the construction and the temple, just as the Canons in the New Law prescribe that the offerings of the faithful be applied not only to priests but also to the fabric of churches.
Mystically, Rabanus refers all these things to almsgiving: for he reads and connects them thus: "The gift of arms, and the sacrifice of sanctification, offer the firstfruits of holy things, and stretch out your hand to the poor," etc., as if to say: Alms given to the poor is "the gift of arms," because it is given with strong and generous arms; the same is "the sacrifice of sanctification:" a sacrifice, because it is given in honor of God; of sanctification, because it sanctifies the giver, or disposes him to holiness: and therefore it is called "the firstfruits of holy things," as the beginning of holiness and justification.
Mystically, again, some accommodate this to Religious. For they, not yet satisfied with external works designated by the goods of their arms, add the internal works of contemplation and reading, and on the altar of their heart they consume themselves as a holocaust of sanctification, that is, themselves, with the fire of charity.
36. AND STRETCH OUT YOUR HAND TO THE POOR, THAT YOUR PROPITIATION AND BLESSING MAY BE PERFECTED.
36. AND STRETCH OUT YOUR HAND TO THE POOR, THAT YOUR PROPITIATION AND BLESSING MAY BE PERFECTED. — The word propitiation is now absent from the Greek and the Syriac, which reads thus: Also stretch out your hand to the poor, that your blessings may be fulfilled. Blessing, Greek eulogia, signifies beneficence, generosity, a lavish gift. Hence the Zurich Bible, or rather Vatablus, translates: That your munificence and expiation may be complete, as if to say: It is not enough to be beneficent to priests, because this is owed by every right; but for beneficence to be complete, it must be extended to the poor: for that is pure and is done purely from love of God, since no recompense is expected from the poor. Hence God claims the poor for Himself: "To You, says the Psalmist, the poor man is left; You will be a helper to the orphan," Psalm IX, 34. Hence by this beneficence toward the poor, the almsgiving person provokes the reciprocal blessing and beneficence of God upon himself, even in temporal things, according to that saying: "He who sows in blessings shall also reap from blessings." See what follows, II Corinthians IX, 6. Wherefore our translator rightly added the word propitiation: for almsgiving makes God propitious to us and expiates sins, Daniel IV, 24.
37. A GIFT HAS FAVOR (correct with the Roman editions: dati, 'of a gift') IN THE SIGHT OF EVERY LIVING PERSON
37. A GIFT HAS FAVOR (correct with the Roman editions: dati, 'of a gift') IN THE SIGHT OF EVERY LIVING PERSON — as if to say: A gift or present is pleasing to every living person. The Syriac: For mercy is in the eyes of all creatures, as if to say:
Everyone loves it. "For where the eye is, there is also love; where the hand is, there is also pain." The Zurich Bible: Generosity is pleasing to all living persons, and should not be withheld even from the dead; others: A gift has favor with every living person. Wherefore Denis wrongly connects and explains these words with the preceding verse thus, as if to say: That your blessing to be conferred upon you on the day of judgment may be perfected, in the sight of every living person, by the grace of the gift, that is, on account of alms given to the poor.
AND DO NOT WITHHOLD KINDNESS FROM THE DEAD (Syriac, from the dead). — Others: do not deny benevolence or a good deed to the dead. For a manifold duty is owed to the dead. First, that of funeral and burial, for which Tobias is wonderfully praised. Hence the Canons also decree that it is not permitted to exact a price for a grave and burial place, but that it must be granted freely. Hear the Council of Tribur, canon 16, which is cited in 13, Question II, chapter 14: "In Ecclesiasticus, it says, it is written: Do not withhold kindness from the dead, knowing that we shall all die. And: All things that have sprung from the earth shall be converted into earth. Why do you sell earth to earth? Remember that you are earth, and to earth you shall return (And elsewhere it is said of man: You tread upon earth, you carry earth, and into earth you shall be converted, you who are taken from the earth). And: Since death is going to be there and is approaching; and if it delays, remember that the earth is not man's but the Lord's is the earth and its fullness. If you sell earth, you are guilty of invading the Lord's property. You received freely from God; give freely for Him. Therefore let it be forbidden to all Christians without exception to sell earth to the dead and to deny the burial that is owed."
The second and most important grace or benefit to be rendered to the dead is prayer, sacrifices, and suffrages for their salvation, that they may be freed from the punishments of Purgatory and be granted the vision of God and heaven, as Judas Maccabeus did, II Maccabees XII, 43. Hence after commanding alms to be given to the living, lest anyone exclude the dead from it, he adds that it must be done for these as well, especially because alms given to the living for the salvation of these dead are likewise alms, and with greater fruit and benefit. The third grace is that their memory and monuments be preserved, and their reputation and honor be defended: likewise that their sons, daughters, wives, and grandchildren be helped, nourished, and protected. See St. Augustine's book On the Care for the Dead, where, in chapter IX, he refutes the Poets and Pagans who held that souls wandered like shades and could not cross the river of the underworld as long as their bodies remained unburied. See the same author, book IX of the Confessions, chapter XII, on the burial of St. Monica his mother, and St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter VII; St. Cyprian, book I, epistle 9 to the Furnitani; St. Ambrose, On Tobias, chapter I; St. Chrysostom, homily 69 to the People; Nazianzen, oration on Caesarius. How great was the care the Pagans had for burial, see in Alexander ab Alexandro, book III of the Genial Days, chapter III, and Tiraquellus on the same passage.
38. DO NOT FAIL THOSE WHO WEEP (on account of the death of parents or some other calamity) in consolation, and WALK WITH THOSE WHO MOURN
38. DO NOT FAIL THOSE WHO WEEP (on account of the death of parents or some other calamity) in consolation, and WALK WITH THOSE WHO MOURN — mourning with those who mourn, as the Zurich Bible translates, and weeping with those who weep, as Paul advises, Romans XII, 15. The Syriac: Do not delay (linger, tarry) from the house of the weeping one, and with all who grieve be grieving. For it is not enough to console those who weep with words; but one must also mourn and weep with those who mourn. For by this communion in grief, sorrow is alleviated, because it is divided among others and is, as it were, supported by them. So did Job, saying in chapter XXX, 25: "I wept over the one who was afflicted, and my soul had compassion on the poor."
This then is the first reason why the sorrow of the afflicted is relieved by compassion: because, namely, the compassionate person opens the heart of the afflicted person, closed and oppressed by grief, and causes the sorrow to flow out and be diverted into himself. Hence St. Ambrose, book III of Offices, last chapter: "The consolation, he says, of this life is to have someone to whom you may open your breast, to have a faithful man who rejoices with you in prosperity, sympathizes in sadness, encourages in persecution, etc., who restrains you when you exult in joyful times, and lifts you up when you grieve in sad times."
The second is that the compassionate person suggests to the afflicted one — who is therefore lacking in counsel — sound advice for mitigating grief, which the suffering person's pain does not allow him to find within himself. Hence Proverbs XXVII, 9, says: "The heart is delighted by ointment and various perfumes, and the soul is sweetened by the good counsels of a friend;" the Septuagint: But the soul is torn apart by calamities. Hence also that saying of the Philosopher: "Speech is a physician for a sick mind."
The third is that compassionate love and affection is as great a good as the suffering person's pain is an evil: therefore, placed in the balance, it counterweighs it, and consoles and cheers the sufferer as much as his pain afflicts and tortures him. Again, the compassionate person gives the sufferer, as it were, a part of his own heart: therefore the sufferer, strengthened as if with two hearts — his own and his friend's — bears the pain more lightly. So St. Gregory, book XX of the Morals, chapter 26, on that passage of Job XXX, I wept over the one who was afflicted: "The one who gives external things, he says, offers something outside himself. But the one who gives weeping and compassion to his neighbor has also given something of himself." He then adds a new reason: "We say that compassion is greater than a gift: because one who does not sympathize often enough gives some material thing; but one who truly sympathizes never denies what he sees his neighbor needs."
The fourth is that the sufferer is, as it were, plunged in a sea of bitterness, from which he cannot emerge by himself: the compassionate person therefore, showing him the affection of compassion, as it were extends a hand to him by which to pull him out; just as fishermen offer bait to a fish in order to draw it out of the sea. For affection is like bait, by which he attracts the sufferer and thus lifts him up with himself to strength and hope of better fortune. So St. Gregory, book III of the Morals, chapter 10: "The order of consolation, he says, is that when we wish to lift an afflicted person from sorrow, we should first endeavor to harmonize with his grief by grieving. One who does not harmonize with the pain cannot console the one in pain; because in the very fact that he differs from the affliction of sorrow, he is less received by the one from whom he is separated by the quality of mind. Therefore the spirit must first be softened, so that it may be congruent with the afflicted, clinging through congruence, and drawing through clinging. For iron is not joined to iron unless both are liquefied by the burning of fire; and a hard thing does not adhere to a soft one unless its hardness is first tempered to softness, so that it may become, as it were, that very thing which it is being prepared to hold. Thus we do not raise up those who lie prostrate unless we bend from the rigidity of our own position. Therefore the friends of blessed Job, in order to lift the afflicted man from his pain, necessarily took care to grieve together." Therefore our tears wipe away and dry the tears of those who weep; just as a dusty rain, which stirs up dust, dries it rather than moistens it.
39. LET IT NOT IRK YOU TO VISIT THE SICK: FOR FROM THESE THINGS YOU WILL BE STRENGTHENED IN LOVE.
39. LET IT NOT IRK YOU TO VISIT THE SICK: FOR FROM THESE THINGS YOU WILL BE STRENGTHENED IN LOVE. — The Greek: Do not be sluggish (and so St. Cyprian reads in book III of the Testimonies) to visit the sick: for from these things you will be loved; the Syriac: Let it not weary you to visit the infirm, because on account of these things you are loved; the Zurich Bible: Do not hesitate to visit the sick, for you will gather favor from it. For the Greek oknein signifies to be reluctant, to be weary, to be burdened, to hesitate, to delay, to neglect, to fear, to tarry, to do with difficulty and reluctance, to omit. Hence oknos is hesitation, sluggishness, laziness, slowness, doubt, fear. For these feelings are connected, and one arises from another and accompanies it. Hence the fabulous sluggard Ocnus in Ovid. For since diseases and the diseased bring and represent nothing joyful but only sad things, and death itself, from this arises the weariness and sluggishness of visiting them. He therefore commands that this weariness be overcome by the fervor of charity, as our holy Father Ignatius did when, while in Paris, he was summoned to Rouen by a sick man, even one unfaithful to him. For in the first three leagues he felt such a heaviness cast upon him by the demon that he seemed to himself to have feet of lead; but bearing and overcoming this steadfastly, he shook it off to such a degree that he completed the rest of the journey running like a deer, overflowing with divine consolations, as Ribadeneira reports in book V of his Life, chapter 2. Therefore a sign of languishing and failing love is to visit the sick with difficulty and sluggishness. Hence in the Council of Toledo, canon 2, which is cited in distinction XXV, canon Unum, among other venial sins to be expiated by the fire of Purgatory, these are listed: "As often as one speaks more than is necessary, does more than is expedient; as often as one irritates the poor who beg importunately; as often as one has been too slow to visit those in prison and too slow to visit the sick."
Again, in the Septuagint, to visit signifies not only to go to and see, but also to console, advise, do good, and help with every kind of aid. Finally, from these things, namely, from all that has been said, such as giving alms, both to the dead and to the living, consoling those who weep, visiting the sick, "you will be strengthened in love:" for these are the duties and acts of love; and acts strengthen and intensify a habit. Not easily, says Palacius, will one be conquered by the devil who strives to visit the sick; the weakness of the sick strengthens weak charity. Again, from these works you will be strengthened in the love of God, because God will love you more firmly, and therefore will not allow you to fall into sins.
The a priori reason is that visiting the sick out of charity is an act of charity: and acts increase and strengthen a habit: if someone visits a sick person not properly from the motive of charity, but of mercy, or of another virtue, even so charity is strengthened. For all virtues are interconnected among themselves, and their bond is charity: therefore charity is nourished, increased, and strengthened through the acts of other virtues, especially mercy and piety. It seems, says Dionysius, that the interpreter read in the Greek ἀγαπήσεις, actively, that is, you will love; this means, in love and affection you will grow and be strengthened: for a continuous act is signified, not one just begun. Now they read passively, ἀγαπηθήσῃ, that is, you will be loved: to which our Latin version can also be adapted, "you will be strengthened in love," if you take love not actively but passively, as if to say: Through these things you will increase love for yourself, you will cause yourself to be loved more by God and men, and in turn you will love them more actively, both because love provokes love, for love is the magnet of love; and because God pours into those whom He loves more a greater grace and love by which they in turn love and cherish Him more. For the love of God is efficacious and produces reciprocal love for Himself. In summary, the full meaning reconciling all versions will be, if you understand love both actively and passively, as if to say: Through these duties of piety you will grow in love, and therefore in turn you will be loved more by God and men. So says Dionysius.
But it seems very probable to me that the elder Sirach, who wrote this book in Hebrew, wrote in this place תאהב taohab, which is the future of the hophal conjugation, that is, you will be placed and strengthened in love. For the hophal has a double passive meaning: for it corresponds to the hiphil conjugation, which is doubly active. Therefore אהב ahab, just as in the hiphil it means "he caused to love," so in the hophal it means "he was made to love," or "he was strengthened in love." Hence tachab, which is the hophal future, means "you will be strengthened in love." From this it becomes probable that our Latin version was translated directly from the Hebrew. The younger Sirach wished to imitate the same thing in Greek: and so by τὸ ἀγαπηθήσῃ he wished to signify not the simple passive, namely, "you will be loved"; but the double, namely, "you will be incited to love, and will be strengthened in it": for so the Latin translator rendered it, and this is what the Hebrew taohab signifies. Therefore ἀγαπηθήσῃ is the same as ἐν ἀγάπῃ τεθήσῃ, that is, "you will be placed in love": and perhaps Sirach rendered it, or it is ἀγάπῃ σνωσθήσῃ, that is, "you will be strengthened in love." So St. Augustine explains the passage inthat passage of Genesis 22:12: "Now I know that you fear God." "I know," that is, "I have made you know": for God knew this already before. And that passage of Romans 8:26: "The Spirit intercedes for us with unutterable groanings." "He intercedes," that is, "He makes us intercede." For the Holy Spirit cannot groan.
Morally, learn here how useful and holy it is to visit the sick. For what is done for the sick, Christ considers done for Himself. Hence on the day of judgment He will say to the elect: "I was sick, and you visited Me" (Matthew 25:36). Whoever therefore visits a sick person, visits Christ. Wherefore St. Bonaventure in the Stimulus of Divine Love, chapter 1: "Why, O soul," he says, "are you anxious all day long after Christ? I will show you whom your soul loves. Surely He lies in the infirmary, and there He is distressed, there He is tormented. Run, and minister to Him, have compassion on Him in His weakness." These words he wrote in a simple but fervent style. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 27, On the Care of the Poor: "Help the poor man," he says, "provide clothing, apply medicine, bind up his wound, inquire about his calamity, offer a prayer about his patience (for all these things, and indeed every aid given in deed or word, are included in the word 'visiting' the sick). Be of good courage, approach. You will in no way be harmed by it; you will in no way contract a disease, even though people who are excessively soft and delicate think so, deceived by empty reasoning, or rather use this as a pretext for their own softness and laziness, or for their impiety." The same Nazianzen, in Oration 20, wonderfully celebrates St. Basil, because he built a hospital at Caesarea, assisted the sick with every resource, and even kissed their wounds, contemplating Christ in them: "Wherefore," he says, "that noble man, born of noble parents, and most illustrious in the splendor of his name, did not shrink from pressing his lips to the sick." I have reviewed more heroic examples of this kind from heroes, such as those of St. Gallicanus, the Empress Placilla, Radegund, Eustachius, St. Mary of Oignies, etc., in my commentary on Isaiah 38, at the end of the chapter, and on James 1:27.
How the sick should be consoled and admonished, see in St. Gregory, Part III of the Pastoral Rule, Admonition 13. The same St. Gregory, in Book 20 of the Moralia, chapter 26, subtly teaches how one who visits the sick is strengthened in love: because, namely, out of love for the sick person he transcribes the sufferings into himself through compassion, which is a remarkable act of love. "He perfectly gives," he says, "who, together with what he sorrowfully extends, also takes into himself the spirit of the afflicted; so that he first transfers into himself the suffering of the one in pain, and then comes to the aid of that person's suffering through his ministry." He illustrates this with the example of Christ: "Who, although He could have helped us even without dying, nevertheless wished to help mankind by dying, because, namely, He would have loved less if He had not also taken upon Himself our wounds; nor would He have shown us the power of His love unless He Himself had for a time endured what He was taking away from us." The same Gregory, in Homily 39 on the Gospels, recounts an illustrious example. Martyrius the monk, he says, found a leper on the road and carried him on his shoulders. "As soon as he reached the entrance of the monastery, the one who was thought to be a leper leaped from his neck, and appearing in that form by which Christ Jesus is usually recognized by men, returned to heaven as Martyrius watched, and ascending said to him: Martyrius, you were not ashamed of me on earth; I will not be ashamed of you in heaven." Pope Leo IX ordered a leper found before the gates to be placed in his own bed; when he was sought in the morning, he was found nowhere. It was believed that Christ had lain there in the guise of a poor man. So Platina and others in the Life of Leo IX.
Now the last things are four: death, judgment, hell, and heavenly glory -- both eternal. He who is not moved by these is either a beast or a stone, not a man; he is steel, he is flint. Sirach here hands down a sure rule that regulates, orders, and sanctifies all our actions, namely this:
40. IN ALL YOUR WORKS REMEMBER YOUR LAST END, AND YOU WILL NEVER SIN.
"Last of all," says Janus, "he places the directive of all human life, just as the helmsman sits in the last part of the ship to steer it," so as to give a keen stimulus to the pursuits of charity and virtues, and the fulfillment of God's precepts. In each of your works, choose that, do that, which at the hour of death you will wish to have chosen and done. "In each of his works let everyone say to himself: If you were about to die right now, would you do this?" says St. Bernard in the Mirror of Monks. In each of your works, choose that, do that, which on the day of judgment, when you will stand before the terrible tribunal of Christ the Judge, you will wish to have chosen and done.
Wherefore St. Isidore, at the end of the Chronicle: "In all your works," he says, "remember your last things. For when each one departs from the world, then for him it is the end of the world." And Nazianzen in his Maxims: "Place death before your eyes always as if it were present; for so it will happen that when you must meet it, you will come out on top."
St. Bernard gives the reason in Sermon 2, On the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul: "'Son,' says the Wise Man, 'remember your last things, and you will not sin'; namely, because this thought especially makes one fearful, fear drives out sin, and does not admit negligence. Now our last things are death, judgment, and hell. What is more horrible than death? What more terrible than judgment? For nothing more intolerable than hell can be imagined. What will he fear, if he does not tremble, is not terrified, is not shaken with fear at these things? In all your works remember your last things: do not allow the horror of death, the fearful crisis of judgment, or the dread of burning hell to be far from the eyes of your heart. Fear, O man, that in death you will be separated from all the goods of this body, and that the sweet bond of flesh and soul will have to be severed by the most bitter divorce. Fear that in the terrible judgment you will be presented to Him into whose hands it is fearful to fall; and when He examines you, from whom nothing is hidden, if indeed iniquity is found in you, you will be alienated from the whole of rest and glory, and separated from the number of the Blessed. Fear that in hell you will be exposed to eternal and immense torments, in the lot of the devil and his angels, in the eternal fire that is prepared for them. How terrible the last day will be in expectation, son, remember your last things." And a little further on: "Whence comes this dissimulation of ours, my brothers? Whence this so destructive lukewarmness? Whence this accursed complacency? Why do we wretched ones deceive ourselves? Perhaps we have already become rich; perhaps we already reign. Do not those horrible spirits besiege the door of our house? Do not those ghastly faces await our departure? What fear will there be, O my soul, when, having left behind all those whose presence is so pleasant to you, whose sight is so welcome, whose companionship is so familiar, you will enter alone an unknown region, and will see those most foul monsters rushing upon you in crowds? Who will meet you in that extreme necessity? Who will protect you from those roaring beasts prepared for their prey? Who will comfort you? Who will guide you? My little children, let us remember our last things, lest we sin."
He repeats the same things in the sermon On the Beginnings, Middles, and Last Things, where he also adds: "For in death you will carry with you nothing great, nothing small of the goods of this world; in the judgment it will be impossible either to deceive or to resist; in hell there will be absolutely no consolation, but perpetual woe, wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth."
This therefore was the meaning, this the stimulus to virtue, of all the Doctors and Saints. Hear St. Augustine, Book 2 of On Genesis against the Manichees, chapter 28: Nothing, he says, so draws men back from sin as the thought of approaching death: for then an account of one's past life must be rendered before the most just Judge. And in Sermon 3, On the Holy Innocents: "If men were willing to continually think about the day of their death, they would restrain their soul from all desire and malice."
The same is even more truly affirmed of the memory of the judgment, and of everlasting punishments; for thus says Basil on Psalm 33: "If you ever feel yourself provoked to some sin, recall to your mind that dreadful and for every mortal intolerable judgment of Christ, and as with a bridle restrain your soul." And St. Ambrose, to the Fallen Virgin, chapter 8: "If sinful men were to see in their minds what kind of judgment threatens the world, human sense would not be scattered by worldly vanity, were it not weighed down by unbelief."
How great a power the punishments of hell have for recalling the soul from every crime, Prosper clearly taught in Book 3 of On the Contemplative Life, chapter 11: "To consider what an evil it is to be excluded from that joy of divine contemplation, to be deprived of the most blessed fellowship of all the Saints, to become an exile from the heavenly fatherland, to die to the blessed life, to live for everlasting death, to be cast into eternal fire with the devil and his angels, where there is the second death, damnation, exile, the punishment of life, not to feel in that fire what gives light, to feel what torments, to suffer the terrible explosions of overflowing flame, to have one's eyes blinded by the blind darkness of the smoking abyss, to be plunged into the depths of surging hell, to be torn apart forever by the most voracious worms, and never to have an end. To think on these and many similar things is nothing other than to give a divorce to all vices and to restrain all the enticements of the flesh."
Hear St. Basil, to his spiritual son: "Always," he says, "let the last day be before your eyes. When you rise at dawn, doubt whether you will reach evening; and when you lay your limbs on your bed to rest, do not trust that the light will come, so that you may more easily restrain yourself from all vices. Let your heart always meditate on heavenly promises: transfer all earthly things you possess into heavenly mansions." Again St. Augustine, or whoever is the author of the Mirror of the Sinner, volume 9, chapter 3: "It is the part of a wise man," he says, "not so much to look ahead to the beginning of any matter, as to foresee the end and outcome. He is proved to be blessed who so thinks about punishment before the punishment that afterwards he escapes the danger of punishment." And in chapter 5: "Would that you were wise and understood the things of the world; and foresaw the things of hell! Surely you would fear God, desire heavenly things, despise the world, and dread hell. In that most fearful last hour of yours, which of your friends, which of your relatives will come with swords and arms to bring you aid? For there will be no one then from among all your dear ones to console you. Your refuge will be with God alone," etc.
After man, the worm; after the worm, stench and horror:
Thus every man is turned into a non-man.
St. Marcella did this, of whom St. Jerome writes in her Epitaph, letter 16 to Principia, her daughter: "For many years," he says, "she so passed her life that she saw herself as an old woman before she remembered having been a young girl, praising that saying of Plato, who said that Philosophy is the meditation on death; whence also our Apostle, 1 Corinthians 15: 'I die daily,' he says, 'for your salvation.' And the Lord: 'Unless a man takes up his cross daily and follows Me, he cannot be My disciple.' And much earlier through the Prophet, the Holy Spirit: 'For Your sake we are put to death all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.' And after many ages that maxim: 'Always remember the day of death, and you will never sin.' And the precept of that most eloquent Satirist:
Live mindful of death, the hour flies; what I speak is already departing.
So therefore she spent her life and lived so that she always believed she was about to die; so she clothed herself as to be mindful of the grave, offering herself as a reasonable, living sacrifice, pleasing to God."
The same Jerome in the Epitaph of Nepotian to Heliodorus: "It is the teaching of Plato," he says, "that the whole life of the wise is a meditation on death. The Philosophers praise this and extol it to the skies; but far more powerfully the Apostle: 'I die daily,' he says, 'by your glory'; for it is one thing to strive, another to act: one thing to live as one about to die, another to die as one about to live. The former is about to die from glory, the latter dies for glory. Therefore we too ought to meditate beforehand in our mind on what we shall one day be, and what, whether we wish it or not, cannot be far off: for even if we were to exceed nine hundred years of life, as the human race lived before the flood, and the times of Methuselah were given to us, still the past length of time would be nothing, since it would have ceased to exist: for between one who lived ten years and one who lived a thousand, after the same end of life has arrived and the irrefusable necessity of death, all that has passed is equal, except that the old man departs more burdened with the load of sins.
The best days of life for wretched mortals
Flee first, diseases follow, and sad old age,
And toil, and the harshness of cruel death carries all away."
He adds the example of Xerxes: "That most powerful king Xerxes, who overturned mountains and bridged seas, when from a high place he had seen an infinite multitude of men and an innumerable army, is said to have wept, because after a hundred years none of those whom he then beheld would survive. O if we could ascend to such a watchtower, from which we could see the whole earth beneath our feet! I would show you the ruins of the entire world: nations dashing against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms: some being tortured, others being slain: some swallowed by the waves, others dragged into slavery: here weddings, there lamentation: those being born, these dying: some abounding in pleasures, others begging: and not only the army of Xerxes, but all the people of the whole world who now live, would be gone in a short space. Speech is overcome by the magnitude of the reality, and less is everything we say. Let us therefore return to ourselves, and as if descending from heaven let us for a moment survey our own affairs. Do you feel, I beg you, when you became an infant, when a boy, when a youth, when in the vigor of life, when an old man? Daily we die, daily we are changed; and yet we believe ourselves to be eternal. This very thing that I dictate, that is written, that I reread, that I correct, is taken from my life: as many points as the notary makes, so many are the losses of my time. We write and write again: letters cross the seas, and as the ship's keel cuts through the furrow, at each wave the moments of our life diminish. This alone do we have as gain: that we are united by the love of Christ."
That great Simeon Stylites left only one discourse in writing, whose title is: On Always Embracing in the Mind One's Departure, where he graphically depicts the anguish of a sinful soul at death, when it is surrounded by demons to drag it to the underworld; and conversely the joy of a holy soul, when it is led by the Angels into paradise. It is found in the Library of the Holy Fathers, in the Appendix. Moreover this Simeon from his pillar taught the people twice daily; and his entire teaching and sermon was about the last things, "bidding them to look up to heaven and fly upward, and to depart from the earth, and to apprehend by vision the kingdom that is expected, and to fear the threats of hell, and to despise earthly things, and to await the things to come," says Theodoret in the History of the Fathers, chapter 26. He taught the same thing by his very actions, namely by his continual standing and prayer, more than by voice and sermon; for he stood perpetually gazing up to heaven, and praying to God as if longing to ascend to Him.
St. Anselm, letter 5 to Burgundius and Richera, his wife: "Place before your eyes daily," he says, "your own end: think most intently about whose the things you leave behind will be and what they will profit you. Think about where you will go, what you will carry with you, what you will find there that you have sent ahead. Certainly you will not carry with you, nor will you find there, anything other than your merits, whether good or evil." And shortly after: "Think on these things, discuss them between yourselves day and night, in private and in public, let these be your conversations with one another, my lord, my beloved. What are we doing, why do we delay, our last day is near. How do we spend our life? How do we make satisfaction to God for our sins? Let us prepare ourselves as if we see the day of our calling approaching, and let us so prepare ourselves that we may go securely to the judgment; because without doubt we shall receive according to what we have done in this life, whether good or evil. God has joined us in this life: let us act so that He may join us together in eternal life, and there we may see our offspring, whom God has already taken to Himself. Let these be your pursuits, this your anxiety, these your sighs."
Do you want a more moving and vivid example? Take this: St. John the Almsgiver, in order to always remember the last things, had a tomb built for himself but left unfinished, and appointed a reminder who on feast days would say to him in front of everyone: "Your tomb up to this day is unfinished, my lord: order therefore that it be completed; for it is uncertain when the thief will enter" — namely, death. This meditation spurred him to such great almsgiving. So says Leontius in his Life. Theodosius the cenobite did the same, whose Life is found in Surius under January 11.
St. Rembert, Archbishop of Bremen, as his Life records, used to say that the first definition of Philosophy is the meditation on death. This therefore he continually premeditated, and for it he prepared himself, so as to fulfill that saying of the Wise Man: "Remember your last things, and you will never sin." For where there is no fear of death, there is the dissolution of life; where the dissolution of life, there is the abundance of sins; and where this is, there is the perdition of the soul. For fear always corrects, removes complacency, begets solicitude, casts down pride, nourishes humility, increases charity and multiplies virtues. Famous is the saying of St. Jerome: "He easily despises all things who always thinks that he must die." And that other: "Whether I eat, or drink, or study, or do anything else, always that last trumpet sounds in my ears: 'Rise, you dead, come to the judgment.'"
Our Blessed Francis Borgia used to say that the exercise of a good man, especially a Religious, is to prepare himself for death daily through the 24 hours; and that he himself was then rightly disposed when on any given day he could say with St. Paul: "I die daily." So says Ribadeneira in his Life, Book 4, chapter 5.
Finally, St. Job, chapter 14:14: "All the days," he says, "in which I now serve, I wait until my change shall come."
The same was the view of the pagans. St. Maximus, sermon 36, relates that Musonius, when asked who best closes his last day, replied: "He who has always set before himself that the last day of life is upon him." Plato, as I have already said, held that "the whole life of the wise is a meditation on death."
Among the Egyptians, at solemn banquets, someone would show a wooden corpse fashioned as closely as possible to a real one to each guest, saying: "Looking at this, drink and enjoy yourself, for such you will be after death"; though to what end they did this is debatable. The witness is Herodotus, Book 2.
Aristippus, turning pale in a storm at sea, when it subsided and someone taunted him: "Why do you Philosophers, who preach that death is not to be feared, turn pale in danger, while we uneducated men do not fear?" "Because," said Aristippus, "it is not for an equal soul that you and I are anxious and afraid." Gellius adds that he said: "I fear for the soul of Aristippus, you do not fear for the soul of a scoundrel." So says Laertius, Book 2, chapter 8.
The philosopher Secundus, as the same Laertius attests, when asked by the Emperor Hadrian what death is, replied: "Death is an eternal sleep, the dissolution of bodies, the dread of the rich, the desire of the poor, an inevitable event, an uncertain journey, a thief of man, the father of sleep, the flight of life, the departure of the living, the dissolution of all things." Finally Seneca in his Proverbs: "Every day," he says, "should be ordered as if it were the last."