Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, he treats of the correct upbringing and discipline of children, and the fruit thereof, and the harm if it is neglected, up to verse 14. Then second, he treats of the good of health up to verse 22; third, up to the end of the chapter, he treats of the good of joy and the evil of sadness. Hence some Greek codices prefix to the first part the title περὶ τέκνων, that is, On Children; and to the second, περὶ ὑγιείας, that is, On Health.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiasticus 30:1-27
1. He who loves his son chastises him often, that he may rejoice in his latter end, and not grope at his neighbors' doors. 2. He who instructs his son will be praised in him, and in the midst of his household he will glory in him. 3. He who instructs his son provokes the enemy to jealousy, and in the midst of friends he will glory in him. 4. His father has died, and it is as though he has not died: for he has left one like himself after him. 5. In his lifetime he saw and rejoiced in him; in his death he was not grieved, nor was he put to shame before his enemies. 6. For he left behind a defender of his house against enemies, and one who repays kindness to friends. 7. For the sake of his children's souls he will bind up his wounds, and at every cry his heart will be troubled. 8. An untamed horse becomes stubborn, and an undisciplined son becomes reckless. 9. Pamper your son, and he will make you afraid; play with him, and he will grieve you. 10. Do not laugh with him, lest you have pain, and in the end your teeth will be set on edge. 11. Do not give him authority in his youth; and do not overlook his faults. 12. Bow down his neck in his youth, and beat his sides while he is a child, lest he grow stubborn and disobey you: and he will be a grief to your soul. 13. Discipline your son and labor over him, lest you stumble upon his shameful conduct. 14. Better is a poor man who is healthy and strong in body, than a rich man who is feeble and afflicted with evil. 15. Health of soul in the holiness of justice is better than all gold and silver; and a sound body is better than immeasurable wealth. 16. There is no treasure above a healthy body: and there is no delight above the joy of the heart. 17. Better is death than a bitter life; and eternal rest than unceasing illness. 18. Good things hidden behind a closed mouth are like offerings of food placed around a tomb. 19. What profit is a libation to an idol? For it will neither eat nor smell: 20. so is he who is driven away by the Lord, bearing the wages of iniquity: 21. looking with his eyes and groaning, like a eunuch embracing a virgin and sighing.
He passes from health to joy in a fitting order: because joy especially preserves and fosters the health of both body and soul, just as sadness destroys it. So says Lyranus.
22. Do not give sadness to your soul, and do not afflict yourself by your own counsel. 23. The gladness of the heart — this is the life of man, and a treasure of holiness that never fails: and the exultation of a man is length of days. 24. Have pity on your own soul by pleasing God, and restrain yourself: gather your heart in His holiness, and drive sadness far from you. 25. For sadness has killed many, and there is no profit in it. 26. Jealousy and anger shorten one's days, and anxious thought brings old age before its time. 27. A cheerful and good heart feasts constantly: for his feasts are prepared with care.
First Part of the Chapter
1. HE WHO LOVES HIS SON APPLIES THE ROD TO HIM FREQUENTLY, THAT HE MAY REJOICE IN THE END, AND NOT GROPE AT THE DOORS OF NEIGHBORS.
The Greek omits the last part, and thus has concisely: He who loves his son chastises him continually, that he may rejoice in his end. The Zurich version: He who loves his son, fre-
frequently plies him with lashes, that in the end he may be a joy to him. The Syriac: He who loves his son will repeat his lashes, that he may rejoice in his end. Parents who love their children in a carnal and foolish way do not dare to correct them when they sin, but excuse and indulge them in everything. The result is that the children become bold, disobedient, dissolute, and quarrelsome, and finally fall into grave evils, even into an infamous and shameful death, which brings the parents the greatest sorrow as well as disgrace. They then seriously, but too late, repent of their excessive indulgence toward their children, and see in reality that it was not love and kindness, but hatred and harm to their children. Therefore parents who are wise, and who love their children with a true and prudent love, correct them constantly — not only by rebuking them with words, but also by beating them with rods and lashes. The reason is that "folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of discipline will drive it away" (Proverbs 22:15). For children, on account of their lack of reason and judgment, and because of their lively spirits and boiling blood, are full of lusts and harmful desires, and are like animals — for example, like frisky goats, frolicking, butting with their horns, and mixing and confusing everything. Therefore, just as animals such as oxen and horses are not driven by words but are spurred and goaded so that they go straight at the will of the rider or charioteer, so likewise misbehaving children must be corrected not so much by words as by the rod and the lash, so that they learn to restrain their innate wantonness and concupiscence. He adds a twofold fruit: First, "that he may rejoice" — both the parent, and more especially the son himself — "in his end." That is to say: The son who is beaten will feel pain and weep at first; but in the end, seeing the fruit of the beating — namely, that through it he has unlearned his childish and perverse ways and put on manly and holy ones — he will rejoice and be glad exceedingly, and will give thanks to his parents who corrected him and thus led him to virtue and good conduct. Second, security from begging; hence he says: "And not grope at the doors of neighbors." That is to say: If you do not correct him, he will become idle and lazy, and from this, having become poor, he will be forced to beg. And since he will be ashamed to do this during the day, he will beg toward evening and at night in the dark, so as not to be recognized; therefore, groping in the darkness, he will seek the doors of neighbors, knocking on them to beg for alms. So that he "not grope" at them, nor beg, correct your son, and teach him not to be idle but to work, so that by the labor of his hands he may provide for himself. Note here (says Palacius) that it was the Lord's law, Deuteronomy 15:4, that there should be no beggar among the Jews; but nevertheless many, driven by poverty, did beg — and they begged in our manner, not by singing, as the Germans do, but by groping at and knocking on doors, as we Spaniards do. So says Palacius, somewhat lightly.
and so that they disturb and overturn the republic. Thus Solomon in the Proverbs frequently insists on this same point, as in chapter 23, verse 13: "Do not withhold discipline from a child; for if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod and deliver his soul from hell." See him throughout chapters 3, 4, and 5. Therefore let the father imitate God the Father, who corrects and perfects His faithful ones and children through many tribulations: "For whom the Lord loves, He corrects, and as a father takes delight in his son" (Proverbs 3:12). St. Paul, Ephesians 6:4: "And you, fathers," he says, "do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."
St. Chrysostom, Homily 9 on 1 Timothy 2, teaches that parents should have no greater care than to educate their children properly and assign them good tutors who will form their character toward all honesty. He gives the reason, saying: "No possession, no estate should be as pleasing and dear to us; for all these things are sought for the sake of children." St. Jerome teaches the same in his letter to Gaudentius.
Plato considers the good education of children to be the foundation, indeed the seedbed, of a good republic. Hence in Book II of the Republic: "The education of children," he says, "is of the greatest importance for rightly ordering one's entire life." And in Book VII: "In the republic that wishes to be happy, magistrates are taught the knowledge of the true God and the true good from their earliest infancy, and all the arts necessary for learning that primary knowledge are imparted to the youth while still young." The same, in Book VI of the Laws: "The right instruction of youth," he says, "is the most serious of all public affairs." Again, in Book IV of the Republic: "It is the duty even of the highest magistrate to see to it that boys and young men are brought up honestly and in holiness from their earliest age and infancy." The same author, in the First Alcibiades, relates that the sons of the kings of Persia, when they had reached their fourteenth year, were entrusted to the care of royal tutors who were selected from among all the Persians and were four in number: the first was the wisest, the second the most just, the third the most temperate, and the fourth the bravest. The first taught the king's son the things pertaining to divine worship; the second instilled in him that he should be truthful throughout his entire life; the third, that he should not allow himself to be conquered by any desire, but should learn to be king of himself and to command his appetite and all the other passions of the soul; the fourth made him fearless and intrepid, so that he would never become a slave through fear of anything.
Aristotle, Book VI of the Politics, chapter 1: In a state, he says, the first and greatest care ought to be given to educating the youth; if this is neglected, the republic must necessarily perish. For this reason Aristotle himself was appointed as tutor to Alexander the Great by his father Philip, who congratulated himself wonderfully on this account, as Gellius attests, Book IX, chapter 3.
Plutarch, the tutor of Emperor Trajan, wrote a golden book On the Education of Children, in
Therefore the wise men of all nations and ages have judged it necessary — not only for the welfare of the household, but also of the entire republic — that parents educate, correct, and discipline their children well, lest they become thieves, adulterers, murderers, and thus
in which, among other things, he says: "Just as the limbs of infants must be shaped and formed as soon as they are born, so that they may be straight and not crooked, so it is fitting to mold the characters of children properly and harmoniously from the beginning. For that young age is pliable and tender for shaping, and lessons are better instilled in their minds while they are still soft; but what is hard is more difficult to soften. For just as seals are impressed upon soft wax, so doctrines are engraved while the mind is still childlike." According to the saying of Horace: The jar will long preserve the scent With which, when new, it first was filled. And that of Phocylides: While the child is tender, train him in noble ways. Cicero, Book II of On Duties, teaches: "No greater or better service can be rendered to the republic than if we teach and educate the youth, especially in such times and circumstances as these, when morals have so declined that they must be restrained and checked with every resource." Xenophon teaches the same in the Education of Cyrus.
There are illustrious examples. Eli, because he did not correct his sons Hophni and Phinehas, lost his life and the priesthood (1 Samuel 2). Constantine the Great, having divided the empire among his sons, educated them excellently in piety and upright morals, both personally and through tutors, as Eusebius relates in Book IV of the Life of Constantine, chapters 51 and 52. Charlemagne educated his sons and daughters with the greatest care, as Aemilius reports in Book II, chapter 10. Theodosius did the same, giving his sons Arcadius and Honorius as their tutor Arsenius, who on account of the sublimity of his life was enrolled among the Saints by the Church. So says Nicephorus, Book XXII, chapter 33, and Book XIV, chapter 2. St. Blanche as a mother made her son St. Louis a saint through her instruction, just as St. Monica did for St. Augustine.
Conversely, the depraved upbringing of the boy Julian, later emperor, made him an apostate. Similarly, Justina imbued her son Emperor Valentinian with Arian impiety. Andronicus the Younger, because his character was not corrected in boyhood, reached such a degree of license that he overthrew his grandfather Andronicus from the throne, as Gregory attests in Book VIII. A fearsome example is that of a five-year-old boy who, having grown accustomed to blasphemy and not being corrected by his father, was snatched from his father's lap by a demon and carried to hell, as St. Gregory relates in Dialogues IV, 18. But no example more illustriously shows how much power bad or good parental education has than that of St. Wenceslaus, whom his grandmother Ludmilla, a devout woman, raised from boyhood to become a holy king — indeed a martyr — and of his brother Boleslaus, who, impiously raised by his impious mother Drahomira, became a sacrilegious parricide. For he killed his brother Wenceslaus and seized his kingdom — Bohemia, I mean — and ruled it tyrannically, as the Life of St. Wenceslaus, Dubravius, and others record.
Lycurgus demonstrated this same principle to the Spartans by means of two puppies born of the same mother, one of which he had raised indoors in luxury, while the other he had taken out and trained in hunting. He set delicacies before them in view of the people and at the same time released a hare; immediately, as each rushed toward what it was accustomed to, one ran to the food and the other pounced on the hare. So Plutarch reports in the Laconian Sayings. More wisely, St. Jerome writes to Demetrias: "It is best done," he says, "with regard to the formation of character: for children are indeed suited to it, since they have in them a certain pliancy and softness by which they can be shaped and drawn at the will of the shaper; and in almost all things, what is tender more quickly becomes accustomed. Young saplings of yet unsteady root, while still pliant in every direction, are easily bent whichever way one wishes; likewise literary studies are better implanted in tender minds. This is also of the greatest importance for one's way of life: while the age is still soft and the mind easily led, the habit of good must be exercised and strengthened by constant meditation." What St. Gregory Nazianzen writes in Letter 57 to Eudoxia is also relevant here: "At Athens," he says, "there was an ancient law, and in my judgment a most excellently established one, that when young men had reached the age of puberty, they were led to the trades; and they were led in this manner: The instruments of each trade were publicly displayed, and the youths were brought to them. Whichever one each happened to delight in, and toward which he would run — in this trade he was then instructed. For those pursuits generally succeed well which we undertake under nature's guidance, while those which are taken up against nature's will tend to frustrate our hopes."
2. HE WHO TEACHES HIS SON WILL BE PRAISED IN HIM, AND IN THE MIDST OF HIS HOUSEHOLD WILL GLORY IN HIM.
This is the third fruit of good education and correction of children: that it brings the parent praise, joy, and glory among neighbors and strangers. "He who teaches" — that is, with both beatings and words; for in Greek it is ho paideuon, that is, "he who instructs, corrects, disciplines." For "will be praised," the translator read in the Greek ainithēsetai; but the corrected codices at Rome read enidēsetai, that is, "will be helped" or "will profit," meaning he will reap great gain from him. The Complutensian and others read epipothēsetai, that is, "will rejoice." Hence you may translate from the Greek thus: He who corrects his son will rejoice in him, and among acquaintances will glory in him. The Syriac: He who instructs his son will rejoice in him, and among his companions will be praised in him. The Zurich version: He who corrects his son will enjoy (will reap fruit and pleasure from) his son, and among nobles will glory in him — reading enidēsetai, which you may translate as "will enjoy," or "will be helped" or "will profit." Therefore he who teaches and corrects his son — in him he "will be praised," that is, he will joyfully and with praise delight in him and enjoy him, and will glory in him among others, as follows. For in this sense the word "to be praised" is often taken in Scripture, as: "In the Lord my soul shall be praised" (Psalm 33:3). "Glory in His holy name" (Psalm 104:3). "In God we shall be praised all the day" (Psalm 43).
The Arabic proverb applies here, Century II, no. 22: "Knowledge is a diadem for a child, and understanding is a golden necklace." Wisely Seneca says in Book II of On Anger: "It will be of the greatest benefit to train boys from the start in a wholesome manner; but the governance is difficult, because we must take care neither to nourish anger in them nor to blunt their natural gifts." And shortly after: "Thus he must be guided between both extremes, so that we use now the bridle, now the spur."
3. HE WHO TEACHES HIS SON PROVOKES THE ENEMY TO JEALOUSY. — In Greek parazelōsei, that is, "will provoke to emulation," will set up against him a rival and competitor in rivalry, will irritate him with envy and pain, will goad him with a certain jealousy and possessive zeal. Hence the Syriac translates: He seeks jealousy for his enemy. Thus God complains, indeed is indignant, about the Jews who worship idols instead of God, as if jealous for His honor and divinity, through Moses, Deuteronomy 32:16, saying: "They provoked Him (Greek parezēlōsan, that is, they irritated Him, provoked Him to jealousy and possessive zeal) with foreign gods, and with abominations stirred Him to wrath." And Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:22: "Do we provoke the Lord?" he says — Greek ē parazēloumen ton Kyrion — that is, do we set up a rival and competitor against the Lord? namely, when we join the table of demons to the Lord's table — that is, the eating of food sacrificed to idols. For thus we set up the idol, indeed the devil, against God as a rival and competitor. Hence the Zurich version translates: He who teaches his son does what burns his enemy. For the enemy is consumed with spite and envy when he sees and envies his rival possessing so great a good — namely, a son so wise and so furnished and adorned with good morals; and at the same time he grieves and fears lest the son seize upon and avenge the injuries inflicted on his father by himself. Conversely, IN THE MIDST OF FRIENDS HE WILL GLORY IN HIM — Greek agalliasetai, that is, "he will exult in him." This is the fourth fruit of good education of children: that through it enemies are confounded, while the father and friends rejoice and exult. Hence it is credible, says Palacius, that Christ glories with delight among the angels when by His teaching He makes someone among us truly holy. For St. Paul everywhere glories in the Christians whom he has taught, saying: "You are our glory and joy" (1 Thessalonians 2:20); and: "Therefore, my brethren, most beloved and most longed for, my joy and my crown — so stand firm in the Lord, beloved" (Philippians 4:1).
Moreover, how much praise and glory accrues to parents from the good upbringing, integrity, learning, and virtue of their children, Seneca vividly depicts in Book III of On Benefits, chapter 31, where he introduces a son who had cultivated himself in virtues and had supported his father — to compensate for the benefit of having been begotten — addressing his father thus: "The good is not to live, but to live well. But I do live well, though I might have lived badly. So this much only is yours: that I live. If you claim credit for my life, bare and needing guidance in itself, and boast of this as a great good, consider that you are claiming credit for what belongs equally to flies and worms. Moreover — to say nothing else than that I devoted myself to good pursuits and directed my course onto the right path of life — if I live well, you have received in the very benefit something greater than what you gave. For you gave me to myself raw and inexperienced; I give you back a son such as you would rejoice to have begotten. My father nourished me: if I do the same for him, I return more, because he rejoices not merely in having nourished, but in being nourished by his son, and derives greater pleasure from my devotion than from the thing itself. His nourishment reached only my body." Then he clearly demonstrates the same point from the glory that children bring to their parents and family when through their virtue they become exalted and famous — whether in wisdom, in virtue, or in sovereignty and kingship: "What if someone," he says, "has advanced so far on his own that he has become known among the nations for his eloquence, or justice, or military deeds, and has also shed a great reputation around his father, dispelling the obscurity of his birth with brilliant light — has he not conferred an inestimable benefit upon his parents? Would anyone know Ariston or Gryllus, were it not for their sons Xenophon and Plato? Socrates does not allow Sophroniscus to perish. It would take long to enumerate the others who live for no other reason than that the outstanding virtue of their children handed them down to posterity. Was the greater benefit given by Marcus Agrippa's father — unknown even after Agrippa — or was it given to his father by Agrippa, distinguished by the naval crown, having attained a unique honor among military decorations, who raised so many great works in the greatest city, works that surpassed all former magnificence and were afterward surpassed by none? Did Octavius bestow any greater benefit on his son, or did the divine Augustus bestow one on his father, even though the shadow of his adoptive father concealed him? What pleasure would he have felt, if he had seen him presiding over secure peace after the civil wars had been won — not recognizing his own good fortune, and hardly believing, whenever he looked at himself, that such a man could have been born in his house?"
4. HIS FATHER HAS DIED, AND YET IT IS AS THOUGH HE HAS NOT DIED (the Syriac: and it is the same as if he had not died), FOR HE LEFT BEHIND ONE LIKE HIMSELF.
This is the fifth fruit of good education. That is to say: Man by the instinct of nature desires immortality and eternity — namely, always to exist and to live. But since this is impossible in himself and his own person, which is mortal and must die, he at least desires that after death he may survive in another person like himself and most closely connected to him — namely, in a son — and live on and propagate himself, his name, and his memory. Therefore the begetting and good education of children is a remedy, indeed a likeness and image of the resurrection and of blessed eternity; for the father who dies seems to rise again in his son. For this reason parents desire to die before their children, even to die for their children, so that they may leave them as survivors, and in them be preserved, live on, and be propagated. For a son well educated by his parent preserves the parent's life, wisdom, and virtue, and makes him, as it were, immortal.
verse 9. "In God I will praise my words" (Psalm 55:5 and 11).
Well known is the story of the father who, along with his son, had been condemned to death for a crime. When the prince softened the sentence and ordered that only one be punished, giving them the choice of selecting — or casting lots — as to which one would be executed, there was a remarkable contest between the two, as the son was eager to die for the father and the father for the son. But the father prevailed at last, arguing that even if he were executed, he would still survive in his son; but if the son were executed, there would be no offspring or memorial either of himself — being an old man soon to die — or of his son. It was therefore better, he said, and he preferred to die, so that his son might remain alive after him. The prince, moved by the piety of both, pardoned them both.
Sirach therefore says that the father reaps this fruit from the good education of his son: that even if he himself dies, he seems nevertheless not to die, because he leaves behind a son as a second self, like himself in virtue — since he has communicated and imprinted his upright character on him through good training. It is otherwise with wicked parents, or with good parents who educate their children wickedly or negligently. For these, as the Poet sings: All a loving parent's care rests upon Ascanius. This is so true in humans that nature has equally implanted the same instinct in all animals. For, as St. Ambrose says in Book VI of the Hexameron, chapter 4: "Nature instills this in beasts, that they love their own young and cherish their offspring." And shortly after: "What wild creature would not offer itself to death before all else for its young? What wild creature, though besieged by countless troops of armed men, would not shield its own with its very body? Though a shower of weapons rain down, it nonetheless keeps its little ones safe from danger, walled behind its own body." Philostratus demonstrates the same point by induction and examples of individual wild animals, in Book II, chapter 7, of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana: "For elephants, when crossing the river Indus, carry their young, holding them fast in bonds lest they fall. Bears, though they surpass other beasts in ferocity, nevertheless do everything for their cubs. Wolves do the same, though intent on their prey; for the female guards the litter, while the male brings food for the safety of the cubs. Panthers likewise do this, who on account of their warmth delight in becoming mothers, and then wish to dominate the males and preside over the home; but the males patiently endure everything for the sake of love for their cubs." And shortly after: "The tiger, too, an animal of remarkable cruelty, goes as far as the ships for the sake of recovering its cubs, and receiving them back, departs with joy. But if, its cubs having been taken away, it sees the ship departing, it howls sorrowfully on the shore, and sometimes even dies from the enormity of its grief. We also see birds doing many things for the sake of their young, such as eagles and storks, which never build nests without placing stones in them. The eagle has named its stone 'eagle-stone,' while the stork calls its stone 'lychnites,' because they apply a torch so that the eggs may produce offspring and serpents may not approach the nests.
when they die, they leave behind children — but either degenerate, or like themselves, that is wicked, who will be a reproach and disgrace to them. Hence in these children, not their virtue and fame, but their vice and infamy, will live on and endure to their perpetual shame.
The same is even more truly the case, in a tropological sense, with good teachers, pastors, preachers, and superiors. For they leave behind disciples whom they have begotten for Christ, as living testimonies and likenesses of their virtue — as St. Peter left Linus, Cletus, and Clement; St. Paul left Titus, Timothy, Onesimus, and Luke; St. John left Prochorus, Ignatius, Polycarp, etc. "For the succession of holy children," says Rabanus, "who, after their fathers have departed from this life, imitate their good zeal in holy religion and upright conduct — these make their dead parents appear as though risen again, since by preserving their teaching and discipline in all their words and deeds, they clearly manifest it." Hence a male child is called in Hebrew zachar, from zacher, that is, "memory" — because in the son the father's name and memory endure after death. Conversely, women in Hebrew are called nashim, from nashah, that is, "he has forgotten" — because in them, especially if they live softly and effeminately, the father's name perishes and his memory is consigned to oblivion. Hence again, the son is called by Euripides "the eye of life." And there are learned men who hold that "son" (filius) is so called as if it were philion, on account of the father's immense love for him, or from the Greek huios through the Aeolic digamma. See Tiraquellus, Preface to the law Si unquam, no. 11.
Therefore the moral philosophers and jurists, indeed experience itself, teach that a father loves his son more than himself. Hence Pacatus, in the Panegyric of Emperor Theodosius: "By the ordinance of nature," he says, "we generally love our children more than ourselves." Virginius in Livy, Book III, steadfastly asserts that the life of his daughter Virginia was dearer to him than his own, if only she had been free to live in liberty and chastity. Aristotle, Book VIII of the Ethics, chapter 12: "Equally," he says, "the life of their children is dear to parents as their own." Hence in Quintilian, Declamation 6, that father exclaims: "Oh, how hard it is to die! How much harder that I live on as a survivor of my son!" The same, Declamation 11: "When the children of a poor man," he says, "were demanded for execution, the father offered himself to save them by dying in their place." Similar is what Tiraquellus relates, at the cited passage, no. 8: "A father and son," he says, "were accused of homicide; for it was certain that one of them had committed it, but which one had done it was uncertain. Emperor Charles II ordered the son to be hanged. When the father learned this, in order to save his son from death and turn the punishment upon himself, he voluntarily confessed to the crime, and was therefore hanged, with his son set free." What wonder? King David the saint, hearing of the death of his son Absalom — though a persecutor and would-be parricide — wailing inconsolably, cried out: "My son Absalom, Absalom my son! Who will grant that I may die for you, Absalom my son, my son Absalom?" (2 Samuel 18:33). For indeed: All a loving parent's care rests upon Ascanius.
This is so true in the human case that nature has equally implanted the same instinct in all animals. For, as St. Ambrose says in Book VI of the Hexameron, chapter 4: "Nature instills this in beasts, that they love their own young and cherish their offspring."
may not approach. And if we consider also the beasts of the sea, no one will be surprised that dolphins, benign by nature, love their offspring. But as for whales and seals and the rest that bring forth living young, who would not marvel at them? When I, he says, on the island of Aegis saw a seal that had been captured by fishermen mourning its dead pup, which it had given birth to in captivity (so to speak), to the point that it abstained from food for three days — though it is the most voracious of all sea creatures. The whale, moreover, hides its young in its jaws whenever they happen to need to flee a larger beast. A viper has also been seen licking with its tongue and, as it were, polishing the serpents it has borne." And when Damis, to whom Apollonius had recounted these things, said he admired from them that saying of Euripides — "For all men, their children are their very soul" — Apollonius immediately replied that this seemed to him cleverly and wisely said, but that Euripides would have spoken much more truly and wisely if he had made the same statement about all animals in this form: "For all animals, their young are their very soul." So says Philostratus.
The reason is that a son is a portion of his father's body, as Aristotle says in Book V of the Ethics, chapter 5. Therefore a father loves his son as a part of himself — indeed the better part, and therefore to survive him — more than himself. Indeed, father and son are like one body and one person; hence what one possesses, the other is deemed to possess, as the jurists say, and among them Tiraquellus at the cited passage, no. 15. Hence in Saxo's Danish History, Book VII, Sinaldus says that his own children are not different from himself, and that he and his sons should be reckoned as one man, to whom nature seems to have granted, as it were, one body. And Paulus Castrensis, Consilium 264, beginning In præsenti causa, column 3, Book II, says that the flesh of the son is, as it were, the augmented flesh of the father — so that, although a new man comes into being on account of the new soul, the first man is not said to be entirely extinguished after his death. For, as Sirach says, "he left behind one like himself." Hence St. Paul also calls Onesimus, whom he had begotten for Christ while in chains, "his own heart," in the letter to Philemon, verse 12: "Receive him," he says, "as my own heart." Where St. Jerome says: "He calls children the heart of their parents."
What Aristotle writes is also relevant here: in Book VI of the History of Animals, chapter 19, he says that lambs are similar to and of the same color as the vein which is under the tongue of the ram from which they are begotten. "The offspring," he says, "become white or black according to whether the veins under the ram's tongue are black or white; for whatever color the veins are, the fleece is the same; it is also varied if the veins are of several colors." The same is reported by Pliny, following Aristotle as usual, in Book VIII, chapter 27. By this symbol, nature — or rather God, the author of nature — signified that the good or bad moral complexion of children (that is, their virtue and vice) depends on the instruction of the father, which is the tongue. Hence bears also shape their formless offspring with their tongue, as Pliny says in Book VIII, chapter 26; whence St. Ambrose, Book VI of the Hexameron, chapter 4: "The bear," he says, "shapes its offspring to its own likeness. Can you not educate your children to be like yourself!" For this reason Elisha sent bears upon the badly-educated boys who mocked him, saying "Go up, bald head!" — so that the parents who had neglected to imitate bears in the formation of their children might be punished by the mauling of those same children by bears, acting as executioners.
Mystically, St. Augustine, in Treatise 9 Against the Jews, Pagans, and Arians, takes these words as referring to Christ, and turns them against the Arians who say: "The Father is greater, the Son is lesser." "Not even any wise man," he says, "would gladly accept such insults — a man who maintains that his son is better than or equal to himself. Hence that prophetic saying: The father rejoiced in his wise son; in his life he saw, and in his death he was not saddened. For the father has died, and it is as though he has not died. Why has he not died? Because he left behind one like himself. Behold, the Prophet says that the wise son of a man is like his father; and you, heretic, dare to say that Wisdom itself, the Son of God, is unlike the Father! The Prophet says that a dead human father, in that he left behind a like son, lives on in his son; and you dare to separate eternal Life itself, which is the Son of God, from the Father who never dies!"
5 and 6. IN HIS LIFE HE SAW AND REJOICED IN HIM; IN HIS DEATH HE WAS NOT SADDENED, NOR WAS HE PUT TO SHAME BEFORE HIS ENEMIES. FOR HE LEFT BEHIND A DEFENDER OF HIS HOUSE AGAINST ENEMIES, AND ONE WHO REPAYS KINDNESS TO FRIENDS.
He repeats and amplifies the same point: that there will be a lasting honor and joy for the father, both in life and after death, from a well-educated son — because the son will defend the house against enemies and repay kindness to friends, which are the two things dying men most desire. Hence the Psalmist sings of such sons, Psalm 126: "Blessed is the man who has filled his desire with them; he shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate" — that is, in judgment, for this was anciently conducted at the gates of cities so that outsiders could freely attend. The Zurich version translates: While alive he saw him and rejoiced in him, and in his death he was not saddened nor put to shame before enemies. Against enemies he left a champion, and one who will repay kindness to friends. These things are truer of spiritual fathers and children in proportion as the parents of souls surpass the parents of bodies. These, at the hour of death and the day of judgment, will not be confounded before their enemies — namely, the demons — on account of neglect of the education and salvation of their children; but giving thanks to Christ, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, they will exult in their care and integrity alike. Therefore, says Palacius, if no other reason could provoke us to piety, this one alone should suffice: that Christ, who once died, may live in us, and whoever sees us may think he sees Christ, according to the words of Paul: "Glorify and bear God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:20). Moreover, the Syriac translates: In his life he saw him and rejoiced; in his (or rather his own) death, he is not wearied. He repays kindness to his friends and takes vengeance on his enemies.
in his death he is not wearied. He repays kindness to his friends and takes vengeance on his enemies. For this reason, the glory of children in the Scriptures is compared to a lamp, because just as one lamp is lit from another, so the glory of the son shines forth from the glory of the father. Again, just as a lamp burns continuously through parts that succeed one another in turn, so that it seems always to be the same light, so the glory of a family endures through sons succeeding one another, so that it seems to be the same head of household. Thus Solomon was the lamp of David (3 Kings 11:36). Moreover, just as the light of a lamp is nourished by oil that is pressed from unripe olives, as Pliny attests in Book XV, chapter 3, so the glory of a son flows from the education and discipline that is applied to him from childhood, before he reaches a mature age when he can no longer be bent. This is what the Psalmist says, Psalm 127: "Your children are like young olive shoots (tender and unripe, and at that stage needing to be beaten and pressed by discipline) around your table." I will say more about the symbol of the lamp at Proverbs 20:20. In the meantime, see our Martin de Roa, Book II of Singularia, chapter 16 and following.
7. FOR THE SAKE OF HIS CHILDREN'S SOULS HE WILL BIND UP HIS WOUNDS, AND AT EVERY CRY HIS HEART WILL BE TROUBLED.
There is a threefold reading here in the Greek texts. The Complutensian reads apridzonta huion, that is, "wiping" or "scraping" the son. The Roman text reads peripsychōn huion, with omega, that is, "cooling" or "refreshing" the son. But our translator and others, by diaeresis or rather dialysis, read peri psychōn huiou, that is, "for the souls of sons." According to the first reading, you may translate thus: He who wipes or scrapes his son clean — just as stains are scrubbed and scraped from cloth with lye, and rust is filed away from gold, or just as dandruff is combed from the head, or chaff and stalks from flax when it is combed — that is to say: He who combs or cards his son, that is, who corrects and chastises him, "will bind up" and heal "his wounds" or "those of the son" — that is, he will remedy the diseases of the son's soul, as well as his own anxieties and pains, which he would otherwise conceive from the son's wicked morals and actions. Hence the Zurich version translates: He who tames his son binds up his wounds and causes him to tremble to the marrow at every sound — so that, just as horses snort and bend at the charioteer's voice, the son may tremble and bend at every voice of his father or instructors.
According to the second reading, you may translate thus: He who coddles his son will bind up his wounds, and at every cry his heart is troubled. That is to say: He who is too gentle and indulgent toward his son, so that he does not dare to correct him, will afterward be forced to bind up the wounds the son has contracted in brawls or elsewhere, and to live in perpetual care and anxiety lest something sad and fatal befall his son — to the point that at every cry he is troubled, fearing that the cry has been raised against his son or about his son being wounded or killed. The Syriac favors this interpretation: He who makes his son pleasure-loving, he says, his wounds will be multiplied, and at every wailing he will lift up his heart.
According to the third reading, which is that of our Vulgate, Rabanus — and after him the Gloss and Lyranus — explains it thus, first: The father will allow himself to be wounded, and "will bind up his own wounds for the sake of the souls," that is, the life and salvation of his children. Thus Paul writes to his Corinthian children in Christ, 2 Corinthians 12:15: "But I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls, even though, loving you more, I am loved less."
Second, better is the interpretation of Palacius: The father will not hesitate to wound his children and to bind up their wounds when this is necessary to save their souls, and so to train them that at the father's voice their very innards tremble. For the Greek has autou, which means both "his own" and "his" (the son's). Our translator reads autōn in the plural, that is, "of them" — namely, of the children. Third, the same Palacius says: The father should not be savage and cruel toward his son; but if it happens that he must beat and wound him for the sake of his soul and life, he will soon bind up and heal his wounds, and at every cry of the son's lamentation, the father's heart will be troubled. Therefore the father is admonished to wound his son, but kindly and gently.
Fourth, Jansenius interprets it thus: A good father — "the wounds which he himself frequently receives and feels in himself" on behalf of "the souls of his children," when he often grieves in his spirit and is anxious for them — these wounds, I say, he will strive to bind up and heal through discipline diligently applied to them. And when it happens that they say or cry out anything in an improper manner, at "every" "cry" (Greek boēn, that is, clamor) of theirs, "his heart will be troubled" — that is, he will not dissemble or be negligent, but will be moved in his whole soul with concern for their correction.
Fifth, you may explain it plainly and easily thus: A good father, "for the sake of the souls" — that is, to save the souls of his children — "will bind up his wounds," that is, "their" wounds — namely, the children's wounds of the soul — that is, he will strive to heal and cure the sins and vices of his children. And "at every cry" — that is, rumor spread about the children's wickedness or misconduct — "his heart will be troubled," and he will therefore struggle with all his strength to remedy the evil.
Symbolically, our Pineda, in Book I of De Rebus Salomonis, chapter 15, explains this saying of Sirach as referring to the care that is lavished on an infant by its parents. For what is that frequent wrapping, unwrapping, binding, and unbinding of a child, and its daily repetition, he says, other than a kind of bandaging and, as it were, a healing of the wounds of nature — that is, of an incredible weakness and frailty? What else is that disturbance of a parent's innards at every sound of the child, every wail and little tear of the little one — that stirring, disturbance, pain, and confusion of the parents? And if you also read the first part of this sentence from the Greek: "Refreshing his son," or
gently treating, or wiping clean — it aptly fits the infantile filth and the care of gently handling an infant's limbs. So that it was fittingly and most truly said that Solomon was nourished with great cares.
8. AN UNTAMED HORSE BECOMES STUBBORN, AND AN UNDISCIPLINED SON BECOMES RECKLESS.
In Greek aneimonos, that is, "left to himself, lacking the bridle of discipline, dissolute." He BECOMES RECKLESS — Greek aprokopros, that is, "leaping forward, impudent, unbridled, hasty, precipitate, rash, reckless, unrestrained, insolent, forward, wanton, shameless, bold, brazen, stubborn, wicked." Hence the Zurich version translates: An untamed horse becomes intractable, and a dissolute son puts on stubbornness. Others: A horse that is not broken in becomes savage (as we see in Rome the horses they call "barbari," before they are broken in — so impatient of bridle and rider that they throw him off, or plunge into ditches, and trample anyone in their path); and a son left to himself becomes insolent. The Syriac: As an unbridled colt, so is the insolent son who does not obey his father. For, as Rabanus explains: "Just as the pride of an untamed horse is prone to falling headlong, so the wantonness of an undisciplined son is near to the ruin of sin." Palacius says: If you do not tame the wantonness of young bulls with the bridle, you will find them hard and intractable; so if you abandon your son to his own will, he will plunge headlong into every vice. Jansenius says excellently: Just as a horse that is not tamed with bridles and spurs in its youth, on account of its natural wildness and wantonness, becomes hard and intractable, so a son who in his youth is freed from discipline and correction and is abandoned to his natural wantonness becomes reckless, rash, and bold for every vice, so that he cannot easily be called back from them afterward. He signifies, therefore, that just as horses are tamed with bridles and spurs and made manageable, so boys and young men must be shaped to modesty and obedience by the best and most weighty instruction, morals, studies, and even beatings — according to the teaching of Aristotle, Book III of the Ethics, chapter 12: "That which desires base things," he says, "and grows greatly, must be chastised and tempered; and of this sort especially are desire and the child." Hence mystically St. Thomas, II-II, Question 142, article 2: "Concupiscence," he says, "is likened to a child in three respects. First, with regard to what each desires: for just as a child, so also concupiscence desires something base. The reason for this is that beauty in human affairs is observed insofar as something is ordered according to reason. Hence Cicero, in On Duties, Book I, in the chapter On Temperance, somewhat from the beginning: 'That is beautiful which is in harmony with man's excellence in that in which his nature differs from other animals.' But a child does not attend to the order of reason, and similarly concupiscence does not listen to reason, as is said in Book VII of the Ethics, chapter 6, near the beginning. Second, they agree with regard to the outcome. For a child, if left to his own will, grows in
his own will. Hence Sirach 30 says: An untamed horse becomes stubborn, and an undisciplined son becomes reckless. So too concupiscence, if it is gratified, gains greater strength. Hence Augustine says in Confessions VII: While lust is served, it becomes habit; and while habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity. Third, with regard to the remedy that is provided for each. For a child is corrected by being restrained; hence it is said, Proverbs 23: Do not withhold discipline from a child; beat him with the rod, and you will deliver his soul from hell. And similarly, when concupiscence is resisted, it is brought back to the proper measure of honesty. And this is what Augustine says in Book VII of On Music, chapter 11: When the mind is raised to spiritual things and fixed and remaining there, the impulse of habit — namely, of carnal concupiscence — is broken, and gradually repressed, it is extinguished. For it was greater when we followed it; not utterly nothing, but certainly less, when we restrain it. And therefore the Philosopher says in Book III of the Ethics, the last chapter, at the end, that just as a child must live according to the precept of his tutor, so also the concupiscible faculty must be in harmony with reason.
Hence the hieroglyph of a young man and of youth, and of its unbridled concupiscence and recklessness, is this: a youth is depicted sitting on an untamed horse, by which he is dragged and tossed in every direction. Someone meets him and asks where he is rushing so headlong. The rider answers, pointing to the horse: "Wherever this one pleases." For the unbridled horse is concupiscence; the rider is the lustful youth, who is swept away by his concupiscence into various crimes and dangers. If you ask him, "Where are you going?" he will answer: "Wherever concupiscence carries me." For this is the untamed horse, or wild donkey, according to Jeremiah 2:24: "A wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, in the desire of her soul she sniffed the wind of her love (the Septuagint: in the desires of her soul she was carried by the wind, as though beside herself); no one will turn her aside."
St. Chrysostom says brilliantly in the commentary on Psalm 6, near the end: "Unless someone quickly restrains a maddened horse, he will quickly perish. Physicians halt venom that is creeping and spreading with the greatest speed, lest it advance further, by cutting away the infected part. Let us do the same, and repress what is vicious in us with the greatest speed, lest by advancing further it increase the disease." And shortly after: "If Judas had restrained his love of money, he would not have come to sacrilege; if he had suppressed that, he would not have leaped to the pinnacle of evils. And therefore Christ represses not only fornication and adultery, but even the impure gaze, tearing out the root from the bottom, so that the vice may be more easily overcome." I will say more about the discipline of children in the next volume, at Proverbs chapter 22, verse 15, and chapter 23, verse 13.
An example is found in Themistocles, who, since as a youth he seemed to have a fierce and changeable temperament, was accustomed to say to those who marveled at his changed character: "Un-
broken and untamed colts turn into the best horses, if someone applies discipline and proper training to them." So says Plutarch in the Laconian Sayings.
9. PAMPER YOUR SON, AND HE WILL MAKE YOU AFRAID; PLAY WITH HIM, AND HE WILL GRIEVE YOU.
For "pamper" the Greek has tithēnou, that is, "nurse, suckle, feed, offer the breast like a wet-nurse" — for titthoi are breasts, and tithēnē is a nurse. Again, for "will make you afraid," the Greek has ekthambēsei se, that is, "he will astonish you, make you stunned." Hence the Zurich version translates: Nurse your son, and he will terrify you; play with him, and he will grieve you. The Syriac: Train your son, lest you be mocked; and if you laugh with him, he will torment you. Others, more directly and forcefully: Nurse your son, and he will strike you with astonished stupor; play with him, and he will cause you pain. This is irony, as if to say: O father, O mother, you who love your already-weaned and growing son too tenderly, feeding and treating him as though he were still an infant — go on, if you please, nursing him softly like a baby and indulging him in everything he asks. But know that, having soon shaken off fear of you, he will make you the one who is afraid — indeed, by his boldness and stubbornness he will make you stunned and leave you astonished, so that you will rightly fear that some great evil will befall both you and him. Play with him, flatter him, and shower him with kisses, as before when he was an infant. But know that, having become shameless, he will despise you, mock you, afflict and grieve you. For just as tender and innocent infancy, devoid of guile and malice, needs nursing and a gentle upbringing, so conversely childhood, succeeding infancy — now capable of guile, pride, and insolence, indeed prone to them — demands a grave and serious education and correction of childish wantonness. Therefore it is necessary for parents to deal with them gravely and severely, to instill in them reverence and fear.
10. DO NOT LAUGH WITH HIM, LEST YOU SUFFER PAIN (the Complutensian: lest you grieve together), AND IN THE END YOUR TEETH WILL BE SET ON EDGE. — That is to say: Do not laugh along with a laughing son, but show a serious face, lest your laughter and his turn to pain — when you see him, because of your laughter and indulgence, disregarding you and doing whatever he pleases, creating the danger of grave evil for both you and himself. Therefore in the end "your teeth will be set on edge," so that, just as numb teeth feel not pleasure but pain from food, so you too will conceive immense pain from an insolent and rebellious son, to the point of being struck dumb with grief and becoming, as it were, stupefied; and so your laughter will turn to gnashing and pain. The Greek reads gomphiaseis tous odontas sou, which, secondly, you may translate with the Zurich version: And at last you will gnash your teeth — that is: Do not be indignant and rage at the wickedness of your son and at your own excessive indulgence toward him. Our translator more aptly renders "will be set on edge"; for he alludes to the numbness of teeth from eating something delicious that is sour — as if to say: Just as one who eagerly eats something acid, which by its sourness irritates and sharpens the palate, rejoices at the moment but afterward feels the numbness of his teeth, so if you laugh along with your son, you will laugh for now, but later you will pay for your laughter with pain. For you will be stupefied at such great insolence and stubbornness of your son; and just as for one whose teeth are numb nothing tastes good, so for you, O father, nothing in life will be savory, nothing sweet, nothing pleasant and joyful — but endless troubles, pains, and sorrows will come your way, if you have nourished your son with excessive indulgence. Although the Syriac translates: Do not walk with him according to his will, lest he provoke you to anger, and in the end make your teeth be set on edge. So says Palacius. Similar is the maxim of Solomon: "Do not smile at your children, lest in the future you weep."
The Arabic proverb applies here, Century II, no. 4: "Playing and joking take away reverence." As the Italians say: The boldness of a master is the cap of a fool. And no. 5: "Do not play with a nobleman, lest he become angry with you; nor with a lowly person, lest he take advantage of you or become bold over you."
Let St. Job serve as an example of fatherly gravity: he dealt so seriously and gravely with his children that even when he occasionally smiled, he was not believed to be smiling. "If ever I smiled at them," he says in chapter 29, "they did not believe it." On which St. Gregory, Book XX of the Moralia, chapter 3: "He who is in charge," he says, "ought to be feared even when smiling, and loved even when angry, so that neither excessive cheerfulness makes him cheap nor immoderate severity makes him hateful." And in chapter 8: "Severity must therefore be blended with gentleness, and a kind of balance must be struck between the two, so that subjects are neither exasperated by much harshness nor dissolved by too much kindness. This indeed is what the ark of the tabernacle signifies, in which together with the tablets there was both a rod and manna; because with the knowledge of Sacred Scripture in the breast of a good ruler, if there is a rod of strictness, let there also be the manna of sweetness. Hence David also says: Your rod and Your staff — they have comforted me. For we are struck by the rod and supported by the staff. Therefore, if there is the strictness of a rod that strikes, let there also be the comfort of a staff that supports. Let there be love, but not enervating; let there be rigor, but not exasperating; let there be zeal, but not savaging immoderately; let there be mercy, but not sparing more than is expedient."
11. DO NOT GIVE HIM AUTHORITY IN HIS YOUTH, AND DO NOT OVERLOOK HIS THOUGHTS.
For "authority" the Greek has exousian, that is, freedom, license, authority to do and say what he wills and what pleases him. For "thoughts" our translator read ennoian, that is, thoughts, notions, intentions, feelings, conceptions — namely, what he turns over in his mind, thinks, intends, aims at, desires, wills, and plots. Others read a neighboring word, agnoias, that is, ignorances — that is, errors, vices, and sins with which boyhood teems. Hence the Zurich version translates: Do not indulge the young man with license, nor wink at things he does ignorantly. The Syriac: Do not pardon him all his vices. The sense is: Do not permit the youth the power to do what he pleases, so that he lives by his own right, acts on his own initiative, as though a master and lord dependent on no one, subject to no one, answerable to no one's direction and correction. "And do not overlook" — that is, do not neglect to correct and direct his "thoughts"
— that is: Search and carefully explore what he is thinking, so that from this you may perceive his natural disposition and the feelings and inclinations of his soul, and if these are depraved, cut them away and correct them; if they are good, foster and direct them. For unless you bend them in youth, they will grow, harden, and become inflexible and incorrigible — just as a tender tree must be bent and directed while it is tender, for if it has grown up, it will not allow itself to be bent or directed.
12. BEND HIS NECK IN YOUTH, AND STRIKE (Greek pataxon, that is, "break"; so the Complutensian: "strike, beat") HIS SIDES WHILE HE IS A CHILD (Greek nēpios, that is, an infant or child who does not yet have understanding; hence the Complutensian translates: "while he is small"), LEST HE GROW STUBBORN AND DISOBEY YOU, AND IT BECOME A GRIEF TO YOUR SOUL. — The Zurich version: Bend the neck (others: the collar) of the one who is still young, and while he is a child, beat his sides, lest perchance, growing hard, he refuse to obey you, and bring pain to your soul. For instead of "not believe you," the Greek has apeithēsē, which you may secondly translate as "resist you," or thirdly as "be disobedient to you" or "become stubborn toward you." The Syriac: Bend his neck while he is a youth, and beat his loins while he is small, lest he become strong and be insolent against you. He admonishes (as Jansenius rightly notes) to bend the neck and beat the sides, because in these two parts of the body pride and wantonness are most active: in the neck, pride; in the sides, wantonness. He does not want the head to be burdened with clubs or blows, lest the intellect be injured; but he wants those parts to be pressed whose repression does not harm the intellect. He wants the neck to be bent, as it were, by imposing burdens upon it; the sides, however, to be beaten and struck with rods and lashes, with which the sides of children are customarily targeted. He thus signifies that pride must be repressed by corrections and rebukes, and that wantonness and folly must be driven out by the rod of discipline, according to the saying: "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of discipline will drive it away."
IN YOUTH — that is, at a tender age still pliable — he wants the neck to be bent, because afterward the neck, already hardened, would have to be broken rather than bent — just as a tender branch is flexible, but an old one is inflexible, so that if you try to bend it, you break it. The Belgians express this pointedly with this proverb: "Children, while they are small, give their parents a headache; when they have grown up, a heartache." Somewhat differently, Palacius refers this to the avoidance of idleness and the embrace of labor, as if to say: He who indulges in idleness walks with his neck erect; you therefore, set your son to work and labor, so that he may have his neck bent over his task. And beat his sides from infancy (that is, from the second and third year of age), lest from that age he become hard toward you and bring pain to your soul. So says Palacius. Ben-Sira agrees with Sirach, in the alphabet, letter daleth: "Gold," he says, "must be hammered, and a child must be beaten; or, gold needs the blow of a hammer, and a child needs beating" — that is, if you spare the rod, the child becomes wicked and useless, just as gold remains less useful unless it is ham-
mered into its proper shape. The Scholiast explains thus: "Just as gold, if you hammer it, shines more brightly, so a child, if you beat him, becomes better. For just as clay, so a tender age — whichever way you lead it, it follows; but once the disposition has hardened, it is not easily reshaped into another form. This correction, therefore, is of love, not of hatred. Hence Solomon, Proverbs 13:24: "He who spares the rod," he says, "hates his son; but he who loves him diligently corrects him." In Hebrew: early in the morning he seeks correction for him. The Scholiast: he applies discipline to him. Moreover, the first effect of correction is wisdom. Hear Solomon, Proverbs 29:15: "The rod and correction give wisdom; but a child left to his own will brings shame to his mother." The second is joy. Hear the same, in the same place, verse 17: "Instruct your son, and he will refresh you, and give delights to your soul." The third is deliverance from hell and eternal salvation. Hear the same, chapter 23:14: "You shall beat him with the rod, and you shall deliver his soul from hell."
13. TEACH (Greek paideuson, that is, correct, instruct, educate, chastise) YOUR SON AND LABOR OVER HIM, LEST YOU STUMBLE AT HIS DISGRACE. — That is: Devote every effort to educating him rightly, lest you "stumble," that is, collide with, be confounded and dismayed by "his disgrace" — that is, the dishonor which, if left to himself, he will commit, and thence the infamy and insult that both he and you, O father, will incur. The Syriac: Teach your son contrition of spirit, and be hard on him, lest in his follies he cause you offense. The Zurich version: Educate your son, and labor at this, so that his disgrace may not be an offense to you. Others: Correct your son and exercise him in doing work, lest you stumble at his disgrace. The corrected Greek codices at Rome read: lest in your own disgrace — that is, to your own shame — he offend, or stumble into some dishonor, vice, or crime. Hear Palacius: Just as one who devotes diligent labor to his field or vineyard escapes poverty, so if you devote vigorous effort to your son, you will free him from disgrace, and rescue yourself from being offended by it.
Reader, understand that these are moral precepts which are for the most part true. For there are children who are for the most part of a more wanton nature and thus require more rigorous discipline; nevertheless, we do not deny that some children are born who by no means require such strict treatment. Moreover, the father should teach his son both by word, by beating, and above all by example. For the Hebrew proverb is true: "The sheep follows the sheep, and the son follows his father by imitation." Note: The word "labor" signifies the enormous care, zeal, and effort that a father must apply in the education of his children; for this is a work of the greatest importance, since the welfare of the family and consequently of the republic depends upon it. Therefore Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, putting to each of the Seventy Translators an individual ethical or political question, proposed this one
to the forty-first: "What is the greatest negligence?" To which he answered: "If someone is negligent of his children and educates them in nothing. For we always make vows to God not only for ourselves, but equally we pray that all good things be present to our children, and that He impart learning and prudence to them. For this happens by the power of God." So reports Aristeas in the History of the Seventy Translators (which is found in volume VII of the Bibliotheca Sanctorum Patrum), who were contemporaries of our Sirach — indeed he was one of them, if we believe Jansenius.
For this reason we see that the children of great men often degenerate from the natural disposition and virtue of their parents, according to the saying: "The sons of heroes are a blight." The reason is that great men, occupied with great affairs concerning the republic, neglect the education of their children and entrust it to others; and the children, proud of their parent's virtue and glory, do not accept discipline and correction. Hence Carneades used to say: "The sons of the wealthy and of kings learn nothing correctly except horsemanship," as Laertius attests in Book IV, chapter 9. Hear Spartianus in the Life of Emperor Severus: "It is established that almost none of the great men left behind a good and useful son" — and he cites the examples of Cicero, Augustus, Scipio, Cato, Trajan, and others. Indeed, it is commonly said: "From the wisest parents the most foolish children are begotten, but from foolish ones, wise children." Alexander of Aphrodisias gives another physical reason for this phenomenon, in Book I of the Problems, chapter 26, and from him Tiraquellus, Law 15 of the Connubialia, no. 154 — namely, that the foolish devote themselves entirely to procreation and therefore pour their best and most perfect spirits into their offspring, while the wise, occupied and distracted by wise thoughts, give only half of themselves to procreation and therefore communicate only the earthly portion of their spirits to their progeny.
An apt but horrifying example is the one reported by the author of the Sermon to the Brothers in the Desert, which is found in volume X of St. Augustine, Sermon 33, concerning Cyril, a citizen of Hippo: "Cyril, as you know," he says, "had a son, and possessed him as his only child; and because he was his only child, he loved him excessively and above God. Therefore, intoxicated by his excessive love, he neglected to correct his son, even giving him the power to do everything that pleased him." And shortly after: "His son, living dissolutely, consumed a portion of his goods; but behold, today, overcome by drunkenness, he wickedly assaulted his pregnant mother, attempted to violate his sister, killed his father, and wounded two sisters to the point of death."
The story of the anonymous man also applies here. Accused of having beaten his father, he defended his impious deed with this knot: "He too," he said, "beat his father, and this one" (pointing to his own son) "will beat me when he has grown up — so deeply is this hereditary among us." Thus we see that those badly educated by their parents badly educate their own children, and consequently, being impious toward their parents, experience impious children in turn. Aelian, in Book XII of the Varia Historia, relates that Diogenes blamed the sloth of the
Megarians and said: "I would rather be the ram of some Megarian than his son" — implying that the Megarians take greater care of their livestock and raise it better than their children.
Moreover, St. Jerome wisely and piously teaches what and what sort of things parents should teach their sons and daughters, in Letter 7 to Laeta, on the Education of a Daughter: "Thus," he says, "the soul that is to be the temple of God must be educated: let it learn to hear nothing else, to say nothing, except what pertains to the fear of God. Let it not understand base words, let it not know the songs of the world; while the tongue is still tender, let it be imbued with sweet psalms. Let the wanton company of boys be far away; let the girls themselves and their maidservants be kept from worldly associations, lest what they have badly learned, they teach still worse." And shortly after: "What untrained minds have absorbed is dislodged with difficulty. Greek history tells us that Alexander, the most powerful king and conqueror of the world, could not rid himself, in his manners and his gait, of the vices of his tutor Leonidas, with which he had been infected while still a small child."
Finally, St. Ambrose proposes the examples of animals for the strict education of children. First, hawks: when their chicks begin to fly, he says in Book V of the Hexameron, chapter 18, they drive them from the nests, and if they linger, push them out with their wings and cast them down, beat them with their wings, and force them to dare what they fear; nor do they afterward offer them any gift of nourishment. He adds the reason: "They seem to train their young for hunting from a tender age," because they must live by hunting. "They take care that at a tender age they do not grow lazy, are not enervated by comforts, do not languish in idleness, do not learn to wait for food rather than to seek it. They discontinue the duties of nurturing, but compel them to dare the habits of hunting." Second, in chapter 17, he assigns the swallows, who know how to cure the dim-sighted eyes of their chicks with the celandine herb, as Tertullian says. Third, in Book VI, chapter 6, he assigns the bears, who lick their shapeless young for so long, and by licking scrape them, until they shape them to their own likeness: "Do you not marvel," he says, "at such devoted parental care in a beast, whose maturity is expressed in piety? The bear, then, shapes its young to its own likeness. Can you not educate your children to be like yourself?" Fourth, the eagle beats its feathered chicks with its wings and by its own example urges them to fly: so parents should teach their children upright morals by example more than by word. God does the same, and comparing Him to an eagle, Moses says in Deuteronomy 32:11: "As an eagle enticing its young to fly, and hovering over them, He spread His wings and took him up and bore him on His shoulders." Fifth, deer "exercise their newborn young in running and teach them to practice flight, lead them to cliffs, and show them how to leap," says Pliny, Book VIII, chapter 32. Sixth, nightingales, according to Aristotle, Book IV of the History of Animals, chapter 9, sing before their chicks and teach them the melodies to imitate. The chicks listen attentively. In the teacher there appears a certain correction, and in the chick-pupil a correction of error.
Second Part of the Chapter
14. BETTER IS A POOR MAN WHO IS HEALTHY AND STRONG IN BODY THAN A RICH MAN WHO IS FEEBLE AND AFFLICTED WITH MISFORTUNE.
"Better," that is, more preferable, more desirable, more excellent, "is a poor man healthy and strong in body" — Greek ischyōn tē hexei, that is, "strong in constitution," namely, in bodily strength, by which he can provide for himself by working — "than a rich man who is feeble and afflicted with misfortune," that is, struck by God with misery and a bad constitution, or bodily infirmity. For the latter leads a sad life in pain, and cannot delight in or enjoy his riches, while for the poor man all things, even common and cheap ones, are most savory. Hence the Greek has: Better is a poor man healthy and of firm constitution than a rich man whose body is afflicted with blows. The Zurich version: Better is a poor man healthy and well, than a rich man with an afflicted body. The Syriac: Better is a poor man alive and strong in his body than a rich man struck in his flesh. Sirach says this to teach that the happiness of man does not consist in riches, nor can the rich boast of them, because a poor man powerful in health and strength is more excellent and happier than the rich who are in poor health and given to luxury (as often happens). He pursues this theme at length in what follows. Hence Palacius says: He compares bodily health, which is held so cheaply by many, with riches, which the world so greatly admires and seeks. He says, therefore, that health with poverty is far more excellent than riches with illness — especially if the illness is inflicted by God as a scourge on account of wickedness. Otherwise, Job, scourged without any fault of his own, was better off than other poor men, however strong they might have been. But the author was looking at the general rule, for the rich are usually not without some wickedness. "Misfortune" here therefore properly signifies misery, affliction, and infirmity; but because this is often inflicted as punishment for guilt and wickedness properly so called, both can be understood here — so that "a rich man scourged with misfortune" is a rich man who is scourged with diseases and other miseries on account of his wickedness. Thus Christ says: "Sufficient for the day is its own evil" — that is, affliction — "thereof" (Matthew 6).
15. THE HEALTH OF THE SOUL IN THE HOLINESS OF JUSTICE IS BETTER THAN ALL GOLD AND SILVER; AND A SOUND BODY IS BETTER THAN IMMENSE WEALTH.
That is to say: Just as "the health of the soul (which consists in the holiness of justice) is better than all gold," so "a sound body" is better than immense riches. That is: There is one health of the soul, another of the body; both surpass the greatest riches, because health is an intrinsic good, and therefore of a higher order than riches, which are good for man only extrinsically and are merely adjacent to him. He calls it "the holiness of justice" because there is also a holiness of the body — namely, chastity and purity of the flesh, that is, flesh free from all irregularity and legal impurity (Hebrews 9:13). There is also a holiness of things — namely, of sacrificial victims, tithes, first fruits, and other things dedicated to God. Against all of these is set the holiness of justice, which consists in justice and the observance of God's commandments. The word "justice" is not in the Greek, which reads thus: Health and good constitution (the Zurich version: soundness) surpasses all gold; and a strong body, immense riches. The Syriac: A vigorous life is more lovable than gold, and a good spirit (that is, joyful, cheerful, pleasant) more than pearls.
Note: Three great goods of man are health, holiness, and wisdom; but it is difficult for these three to be accumulated together, so that all three outstanding goods are found in one and the same person. For many harm their health for the sake of holiness, which they seek through the mortification of the flesh; others harm it for the sake of wisdom, when, namely, through excessive study they exhaust their spirits and weaken their stomach and head. Therefore, although the first good is holiness, the second wisdom, and the third health, nevertheless in terms of usefulness and service to others, it is better to have moderate wisdom with firm health than great wisdom with weak health — for the latter cannot use his wisdom or teach it to others. Holiness, moreover, can be retained together with health, and is retained by the prudent and discerning, who moderate their fasts and other bodily mortifications and devote themselves more to interior virtue — namely, charity, humility, prayer, quiet, and patience, in which the holiness of the soul consists. Hence Thales, when asked "Who is happy?" answered: "He who is healthy in body and educated in mind." So says Laertius, Book I, chapter 1. Such was Moses, of whom St. Chrysostom, in his discussion, says: "He applied a bridle to his body, so that by tightening the reins immoderately he would not render the horse useless for his service, nor, having become excessively corpulent, would it rear up again against the reins of reason; but he had care simultaneously for his health and for the control of perverse inclinations." Maximus, in Sermon 27, cites Democritus saying: "Men pray to God for health, yet they do not know its strength within themselves. For by living in a disordered way, they are themselves the betrayers of their own health." Similarly, Diogenes was indignant at those who offered sacrifice for good health and then, at the very sacrifice, gorged themselves on immoderate feasts, doing what was contrary to good health. So says Laertius, Book VI.
Finally, Pythagoras said that three things should be sought from the gods: beauty, riches, and good health. For health is most intimate to man, and the foundation and substrate of all other goods and joys; for it touches and affects man's very essence most closely. For miserable is the life that is deprived of health and pressed down by diseases, and therefore it should be called not so much life as
a slow death, says St. Gregory. For the sick feel no pleasure in wine, luxuries, riches, honors, etc., because pain and illness intercept this pleasure, seizing the mind and consuming it with sorrow, so that it cannot attend to other goods and joys, nor be nourished and delighted by them. Hence Plato, in Book I of the Laws: "First place," he says, "belongs to good health; second to beauty; third to strength; fourth to riches — not blind ones, but those that see keenly." Stobaeus, from Selerius, says: "To be in good health is the best thing for mortal man; next, to be endowed with an honorable appearance; third, to have riches without fraud; fourth, to flourish in age with friends." Well known is the saying: "Nothing in life is better than being in good health." And: "Good health and wisdom are the two goods of life" — namely, "that there may be a sound mind in a sound body."
Aristotle of Sicyon wrote a paean in praise of health, as Athenaeus reports in Book XV: "O Health," he says, "most ancient of goddesses, may I live with you for what remains of my life; and do you be my constant companion." And shortly after: "With you, divine Health, all things flourish, and the springtime of the Graces smiles; but without you no one is happy." Aristotle, Book II of the Rhetoric: "For man," he says, "good health is the best thing." The same, in Book I of the Moralia ad Eudemum, relates that someone in the vestibule of the temple of Apollo on Delos inscribed this maxim: "The same person does not possess all things — honor, goodness, and pleasure. The most honorable thing is what is most just; the best thing is good health; the most pleasant thing is to obtain what one loves."
Understand these things concerning the goods of nature; for more excellent than all of these is virtue, grace, and charity. For the sake of this, so many millions of Martyrs poured out their health, blood, and life, and every Christian must do the same when necessary. For grace is of a higher order — namely, supernatural and divine — to which all natural things must necessarily yield. And virtue is the health of the soul, which far surpasses bodily health. St. Augustine adds, on Psalm 37, that the health of this life is rather a disease when compared with the health of immortality: "For why," he says, "did he say: There is no soundness in my flesh — unless because what is called the health of this life, for those who understand rightly and remember the sabbath (of eternal rest), is by no means health? For if you do not eat, hunger will trouble you. That hunger is a kind of natural disease." And further: "Take away those remedies (food and drink), and see whether the things that exist do not kill you. If, with those set aside, there are no diseases, then there is health. But if you have something that can kill you unless you eat, do not boast of your health, but groaning, await the redemption of your body." Hence the words of the Psalm — "There is no soundness in my flesh" — he explains as if to say: "When I compare this health with that health which I shall have in everlasting rest, where this corruptible will put on incorruption and this mortal will put on immortality, I see that in
comparison with that health, this health is a disease." Perfect health, therefore, is immortality.
Moreover, the physician Levinus Lemnius, in his Exhortation to the Best Way of Life, chapter 29: "Three things," he says, "are commonly reported as most healthful," which everyone should observe: "To eat short of satiety; not to shun labor; to preserve nature's seed. Opposite to these are three most unhealthful things," which besides diseases hasten premature old age and dispatch men with an early death: "To be bloated with gluttony; to grow torpid with idleness; to be enervated by immoderate sexual indulgence." For since frugality, having routed gluttony, establishes a healthy body, and exercise, having shaken off leisure and sloth, makes it nimble and fit — then, if we may take lessons from the horse: But no effort strengthens the powers more Than to turn aside from Venus and the goads of blind love, says Virgil, Georgics III. Indeed, an intemperate and libidinous adolescence hands over a worn-out body to old age. As a symbol of this, the pagans said that the goddess Venus, who shortens life, has three goddesses opposed to her who prolong it: namely Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and temperance; Diana, the goddess of exercise; and Vesta, the goddess of chastity and virginity.
Some report that Galen, the prince of physicians, says Caelius Rhodiginus in Book XXX, chapter 20, lived to one hundred and forty years, and practiced such abstinence in food and drink that he never ate or drank to satiety, nor ever tasted anything raw. Hence it happened that he always breathed a fragrant breath, and without any illness, he failed solely from old age. Hence the proverb: "Galen's health" — for a health that is so prosperous and so uninjured as to exceed human comprehension. So says that author, upon whose authority the credit rests; for Suidas gives Galen only 70 years. Certainly Galen himself, in his book addressed to Thrasybulus, On the Art of Preserving Health, writes that he found by experience that he was stronger than many athletes who seemed to be the most outstanding and who had won crowns in many competitions.
Cyril illustrates this maxim with a striking fable about a youth and griffins in Book III of the Moral Apologues, chapter 19, entitled: What Are True Riches. A certain covetous young man, he says, set out for India to the gold mines. When he approached them, he was warned by the inhabitants to withdraw, because those places were inhabited by terrible and rapacious griffins. He was grieved that he had made so great a journey in vain. But a wise man came up and said: I will show you gold — not the counterfeit gold that you desire, but true and pure gold, which is nothing other than God Himself and His love, charity, and holiness. "Hence the Brahmins too," he says, "in order to enjoy free tranquility, entirely banished gold from their territories, lest, contaminated by its use, they corrupt justice through avarice and betray salutary peace. Nature
too conceals this kind of metal in the bowels of the earth, whence those who are zealous for virtue have sensed that gold is more of an evil than a good for human affairs. Indeed, if the supreme good of man consisted in material riches, why would circumspect providence have granted them to beasts rather than to men? For griffins possess emerald gems, golden necklaces, and mountains of gold, and the earth rejoices in the richest veins of metals and many precious stones hidden from us. Does it not appear from this that nature has refuted the shrewdness of avarice, since it has given far greater abundance of the riches we desire either to brutes to possess, or has hidden them in the very elements?" Then, teaching that true riches consist not in desire but in the cutting away of desire: "Flee gold," he says, "despise riches, extinguish the flames of greed; for they do not enrich the soul but impoverish it, while they enslave it through vice. Only love and seek the good of virtue, because what you seek, you have within you. For the treasure of the supreme good resides nowhere else than in those who love it. When he had carefully listened to these things, straightway, having put greed to flight, he rejoiced to have found within himself the rich vein of virtue."
16. THERE IS NO TREASURE ABOVE THE TREASURE OF BODILY HEALTH, AND THERE IS NO DELIGHT ABOVE THE JOY OF THE HEART.
In Greek: There are no riches better than bodily health, nor is there a joy better than the pleasure of the mind. The Zurich version: There is no pleasure greater than the joy of the mind — which proceeds from bodily health and immeasurably surpasses the joy arising from riches or from honors. The Syriac: There is no wealth like bodily health, and there is no joy like a good — that is, a cheerful — heart. He proves what he said in the preceding verse, that health of both soul and body surpasses all gold, from the fact that bodily health is in itself a "treasure" and the greatest wealth, which far transcends and surpasses all treasures of gold; while the health of the soul produces peace of conscience and joy of mind, which surpasses every other delight that worldly people find in luxuries, riches, and other earthly things. For the joy of a holy mind is in God, with God, and concerning God; therefore it is divine, heavenly, most pure, most noble, and eternal, while carnal joy is earthly, impure, cheap, and momentary. Moreover, since the Greeks in the preceding verse have nothing about the holiness of justice, but only about bodily health, they understand this verse as referring to the same alone — as if to say: There is no treasure more excellent than the treasure of health; because a healthy person, even if poor, has true joy of heart, and therefore surpasses every delight that unhealthy rich men have in their gold, wife, children, household, honor, etc. So says Palacius: Bodily health, he says, is greater riches than all other riches. This is shown from the fact that prolonged illness consumes all the wealth that a healthy body has acquired. Furthermore, although gold, silver, household, and the rest bring joy to a man, they do not bring the kind of joy that bodily health does; for health makes the heart glad, while those things, if a man is ill, cannot make it glad. Therefore the poor man is rich in his health, just as the rich man is wretched in his infirmity. Again, the poor man rejoices in his heart because of his health; the rich man is prostrated by his illness. Therefore health, even in a poor man, avails more than riches in a rich man. For, as Quintilian wisely says in Declamation 1, on behalf of the blind man: "All rashness of spirit is broken by calamity of the body; and the impulses of the mind grow cold when the services of the limbs do not carry them out." However you take it, this is a universal maxim: "There is no delight above the joy of the heart," which has its place everywhere and in every circumstance.
Moreover, that the true joy of the heart comes from virtue alone, Seneca teaches in Letter 23: "The foundation of a good mind," he says, "is not to rejoice in vain things. This foundation, I said, is also the summit: he has reached the highest point who knows in what to rejoice, who has not placed his happiness in another's power. Anxious and unsure of himself is the man whom some hope entices — even if it is at hand, even if it is not sought with difficulty, even if his hopes have never deceived him. Before all else, do this, my Lucilius: learn to rejoice. Do you think I am now taking away many pleasures from you, I who remove what is fortuitous and consider that hopes, the sweetest of delights, are to be avoided? On the contrary. I do not wish joy ever to be absent from you; I wish it to be born at home for you — and it will be born, if only it is within yourself. Other cheerful moods do not fill the breast but merely relax the brow; they are superficial — unless perhaps you think that the man who laughs is rejoicing. The spirit must be alert and confident, and above all things uplifted. Believe me, true joy is a serious thing." And much more follows. Elsewhere he says: "Virtue alone provides perpetual, secure joy; even if something stands in the way, it intervenes like clouds that are borne below and never overcome the day." So he says, in Letter 27.
More divinely, St. Paul teaches that true joy is to rejoice in the Lord, when he says: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). What it means to rejoice in the Lord, St. Basil beautifully explains in the Shorter Rules, Rule 194: "To rejoice in those things," he says, "which are done according to the Lord's commandment, is to rejoice in the Lord. Therefore whenever we carry out God's commandments, or suffer something for the Lord's name, we ought to rejoice and congratulate one another." Moreover, as the same Basil says in Homily 4 On Thanksgiving: "Joy is a certain exultation, as it were, of the soul leaping up and expanding, because something has happened as desired. Therefore Paul, in Philippians 4:4, urged that we should rejoice in the Lord." On which passage Anselm says: "Rejoice," he says, "not in the world, but in the Lord; for just as no one can serve two masters, so no one can rejoice both in the Lord and in the world." And St. Chrysostom, Homily 18 to the People: "He did not simply say: Rejoice always; but he adds, supplying the cause of continual pleasure: Rejoice in the Lord always."
By what means someone may always rejoice in the Lord, he explains immediately afterward: "He who rejoices in the Lord can be deprived of this pleasure by no accident; for all other things in which we rejoice are changeable and do not bring us so great a pleasure as to drive away and overshadow the sadness arising from other sources. But the fear of God possesses both of these qualities; for it is stable and unmoved, and it produces so great a joy that no sense of other evils takes hold of us. For he who fears God as he ought and trusts in Him has gained the root of pleasure and possesses every fountain of joy. And just as a spark falling into the immense sea is quickly and easily extinguished, so whatever blows strike the one who fears God — falling, as it were, into the vast ocean of joy — they are extinguished and lost. And truly this is most marvelous: that even when the things that usually cause sadness are present, he himself remains rejoicing." This he pursues at length in a lengthy discourse, running through virtually every kind of evil, and showing that true joy is not only not extinguished by them but is not even slightly affected or diminished.
This is also brilliantly shown by St. Basil, in Homily 4 On Thanksgiving: "The soul," he says, "which has once bound itself in every way to the desire of its Creator, and has now grown accustomed to delighting itself in the contemplation of His great beauty, absolutely does not allow that intense joy and the most pleasant expansion of its spirit to be intercepted or altered by the manifold and successive changes of carnal passions. Rather, it turns what brings sorrow to others into an increase and addition to its own joy. Such was the Apostle, when he took extraordinary pleasure in infirmities, in tribulations, in persecutions, in necessities, exchanging his poverty for glory and exultation." Hence Rabanus understands all this of the health of the soul: "Because," he says, "he who is healthy in mind is not harmed by being vexed in bodily tribulation. Hence Paul says of himself, 2 Corinthians 12: When I am weak, then I am strong. Gladly therefore I will glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore the body is truly healthy when it labors vigorously in the divine work; and with this health, no great treasure of riches can be compared. There is no delight like the joy of the heart — because with the delight of true wisdom, which consists in true charity, and with the contemplation of truth itself, which is the certain knowledge of God, no earthly joy can be compared."
Moreover, the invocation of the holy Angels wonderfully contributes to joy; for since they are blessed and therefore most joyful, they breathe their joy upon those they assist. Hence a good Angel is distinguished from an evil one in that the former inspires joy, while the latter inspires sorrow. Thus Raphael, by curing Tobias of his blindness and by escorting his son and bringing him back with a rich wife and dowry, brought joy to the whole family. Likewise, the Angel announcing to Sarah and Abraham the birth of Isaac drove away the sorrow of barrenness (Genesis 18:10). The same was done by the other angels who appeared to the Patriarchs and Prophets in Scripture. Thus, to St. Magnus, Bishop of Anagni and martyr under Decius, an angel appeared as he was grieving: "Why, Magnus, are you sad?" he said. "Put aside your sadness; for I have been sent to you to drive away all sorrow from you," as his Acts record.
17. BETTER IS DEATH THAN A BITTER LIFE, AND ETERNAL REST THAN PERSEVERING ILLNESS.
In Greek: Death is preferable to a bitter life, or a disease of long duration. The Syriac: It is better to die than to live a wretched life, and to descend to the underworld rather than to suffer persevering pain. Here he precisely compares and prefers death to a bitter life, such as that of a rich man afflicted with diseases — because death brings rest and frees one from the diseases and evils of this life, while a bitter life of illness is not so much life as a perpetual and prolonged death. For as the Poet says: "Life is not mere living, but living well." And Pliny the Younger, Book IV, Letter 23: "If you count the years," he says, "it is a short time; if you count the changes of fortune, you would think it an age." And Ovid, Book I of Letters from Pontus, Elegy 1: For if someone should reckon my woes through long years, Believe me, I would be older than Pylian Nestor.
He therefore abstracts from the state of grace and considers only nature and the gifts or evils of nature, comparing them among themselves. For if you consider the state of grace, the bitter life that the Apostles and all the Saints have lived and continue to live in mortification, labors, and persecutions is far more excellent than death, according to Christ's saying: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5). Conversely, for impious rich men it is better to live here and enjoy their riches, even with illness and sickness, than to die; for after death they will proceed to the eternal torments of hell. In a similar way, Job, abstracting from the state of grace and considering only his sufferings according to nature, desires death in order to be freed from them. Hence he says, chapter 3, verse 3: "Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man is conceived." So also Jeremiah, chapter 20, verse 14: "Cursed," he says, "be the day on which I was born; the day on which my mother bore me — let it not be blessed." See what is said there.
Therefore by "eternal rest" (which, however, is not in the Greek) understand not the rest that the Blessed possess in heaven, which we pray for the faithful departed saying: "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord" — but rather the rest that a man constituted in the pure powers of nature desires and expects after this life: namely, that free from every affliction of this life, dwelling and resting silent in the state of departed souls, he may find peace. Of this Job says, chapter 3, verse 13: "For now, sleeping, I would be silent, and in my sleep I would rest." Hence the pagans believed that souls after death are silent, at rest, and as it were asleep, just as bodies sleep in the tomb. Hence also the place of the dead — namely, the underworld or limbo — is called in Hebrew
placed around the tombs of the dead, who neither eat, nor drink, nor derive any benefit from them."
Note: The Gentiles of old, after the death of their family members, offered funeral rites to the Manes, that is, to the souls of the dead, by placing food and drink (especially beans, because they dull the senses and cause sleeplessness) upon their tombs — as if the souls were delighted to be nourished and refreshed by them, as Pliny expressly teaches, book XVIII, chapter 12: "Because," he says, "the souls of the dead are in them (namely, in beans), for which reason they are taken up in funeral rites." And Lucretius, book III:
They offer funeral rites. And they slaughter black cattle, which they send As offerings to the dark Shades.
For they believed that souls were corporeal, or at least had thin and airy bodies, which needed to be restored with food. This custom crept from the Gentiles to the Christians, which St. Augustine accordingly censures, sermon 15 On the Saints: "I marvel," he says, "that so pernicious an error has crept in among certain faithless people today, that they bring food and wine to the tombs of the dead, as if souls that have departed from their bodies require bodily food." The same author, On the Morals of the Church, chapter 34: "I know there are many who worship at tombs, who drink most lavishly over the dead, and set out banquets for corpses, and bury themselves over the buried." The same custom is recounted and censured by St. Ambrose, On Elijah and Fasting, chapter 17, and by St. Cyprian, tract On the Double Martyrdom. And St. Paulinus, on the 9th birthday of St. Felix, rebuked his rustic flock in Italy, because in their simplicity they brought feasts to the tomb of St. Felix according to the old Gentile custom:
Because error, he says, Has settled in rude minds; nor does simplicity, Unaware of so great a fault, lack piety, Wrongly believing that the Saints rejoice in tombs drenched with fragrant wine.
The Jews followed these Gentiles — or rather preceded them — but with a loftier and holier purpose and faith. For they set out a funeral banquet beside the tombs of the dead for friends and the poor, so that by their prayers, as well as by this almsgiving, they might free the souls of their loved ones from the punishments of purgatory. This is what Tobias counsels his son, chapter 4, verse 18: "Place your bread and your wine upon the tomb of the just, and do not eat and drink from it with sinners."
Following the Jews, the Christians, especially in Rome and in Africa, brought banquets to the tombs or memorial shrines of the martyrs, which they and their friends first tasted as if sanctified by this quasi-contact with the martyrs; then they distributed them to the poor, who were summoned to the church for the agape feast on the feast days of the Martyrs, and they did this in honor of the martyrs. They did the same at the burial of their own dead, whose salvation or glory was uncertain — that is, they arranged alms, or a feast or agape in cemeteries or churches, so that
is called רומה duma, that is, silence. Thus Virgil, book VI of the Aeneid, sings of the underworld: O gods, who hold dominion over souls, and you, silent shades, And Chaos, and Phlegethon, places silent far and wide in the night. And Seneca in the Hippolytus: He entered the house silent with perpetual night. And Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, thus describes the underworld and the souls descending there: There is a downward path, clouded with funeral yew: It leads through mute silence to the infernal seats. The sluggish Styx breathes out mists; and fresh shades Descend that way, and phantoms done with burial. Pallor and winter hold wide those rough places.
Tropologically, Rabanus says: "Better is death, of which it is written in Psalm 115: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, than the bitter life which sinners lead while devoting themselves to wicked works. And the eternal rest, which the just possess in the sight of the Lord, is better than the persevering languor by which those who persist in sin waste away daily, whose end is destruction, and whose glory is in their shame — they who savor earthly things," Philippians 3.
18. GOOD THINGS HIDDEN IN A CLOSED MOUTH, ARE LIKE OFFERINGS OF FOOD PLACED AROUND A TOMB.
He continues to show how useless riches and delicacies are to the wealthy who are afflicted with illness, by means of three comparisons. The first is that of the tomb, that is: Wealth and food stored and hidden in chests and cellars by a rich but sick man, who because of illness and nausea of the stomach cannot enjoy them, and therefore has his mouth, as it were, closed to them — these are useless, just as useless are the feasts set out at the tomb of a dead man, since the dead man cannot eat or taste them. By this it is indicated that a wealthy sick man is like a dead man, inasmuch as he can no more be refreshed and restored by his delicacies than a dead man can. For even if he has many good things hidden in his cellars, yet if his illness closes his mouth to them so that he cannot eat them, or only with pain and nausea, then those things will be like the food that was customarily set out for the dead.
Note: For "hidden," our translator reads κεκρυμμένα; the Complutensian edition reads κεκλεισμένα, that is, "closed." Hence they translate: Good things closed to a closed mouth, etc. But "closed" means the same as "hidden." The corrected codices at Rome read ἐκκεχυμένα, from which they translate: Good things poured out to a closed mouth, or poured out before a closed mouth, are dishes of food placed at a tomb. The Syriac: Good things that are hidden in the mouth of the one who hides, like foods that are placed upon tombs.
Mystically, Lyranus says: "Good things hidden in a closed mouth" — that is, he says, knowledge stored up in the mind of a man who is lazy about teaching — is useless, just as food set out for the dead is useless. Likewise Rabanus: "This testimony," he says, "applies against those who neglect to preach to others the talent of God's word which they themselves have understood by their intellect; whose knowledge is thus useless to the living, just as feasts placed around
they might expiate and free the soul of the deceased — if it were detained in the punishments of purgatory — both by the prayers of the poor and by this almsgiving. Hence St. Augustine, book IX of The City of God, last chapter: "Whoever," he says, "brings feasts there (to the tombs of the Martyrs) — which indeed is not done by the better Christians, and in most parts of the world no such custom exists — yet whoever does it, after they have set the food out, they pray and then take it away to eat it, or even distribute it to the needy, desiring that it be sanctified there by the merits of the martyrs in the name of the Lord of the martyrs." The same author, book VI of the Confessions, chapter 2, concerning his mother: "When she had brought porridge and bread and unmixed wine to the memorial shrines, as was customary in Africa."
But because this rite recalled the Gentile parentalia, and because many abused it for feasting and carousing, St. Ambrose removed it from the churches, as St. Augustine relates, book VI of the Confessions, chapter 2; and the African Church, taught afterwards by St. Augustine, followed his example. Therefore, in its place, alms for the deceased began to be distributed at home on all sides, as is still done today. All of this is clear from St. Augustine, epistle 64, and from St. Paulinus, epistle to Alethius, and from St. Chrysostom, homily 32 on Matthew.
19 and 20. WHAT WILL AN OFFERING PROFIT AN IDOL? FOR IT WILL NEITHER EAT NOR SMELL: SO IS HE WHO IS DRIVEN AWAY BY THE LORD, BEARING THE WAGES OF INIQUITY.
This is the second comparison, drawn from idols and their sacrificial victims, showing the misery of the rich but sick man. For in ancient times sacrifice was established as a kind of banquet and feast of God, or of the idol, deigning to associate and, as it were, dine with men, as I discussed in Leviticus 1. Hence in every sacrifice there was a victim as food and flesh to be eaten by God, and at the same time wine was poured out as a drink to be drunk by God or the idol.
The meaning therefore is, as if to say: Just as a victim is offered in vain, and wine is poured out with it to an idol — since that idol is made of stone or gold, having no taste or smell or sense for food and drink — so likewise the rich man, "who is driven away," in Greek ὁ ἐκδιωκόμενος, that is, who suffers persecution from the Lord, or rather whom God pursues on account of his crimes and pride, and afflicts with diseases and calamities, so that like another Cain he appears to be proscribed and defeated by the Lord, and to bear his sickness as "the wages of his iniquity" — this rich man, I say, though sick, will have his wealth in vain, with which to prepare splendid banquets, since he cannot taste them or enjoy them.
Hence from the Greek you may translate more clearly: What good is an offering to an idol? For it neither eats nor smells: such is the one whom the Lord pursues. The Tigurina: What use are libations to an image? For it will neither eat from them nor perceive their odor: so it is with the one who has been defeated by the Lord, and bears the wages of iniquity. The Syriac: What use are the idols of the peoples, which neither eat nor smell? So is the one who has riches and does not use them.
Here note that the rich are rightly compared to idols. First, because they possess riches and worship them as their own idols. Hence avarice is called by the Apostle "the service of idols," Ephesians 5. The rich therefore are adorned with their riches as idols are adorned with gold and gems. Second, because the rich are worshiped by the world as idols and as certain divinities. Third, because just as the most precious wines and herds are poured out and slaughtered for idols, so for the rich sumptuous tables are prepared, abounding in every kind of delicacy. Fourth, just as an idol derives no καρπόν, that is, fruit, from the καρπώτε, that is, the offering made to it, because it neither tastes nor feels anything — so also the rich man, if he is sick, derives little or no fruit and pleasure from all his wealth and delicacies.
21. SEEING WITH HIS EYES AND GROANING, LIKE A EUNUCH EMBRACING A VIRGIN AND SIGHING.
This is the third comparison, that of the eunuch, as if to say: The rich but sick man already described sees the banquets and groans because he cannot devour them and enjoy them — just as a eunuch seeing a beautiful virgin groans and sighs because he cannot enjoy her due to his frigidity and impotence. Therefore riches and delicacies bring him not consolation and joy, but sorrow and torment.
Such a man is therefore like Tantalus, who in hell, though standing in the midst of waters, is nonetheless tormented with thirst. Of whom the Poet says: Tantalus grasps at fleeing fruit: his garrulous tongue brought this upon him. And Horace: Tantalus, thirsting, grasps at the streams that flee from his lips.... Change the name, and the story is told about you: You sleep gaping upon sacks heaped up on every side, And are forced to spare them as if sacred, Or to take pleasure in them as in painted pictures.
Tantalus, therefore, immersed in the river up to his lips but not permitted to drink from it, and therefore always thirsting, is the symbol and figure of the rich man — whether miserly or sick — who, though immersed in wealth, either does not dare or is not able to enjoy it.
Third Part of the Chapter
22. DO NOT GIVE SADNESS TO YOUR SOUL, AND DO NOT AFFLICT YOURSELF IN YOUR OWN COUNSEL.
In Greek: Do not give your soul over to sadness. The Tigurina: Do not plunge your spirit into melancholy, nor afflict yourself with your own counsels. Others: Do not give your soul to sorrow, and do not afflict yourself on account of counsel
AND DO NOT AFFLICT YOURSELF IN YOUR OWN COUNSEL. — your soul. The Syriac: Do not give your soul to sadness, and do not offend in the counsel of your soul. Here Jansenius rightly observes: He does not say, "Never have sadness in your soul" (for that is impossible for human weakness), but: "Do not give sadness to your soul," or, as it is in the Greek: Do not give your soul over to sadness — that is, do not allow sadness to dominate your spirit, nor voluntarily summon it upon yourself and provide occasion for grieving. For when something sad happens, the matter of sadness must be overcome by the consideration and weighing of the good things that are present, so that it is not permitted to dominate our spirit. And the greatest care must be taken that, when we have much occasion for joy, we do not ourselves suggest matter for sadness, by exaggerating certain slight evils to ourselves. This, then, is what is meant when it says: "Do not give sadness to your soul." And the discourse concerns that sadness which Paul calls "the sadness of the world," which he says works death — namely, sadness about the things of this world. For "the sadness that is according to God works repentance unto lasting salvation": and therefore that kind of sadness should be willingly taken up and given to our soul. So Palacius.
Therefore that sadness which does not produce joy must be avoided, just as one avoids a potion that does not produce health. But that sadness which generates joy, and which works lasting salvation and blessedness, should be cultivated. On the harm and damage of sadness, see St. Ambrose discussing the matter, oration 2 On Satyrus; St. Gregory, Moralia XXXI, chapter 217; St. Augustine, book XII On Genesis Literally, chapter 33; Cassian, Conference IX, chapter 3; St. Bernard, On the Interior House, chapter 52.
Moreover, the remedy for sadness is either to remove the evil that saddens us, or, if it cannot be removed, to diminish it by forethought and to bear it with a great spirit. For the cause of sadness is not so much the evil itself that presses upon us, as our own opinion, apprehension, and estimation of it — namely, that we judge it to be hard and grievous. Since this estimation lies within our power, it can be mitigated, or indeed laid aside entirely, and thus sadness will likewise be mitigated or wholly set aside. For Epictetus truly says, Enchiridion, chapter 1: "In our power," he says, "are opinion, appetite, desire, aversion, and whatever are our own actions." And that the opinion of evil rather than the evil itself is the cause of sadness, the same author wisely affirms in chapter 10: "Men," he says, "are disturbed not by things, but by the opinions they hold about things." And Plutarch, in his book On Exile: "Exile," he says, "ignominy, loss of goods — as on the other hand, crowns, magistracies, and the first seats — have their power to grieve or delight not from their own nature, but from our own judgment." And Cicero, Tusculan Disputations III: "Prolonged reflection," he says, "that there is no evil in the matter, cures the pain — not the mere passage of time." See St. Chrysostom, homily That No One Is Harmed Except by Himself. See also our Gregory of Valencia, I-II, disputation 3, Question 6, point 3, where he assigns eight remedies for sadness and pursues them at length.
Furthermore, the remedy for sadness is a good conscience, trusting and fixed in God. For, as St. Chrysostom says, homily 25 to the People: "Nothing else is sad except to offend God. When they have this," neither tribulations,
First, Palacius holds that here the same thing, or nearly the same thing, is said as in the first hemistich, as if this counsel is the cause of sadness, or sadness itself, that is: Do not afflict yourself with sadness; therefore do not pursue those counsels that are sad, or that attract or increase sadness for you. For the sad, the melancholic, and the scrupulous tend to be brooding, to turn over a thousand thoughts, to agitate a thousand plans and anxieties of the soul — to whom therefore it should be said with the Psalmist: "How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?" Psalm 12:2. Likewise Lyranus, who also gives an example: "As those do," he says, "who are in despair, who kill themselves."
Second, that is: Do not afflict yourself because your plans do not have a successful outcome, or are denied, or are overturned by others, especially by your rivals. But consider that there are as many opinions and counsels as there are heads of men. Therefore bear this peacefully, and say with the Apostle: "Let each one abound in his own sense" and counsel, Romans 14.
Third, Jansenius says, that is: Do not deliberate and consult too anxiously and scrupulously; do not afflict and torment yourself with various counsels and deliberations — that is, while you too anxiously devise in your mind how to extricate yourself from certain evils, or how to obtain some good that you desire. And above all, do not anxiously think and deliberate about future events, duties, labors, tribulations, and other things that may befall you — because in reality they may perhaps never befall you. Therefore think of that saying of Christ: "Sufficient for the day is its own trouble," Matthew 6. And so, just as in the first clause He counseled laying aside sadness, so here He counsels laying aside anxious cares and worries, which afflict no less than sadness does, and which partly follow from and partly precede and cause the sadness of the soul. Just as in the first clause, then, He counseled that in place of sad thoughts, joyful ones should be summoned, by which the mind may be roused to joy, so here He counsels that anxious cares and worries should be converted into freedom and cheerfulness of spirit, and that they should be surrendered to divine providence, and one should say with the Psalmist: "The Lord is solicitous for me," Psalm 39:18. And Psalm 22:1: "The Lord rules me (St. Jerome: The Lord is my shepherd; the Hebrew and Septuagint: The Lord feeds me, as a shepherd feeds his sheep), and nothing shall be wanting to me: in a place of pasture, there He has placed me." And with St. Paul: "Be anxious about nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God," Philippians 4:6. And with St. Peter, epistle I, chapter 5, verse 7: "Casting all your care upon Him, because He cares for you." See the comments at both places.
nor plots, nor anything else will be able to sadden a wise soul. But just as, if you cast a tiny spark into a deep place, you will immediately extinguish it — so likewise every excess of sadness is extinguished when cast into a good conscience. For this reason indeed Paul always rejoiced, because inwardly he trusted in God, and he did not feel so many evils, but though he grieved as a man, he did not fall. So also the patriarch Abraham was in delight though he suffered many sorrows — yet none of these things cast him down." Blessed Caesarius of Arles, homily 2: "True joy," he says, "is not possessed unless peace and justice are maintained. For the first and, as it were, the root is justice; the second is peace, the third is joy. From justice, peace is born; from peace, joy is generated. Justice and peace seem to be, as it were, good works; but joy is understood to be the fruit of good works." And St. Bernard, in the books On Consideration: "What is richer, what sweeter in the heart, what quieter and more secure on earth than a good conscience? It fears no loss of possessions, no insults of words, no tortures of the body — it is raised up rather than cast down even by death itself."
The pagan writers agree with our authors. Cicero to Torquatus, in a familiar letter: "The consciousness," he says, "of an upright will is the greatest consolation in adversity." And Seneca to Lucilius: "I do not wish joy ever to be lacking to you: I want it to be born at home within you. And it is born, provided only that it be within yourself." And a little later: "The desire for true good is safe. You ask what this is, or whence it arises — I will tell you: From a good conscience, from honorable counsels, from right actions, from contempt of fortune, from the calm and continuous course of a life pressing along one path." To this purpose is the saying of Pythagoras: "Do not wear a tight ring, that is, do not do things that constrain and afflict you." And: "Do not eat your heart, that is, do not torture yourself with cares and anxieties" — which a conscience aware of its own crime especially tends to produce. So Plutarch, tract On the Education of Children.
Again St. Bernard, tract On the Interior House, chapter 54, says: "Do you wish never to be sad? Live well. A good life always has joy: the conscience of the guilty is always in punishment." And chapters 20 and 22: "The conscience is clean when it is neither justly accused regarding the past, nor unjustly delighted regarding the present. A good conscience is the title of religion, the temple of Solomon, the field of blessing, the garden of delights, a golden reclining-couch, the joy of the Angels, the ark of the covenant, the treasure of the king, the court of God, the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, a book sealed and closed, and to be opened on the day of judgment. Nothing is more pleasant, nothing safer, nothing richer than a good conscience: let the body be oppressed, the world drag, the devil terrify — and it will be secure. A good conscience will be secure when the body dies; secure when the soul is presented before God; secure when both shall stand in the day of judgment before the terrifying tribunal of the just Judge."
Finally, St. Basil, homily 4 On Thanksgiving: "Thus," he says, "you will attain to always rejoicing: namely, if the plan and method of your entire life aims at and looks toward God, and the hope of recompense makes the sorrows of this life lighter. Has someone afflicted you with disgrace? Then look up to that glory which is stored up in heaven, to be obtained by you through the merit of patience. Have you suffered the loss of your possessions? Fix your eyes more firmly on the heavenly riches and the incomparable treasure which you have set aside for yourself at the price of good works. Have you been excluded from your native land? But you have for your homeland that heavenly Jerusalem. In this manner, if you set against the things that now cause you trouble the good things that are hoped for, you will keep your soul from all anxiety. To this the decree of the Apostolic law invites us: Rejoice always," Philippians 4. "This is what the wisest king proclaims to all, Ecclesiastes 3:12: And I recognized, he says, that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well in one's life" — that is: These two things are connected, to rejoice and to act well; therefore, in order to always rejoice, always act well.
23. THE JOY OF THE HEART
THIS IS THE LIFE OF MAN, AND A TREASURE OF UNFAILING HOLINESS; AND THE EXULTATION OF A MAN IS LENGTH OF DAYS. — The Greek, as is its custom with two-part sentences, omits the middle clause, and reads thus: The joy of the heart is the life of man, and the exultation of a man is length of days. The Tigurina: The joy of the soul is truly life for man, and an inexhaustible treasure of holiness, and the gladness of every age is longevity. The Syriac: The joy of the heart — this itself is the life of man, and a (pure and therefore joyful) conscience of a man itself increases his life.
He assigns three fruits and effects of happiness and joy. The first is that it is, as it were, the life of man — both because man always needs some pleasure as a kind of refreshment, on account of the many labors and troubles that befall him in this life, as Aristotle teaches, book VII of the Ethics; and because life in sadness is not so much life as death, as he said in verse 17; and because joy makes all the vital actions flourish — for one performs them with gladness, and therefore briskly, exultantly, fully and perfectly, according to that saying of Proverbs 17:12: "A joyful spirit makes the age flourish; a sad spirit dries up the bones."
The second fruit of joy is that it is "a treasure without failing," that is, an unfailing treasure "of holiness" — meaning: The pure and true joy of the heart is not only the life of man, but is also an unfailing treasure of holiness, because it fosters and preserves holiness. By this he signifies, first, that joy devoid of holiness — which is conceived from an abundance of wealth, honors, and pleasures — is not pure and true, but mixed with many sorrows and sadnesses, and therefore will fail and not last long; second, that pure, true, and unmixed joy consists in holiness — for a good and holy conscience is always joyful, because it knows itself to be in the grace of God, indeed to be a child of God, from whom it therefore confidently expects its inheritance and eternal glory; third, that joy
fosters and increases holiness. For it causes a man to perform the holy works of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, religion, and so forth, joyfully and eagerly, and therefore to persevere in them constantly. For things done with sadness are done listlessly and with weariness, and therefore a man cannot endure in them. Great is this praise of joy — that it is an inexhaustible treasure of holiness — because it continually rouses a man to perform and amass more and greater holy works, and because it eagerly and courageously overcomes all the difficulties and temptations that the devil, the world, and the flesh suggest, in order to draw a man away from holy exercises.
Therefore St. Antony commended spiritual joy above all else to his religious followers who lived arduously and austerely, as a singular shield and remedy for conquering all temptations: "There is one way," he said, "to conquer the enemy: spiritual joy, and the constant remembrance of the soul always thinking of the Lord — which, driving out the tricks of the demons like smoke, will pursue the adversaries rather than fear them." So St. Athanasius, in the Life of St. Antony. Hence Palladius, in the Lausiac History, chapter 52, speaking of the holy Anchorites and companions of the Abbot Apollo: "One could see them," he says, "exulting in the desert, so much so that no other such exultation could be seen anywhere on earth, nor any bodily joy — for there was among them no one who was gloomy or sad. But if anyone seemed to show sadness, Abbot Apollo immediately asked him the reason, and would reveal what was hidden in each one's heart; and he would say: We ought not to be sad on account of our salvation, since we are to be heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Let the Gentiles be sad, let the Jews weep, let sinners mourn — but the just shall rejoice. And those who occupy their minds with earthly things will find their cheer in earthly things; but we, who have been deemed worthy of so great a hope — how shall we not rejoice perpetually, when the Apostle exhorts us, 1 Thessalonians 5, to always rejoice and to pray without ceasing?"
Conversely, nothing is so vulnerable to the temptations of the devil as a sad spirit. For sadness drives away the Holy Spirit, as the spirit of joy, and summons the dark spirit — namely, the devil, who is the spirit of sloth and sadness. Hear St. Chrysostom, book III On Providence: "More pernicious than every work of the devil," he says, "is the immoderate magnitude of grief and sloth; for those whom the devil overcomes, he overcomes through grief. But if you remove grief, absolutely no evil or inconvenience will befall you from him." And further on: "We ought to be sad only then — not when we are afflicted by evil, but when we ourselves perpetrate some evil." See Cassian, book X On the Institutes of Renunciation, chapter 2 and following, where he graphically depicts the spirit of sloth and grief, and recounts its suggestions, effects, and damages. Therefore Hermas, a disciple of St. Paul, in the book entitled The Shepherd (found in volume V of the Library of the Holy Fathers), which the ancients everywhere cite and celebrate, says: "Just as
wine," he says, book II, chapter 10, "mixed with vinegar does not have the same sweetness — so also sadness, joined to the Holy Spirit, does not have that same pure prayer." Indeed, sadness drives away the Holy Spirit. For "the fruit of the Holy Spirit is charity, joy, peace," etc., Galatians 5:22. But hear again Hermas, book II, commandment 10, speaking in the person of God: "Sadness is the most wicked of all spirits, and the worst for the servants of God; it destroys all spirits and tortures the Holy Spirit." And further: "Therefore put on cheerfulness, which always has favor with the Lord. You will take delight in it. For every cheerful man works well, and savors good things, and despises injustice. But a sad man does evil, because he makes sad the Holy Spirit, who was given to man for his cheerfulness." And again: "It is an evil thing that a sad man prays to the Lord and does not first make his confession, and does not obtain from God what he asks. For the prayer of a sad man always lacks the power to ascend to the altar of the Lord." To this purpose is that saying of Aaron, Leviticus 10: "How could I please the Lord in the ceremonies with a mournful mind?" For a mind overwhelmed and oppressed by grief cannot lift itself up to God. Add to this that "God loves a cheerful giver," 2 Corinthians 9.
The third fruit of joy is: "And the exultation of a man is length of days" — not formally, but causally, that is: Joy and exultation make a man long-lived, while sadness makes him short-lived. For joy cheers, enlivens, expands, multiplies, and strengthens the vital spirits, which preserve and increase the heart and life of man; sadness does the opposite. Hear St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Distichs: "Sorrows bring premature old age to mortals. For time will never restore what sorrows have ruined and laid low. An anxious mind gnaws the bones like a moth; but the body that bids all cares farewell flourishes splendidly."
Hippocrates, Galen, and the other physicians teach the same. Hence the School of Salerno prescribes these remedies for a healthy life: If physicians fail you, let these three be your physicians: A cheerful mind, easy rest, and a moderate diet.
Therefore, in order for a faithful man to be always cheerful, he must summon joyful and cheerful thoughts about heaven, about Christ, about the benefits of God and His presence, indwelling, and operation within us; about the Blessed Virgin, about the Saints, and other similar things, which our Alvarez de Paz recounts at length, On the Attainment of Virtues, book III, part II, chapter 4. Hence Rabanus says: "True joy of the heart," he says, "consists in nothing other than true charity, where the life of man with its treasure of virtues remains without failing in holiness — because no virtue can subsist without its help. For this is the more excellent way, which the Apostle placed above all tongues, martyrdom, and almsgiving, saying: But now there remain faith, hope, and charity: these three, but the greatest of these is charity," 1 Corinthians 13.
Anagogically, the same Rabanus: "The exultation of a man is length of days" — that is, the blessed eternity of the Saints; because there true exultation exists, where true blessedness exists. For the present life is full of miseries and unhappy with constant sorrows.
24. HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL BY BEING PLEASING TO GOD, AND BE CONTINENT: GATHER YOUR HEART IN HIS HOLINESS, AND DRIVE SADNESS FAR FROM YOU.
So read and punctuate the Roman editions, though Jansenius and others read and punctuate differently. The Greek reads more briefly: Love yourself, and speak to yourself, or: Console your heart, and remove sorrow far from you. The Syriac: Be kind to your soul, and refresh your heart, and make sadness far from you. Here note, first: He who loves his soul has mercy on it; but he who does not love it, but hates it, is merciless and indeed cruel toward it — as is one who loves iniquity, and thereby summons present and eternal sadness and pain upon it.
Second, the phrase "being pleasing to God" can be taken in two ways: first, as signifying the cause and end of having mercy on the soul; second, as signifying its effect, or rather its manner. According to the first interpretation, the sense will be, that is: "Have mercy on your soul" with this end and fruit — namely, that by this mercy you may please God, who has commanded you to do so, when He entrusted to you the care and salvation of your soul, and commended it above all other things. According to the second interpretation, the sense will be: "Have mercy on your soul," striving to please God — which will happen if you contain yourself in holiness. For mercy toward the soul consists in this: that he who wishes to have mercy on it should strive to make it pleasing to God, which he will do if he makes it holy. Origen says admirably, homily 4 on Luke chapter 6: "God," he says, "has entrusted to your soul His own image and likeness. Therefore this deposit, so distinguished, must be restored to you as completely as it is known to have been received by you."
Jansenius takes it differently, understanding "being pleasing to God" as an antecedent, as it were a presupposition of the verb "have mercy," as if it said: You who please God, and have a good conscience in God, so that you are conscious of no great evil — you rightly ought to have mercy on your soul, namely, to console it in sorrows through the good testimony of your conscience, by which you are confident that you please God.
Third, the word "and be continent" signifies the manner in which you ought to have mercy on your soul and please God, that is: If you wish to have mercy on your soul and to please God, be continent, practice continence, restrain yourself from all the desires of the flesh and of concupiscence. For continence is the virtue that restrains all the surging movements of concupiscence. Hence, explaining further, he adds: "Gather your heart in holiness."
Fourth, in place of "gather your heart in holiness," the Greek reads: "console your heart." Hence Jansenius, wishing to adapt the Latin Vulgate to the Greek, explains all of this as referring to sadness, that is: "Be continent" — that is, restrain — "your heart" from immoderate sadness, "and gather" it, not allowing it, namely, to pour itself out
into grief, but by your consolation suppressing and keeping it collected within you. "Gather it," I say, "in the holiness" of God — that is, console it when it is sad, on this account: that you are holy before God, and that you please God by His gift. Or "gather" it "in the holiness" of the heart itself — that is, console your heart on this account: that it is holy through the true knowledge and love of God. However, since the Latin Vulgate has been approved and confirmed by the Council of Trent, session 4, over the Greek, and since here and elsewhere it is richer and fuller than the Greek, we ought rather to adapt the Greek to the Latin than the Latin to the Greek. Therefore: "gather your heart in holiness" explains "be continent," that is: You will be continent and will practice continence if you "gather your heart in holiness." For the suggestions of concupiscence, which are very many, distract the heart and solicit and scatter it toward various allurements of the flesh. Therefore, in order to flee and crush them, call your heart away from them, and summon and gather it entirely, so that it may cling to holiness — that is, to God and His will and law; for in this all holiness consists. And if you do this, you will dispel all sadness. For this is what he adds: "And drive sadness far from you." Which is the end and aim of the entire sentence.
For he exhorts us to drive out sadness, and suggests and prescribes the way to do it. Palacius notes that a wicked heart is scattered like ashes and dispersed like sand; but a holy heart, he says, is gathered and becomes one, because it is united to God, who is supremely one. Therefore "to cling to God is good for me," Psalm 72. Because "he who clings to the Lord is one spirit," 1 Corinthians 6:17.
The meaning, therefore, is this, as if to say: Do you wish to drive sadness from yourself and to summon lasting joy? Have mercy on your soul, by taking care that it may please God, and therefore restrain all its wicked concupiscences. You will do this if you call your heart away from them, and gather and unite it to holiness. For if you do this, you will drive all sadness from yourself — holiness is the mother of joy and the expeller of sadness. Therefore, in order to drive this misery, namely sadness, from your soul, have mercy on your soul, and cure its greater misery, namely concupiscence and iniquity; for from that, sadness arises. That is: He is merciless and cruel, a torturer and executioner, as it were, of his own soul, who delivers it over to concupiscences, to be torn by them, and to be, as it were, cut into a thousand desires, and to serve them foully and wretchedly like a slave at every beck — and thereby to suffer a thousand agonies and sorrows of conscience, and to be tormented and torn by them. He, therefore, who is wise and desires to flee these things — he has mercy on his soul, and strives to please God, and therefore restrains and abstains from concupiscences, and gathers and delivers his whole heart to God and His holiness; and by this means he drives out all sadness and summons all joy. For, as Bede says in Proverbs: "Those whose hope rests on low things are easily saddened." Conversely: "Those whose hope rests on high things are easily gladdened." So explain
and eternal life, but a blessed life in heaven, and not a wretched one in hell. So Pope Stephen V, as found in 33, Question 2, chapter 8, Admonere, section Idcirco. He admonishes Aistulph, who had murdered his wife: "Have mercy," he says, "on your soul, lest you be a murderer of your own self. Therefore we beseech you to leave this evil world, which drew you to so monstrous a crime of sin, and enter a monastery, humble yourself under the hand of an Abbot, and aided by the prayers of your better brethren, observe with a simple heart all that shall be commanded to you — if perchance the infinite mercy of God may pardon your sins and refresh your soul, before you are tormented by everlasting flames."
Rabanus, Lyranus, and Palacius — indeed St. Augustine himself, Enchiridion chapter 76, which is also found in the decree On Penance, distinction 3, chapter Qui vult — say: "He who wishes," he says, "to give alms in an orderly way, ought to begin with himself, and give it to himself first. For almsgiving is a work of mercy, and it was most truly said: Have mercy on your soul, being pleasing to God. For this we are reborn: that we may please God, whom what we contracted by birth rightly displeases. This is the first alms that we give to ourselves — because we have sought ourselves out as wretches through the mercy of the compassionate God, confessing His just judgment by which we were made wretched, of which the Apostle says, Romans 5: Judgment indeed from one unto condemnation. And giving thanks for His great charity, of which that same preacher of grace says: God commends His love in us, because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us — so that we, truly judging our own misery, and loving the charity of God which He Himself has given, may live piously and rightly." Thus far St. Augustine. The same author, sermon 102 On the Seasons: "Now," he says, "out of His ineffable kindness, He (God) not only admonishes us, but even entreats us, that we may turn from deadly sins. Let us hear Him while He entreats, lest He not hear us when He judges. Let us hear Him speaking through the Prophet: My son, He says, have mercy on your soul, being pleasing to God. What will human frailty answer to this? God entreats you to have mercy on yourself, and you refuse! He pleads your case before you, and cannot obtain it from you! And how will He hear you supplicating on the day of judgment, when you would not hear Him entreating on your own behalf?"
Likewise St. Bernard in the Sentences: "The Spirit of wisdom," he says, "present everywhere, knows what is done in heaven and what is done in hell. And when He has filled the human mind, He strikes fear about the punishments of hell, and pours in the love of heavenly things, and so makes a man have mercy on his own soul, and says to him: Have mercy on your soul, being pleasing to God." The same author, sermon 8 to the Knights Templar: "It is truly a great wickedness," he says, "not to have mercy on yourself, and to repel from yourself the only remedy of confession after sin, and to wrap fire in your bosom rather than shake it out, and not to lend your ear to the counsel of the Wise Man, who says: Have mercy on your soul, being pleasing to God. Therefore, he who is wicked to himself — to whom will he be good?" The same, epistle 8 to Bruno: "The first," he says, "degree of piety is that about which it is written: Have mercy on your soul, being pleasing to God. From this, well-ordered charity proceeds on a straight path to having mercy on one's neighbor — for each person is commanded to love his neighbor according to his own measure."
See the same author pathetically urging Eustachius, the occupier of the See of Valencia, to repentance with these words, Epistle 183. With the same words you may press any sinner, saying: Have mercy on your soul, O wretch, so that since your body must shortly perish and die and be given to worms, you may at least take counsel for your soul — so that, since it is immortal and eternal, it may obtain an immortal
25. FOR SADNESS HAS KILLED MANY (certain Greeks read: It has destroyed and killed; and likewise the Syriac: For sadness has killed many, and has destroyed them), AND THERE IS NO PROFIT IN IT — because even though you grieve over an evil, you will not thereby remove it, but rather you will increase and double it. Furthermore, melancholy, sadness, and sloth have killed many and continue to kill daily, both as to the body and as to the soul, and they slay them with both present and eternal death.
Sadness, therefore, is an executioner's block. If you shudder at being the executioner of others, why do you not shudder at being your own executioner through sadness? Physicians give the cause and manner, and among them Francis Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 72. Great sadness, he says, always harms, and can sometimes kill — not indeed suddenly, as fear and joy do (Galen is the authority for this), but gradually and over a long time. Because through joy the entire heat is poured out copiously and without any restraint; therefore in the faint-hearted it completely evaporates. In great fear, rushing copiously to the heart, it is suffocated. The motion of sadness is similar to that of fear, yet not as violent as fear, but slow by its nature, and therefore gradually causes the vital heat to languish and the nourishment of the parts to diminish, and thus leads to wasting. This is clearly signified by those words of Proverbs 17: "A sad spirit dries up the bones." Therefore sadness has perhaps killed no one suddenly — as fear and joy do — but slowly and gradually, very many.
Those words, "And there is no profit in it," bear a twofold meaning, natural and moral. In the natural sense, they signify that sadness contributes nothing — for it serves neither to drive away diseases nor to protect health (this, to be sure, must be understood from what has been said as referring to great sadness that excludes all cheerfulness). In the moral sense, they contain a certain exhortation to drive sadness from the soul. As if to say: Avoid sadness because it has killed many, and it contributes nothing toward recovering that for which you grieve; for you will not by tears raise a deceased husband back to life, nor a son, nor will you find lost money, nor will you restore a house consumed by fire.
Hence Blessed Antiochus, homily 25: "Sadness," he says, "is a worm of the heart, devouring its own mother like a viper." And St. Athanasius, cited by St. Bernard, On the Way to Live Well, chapter 11: "A man
who is sad," he says, "always acts wickedly, and grieves the Holy Spirit given to him by God." St. Chrysostom, homily 7 to the People: "God," he says, "implanted sadness in us for no other reason than for sin alone, and He has made this clear through experience itself. For in the loss of money, and in death, and in sickness, and in other troubles that befall us, by grieving and sorrowing we not only gain no consolation, but actually increase our troubles. But if we grieve and are sad about our sins, we diminish the magnitude of the sin, and what was great we make small, and often we even destroy it utterly and completely." The same author, epistle 8 to Olympias: "Sadness," he says, "is a cruel torment of souls, a certain inexplicable pain, and a judgment worse than every judgment and punishment. For it is like a venomous worm, not only destroying the flesh, but the very soul itself — tearing the soul apart, consuming the powers of the soul — a perpetual night, and deep darkness, and a storm and whirlwind; a hidden fever, burning more fiercely than any fire, and a battle that has no rest." Cassian, book IX On the Institutes of Renunciation, chapters 2 and 3, citing and explaining that text of Proverbs 25: As a moth to a garment, and a worm to wood, so sadness harms a man's heart. "For a garment," he says, "touched by the gnawing of moths, can no longer serve any purpose of value or respectable use; and likewise wood riddled by worms deserves to be assigned no longer to the adornment even of a modest building, but to the burning of fire. So the soul that is devoured by the most devouring bites of sadness will be useless for that pontifical garment which the ointment of the Holy Spirit descending from heaven — first upon the beard of Aaron, then upon its hem — is said to customarily receive, according to the prophecy of St. David: Like ointment on the head, which descended upon the beard of Aaron, which descended to the hem of his garment," Psalm 132.
The natural but effective remedy for sadness is great and vigorous occupation, especially in some honorable and pleasant matter; for this calls the imagination away from sorrows to itself, occupies and cheers it. Try it, and you will feel that the matter is so.
Furthermore, our Alvarez de Paz suggests eight remedies for dispelling sadness, On the Extermination of Evil, book II, part V, 12, before the end. Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, proposing to each of the seventy Translators individual ethical questions, put this question to the twenty-ninth: "How might one live without sadness?" To which he replied: "If you harm no one," he said, "and help everyone, pursuing all with justice — from this, such a fruit of pleasure is gathered. But God must be implored, that those things which happen contrary to our expectation — such as deaths, diseases, and illnesses — may not harm us," etc. And to the fifty-sixth he put this question: "In what matters should one be sad?" To which he replied: "In the adversity of friends, since we see these things are long-lasting and unavoidable, and they destroy those overwhelmed by calamities. For in these matters no reasoning lightens the sorrow.
But concerning those things in which we despair, and in which we find nothing useful, all mortals are saddened; to escape evil entirely, however, belongs to divine power." So he, a contemporary and perhaps a companion of Sirach, as Aristaeus relates in his History of the Seventy Translators, which is found in volume VII of the Library of the Holy Fathers.
More clearly and splendidly, the Psalmist, Psalm 41, assigns prayer and hope in God as the remedy for sadness: "Why," he says, "are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the salvation of my countenance and my God." And St. James, chapter 5, verse 13: "Is any of you sad?" he says. "Let him pray. Is he of good cheer? Let him sing psalms." To this purpose is the proverb of the Hebrews in the More Nebuchim, book II, chapter 37: "Prophecy does not rest upon the sad, nor upon the sluggish." Therefore Elisha, to prepare himself for prophecy, sought a Psalmist who would cheer his mind by his singing of psalms, and lift it up to divine things, 4 Kings 3:15.
Finally, sadness in many people arises from sad events of the past that have befallen them, for which as an antidote one should suggest that saying of Seneca, On the Government of Princes: "Do not repent of a past matter, because that is proper to the weak." For a past event is impossible to recall. And no wise person repents, grieves, or afflicts himself over an impossible thing.
Antonius in the Melissa, book I, chapter 72, On Sadness, suggests other remedies for it. The first from St. Gregory Nazianzen, who says: "The sharing and fellowship of grief is a consolation to the sorrowful." And from St. Chrysostom, who says: "Sadness divided among many torments the sufferer less." And from Photius, who says: "Only the conversations of those who have experienced similar emotions are consolations to those who mourn." The second from Plutarch, who says: "The smoothest road should be chosen, and the most tranquil life. As one puts a tunic under a breastplate, so one should put reason and the mind under sadness." The third from Theopomptus, who says: "Time frees the foolish from sorrow, but reason frees the wise. He is wise who is not saddened by things absent, but rejoices in things present." The fourth from Photius, who says: "Flee temptation with patience and prayer; but if you oppose it without these defenses, it attacks more fiercely."
26. ENVY AND ANGER DIMINISH DAYS, AND ANXIOUS THOUGHT BRINGS OLD AGE BEFORE ITS TIME.
To sadness he appends three things, partly its offspring, partly its kinsmen and companions: namely envy, anger, and worry, which, just like sadness, gradually wear a man down and kill him. For "zeal" here means envy, whose companion and partner is anger. Hence Jansenius takes "zeal" to mean anger; others, any kind of zeal; Palacius, jealousy, by which a husband is jealous of his wife, or vice versa. For "anxious thought," the Greek is μέριμνα, that is, care and worry. As if to say: Envy and anger corrode and consume the days of a man's life, and are, as it were, their rust and moth. Similarly, care and worry bring a man early and premature old age. Hence the Tigurina translates: Envy and anger diminish days, worry
brings on premature old age. Likewise Bias, as found in Laertius, book I, chapter 6: "As iron," he says, "is consumed by rust, so the envious man wastes away by his own vice" — that is: Just as iron generates from itself the rust that eats it away, so the envious man conceives envy, which eats and consumes him. And Periander: "As rust corrodes iron, so envy wears down the soul of the one in whom it dwells." And St. Basil, in his homily on certain passages of Scripture: "This is another disease peculiar to human life, and implanted in our souls by nature, and more apt to consume hearts than rust consumes iron." Others translate: Zeal and furious anger diminish days, and worry brings old age before its time. The Syriac: Zeal and anger consume days, and care makes gray hair appear before its time. The physicians teach the same; hence the School of Salerno begins thus: If you wish to be safe, if you wish to make yourself healthy, Remove heavy cares, and believe that getting angry is profane.
A very illustrious example is Alexander the Great, who obscured all the glory of his deeds by his anger — by which he, the conqueror of all, was himself conquered — since through it he brought death upon his friends and cut short his own life. "For Alexander," says Valerius Maximus, book IX, chapter 3, "was practically torn from heaven by his own anger; for what stood in his way from rising there, except that Lysimachus was thrown to the lion, Clitus was run through with a spear, and Callisthenes was ordered to die?" And indeed, lamenting the death of Callisthenes, Seneca, angered at Alexander's anger, most eloquently says, book VI of the Natural Questions, chapter 23: "This," he says, "is Alexander's eternal crime, which no virtue, no felicity of circumstances will redeem. For whenever anyone shall say: He killed many thousands of Persians — it shall be objected: And Callisthenes. Whenever it shall be said: He killed Darius, who then held the great kingdom — it shall be objected: And Callisthenes. Whenever it shall be said: He conquered everything as far as the Ocean, even attempted it with new fleets, and extended his empire from the corner of Thrace to the boundaries of the East — it shall be said: But he killed Callisthenes. Though he may have surpassed all the ancient examples of generals and kings, of all the things he did, nothing will be as great as the crime of killing Callisthenes."
Truly therefore Heraclitus said: "It is hard to fight against anger, which takes away life."
Famous is that saying of the natural philosophers: τὰ ἄχολα μακρόβια, that is, animals lacking bile, such as the deer, are long-lived. Moreover, the longevity of man and animals is described in a gradual ascending scale — whether truly or rather fabulously — by Ausonius, Idyll 18: Three times two and ten times nine years exceeds The just span of life that fills the aging of men: The chattering crow surpasses these nine times in living; And the stag exceeds the crow's ages four times; The raven conquers the swift-footed stag three times....
Francis Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 72, gives the reason: "It seems to me," he says, "that these three things — namely envy, anger, and anxious thought — are signified by the single name of worry. For we call those people worried who care more than enough about what is happening, what will happen. For such are the envious, and consequently the angry and the brooding — all of which exclude cheerfulness from the soul. Therefore, if it is truly said in Proverbs 17: 'A joyful spirit makes the age flourish,' it rightly follows that what worry excludes — namely joy — brings on premature old age. And that this is true is established, since it was previously indicated that a sad spirit dries up the bones; therefore that passion also dries up, whose companion is sadness — namely, worry and excessive care. And just as it dries, so it cools; because (as we just said) it dries by diminishing nourishment through the consumption of vital heat and spirits. Natural cooling combined with drying is itself old age. Whence it follows that being worried, and consequently angry and brooding, brings old age before its time. And no matter is better known from experience. And nothing is more advisable for those who lead a private life than to be worried about nothing; but for those who hold the helm of the state, who cannot do this, it is advisable to intersperse joys among their cares, and frequently to relax the mind freed from such great cares, and to give place to food and exercise, lest the body waste away because the mind is always diverted to thought.
To this purpose is that saying of St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Distichs: "Sorrows bring premature old age to mortals. An anxious mind gnaws the bones like a moth; but the body that bids cares farewell flourishes splendidly." Hence Sirach adds: "A splendid and good heart is in its feasts."
Memorable is what Hermas, a disciple of St. Paul, writes from the mouth of God, book II of The Shepherd, commandment 3 — namely, that anger and impatience obscure and extinguish the Holy Spirit within us, while equanimity and patience rouse Him and bring Him forth. "Be even-tempered," He says, "and patient, and you will have dominion over all the most wicked works, and you will perform all justice. And if you are patient, the Holy Spirit who dwells in you will be clean, and will not be obscured by any most wicked spirit, but will rejoice and expand and feast in the vessel in which He dwells, and will appear before the Lord cheerful in great peace. But if any anger comes upon you, immediately the Holy Spirit who is in you will be distressed and will seek to depart. For He is suffocated by the most wicked sight, and has no place to appear before the Lord as He wishes; for He is afflicted by anger. When both spirits therefore dwell together, it is destructive for the man." He proves this by a comparison: "For if someone takes a little wormwood and puts it into a jar of honey, is not all the honey destroyed? So much honey is lost from a little wormwood, and it loses the sweetness of the honey, and it no longer has favor with its master — because all the honey has become bitter and has lost its use. But if wormwood is not put into the honey, it will be sweet and useful to its master. See, then, how equanimity is sweeter than honey,
and will be useful to the master who dwells in it; for anger is useless. If, therefore, anger is mixed with equanimity, the soul is disturbed, and his prayer is not useful to God."
Tropologically, Rabanus says: "Envy," he says, "and anger will diminish the days of a man, since they will make him unworthy of eternal life; and they will bring on old age before its time, because men of blood and deceit will not live out half their days," Psalm 54. That is, they cannot perpetually possess the prosperity without punishment that they promise themselves."
27. A SPLENDID AND GOOD HEART IS IN ITS FEASTS: FOR ITS FEASTS ARE DILIGENTLY PREPARED.
Against anxious thought and worry, which bring on early old age, he sets as a remedy and antidote a splendid heart that cheers itself with feasts, and thus dispels cares and prolongs life. By a "splendid heart" he means one that is cheerful and generous, not sad or miserly. For sadness and avarice contract, darken, and cloud the heart, while cheerfulness and generosity expand, cheer, and make it magnificent and, as it were, splendid. Hence light and splendor are symbols of joy and beneficence, while gloom and darkness are symbols of sadness and avarice. Hence the Psalmist frequently prays: "Shine Your face upon Your servant, O Lord" — that is: Show me Your bright, that is, cheerful, benevolent, and beneficent countenance. The meaning therefore is: A cheerful and generous heart, and a "good" one — that is, happy and pleasant — is in its feasts, and enjoys them honestly and joyfully, and diligently prepares them for itself and others. Therefore it lives more happily, longer, and more honorably. Hence the Tigurina translates: A splendid and kind heart will procure food for itself to eat; but it will not greedily heap up many things that it does not dare to enjoy, says Vatablus. Others: A splendid and good heart takes care of its food dishes. The joyful and splendid man neither neglects the care of food through sadness, nor meanly sets his table through stinginess, but feasts joyfully and generously, yet moderately and temperately with his family. The Syriac: A good (joyful) heart — abundant are its foods, and whatever it eats shows upon its body, that is: Everything that a joyful man eats, he digests and converts into his own substance, and fattens his body; and so he shows that he has eaten well and digested his food. The sad and melancholy man does the opposite.
To this purpose is that saying of Blessed Nazianzen in his Distichs: "It belongs to a temperate soul to bear some cheerfulness about it." Palacius shrewdly observes that these are precepts of natural ethics. Sirach, he says, was from the Jews, to whom temporal goods were promised on account of upright morals — namely, a longer life, happy years, more abundant feasts — that is, a happy life in this world. Far loftier is the Christian life, which desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ; which abstains from all things in order to receive an incorruptible crown; which lives in hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, and the daily care of the churches, awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God, etc.
Mystically, a "splendid heart" — that is, one that is joyful, and filled with gladness and exultation — is nothing other than the heart of a just man, which no sorrows flowing from the bites of conscience disturb. Its feasts are nothing other than good works, conformable to the law imposed upon it. And when these are diligently prepared and ardently undertaken, the heart is "good" and pleasant — it does not languish from infirmity, but grows fat from holiness. Know therefore, O man, that to take the foods of the body too eagerly is a vice; but to receive the foods of the soul most eagerly is perfection. For those who, as if suffering hunger, eagerly eat this food of virtue, are satisfied by God who feeds them, according to that saying: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied," Matthew 5. Hence Rabanus says: "Surely," he says, "the will of the elect takes pleasure in the feasts of the virtues, which feasts possess unfailing riches of spiritual wealth."
Note: The Greek texts here vary greatly. For the Complutensian edition places this verse at this point, along with our translator. But the Roman Greek text and others transfer it to the end of chapter 33. However, it seems to fit this place better. Then the Roman text appends to this verse and chapter those things which our translator and the Complutensian edition place at chapter 36, verse 13 and following. A similar transposition occurs in the following chapter, as I will discuss in its synopsis.