Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
In the preceding chapter he attacked the contentions, rivalries, and quarrels of the faithful, especially of the teachers; here he points out and cuts off the root of this evil, namely concupiscence and love of the world and of the goods of the present life, to which he opposes love of and access to God. Therefore, in verse 1, he censures concupiscences as the kindling of quarrels and wars. Then, in verse 4, he teaches that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Moreover, that one must approach God, who resists the proud, through humility and cleanness of heart, so that He Himself may exalt us. Third, in verse 11, he inveighs against detractors. Fourth, in verse 13, he shows the vanity of concupiscences from the vanity of the life to which they cling and adhere. The sum of the chapter is therefore: to heal and extinguish the concupiscence of honor and excellence, or ambition, which is the mother of envy, quarrels, wars, and detractions, through the pursuit of humility and modesty.
Vulgate Text: James 4:1-17
1. From whence are wars and contentions among you? Are they not hence? from your concupiscences, which war in your members? 2. You covet, and have not: you kill, and envy, and cannot obtain: you contend and war, and you have not, because you ask not. 3. You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss: that you may consume it on your concupiscences. 4. Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God. 5. Or do you think that the Scripture saith in vain: To envy doth the spirit covet, which dwelleth in you? 6. But He giveth greater grace. Wherefore He saith: God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 7. Be subject therefore to God, but resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners: and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. 9. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow. 10. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and He will exalt you. 11. Detract not one another, my brethren. He that detracteth his brother, or he that judgeth his brother, detracteth the law, and judgeth the law. But if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. 12. There is one lawgiver and judge, that is able to destroy and to deliver. 13. But who art thou that judgest thy neighbour? Behold, now you that say: To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and there we will spend a year, and will traffic, and make our gain. 14. Whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. 15. For what is your life? It is a vapour which appeareth for a little while, and afterwards shall vanish away: for that you should say: If the Lord will, and if we shall live, we will do this or that. 16. But now you rejoice in your arrogancies. All such rejoicing is wicked. 17. To him therefore who knoweth to do good, and doth it not, to him it is sin.
Verse 1: From Whence Are Wars and Contentions Among You
1. From whence are wars and contentions among you? — The first Christians waged no wars, nor could they wage them, since they were few and subject to the Gentiles. Therefore he calls quarrels, brawls, and fights wars, so that the term is explanatory, as if to say: "Wars," that is, "quarrels." So Lyranus. Second, "quarrels" can be understood as of words, "wars" of blows; whence Thomas Anglicus says: Quarrels pertain to those litigating before a judge, when they wish to win their case by calumny, under the pretext of justice; wars pertain to the violent, who attempt to vindicate the matter for themselves by violent injury. Third, by wars understand fights and duels: for a duel is a war between two. Finally, James foresaw that there would be wars among Christians after Constantine, and he is striving here to remove them. The sense therefore is, as if to say: In the preceding chapter I blamed envy and contentions, which stir up wars and quarrels, and I urged the pursuit of modesty, concord, and peace; now I will more deeply point out their root with my finger, so that, with these cut off from you, the branches of this evil may likewise be cut off. From whence then and from what root do they arise — wars and contentions among you? Surely from your concupiscences: for when many people covet the same thing and cannot all obtain it together, each contends, litigates, and fights to obtain it and claim it for himself. You wish to extend the boundaries of your field and dominion, you aspire to a dignity, you seek an office: you are resisted by others who are striving to retain or obtain the same things; you are therefore incited to litigate with them and to ruin them, so as to attain the thing coveted. Therefore all quarrels and wars arise on account of mine and thine: take these two pronouns from the world, or at least from the minds of men, and there will be no quarrels, no wars, says St. Chrysostom. Hence, as Virgil says in Aeneid XII:
"A boundary was set on the field, that it might settle disputes over the plowed lands."
Truly the ancient princes and tyrants were incited to war by no other cause than the ambition of extending their empire and the desire for foreign wealth. This is the meaning of the Hebrew רִיב rib, that is, quarrel: for it is derived from, or alludes to, רָהַב rahab, that is, he was proud; and to רָבַב rabab, that is, he multiplied. For from pride and the desire of excelling, and of multiplying riches and honors, arise all quarrels and wars. Hear Sallust in the Conspiracy of Catiline: "There is one," he says, "and that an ancient cause of waging war, the profound desire of empire and of riches"; and Tacitus in book IV of the Histories: "Gold and wealth are the chief causes of wars"; and Lucan in book III of the Pharsalia:
"But you, the most worthless part of things — riches — have stirred up the strife."
and Ovid in book I of the Metamorphoses:
"And now the harmful iron, and gold more harmful than iron, had come forth; war comes forth, which fights with both."
Moreover, St. Augustine wisely says in book IV of De Civitate, ch. 6: "To wage wars on neighbors, and from there to proceed against the rest, and to crush peoples who give no offense merely from the desire of dominion — what else should this be called than great brigandage?" Such of old were the wars of Alexander, Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, and generally of the kings of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Medes, Greeks, and Romans. Hence, although Priscian thinks "bellum" (war) is said by antiphrasis, as if it were not at all bellum, that is, beautiful; and Festus, as if it were beast-like and savage; others judge that it is named from Belus, who, as the first king of the Assyrians, began to attack and subjugate his neighbors by war. Now Belus by his proper name was called Nimrod, whose tyranny is described in Genesis 10. By appellative he was called in Hebrew Bal, Baal, Bel, and Belus, that is, lord, because he was striving to lord it over all. See what is said on Genesis 10:10. Thus Cassiodorus, book I, Variarum epist. 30: "There were not at first," he says, "armed contests, but each side would provoke the other with however fervid an effort of fists; whence also fighting (pugna) took its name. Afterwards Belus first produced the iron sword, from whom it was decided that war (bellum) be named. A grim conflict, a cruel garrison, a brutish struggle. It must be charged as a crime that posterity could perish from it." Understand this of after the Flood; for before the Flood the giants had been infamous for wars and slaughters, as Josephus testifies in book I of the Antiquities, ch. 13. There he also judges that the first man to practice the military art was Tubal Cain, who invented the art of metalwork in all the works of bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22). The Gloss follows Josephus.
Are they not hence? — namely, from your concupiscences, as follows.
From your concupiscences (in Greek ἡδονῶν, that is, pleasures), — namely those that you covet, that is, from concupiscences of riches, of honors, and of delights: for although anger is in the irascible appetite, it nevertheless arises from the concupiscible appetite. For from the fact that one cannot obtain the thing coveted, he becomes angry, and stirs up quarrels and wars. Furthermore, peace gave the matter to concupiscence, and concupiscence to war: hence in the time of the persecutions there were no wars among Christians until Constantine; but once peace was given by him to the Church, immediately the Arian bishops and princes began to stir up quarrels and wars in her, and soon the rest. Hence St. Leo truly says in Sermon 6 on the Epiphany: "The devil," he says, "changes the terrors of proscriptions into the conflagration of avarice, and those whom he has not broken by losses, he corrupts by greed; he inflames with concupiscences those whom he cannot harass with torments." And Tertullian: "The toga has done more harm to the republic than the breastplate." For although a just quarrel and war undertaken in due manner is permissible and even holy for Christians, as St. Augustine teaches against Erasmus and the Anabaptists in Enchiridion 78, nevertheless it scarcely lacks sins, at least venial ones: for it is generally undertaken out of excessive love of earthly things. Moreover, the desire of vengeance, envy, malevolence, pride, glory, etc., easily insinuates itself.
Which war in your members. — For although passions and concupiscences are in the soul and in the appetite — whether concupiscible or irascible — yet because these appetites have their seat and as it were pitch their camp in the members, and exert themselves through them, hence concupiscences likewise have their seat in the members: as anger in the gall, lust in the members destined for generation, sadness in the spleen, love in the liver, etc. Hence concupiscence is called by the Apostle the law of the members (Romans 7:23). Furthermore, concupiscences war against the mind and the spirit. For, as the Apostle says in Galatians 5:17: "The flesh — that is, concupiscence — lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." These therefore are like two soldiers, or rather two leaders of war, who continually fight one another and lead out their soldiers to battle: namely, concupiscence leads out all the passions, sensations, imaginations, and members; the spirit leads out faith, hope, charity, and all the moral virtues, which contend with each individual concupiscence, as Prudentius graphically describes in the Psychomachia, that is, the battle of the soul. Finally, these concupiscences so war in the members that they dominate as to sudden and undeliberate acts, which precede reason and liberty; but as for human acts that are free and deliberate, they do not dominate: rather both they themselves and the members are subject to the will and free choice, by which they are governed not despotically, as a brute is governed by man, but politically, as a citizen is governed by a magistrate, whom he can contradict and resist. Hence the Apostle exhorts the faithful already baptized and justified in Romans 6:12, saying: "Let not sin therefore (the fomes of sin, namely concupiscence) reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin; but present yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice unto God: for sin shall not have dominion over you." See what is said there. Hence Laurence Giustiniani truly and wisely says in De Interiori Conflictu, ch. 8: "The whole discipline of the Christian profession is recommended not in the working of miracles, not in foretelling the future, not in elegant eloquence and the explanation of the Scriptures, but in cutting off concupiscences. How much one loves Christ, let him recognize in this spiritual struggle." And St. Augustine, in De Agone Christiano, ch. 2: "There then," he says, "are the visible powers hostile to us conquered, where the visible desires are conquered. And therefore those of us who in ourselves conquer the desires of temporal things must necessarily conquer in ourselves also him who reigns in man through those very desires. For when it was said to the devil: Earth shalt thou eat, it was said to the sinner: Earth thou art, and into earth shalt thou go. The sinner has therefore been given as food to the devil. Let us not be earth, if we do not wish to be eaten by the serpent."
Verse 2: You Covet, and Have Not; You Kill, and Envy, and Cannot Obtain
2. You covet, and have not. — He teaches that concupiscence, which stirs up quarrels and wars, is a restless evil that torments the soul with continual desire and thirst for the things coveted, and never fills and satisfies it. Again, that concupiscence stirs up quarrels and wars in order to claim the coveted thing for itself, but in vain: for the thing coveted is not to be procured by arms, but to be asked of God, the author and giver of all things. Concupiscence therefore raises in the soul nothing but the tumults of anger and quarrels, and these empty and fleeting; inasmuch as it cannot obtain the thing desired, and brings on itself the more anguish, fears, and sorrows.
"You covet" therefore "and have not." This can first be taken in the Hebrew manner for "because," as if to say: You covet because you do not have what you covet: by coveting therefore you signify that you are needy and wretched.
Second, "and" can be taken simply as a copulative word, as if to say: "You covet," and yet "you have not," you do not obtain what you covet; and this firstly, because you often covet things belonging to others and unlawful things, which you cannot acquire by right and lawful means, and often not even by injury and wickedness. Secondly, because concupiscence is insatiable; for having obtained what it coveted, it immediately covets another thing and another, without measure. We see this in merchants, who when they have made a hundred, desire a thousand, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a million, etc., according to that line:
"The more waters are drunk, the more they are thirsted for";
and in the ambitious: for he who aspires to be a senator, when he has obtained it, aspires to be a governor, then a Count, then a Duke, then a Prince, then a King, then an Emperor.
Third, because concupiscence is unstable: for when it has obtained the thing coveted, it grows weary of it and covets another: so the end of one concupiscence is the beginning of another, according to that of Lamentations 1:8: "Jerusalem hath grievously sinned, therefore is she become unstable," where I have given many causes of this instability. Seneca saw the same thing, in De Vita Beata, ch. 7: "Pleasure," he says, "when it most delights, then is extinguished. Nor does it have much room: and so it quickly fills and becomes wearisome, and withers after the first onset. Nor is anything ever certain whose nature is in motion. So nothing of that can have any substance which comes and passes most swiftly, perishing in its very use. For it arrives where it leaves off; and while it begins, it looks toward its end." The same, in book III De Beneficiis, ch. 3: "Always occupied with new desires," he says, "we do not look at what we have, but at what we seek: intent not on what is, but on what is sought. For whatever is at home is cheap." Therefore "you have not," because although you have, you do not consider yourselves to have; and because you covet something else, which in fact you do not have. The covetous person is therefore like a chameleon, which lives on the wind of its own desire, and does not enjoy the thing desired: and he is, as that one says, "a man of desires," but in another sense than Daniel 9:23.
Fourth, because the covetous person does not so much have the coveted thing as he is had and possessed by it, as by a master, indeed a tyrant. Hear Seneca, in De Vita Beata, ch. 14: "Moreover, they do not have pleasure, but pleasure has them; by whose lack they are tortured, or by whose abundance they are strangled. Wretched, if they are deserted by it; more wretched, if they are overwhelmed. Like men caught in the Syrtic sea, now they are left on dry ground, now they are tossed by the rushing wave." And soon after: "As we hunt wild beasts with toil and danger, and the possession of those captured is also anxious, for they often tear apart their masters: so those having great pleasures have ended up in great evil, and the captured have captured them; which the more and greater they are, the more diminished and the slave of many things is he whom the crowd calls happy, etc.; nor does he buy pleasures for himself, but sells himself to pleasures."
Fifth, because the life of the covetous is often spent almost entirely in the pursuit of the things they covet. "Some," says Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae, ch. 19, "while striving to the height of ambition, are left by their age while still struggling at the first steps. Some, when they have burst through to the consummation of their dignity through a thousand indignations (others read indignities), a wretched thought comes upon them that they have labored only for the inscription of a tomb. The extreme old age of some, while it is being arranged for new hopes as if it were youth, has failed, weak amid great and shameless efforts." It is chiefly of this concupiscence of ambition that James here speaks: for it stirs up countless tumults for itself, and quarrels and wars for others.
Sixth, because often the covetous person dares not use and enjoy the thing coveted; thus the miser heaps up wealth and lives sordidly, and does not dare to spend it, lest he diminish it. Therefore the wealth he has, in truth he does not have, but guards it for others to have. This is what the Wise Man says in Proverbs 13:7: "There is as it were one that is rich, when he hath nothing; and there is as it were one that is poor, when he hath great riches." Hence Democritus, as Hippocrates testifies in his second letter to Damagetus, used to laugh at the madness of men, that when they have not wealth they crave it; when they have it, they hide it; that they pervert all things to their own desire; that they are sick from all the affections; that they covet things which bring sadness and harm; and that they are therefore worse and more stupid than wild beasts, since these latter contain themselves within sufficiency. Finally, the Wise Man, Proverbs 30:15: "The horseleech hath two daughters that say: Bring, bring." The "sanguisuga" is the leech, which is so called from clinging (haerendo), according to that line:
"A leech that will not let go of the skin until full of blood."
Therefore the two daughters are the two mouths by which the leech sucks blood. Symbolically, the leech is concupiscence, especially avarice toward the poor, of which the Wise Man had immediately before been treating, which sucks the blood of the poor like a leech. This says: Bring gifts, that I may sell justice; bring presents, that I may sell favor, says Cajetan. Bede however says: The leech is the devil, whose two daughters who say "Bring, bring" are luxury and avarice. St. Bernard in his Declamation at the beginning: "Of one's own will," he says, "there are two insatiable daughters, the leeches, crying: Bring, bring. For neither is the soul ever satisfied with vanity, nor the body with pleasure." Flee this leech, and you have left all things behind. Truly Seneca, in book VIII De Beneficiis, ch. 26: "See," he says, "how the immense desires of men always gape and demand. You will not marvel that no one repays in a place where no one receives enough."
You kill. — The interpreter reads with the Syriac, Complutensian, and Royal editions φονεύετε, or φονεύετε. Others read φθονεῖτε, that is, you envy. So Cajetan, Clarius, Vatablus; for the faithful do not seem to have so envied their rivals as to kill them. But I reply that in so great a number of the faithful some had broken out into murders, just as they had broken out into heresies and schisms: and although the crime of these few, James here exaggerates and proposes as worthy of all to execrate. Again, "you kill," not in a completed act, but in an inchoate one, that is, you think of killing, you machinate murder. For envy and anger always grow, and at length break out into murders. Hence φόνος καὶ φθόνος, that is, envy and killing, are neighbors both in name and in reality and operation. Orators, when they attack a vice, are accustomed to recount and exaggerate its extreme and most grievous damages, though rare, in order to drive their hearers more strongly to hatred of the vice: so does James here, especially because he writes also to posterity, whom he foresaw would commit murders out of anger and envy, as we often see done now.
And you envy. — First, "and" is the same as "because," as I said a little before, as if to say: Because you envy, therefore you kill; otherwise indeed the discourse would be diminishing: for it is less of an evil to envy than to kill. Second, properly, as if to say: After you have killed, you go on to envy others, indeed to feel zeal: for "zeal" (zelus) signifies not just any sort of envy, but a vehement and sharp one, such as was in the fratricide Cain. Wherefore Eusebius, in book XI De Praeparatione, ch. 4, says that "Cain" is interpreted from the Hebrew as envy and zeal, from the root קָנָא kana, that is, to be zealous (whence the Apostle Simon is called Chananaeus, that is, zealot), although his mother Eve called him Cain, that is, possession, from the root קָנָה kanah, that is, he possessed, saying: "I have gotten a man through God" (Genesis 4:1). Doubtless this portended that the love of possessing in Cain would cause envy, envy slaughter, indeed parricide.
And cannot obtain, — that which you covet and on account of which you envy and kill. I gave the causes a little before.
You contend and war. — Whether and how much a quarrel differs from a war, I said at the beginning of the chapter.
Because (for that reason that; for in Greek it is διὰ τὸ μὴ αἰτεῖσθαι, that is, because) you ask not. — He signifies the cause why they do not obtain the thing coveted: namely, that they strive to seize it by quarrels and arms through injury, but do not ask it of God, who alone is the giver of all things.
Verse 3: You Ask, and Receive Not, Because You Ask Amiss
3. You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it on your concupiscences (in Greek ἡδοναῖς, that is, pleasures). — The Syriac: "that you may feed, nourish, pasture, and sustain them." This is an occupatio: for he meets the objection of those who covet and say: Behold, we have often asked of God the things we covet, and have not obtained them: in vain therefore do you admonish us to ask them of God, and not to seize them by quarrels and wars. St. James replies: You ask indeed, but you do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may abuse them against God for your own lust. Hear Bede: "He asks amiss of God," he says, "first, who, despising the commands of the Lord, desires heavenly benefits from the Lord. Second, who, having lost the love of heavenly things, seeks only to obtain the lowest goods. Third, and these things not for the sustenance of human fragility, but for the overflow of unrestrained pleasure; which is to wish to consume them in concupiscences." The way of asking rightly is that which Christ teaches in Matthew 6:33, saying: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you," things, that is, that are necessary for life, not for concupiscence: for God gives only good and salutary things, not evil and harmful ones, such as those by which concupiscence is satisfied. Therefore to those who ask for such things, God plainly stops His ears. For He hates those things, because they are base, and therefore He cannot bestow them; nor can the fountain of sweetness pour forth anything bitter, says Cyril, in book IX on John, ch. 43, and St. Augustine, tract 73 on John, and following him St. Bernard in the sermon Against the Vice of Ingratitude. "It is of mercy," he says, "sometimes to withdraw mercy; just as it is of anger and indignation to display mercy, as it was for the Hebrews who in their murmuring asked for flesh, to give it to them: for soon afterward the wrath and vengeance of God ascended upon them" (Psalm 77:30). Wherefore Cassian, Collation IX, ch. 23, teaches that wealth, honors, delights, power, strength, etc., are not to be asked of God. "For the founder of eternities," he says, "wills that nothing perishable, nothing base, nothing temporal be implored from Him. And so whoever, neglecting eternal petitions, would prefer to ask of Him something transitory and perishable, will inflict a most great injury on His magnificence and omnificence, and by the cheapness of his prayer will incur rather the offenses than the propitiation of his judge." Elegantly St. Gregory, in homily 27 on the Gospel, expounding that saying of Christ in John 14, "If you shall ask anything in My name": "The name," he says, "of the Son is Jesus: but Jesus means Savior, or also Salvific: he therefore asks in the name of the Savior, who asks that which pertains to true salvation, etc. Weigh, I beg, your petitions; see whether you ask in the name of Jesus, that is, whether you ask for the joys of eternal salvation. For you do not seek Jesus in the house of Jesus, if in the temple of eternity you pray importunately for temporal things. Behold, one in his prayer seeks a wife, another asks for a country house, another asks for a garment, another beseeches that food be given to him. And indeed when these things are lacking, they are to be asked of almighty God; but we ought to remember that we have received from the command of the same our Redeemer: Seek ye first the kingdom of God." He adds that some pray for things forbidden by God, such as the vengeance and death of an enemy, and says: "Whoever therefore prays thus fights against God in his very prayers; whence also under the figure of Judas it is said: Let his prayer become sin. Now prayer is sin when it asks those things which He Himself who is being asked forbids." Chrysologus, sermon 132: "He who asks evils of God," he says, "judges and senses God to be the author of evil."
The Gentiles ratified the same thing. Seneca, epistle 10, from Athenodorus: "Then," he says, "know that you are released from all desires, when you have arrived at the point where you ask nothing of God except what you can ask openly. For now, how great is the madness of men! They whisper the most shameful vows to the gods; if anyone brings his ear close, they fall silent; and what they do not wish a man to know, they tell to God." And soon after: "Live with men as if God saw you; speak with God as if men were listening." And Juvenal, satire 10:
"We must pray that there be a sound mind in a sound body; / Ask for a brave spirit, free from the fear of death, / That counts the last span of life among the gifts / Of nature; that can bear whatever labors, / Knows not how to be angry, desires nothing…"
Plato's prayer was: "Jupiter, give us good things, whether we ask them or not; but ward off evils, even if we ask them through error." For otherwise we seem to want to prescribe to God a law of being wise and of giving. But hear from Valerius Maximus about Socrates, book VII, ch. 2: "Socrates, as it were a kind of earthly oracle of human wisdom, judged that nothing further was to be asked of the immortal gods than that they should bestow good things: because they alone knew what was useful to each one: but we for the most part seek by our vows that which it would have been better not to obtain. For, O mortal mind wrapped in the densest darkness, into how widely-yawning an error do you scatter your blind prayers? You crave riches, which have been the ruin of many; you covet honors, which have undone many; you turn kingdoms over in your mind, whose outcomes are oftentimes seen to be wretched; you lay hold on splendid marriages, but as these sometimes give luster, so they not infrequently overturn houses from the foundations. Cease then, foolish one, to gape after the future causes of your evils as if after the most fortunate things, and commit yourself entirely to the decision of the heavenly ones: because those who easily bestow good things can also choose the most fitting."
Wherefore God shows His mercy when He denies the harmful things we ask; but His wrath when He grants and concedes them. "God does not hear many according to their will, in order that He may hear them according to their salvation," says Isidore, book III De Summo Bono, ch. 7; and St. Augustine, epistle 34 to Paulinus: "The Lord is good, who often does not grant what we wish, that He may grant what we should prefer." St. Bernard, sermon against the vice of ingratitude: "It is a matter of mercy, in this respect, that God withdraws His mercy." Finally St. Gregory, in book XV of the Morals, ch. 12: "It is a sign of greater wrath," he says, "when that is granted which is wickedly desired, and from this sudden vengeance follows: for the more quickly an evil vow is permitted to be fulfilled, the more quickly it is punished"; as God punished the Jews who coveted flesh, when by giving it to them, He immediately sent upon them the plague of death as a punishment (Numbers 11:33); and therefore the place was given the name "The Graves of Concupiscence."
Verse 4: Adulterers, Know You Not That the Friendship of This World Is the Enemy of God
4. Adulterers. — The Greek adds καὶ μοιχαλίδες, that is, "and adulteresses": for he reproves women as well as men. You will say: To call someone an adulterer is a grave reproach. I reply: It is a reproach when it is hurled at someone as a slur, to defame or dishonor him; but when it is thrown at someone to rebuke and correct him, that he may amend, it is a correction and discipline, which proceeds from love, not from hatred and anger. Such is this rebuke of James, just as that of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:7: "Brood of vipers"; and that of Christ in Luke, last chapter, verse 25: "O foolish and slow of heart to believe!" and that of Paul in Galatians 3:1: "O senseless Galatians"; and in Acts 13:10 to Elymas the Magician: "O full of all guile and of all deceit, son of the devil." For the hard are to be hardly reproved, as the Apostle commands Titus in chapter 1, verse 13. For just as long and stubborn diseases are cured only by burning, cutting, and the cautery, so too the love of the world — namely concupiscence, which is innate in all and which men follow like brute beasts — can be cured only by sharp rebuke and long mortification, as it were by chafing and cutting. Moreover, if it is permitted to parents and masters to flog their sons and disciples with rods and blows, much more is it permitted to chastise the same with sharper words; indeed, as St. Chrysostom says in homily 7 to the People: "Then most of all are they fathers, when they keep their sons from the table, inflict floggings on them, and visit them with disgrace."
You will ask, in what sense and by what truth he calls them "adulterers?" I reply: In the same sense in which idolaters are called adulterers by the Prophets, because, namely, having abandoned God, the spouse of their soul, they cling to idols as to adulterers; so these, having abandoned God their spouse, were clinging to the world as to an adulterer. For, as the Apostle says, II Corinthians 11:2: "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ." Or, what comes to the same thing, they are called adulterers because they were shamefully turning aside to the embraces of worldly wisdom, having despised the heavenly wisdom, which St. James shortly before celebrated; concerning which the Wise Man also says (chapter 8, verse 2): "I sought to take her for my spouse, and I became a lover of her beauty."
Morally learn here how we ought to hate and flee the world, namely as an adulterer: therefore the love of the world is a spiritual and mystical adultery, which is so much more grievous than the carnal and literal as God, who is here despised, is nobler than the man to whom the wife is betrothed. Therefore he who loves the world is truly an adulterer before God, and shall be punished as an adulterer. For all his loves are adulterous, which directly oppose the chaste love and charity of God, which is diffused through the Holy Spirit in our hearts. This is what Jeremiah thunders forth, rebuking the idolatrous Synagogue, in chapter 3, verse 2: "But thou hast prostituted thyself with many lovers." And Hosea 2:2: "Judge your mother, judge her: because she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her put away her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts." To this James here alludes; for the concupiscences of which he here speaks are the mystical fornications and adulteries of the soul: hence those who obey them against the law of God, are rather to be called sons of the devil, whom they imitate and follow, than of God, says St. Irenaeus, book IV, ch. 79. So St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Iambics, poem 3, calls riches a "harlot," because as a harlot now flatters this lover, now that, now another, and deludes and deceives all, so too do riches.
Second, others explain it thus: "Adulterers," that is, you appear as illegitimate, degenerate, and adulterous sons; because you love and worship not God your Father, but the adulterous world. So says Paul, Hebrews 12:8: "But if you be without chastisement, etc., then are you bastards" — in Greek νόθοι, that is, adulterous and spurious — "and not sons." But the prior sense is the genuine one: because in Greek it is μοιχοί, that is, adulterers, not νόθοι, that is, beastly and spurious.
Know you not. — This word has emphasis and stings sharply, as if to say: Are you so ignorant or do you not consider your sworn enemy — namely, the world — and rather think him a friend, who makes you enemies of your God? And truly the ignorance, thoughtlessness, and madness of men is astonishing, in that they follow and love the world at the eternal cost of God and of heavenly goods.
Because the friendship of this world is the enemy of God. — Some read more forcefully, "is enmity with God"; for if you read τὸ ἔχθρα with the Syriac with the paroxytone accent, it means "enmity": but if with others you commonly read it with the grave accent ἐχθρά, it means "enemy."
You will ask, what is the "friendship of the world?" First, some take it actively as that by which the world loves, cherishes, and exalts the wicked, but hates, depresses, and persecutes the upright (John 15:18).
Second, others better take "the friendship of the world" passively, namely as that by which the world is loved and worshipped by worldly men in preference to God, indeed with contempt for God's law. Whence James appositely adds: "Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God." Friendship with the world therefore is that by which one loves the goods of the world — wealth, honors, delights — so that on their account he transgresses God's law, or is prepared to transgress and to offend Him mortally. Likewise that by which one loves and cherishes worldly men — namely the proud, the rich, the powerful — so that to win or retain their favor he transgresses the precepts of God and of the Church. That this is so is clear from the fact that what he called concupiscences a little before, he here calls the world. Hence St. John, expounding this passage of James in an antistrophic sentence, says in his First Epistle, ch. 2, verse 15: "Love not," he says, "the world, nor the things which are in the world. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but of the world." Truly Seneca, epistle 84: "Leave," he says, "those things to which men run about; leave riches, the danger or the burden of those who possess them; leave the pleasures of body and mind: they soften and unnerve; leave ambition: it is a swollen thing, vain, windy, having no end; it is as anxious lest it see anyone before itself, as lest it see another after itself: it labors with envy, indeed with a double envy: you see however how wretched he is, if he whom another envies, also envies. Rugged is the way to the summit of dignity."
Wherefore, in a Christian and wise manner, Tertullian says: "In this world, nothing concerns us, except that we may depart from it as soon as possible." And St. Cyprian, in his book On the Habit of Virgins, ch. 2: "Let Christians know that those goods are good which are spiritual, divine, heavenly, which lead us to the Lord, which remain with us in everlasting possession with God. As for whatever earthly things have been received in the world and are to remain here with the world, they ought to be despised as much as the world itself is renounced, when by a better passing-over we come to the Lord." The same, in his treatise On Mortality: "Moreover," he says, "since the world hates the Christian, why do you love him who hates you, and not rather follow Christ who has redeemed you and loves you? Behold, the world totters and slips, and bears witness to its own ruin not by the old age of things, but by its end, etc. We must also consider, and again and again think upon, that we have renounced the world, and that we live here for the time being as guests and pilgrims." See St. Ambrose, in his entire book On the Flight of the World, who also in chapter 1 On the Form of Life of the Virgin urges with these words of James the virgin consecrated to God, that she should plainly flee the company of worldlings. And St. Gregory, homily 28 on the Gospels: "Behold," he says, "the world which is loved is fleeing; these saints (Nereus and Achilleus), at whose tomb we stand, trampled down the flourishing world by the contempt of their mind. Life was then long, health continuous, opulence in things, fruitfulness in offspring, tranquility in peace: and yet while it flourished in itself, the world had already withered in their hearts. Behold, now the world has withered in itself, and still flourishes in our hearts. Everywhere death, everywhere mourning, everywhere desolation, on every side we are smitten, on every side we are filled with bitterness; and yet with the mind blinded by carnal concupiscence, we follow its very bitterness itself, we follow it as it flees, we cling to it as it slips. And because we cannot hold back what is slipping, we slip together with the very thing we hold as it falls."
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, is constituted an enemy of God. — Therefore God and the world, the love of God and the love of the world, are contraries and antagonists, and deadly enemies. So Didymus here: "As," he says, "it is impossible to serve God and mammon, so to be a friend of God and at the same time of the world." And St. Augustine, book XIV On the City, ch. 28: "Two loves," he says, "have made two cities: the love of God, even to the contempt of self, made the city of Jerusalem; the love of self, even to the contempt of God, made the city of Babylon." Hence the Apostle, sounding the trumpet for the love of Christ: "But God forbid," he says, "that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." See what is said there; following whom as a master, St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Romans: "My love," he says, "is crucified." Wisely Richard of St. Victor, On the Degrees of Charity, ch. III: "The dove-like eye," he says, "of one truly devout is love, which is fixed by no concupiscence on the things granted to human use, but in transitory things contemplates the eternal." For truly Bede here: "All," he says, "lovers of the world, all seekers of trifles." St. Augustine (or whoever is the author), in his book On the Twelve Abuses, degree 7: "The love of the world," he says, "and of God cannot dwell together in one heart, just as the same eyes by no means look upon heaven and earth at once." St. Cyprian, in his epistle to Donatus: "The world smiles," he says, "that it may rage; it caresses, that it may deceive; it allures, that it may slay; it exalts, that it may cast down; with a kind of usury of harm, the greater has been the sum of dignity and honors, the greater is the interest of penalties exacted." Finally Sodom was the type of the world, full of all unspeakable crimes, which therefore was consumed by stars from heaven. Therefore as Lot, following the angel, escaped the burning of Sodom, so let us, following the grace of God, flee the perils and burnings of the world.
Note: For "is constituted," in Greek it is καθίσταται, that is, plainly and firmly constituted, namely always and unto all eternities, unless God in His infinite clemency catch the lover of the world rushing into hell, and call him back to Himself and to heaven.
Thus Theodore the Archimandrite, while still a boy, moved and stricken in conscience by this saying of James, despised the world and riches, as his Life relates; likewise St. Nicholas of Tolentino, having heard an Augustinian preacher discoursing on that text of St. John, I Epist. ch. I: "Love not the world," despising the world, embraced the monastic life of the Order of St. Augustine.
Verse 5: Do You Think That the Scripture Saith in Vain
5. Do you think? — In Greek it is ή, that is "or," and thus some codices read it. But ή, that is "or," is often the same as "whether" (an), as the Thesaurus of the Greek language teaches with many examples.
Because the Scripture saith in vain (uselessly, without cause). — What? Some answer: that which immediately preceded, namely that we should flee the friendship, laws, and company of the world, and seek after the grace and friendship of God: for this is what the Prophets and other books of sacred Scripture proclaim everywhere. So Bede. Others, with Oecumenius, refer it to what follows a little after: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." But others everywhere refer it to what immediately follows: "The spirit which dwells in you lusts unto envy," as if to say: God is zealous and as it were jealous over your soul, as over His spouse; whence He suffers no rival, namely the world: for to lust unto envy is the same as to be jealous. For he who is jealous so desires the loved object that he envies it to any rival, and desires alone to possess it, and suffers no one to be admitted to a share of love: but that God is zealous, is written Exodus 20:5; Nahum 1:2, and elsewhere. If you wish to claim more for St. James, namely that this saying recited by him is written precisely and in those very terms in the Scriptures, I confess that I do not know where it is so written, nor has anyone hitherto been able to point this out. Wherefore the punctuation, version, and exposition of Oecumenius seem novel and distorted. For he punctuates, translates, and explains thus: "Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, or unto envy?" as if to say: Do you think that the Scripture delivers to us precepts difficult and exceeding our strength concerning hatred of the world and concupiscence, because it envies us these things? You err: for it does not do this in vain or out of envy, but because "it desires" πνεῦμα in the accusative, that is, the spirit, namely the right (spirit), that is, good purpose and good will to stir up and dwell in you by His exhortation; and when He has found this operating in us through spiritual modesty, He gives greater grace. For all the others punctuate and translate differently; except Francis Lucas, Annotation 594, who follows Oecumenius.
Does the spirit which dwells in you lust unto envy? — Thus by way of question the Roman Codices and most others read this: yet some take away the question-mark and read assertively. Again others refer the question to the "do you think," others to the "the spirit lusts." Now some take "spirit" here as the human spirit, but in various senses. First, some, as if to say: The spirit of man given over to the world and lusting after the things of the world, harms itself and its own salvation and as it were envies them; but God bestows grace more abundantly than we ourselves desire. Second, as if to say: The human and worldly spirit drives us to lust after another's goods, and to envy these to others. So Lyranus, Hugo, and Thomas Anglicus. Third, Emmanuel Sa, as if to say: The spirit of man unto envy, that is, through envy, desires the goods of his neighbor. Fourth, others, as if to say: The spirit of zeal and fervor dwelling in us so lusts, that is, makes us lust after virtue and sanctity, that He stirs up in us a holy envy of equalling, nay surpassing those who run before us in the pursuit of virtue.
But others everywhere take the Spirit here as the divine Spirit and the Holy Spirit, and that better. For to Him alone belongs that which follows: "But He gives greater grace." First then Bede, among other expositions, brings forward this, as if to say: Do you think that the divine Spirit stirs us up to concupiscence and envy? You err if you think this: for He is the spirit of continence, charity, and concord, and "gives greater grace" than the goods and grace of the world which you covet: therefore he must be an evil spirit, who incites you to lust and envy. Second, the Gloss, as if to say: The Spirit of God desires and lusts that we should envy the world and pursue it with hatred. Third, Hugo, as if to say: The Spirit lusts unto envy, that is, against envy, namely that as a work of the devil it should be removed from the world. Fourth, our Justinian, as if to say: The Holy Spirit, with whom you have been imbued in baptism, lusts unto envy, that is, He is so disposed toward you, His worshippers and friends, and heaps you with such great gifts, that the lovers of the world may rightly envy you, according to that of Isaiah 65:13: "Behold, My servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry. Behold, My servants shall drink, and you shall thirst," etc. In this sense envy is attributed to worldlings, not to God, as happens in the other expositions, which therefore seem somewhat harsh. For nowhere else in Scripture is envy attributed to God, nor can it properly be attributed. Fifth, fittingly others, referring the question to the "the Spirit lusts," explain it thus: as if to say: Do you think that the Holy Spirit, dwelling in and governing you, is jealous over you, and envies you the friendship of the world, which would be to your benefit, that He alone may possess and enjoy your heart, as if some great good accrued to Him from this? As if to say: Far from it: nay rather, "He gives greater grace" than can be received or hoped for from the world; which however He denies to the lovers of the world, as being contrary both to Himself and to their own salvation. Wherefore it is written: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." So Francis Titelmann and Francis Lucas, Note 593. Sixth, Gagneius, Cajetan, Catharinus, Salmeron, Mariana, and Corinus, referring the question to the "do you think," hold that more significantly and forcefully envy is here attributed anthropopathically to the Spirit of God, that is, jealousy, which is attributed to God by the Prophets and Apostles, II Cor. 11:2; Exodus 20:5; Jeremiah ch. 2, and other places presently to be cited. For envy is sometimes taken in a good sense, as when we call the rivalry of two for virtue, and in striving forward, holy envy. Such also is that envy which envies riches and honors to vices and the vicious, which they themselves abuse against God for crimes. Such also is that of Pliny, book II, last epistle: "Why do you envy a good death to him to whom you cannot give a good life?" So God envies the world, that it allures and ruins souls (drawing them) from God to itself, which is indeed a holy envy. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Do you think, O Christians, that in the Scriptures God is called jealous over you in vain, and a hater of the world, and as it were envying it the possession of your heart, and that He desires it "unto envy," that is, with envy of the world, or so as to envy it to the world? He is not so called in vain. For He is in fact zealous, impatient of any consort: He does not suffer us to love others besides Himself, He does not bear us to love the world like adulteresses. Therefore God lusts after our heart like a jealous lover, and affects it with great zeal, and therefore grieves and as it were envies the world, because it allures to itself by enticements souls espoused to God. James proves what he said, namely that the friendship of the world is enmity with God, from this: that the Spirit of God so loves us that He alone wishes to be loved, nor suffers a rival. For He loves us as His most beloved spouses. Whence if we love another, namely the world, He is angry with us as with adulteresses. He burns therefore with love of us: if therefore at any time He denies us something we ask, He does not do this because He envies it to us — being one who loves us even unto envy — but lest it should hurt us, and turn us from His love to the love of the world.
Where note moreover how great is the love of the divine Spirit toward us: namely, with burning zeal He loves us, and wills to be loved by us with the same; and if He is not loved, He is indignant and rages like a she-bear meeting the robber of her cubs, Hosea 13:8. Excellently does St. Augustine establish and defend this zeal in God from Scripture, in his book Against Adimantus, ch. XIII: "Take away," he says, "error and grief from zeal, and what will remain besides the will guarding chastity, and avenging conjugal corruption? By what word therefore could it better be hinted than by the zeal of God? whereby we are called to a heavenly union with God, and He does not will us to be corrupted by base love; and He punishes our unchastity, and loves chastity. For it is not in vain that even popularly it is wont to be said: He who is not zealous, does not love." This therefore is the zeal of God which is holy, this is the holy envy. By similar figure and form there is attributed to God indignation, vengeance, fury against sinners who prefer the world to God: for govern fury by reason, as God governs it, and exercise it for justice, and you will be holy, and it will be not so much the fury of vengeance as the rigor of justice. So too St. Jerome on Zephaniah I: "Unless God," he says, "loved the human soul, He would never be zealous over it, and would not, after the manner of a husband, avenge the sin of love." Indeed St. Paul, II Corinthians 11:2: "I am jealous of you," he says, "with the jealousy of God: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ." Wherefore it becomes us, with a like step, since we cannot with an equal one, to meet this love of God, and to repay change for change and zeal for zeal, that calling away our whole heart and whole love from the creatures of the world, we may bestow them upon Him alone with the entire striving and ardor of the soul.
Thus did St. Agnes, who consecrated herself wholly to Christ as her spouse, and therefore drove away with indignation a most noble youth seeking marriage with her, and promising and giving all things, as a satellite of the devil with his gifts: "Depart from me," she said, "fuel of sin, nourishment of crime, food of death. Depart from me, because I have already been forestalled by another Lover, who has offered me ornaments far better than yours, and has pledged me with the ring of His faith, far more noble than you both in lineage and dignity. Whose nobility is loftier, whose power stronger, whose aspect more beautiful, whose love sweeter and more graceful in every grace: whose Mother is a Virgin, whose Father knows no woman, whose beauty Sun and Moon admire, by whose fragrance the dead come back to life. To Him alone do I keep faith, to Him I commit myself with all devotion. Whom when I shall love, I am chaste; when I shall touch, I am clean; when I shall receive, I am a virgin," as St. Ambrose relates, book IV, epistle 34. The same must be said by us to the world, the flesh, and the devil, when they tempt us, and strive to entice us away from Christ to themselves. Wherefore St. Agnes after death appearing to her parents with a choir of Virgins, in golden robes and shining with vast light, standing by the Lamb whiter than snow, said to them: "Rejoice with me and congratulate me, because together with all these I have received bright seats: to Him I am joined in heaven, whom while placed on earth I loved with the whole intention of my soul." So St. Ambrose. Similar is the bride in the Canticles, who everywhere breathes nothing but the ardor, languor, delights, and zeal of love: "Stay me up," she says, "with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, because love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell; the lamps thereof are lamps of fire and flames," Canticles 8:6, etc. And the Psalmist in the Epithalamium of Christ and the Church, or of the holy soul: "The queen," he says, "stood on Your right hand, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety. Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house: and the King shall greatly desire your beauty."
Moreover Christ was zealous over us even unto agony and bloody sweat. For while suffering and praying for us in the garden, He sweated copious blood from anguish not so much of pain as of love for us, and because while He loves us most, He is loved little by us, nay, is held in hatred by many. This His zeal toward us He sets forth everywhere in the Prophets, as Isaiah 9:6: "A little one," He says, "is born to us, etc. The zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this." And ch. 59 v. 17: "He was clad with zeal as with a cloak." Zechariah 8:2: "I have been jealous for Sion with great zeal, and with great indignation have I been jealous for her." Ezekiel 36:6: "Behold, I have spoken in My zeal and in My fury, because you have borne the confusion of the nations." And v. 5: "In the fire of My zeal I have spoken concerning the rest of the nations." Psalm 78:5: "Your zeal shall burn like fire." Wisdom 1:10: "The ear of zeal hears all things." Ezekiel 23:25: "I will set My zeal against you." Zephaniah 3:8: "With the fire of My zeal all the earth shall be devoured." To these places St. James here alludes. This zeal for God and in God's stead the guardian Angel of St. Cecilia showed. For of him she herself thus speaks to Valerian her bridegroom: "I would have you know that I have an Angel of God for a friend, who guards my body with the highest zeal. And if he were to suspect even the least that you should touch me with unchaste love, he would forthwith kindle his wrath against you, and would destroy the flower of your youth; but if he learns that you hold me with simple and immaculate love, and guard my virginity whole and unstained, he will love you as he loves me, and will show you his grace," as he in fact did, when visibly appearing to him he made him a Christian, a virgin, and a martyr.
Moreover piously and beautifully Chrysologus explains the most ardent zeal of the heavenly bridegroom Christ hanging on the Cross, and kindly calling adulterous souls to Himself, sermon 108: "He stretches forth His limbs, He dilates His bowels, He extends His chest, He offers His bosom. Does He not say: See in Me your body? and if you fear what is God's, why do you not love at least what is yours? if you flee the Lord, why do you not run back to the Parent? But perhaps the greatness of My Passion, which you have wrought, confounds you? Do not. These nails do not fix pain in Me, but they fix more deeply your charity in Me. My blood is not lost to Me, but yours is paid forward as a price." No less elegantly Bernard extols the charity both of the Holy Spirit and of Christ, epistle 197: "O twofold and most firm proof of the love of God toward us! Christ dies, and earns to be loved; the Spirit affects, and makes loved: the former does what causes Him to be loved, the latter that He may be loved: the former commends to us His great love, the latter both gives it: in the former we behold what to love, from the latter we take whence to love: the occasion of charity therefore is from the former, the affection from the latter."
Who dwells. — In Greek κατῴκησεν, that is "has dwelt," as if to say: Once in baptism the Spirit of God dwelt in you; but now in many of you He does not dwell, because you have fallen away from Him and love the world: nevertheless in the others, who persevere in the grace of baptism, He still dwells.
Verse 6: But He Giveth Greater Grace; God Resisteth the Proud and Giveth Grace to the Humble
6. But He gives more grace. — The Syriac: "but more excellent grace is given by our Lord given to us," namely the Holy Spirit shows the Spirit of God to love us unto envy, that is, most ardently and as it were jealously, and to lust after us, from this — that He gives far greater grace, gifts, and goods than the world (gives) and than we deserve, in order to tear us away from the love of the world, His rival, and to invite and almost compel us to His love. Therefore He envies the world, that giving few things, it is loved much: while He, giving infinite things, is loved little and scarcely by us. Again, He meets the objection of the worldly who say: The love of the world is so innate to us that we cannot cast it off. For He answers: God gives a greater grace than the love of the world, that through it you may easily conquer the love of the world and cast it out of your soul, if you are willing to submit yourselves to the grace of God and earnestly cooperate. For, as the Apostle says, Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me"; and: "God is able to do all things superabundantly above what we ask or understand," Ephesians 3:20. James alludes to that of Exodus 20:6: "Showing mercy unto thousands to them that love Me": just as in the "the spirit lusts unto envy," he alluded to the "I am the Lord your God, a strong jealous one." Ibid. v. 5.
Wherefore He says (this verse is missing in some Greek manuscripts; whence the Zurich and Pagninus omit it. But the Roman and several other Greek and Latin texts read it. He proves that the Spirit of God gives greater grace to those who love, reverence, invoke Him, and submit themselves wholly to Him, from this — that the Scripture and the Holy Spirit say): God to the proud (who, despising God, follow the world and the honors and pomps of the world) resists (or, as Cassian reads, book XII Inst. ch. VI, "opposes"; or, as Cyprian, epistle to Novatian, "sets Himself against"; the Syriac, "casts down, crushes"), but to the humble (who, despising the pomps and pride of the world, humbly submit themselves to the Spirit of God and obey in all things, and allow themselves to be led and ruled by Him in all things) He gives grace. — Now the Holy Spirit says this, Proverbs 3:34; for there we read: "He shall deride the deriders, and to the meek He shall give grace." The Septuagint, whom in their custom St. James here, and St. Peter I epistle ch. V, cite and follow, translates: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." For the deriders are the proud, and the meek are the humble.
Counter-strophes to this saying of James are had from all the sacred writers, that so this most true doctrine, yet obscure and difficult in practice, may be impressed upon us by so many concordant witnesses. The first is David's, Psalm 17:28: "You will save the humble people, and will humble the eyes of the proud." The second, Solomon's, Proverbs 29:2 and 3: "Humility follows the proud man, and glory shall uphold the humble of spirit." The third, Isaiah ch. 2 v. 12: "The day of the Lord shall be upon every one that is arrogant and proud." And ch. 66:1: "To whom shall I have regard, but to the poor little one and contrite of spirit, and him that trembles at My words?" The fourth, of Anna, mother of Samuel: "The bow of the mighty has been overcome, and the weak are girt with strength. He raises up the needy from the dust, and lifts up the poor from the dung-heap, that he may sit with princes, and hold the throne of glory." The fifth, Judith 9:16: "Nor have the proud from the beginning pleased You, but the prayer of the humble and meek has always pleased You." The sixth, of the Virgin Mother of God: "He has put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty," Luke 1:51. Let a seventh be added, one of the Seventy interpreters of sacred Scripture, who being asked by Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, by what method one could guard against pride, answered: "If he consider that God casts down the proud, but exalts the meek and humble." Finally, all the pages of the divine volumes everywhere breathe this sentiment, says St. Augustine, book III On Christian Doctrine, ch. XXIII. Wherefore appositely Isidore of Pelusium, book I, epistle 164, admonishes Martyrius, saying: "God resists the proud: for from the beginning He set Himself against their prince. Consider therefore how much it is, both to have God as enemy and adversary, and the old enemy as a companion."
The causes are many. The first, because as the root of every sin and evil is pride, Sirach ch. 10 v. 15: so the root and fount of every good and virtue is humility.
The second, because the proud man is a swollen vessel filled with the wind of arrogance, and therefore incapable of grace: but the humble is a lowered and empty vessel, and therefore capable of grace and of the divine liquor. Therefore as rain descends from the hills into the valleys, so grace rains down from heaven upon the humble.
The third, because God is jealous of His own glory: whence He casts down the proud who seek it, and lays them low in hell, but exalts the humble who adore it, to grace and glory. Again, humility deserves to be enriched and exalted, pride to be despoiled and depressed. As therefore the shadow flees from him who follows it, but follows him who flees: so honor flees from the proud who follow it ambitiously; but follows the humble who flee from it.
The fourth, because grace is grace and is given gratuitously, and only to those who (receive) gratuitously, such as the humble, who give thanks for it; not to the proud, who attribute it to their own strength and merits.
The fifth, because the loftiness and magnificence of kings, and especially of God, demands that of Virgil, Aeneid, book VI:
"To spare the subjected, and to subdue the proud."
Finally, humility is the proper virtue of Christ and of Christianity, according to that of Matthew 11:29: "Learn from Me, because I am meek and humble of heart"; so St. Bernard, treatise On the Degrees of Humility. Whence humility is so powerful that it resists God, according to that: "He said that He would destroy them, if Moses His chosen had not stood in the breach in His sight." For the breaking of the heart is humility, the queen of the virtues, which conquers God by its reverence, says Rupert, book IV on Exodus, ch. XXVI.
Wherefore St. Chrysostom, homily 20 on the Epistle to the Romans, says that pride is the highest folly and madness, and nothing is more insane than the proud man. For what is more insane than to resist God, and to wish to wage war with God like the giants? What is more insane than to deprive and despoil oneself voluntarily of the favor, grace, and help of God, on whom all things depend? What is more insane than to have, not a man, not an angel, not a demon, but God as antagonist and enemy, and to provoke to combat Him who thunders and lightens against the proud? Whence St. Jerome, epistle 43: "What kind of evil," he says, "must that be, which has God as adversary!" For the proud man by his pride as it were challenges God, and provokes Him to single combat. Whence God, the jealous one, accepts it, and says: Mine is this antagonist, mine this duel: here are My powers to be put forth, here a new Lucifer to be trampled. So Cassian, book XII On the Institutions of Renunciation, ch. VII.
Whence St. Ambrose, sermon 7 on Psalm 118, having spoken of pride: "What," he says, "can be worse than this sin, which began from injury to God? and therefore the Scripture says: God resists the proud, James 4:6. As if a repeller of His own insult, He has taken up as it were a special combat against pride; as if to say: This is My adversary, who provokes Me; this contest is owed to Me."
Wisely therefore St. Fulgentius, epistle 6, ch. IX: "Let humility of soul," he says, "grow in you, which is the true and entire sublimity of the Christian; and so much the more shall you know the grace of God growing in you, by how much you see humility of heart abounding in you." And St. Augustine, sermon 16 On the Martyrs: "Loftiness," he says, "do you seek? through the valley one comes to the mountain. The seat of brightness do you seek? first drink the chalice of humility." The same, sermon 3 On the Words of the Lord: "Christ was seized, beaten, crucified, and slain. This is the way. Walk by humility, that you may come to eternity. Christ as God: He is the fatherland whither we go; Christ as man: He is the way by which we go. To Him we go, through Him we go. What do we fear lest we err? He has not departed from the Father, and has come to us: He sucked the breast, and contained the world: He remained in the manger, and fed the angels, the God-Man. The same man who is God, the same God who is man." The same, sermon 8 On the Epiphany: "The whole," he says, "discipline of Christian wisdom consists not in abundance of word, not in subtlety of disputing, nor in appetite for praise and glory, but in true and voluntary humility, which the Lord Jesus Christ, from the womb of His Mother to the punishment of the Cross, chose and taught above all strength." The same, epistle 65 to Dioscorus, teaches that there is no other way to truth than humility; and as Demosthenes said that the whole force of eloquence consists in pronunciation, so the whole force of Christianity consists in humility.
The Gentiles saw the same. Aesop, when asked by Chilon, "what then God did," answered: Τὰ ταπεινὰ ὑψοῖ, τὰ ὑψηλὰ ταπεινοῖ, that is, He exalts the humble, He humbles the lofty; so his Life has it. Artabanus, dissuading Xerxes from the expedition against the Greeks, says that God smites with lightning lofty trees, towers, and mountains, but preserves and protects the humble; that He levels great and proud camps with small forces, nor allows any besides Himself to think loftily. So Herodian, book VII. Truly the Tragedian: "God the avenger follows the proud from behind."
Moreover St. Basil, oration 17 On Humility, assigns these signs and effects of humility: "He," he says, "who is endowed with the highest modesty, and who when he is afflicted with insults, confesses himself to be far inferior to what is said, no insults will ever strike or trouble his mind: but if he is called destitute, he knows himself to be destitute, and in need of all things, and to have need of the daily supply of the Lord. And if he hears himself called ignoble and born in an obscure place, he has long before perceived in his mind that he has been fashioned from clay." And presently: "Now there follows a humble mind a somewhat sad and downcast look, a neglected appearance, dishevelled hair, soiled clothing, yet so that these things seem to come about by chance and accident, which mourners do on purpose."
Verse 7: Be Subject Therefore to God; Resist the Devil, and He Will Flee From You
7. Be subject therefore to God, — ὑποτάγητε, that is, be subordinated; the Syriac, "be servants": for the right order of nature demands that the creature be subordinated and serve its creator. "Therefore serve God," that you may obtain the grace and friendship of God. For, as I have said, "God gives grace to the humble." Wherefore the Psalmist, Psalm 61:2: "Shall not," he says, "my soul be subject to God? for from Him is my salvation. For He is my God and my Savior, my upholder, I shall be moved no more."
Resist (ἀντίστητε, that is, stand against, oppose yourselves, withstand; the Syriac, "rise up against him") the devil, — who, as it were king over all the sons of pride, as Job says ch. 41 v. 25, solicits you to pride, and to seeking after the pomps of the world. But we cannot resist a sharper and longer temptation without new aid of the grace of God, as the Doctors teach from St. Augustine. Therefore before all things the grace of God must be assiduously invoked, and when the victory is gained, we must ascribe it not to our own strength, but to God's. "For indeed that we may resist the devil and he may flee from us, we therefore in praying say: Lead us not into temptation," says St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace, ch. LVIII.
And he will flee from you. — If you resist a man assaulting you, you do not on that account put him to flight and conquer him: but if you resist the devil, you put him to flight and conquer him. In your power therefore, and easy to you, is the victory over him: because, as St. Augustine says, homily 12, among the 50, "The devil can persuade and solicit, he absolutely cannot compel; and therefore since by God's help it is in your power whether you consent to the devil, why should not God rather than he be obeyed, so that St. James, the brother of God, cries out: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Thirdly, St. Chrysostom, sermon 3 On Lazarus, compares the devil to a dog, which stays at the table as long as something is thrown to him from there; if nothing is thrown to him, indeed if he is driven away strongly with a stick, he flees, nor rashly returns. The same, homily 22 to the People: "To a dog," he says, "is pleasure like: if you drive it away, it flees; if you nourish it, it remains." Fourthly, the devil is like a soldier who pursues fugitives more sharply, as cowards and unwarlike; so St. Bernard, epistle 1 to Robert, who had fled from Cîteaux to Cluny: "Or do you think," he says, "because you fled from the line of battle, that you have escaped the hands of the enemies? More gladly does the adversary pursue you fleeing, than he sustains you resisting; and he presses more boldly from behind, than he withstands you face to face." Wherefore wisely St. Cyprian, sermon On Zeal and Envy: "So ready," he says, "to fight back ought the mind always to be, as the enemy is always to attack."
Morally: St. Gregory notes, book III Mor., ch. VIII, that the more strongly the devil is conquered, the more ardently is he stirred up to ambushes, that he who has been overcome by strength may conquer by ambushes and tricks. Whence Cassian, book V Inst., ch. XIX, admonishes the athlete of Christ, that the more he has grown by the successes of his triumphs, the more should he expect a stronger order of struggles to follow. Hence as foxes lie down as if dead, that they may allure and devour the hens as if secure: so the demon also at times feigns to flee as if vanquished, that he may suddenly invade and overthrow a man as if secure of victory: just like Horatius, the sole survivor of the three, fleeing, killed the three Curiatii one after another, and thus secured for the Romans dominion over the Albans. And Antigonus, retreating before his enemies, said he was not fleeing, but pursuing his advantage from behind, as Plutarch testifies in the Apophthegms. Finally, the devil more infests the holier ones, and more lays snares for them, since he sees that they are more unlike himself and more like God, and he envies them; for he neglects sinners as being like himself, since he possesses them. Again, the demon once conquered and put to flight, returns again and again to tempt us, just as he returned to Christ, Matthew 4:5 and 8. Yet if he is strongly and constantly repelled, he does not so easily and quickly return to tempt us, at least with the same kind of temptation, lest he again be conquered and put to shame. Whence St. Ambrose on ch. 4 of Luke: "He is wont to yield," he says, "to true virtue, and although he does not cease to envy, yet he fears to press on: because more often he shrinks from being triumphed over."
Wherefore our holy Father Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises compares the devil, first, to a wanton woman, who impotently lords it over and insults a timid man, but stands in awe of a bold man, and silently submits to him. Secondly, St. Gregory, book V Moralia, ch. XVII, and Olympiodorus, and others expounding that of Job ch. 4 v. 11, "The tiger has perished, because it had no prey"; where instead of "tiger," the Septuagint translates μυρμηκολέων, that is, "ant-lion": The Devil, they say, is the ant-lion, who in the presence of the pious and constant who resist him is most timid like an ant; but to the impious and inconstant who yield to him, he stands terrible like a lion. So too Theodore Studites, epistle 68: "Timid," he says, "is the devil, rejected, unwarlike, and therefore by a certain spirited courage to be driven far away, so that for this reason St. James the brother of God cries out: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
Moreover the devil "attacks us by our own desires," says St. Basil, homily 23. And, as St. Ambrose says, book I On Cain and Abel, ch. V: "He delights the eyes, soothes the ears, but defiles the mind; he tells many lies, adds falsehoods, withdraws truths; he promises money, offers gold, but takes away discipline." Besides this, it is the cunning of the devil, that he attacks us in the part in which we are weaker; just as a general attacks the citadel in the part in which it is weaker, says St. Gregory, Mor. XXXI, ch. XVII, otherwise XXX, who also adds: "The crafty adversary tries to strike at the same time, both openly raging and lurking in ambushes, etc. For often he proposes a temptation of lust, and suddenly more fraudulently ceasing, suggests pride about chastity preserved. And there are some, who, while they see many fall from the citadel of chastity into the pit of pride, neglecting the chastity of their life are plunged into the uncleanness of lust. And there are on the contrary some who, while they flee the uncleanness of lust, through the summit of chastity rush into the abyss of pride." Wherefore we must always be vigilant, and always ready for combat, and immediately resist a temptation as it arises; for, as the same says Mor. XXI, ch. VII: "If a temptation rising in the heart is not resisted swiftly, by the very delay by which it is nourished, it is strengthened; and arising outwardly in works hardly prevails to be conquered, who inwardly holds captive the mind itself, the mistress of the members."
Verse 8: Draw Nigh to God, and He Will Draw Nigh to You; Cleanse Your Hands and Purify Your Hearts
8. Draw near to God (not by steps of the body, but of the heart and mind, that is, by affections), and He will draw near to you. — You will ask, by what way do we draw near to God? I answer, first, by withdrawing from the devil and resisting him, as was said before: for God and the devil are two extremes most opposed, and two enemies most hostile to each other; whence the more you withdraw from the one, the more you approach the other opposite; thus Origen, book IV on the epistle to the Romans, chapter 5: War against the devil, he says, prepares peace toward God; and we draw near to Him when we resist the devil. On the contrary, the Apostles drew near to Christ, with Peter saying: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life," John 6:69.
Furthermore, not only sinners through mortal sin, but also the just through venial sins distance themselves to some extent from God, especially through tepidity and torpor, when they grow lukewarm in good works and in zeal for advancing: but they draw near to God when they wash away their failings with tears, resume fervor, diligently apply themselves to good works, and strive after perfection. Now, since manifold negligence creeps upon us daily, hence we have need of its constant purgation and the stirring up of the mind, as St. Leo teaches, sermons 8 and 11 On Lent.
Note: God draws near to the penitent and to the fervent just through a manifold operation and effect, which Thomas Anglicus assigns as fourfold. The first, he says, is the illumination of the mind in regard to things to be known, as when the blind man was enlightened by Jesus, Luke 18:40. The second is instruction in regard to things to be done, according to Deuteronomy 33:3: "All the Saints are in His hand: and they who approach His feet shall receive of His doctrine." The third is the recovery of divine grace, namely of justice, either of the first or of an increase of it. The fourth is the delight of inner joy, which is called a hymn to all the Saints of God, to the people drawing near to Him, Psalm 148:14. "Thou art good, O Lord, to the soul that seeks Thee, what then to the one finding Thee? Thou wishest therefore to be found that Thou mayest be sought, to be sought that Thou mayest be found," says St. Bernard, On Loving God. And the Psalmist, Psalm 83: "Blessed is the man whose help is from Thee; he hath disposed in his heart ascents, in the vale of tears, in the place which he hath set."
Second, by humbling ourselves: for God gives grace to the humble, as was said before; thus St. Augustine, sermon 2 On the Ascension: "See, brethren," he says, "a great miracle. God is on high: lift up yourself, and He flees from you; humble yourself, and He descends to you. Why? Because He is exalted and regards lowly things, and the high — that is, the proud — He knows from afar, that He may cast down"; thus Hugh: By humility, he says, and good works we ought to draw near to God, "as to mercy, as the naked to the rich man, as the famished to bread, as the sick to the physician, as servants to the master, as disciples to the teacher, as the blind to the light, as the cold to the fire."
Third, by purifying ourselves from sins through penitence. Whence, as if explaining this, St. James adds: "Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts"; for the more we recede from sin and impurity, the more we approach virtue, purity, and God, according to Psalm 33:15: "Decline from evil, and do good." Thus the Council of Trent, session VI, chapter 6, teaches that the sinner approaches God through acts of faith, fear, hope, love, contrition, and the resolution of a new life; according to Zechariah 1:3: "Be converted to Me, and I will be converted to you." Thus the penitent Magdalene approached the feet of Jesus, watering them with tears, kissing and anointing them, Luke 7.
Fourth, by loving God and performing works of charity. For love joins the lover to the beloved, indeed transforms him into the beloved. Whence St. John, 1st epistle, chapter 4, verse 16: "God," he says, "is charity, and he who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him"; and the Wise Man, Proverbs 8:17: "I love them that love Me, and they that early watch for Me shall find Me"; and the Apostle, Romans 8:35: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Shall tribulation? or distress?" etc. Truly love is the magnet of love: love draws love, as the magnet draws iron.
Fifth, by prayer and by zeal for perfection; thus Origen, hom. 1 on Genesis: Just as, he says, the eyes of the body are not illuminated equally by the sun, but the more so the higher one ascends to loftier places, so the mind, the more loftily it draws near to Christ, the more clearly is it irradiated by His light; according to Psalm 33:6: "Come ye to Him, and be enlightened." But properly we draw near to God when, as obedient servants, friends, and sons, we offer ourselves and all that is ours to God as the supreme Lord of all, as friend and father; and we say with the Psalmist: "But it is good for me to adhere to God," Psalm 72:28. For on the contrary God complains of certain people, saying in Isaiah 29:13: "This people draws near with their mouth, and with their lips glorify Me; but their heart is far from Me"; and Jeremiah 9:2: "Thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins." Plotinus the Platonic philosopher saw this through a shadow, in Ennead 6, book 9, chapter 7, when he says: "We must separate the soul from all external things as from burdens and obstacles, that it may be illuminated by God. For just as prime matter must be empty of all forms, that it may thus receive the figures of all things, so the soul of man must be formless, that it may be conveniently informed by God."
Furthermore, we draw near to God not by the pure powers of nature and free will, as if by them we prepared ourselves to receive God's grace, as the Semipelagians contended, making grace the handmaid of free will; but we are prevented and aroused by God's grace. For this is the leader and beginning of our conversion and approach to God, as the Council of Trent defines, session VI, chapter 5. And Christ Himself, Apocalypse 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man shall hear My voice and open the door to Me, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." And the Psalmist, Psalm 58:11: "His mercy shall prevent me." And Christ expressly asserts in John 6:44: "No man can come to Me, except the Father who has sent Me draw him." Truly St. Jerome on chapter 2 to the Ephesians: "Without the blood (that is, the merit of the blood) of the Lord Jesus, no one draws near to God."
And He will draw near to you. — Since God is everywhere, He is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live, and move, and are, as the Apostle says, Acts 17:28. He therefore draws near to no one locally and substantially, but accidentally through grace, and causally through the working of the virtues. For just as a sinner recedes from God through sin and draws near to the devil, to death, and to hell, so the same person through penitence and good works draws near to God. Thus Cain, after killing his brother, wandered as a fugitive in exile from God, Genesis 4:12. And the prodigal son went into a far country, Luke 15:13. But, as St. Augustine rightly notes, Confessions book 4, chapter 9: "He who, by losing, dismisses God, flees from Him appeased to Him angered."
By the imitation of the virtues of Christ and the Saints, who drew most closely to Christ; for in these consists our approximation to God: thus Bede and Anselm.
Cleanse your hands — from all rapine, strife, lust, gluttony, and every sin. For by "hands" he understands metonymically every outward work: for this is done and perpetrated by the hands; just as by "hearts" he understands the inward work. "Hands" therefore signify outward actions, the heart inward affections, as if to say: Purify your hearts from every depraved thought, scheming, and delight, and likewise your hands from every depraved work, so that you neither do nor will anything evil. He alludes to Psalm 23:3: "Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? The innocent in hands and clean of heart." So Paul commands those praying to lift up to God pure hands, 1 Timothy 2:8: see what is said there. As a symbol of this thing, priests and the faithful before holy communion wash their hands, that they may attest that they repent of the faults committed by the hands; for, as Bede says: "This is for us truly to draw near to the Lord, namely to have cleanness of work and simplicity of heart."
And purify (Syriac, "sanctify") your hearts, — minds and souls. He says this first, against the Jews, who placed all purification in external ceremonies, whereas Christ and Christianity place chief holiness in the purity of heart and mind. Second, to teach how they ought to cleanse the hands, that is, the works, namely by purifying their fountain and root, that is, the heart. For, as Christ says: "From the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies: these are the things that defile a man," Matthew 15:19.
Just as physicians, therefore, cure the external diseases of the limbs by purging the internal corrupt humors of the inward parts which cause them, so the mind of the faithful must be purged, so that the filth of the hands, that is, of the works, flowing thence may be purged away. Wherefore St. Paul, 1 Timothy 1:5: "The end of the commandment," he says, "is charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith."
Double-minded. — In the Psalms they are called "of a double heart," who hide one heart, as it were, in their inward parts, and show another in their hands and works. In Greek δίψυχοι, that is, two-souled, inconstant, who now desire and will this, now that; whence the Syriac translates "divided" or "doubtful in mind"; see what is said on chapter 1, verse 8. Excellently Nyssen: "I call a mind simple and of one mode," he says, "that which is observed only in the good, and is mixed with the communion of no evil." And Cicero, in the book On Old Age: "The soul," he says, "freed from all admixture of the body, desires to be pure and entire."
Verse 9: Be Afflicted, and Mourn, and Weep; Let Your Laughter Be Turned Into Mourning
9. Be afflicted, — ταλαιπωρήσατε, that is, "afflict yourselves," or "be afflicted," both by inward sorrow and compunction of mind, and by external afflictions of the body, such as fasts, prayers, lying on the ground. The Syriac: "be made humble." He teaches that the way to cleanse hands and hearts, and so to draw near to God, is penitence, compunction, affliction, by which we not only acknowledge and confess the miseries of our soul, but also lament them, punish, chastise, and root them out through pains and miseries, partly of this life patiently endured, partly voluntarily and willingly undertaken.
"Be afflicted" therefore, first, by humbly acknowledging your misery; second, by lamenting and chastising the misery of fault and sin; third, by patiently bearing the miseries of this life; fourth, by redeeming the eternal miseries and torments of hell through small and brief penances; fifth, by bravely sustaining temptations and persecutions with Christ; sixth, by sympathizing with the calamities of others; seventh, by passing eagerly through the labors of the present life to eternal joys; eighth, by sighing from the miseries of this pilgrimage and exile toward Christ and heaven. Whence Thomas Anglicus enumerates eight miseries of this life, namely those of original fault, of actual sin, of innate frailty, of worldly poverty, of human persecution, of diabolical temptation, of eternal calamity, of salutary penitence. We are therefore here in a vale of tears and miseries, and therefore we ought to pity ourselves, to groan and to lament, according to that of Ecclesiastes 7:5: "The heart of the wise is where there is sorrow, and the heart of fools where there is gladness." Moreover, Seneca in his Consolation to Polybius says: "Abundant," he says, "and continuous matter for weeping is everywhere. Tears will fail us before the cause for grieving does." Therefore Heraclitus was always weeping over his own misery and that of mankind; Democritus, on the other hand, by perpetually laughing, mocked their foolish and stupid mirth and laughter amid such great miseries.
St. Bernard, in Sermon 3 On the Nativity, cleverly gathers from Christ's example: "He is the little child once promised through Isaiah, knowing how to reject evil and choose good; therefore evil is the pleasure of the body, good is affliction: for indeed He chose the latter and rejected the former." Now as to the obtaining of pardon for sins, Nazianzen affirms emphatically in Oration 18, page 490: "For God is reconciled by no other means so much as by the affliction of the body." And the Blessed Virgin Mary affirmed to St. Elizabeth, according to Bonaventure in the Life of Christ, chapter 3: "Hold for certain that no grace descends upon a soul except through prayer and bodily affliction."
Sermon on the Mount. Those are more blessed who mourn and weep over their own sins or the sins of others. So say SS. Chrysostom, Ambrose, Hilary, and Jerome on Matthew 5. Most blessed are those who, on account of the sorrow of the struggle they have with the flesh, the world, and the devil, and on account of the desire for the heavenly homeland and the love of God and Christ, mourn this their exile in the body. So Nyssen, Oration 3 On the Beatitudes. Such a mourner was Paul, saying: "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Romans 7:24; and: "Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ," Philippians 1:23. See what is said there. Such also was David, saying: "My tears have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily: Where is thy God?" Psalm 41:4. And Jeremiah throughout the Lamentations, and especially chapter 2, verse 18: "Bring down," he says, "tears like a torrent day and night: give thyself no rest, and let not the apple of thine eye cease." Such were the ancient anchorites, whose mourning Climacus relates in step 7, where he thus defines holy mourning: "Mourning according to God is a sadness of soul, an affection of an afflicted heart, always most ardently seeking that which it thirsts for; that which it does not obtain, it pursues with the highest labor, and mourning, wails after it." Then he assigns to mourning partly its signs, partly its effects. "It belongs to those who are advancing in blessed mourning to have continence and silence of the lips. To those who have already advanced, not to be angry, and to forget injuries entirely. To those who are perfect and consummated, profound humility of soul, thirst for ignominy, a spontaneous hunger for vexations coming against the will, no condemnation of sinners but compassion beyond their strength." And then he conveys the practice of mourning: "Stand trembling in the prayer of supplication, just as one standing before a judge, that by both inner and outer demeanor you may obtain the favor of the just Judge," etc.
Among the ancient mourners, St. Ephrem excelled, who is wholly in compunction and mourning, as is evident from all his works, and especially in the treatise On Compunction: "O virtue of tears," he says, "which art the medicinal workshop of sinners, through thee sinners are made blessed." And: "Mourning wipes the soul with tears and makes it clean, cuts off pleasures and perfects virtues." And St. Bernard, sermon 16 on the Canticle: "I am terrified," he says, "of Gehenna; I tremble at the teeth of the infernal beast, and at the belly of hell, at those that roar prepared as food; I shudder at the gnawing worm and the burning fire, the smoke and vapor, the sulphur and the spirit of storms; I shudder at the outer darkness. Who will give water to my head and to my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may forestall by weeping the weeping and the gnashing of teeth?" And St. Augustine pathetically in his Meditations, chapter 36: "Give me, O Lord," he says, "the upper watering and the lower watering, that my tears may be my bread day and night. Grant me this grace for Thy sake, that as often as I think of Thee, speak of Thee, write of Thee, as often as I remember Thee, stand before Thee, offer praises, prayers, and sacrifice, with tears bursting forth I may weep abundantly and sweetly in Thy sight, so that my tears may be made my bread day and night," etc.
And St. Laurence Justinian in The Tree of Life, IX: "O humble tear!" he says, "thine is the power, thine the kingdom; thou dost not fear the tribunal of the judge, thou imposest silence on the accusers of thy friends. What more? Thou conquerest the unconquerable, thou bindest the Almighty, thou bendest the Son of the Virgin, thou openest heaven, thou puttest the devil to flight."
And mourn and weep. — The Syriac, אתאבלו etabbelu, that is, mourn after the manner of Abel, who, having suffered persecution and been killed by his brother Cain, bears the type of those who mourn, just as Cain of those who rejoice: hence Abel, Hebrew הבל Habel, means "vanity" or "mourning" (from the root אבל aval, that is, "he mourned." For the Hebrews often interchange ה with ר), as Origen says in tract 26 on Matthew, and St. Augustine, Book 18 of The City of God, chapter 15. The causes of mourning are the eight miseries already enumerated. Hence Beda explains thus, as if to say: "Do not enrich yourselves and rejoice in this world, but mindful of the crimes you have committed, rather take care of this, that through the brief miseries of this life, poverty, and transitory lamentation, you may attain to the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom." And St. Augustine on this passage of James: "Indeed this region is the region of scandals, of temptations, and of all evils, that we may groan here and deserve to rejoice there; be afflicted here and consoled there, and say: Because Thou hast delivered my eyes from tears, my feet from falling; for I shall please the Lord in the land of the living; in the land of the dead is labor, sorrow, fear, tribulation, groaning, and sighing." Christians therefore in this life ought to have mourning and sorrow, not laughter and joy; but they await that joy in heaven. On the contrary, infidels and the impious may rejoice here for a little while, but in Gehenna they will wail forever, according to the saying of Christ: "Woe to you that laugh, for you shall weep," Luke 6:25; and: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," Matthew 5. Therefore this holy mourning is opposed to laughter and laughers, and to joy and to all who flow in happiness, whom the world applauds as blessed, but on whom Christ pronounces woe; truly mourners are pronounced blessed. Note here three degrees of this beatitude: For blessed are those who patiently endure mournful adversities sent or permitted by God, says St. Augustine.
He returns to what was said in verses 6 and 7 about humility; and because humility is the daughter of true mourning, with which he dealt in the preceding verse. "For he who weeps is not proud; he who mourns is humbled," says St. Ambrose, Book 5 on Luke. For there are some who falsely and feignedly mourn, namely, those who while they lament, are proud and grumble against their neighbor or against God, says St. Gregory, Book 9 of the Morals, chapter 19, otherwise 28.
"Let your laughter (with which you have laughed in gentilism, rejoicing in feasts, jests, foolish talking, scurrility, and indulging in every base pleasure) be turned into mourning" of penance and of a graver and more severe Christian life; according to that saying of Christ: "The world shall rejoice, but you shall be made sorrowful; but your sorrow shall be turned into joy," etc., and: "your joy no one shall take from you," John 16:20; and that of Apocalypse 7:17: "God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." And Psalm 125, verse 5: "Going they went and wept, casting their seeds: but coming, they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves." And Psalm 136, verse 1: "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Sion." Where in passing St. Augustine says: "The rivers," he says, "of Babylon are all the things which are loved here and pass away." Do you love honors, riches, delights? You love the rivers of Babylon, that is, of confusion, which pass away most swiftly like rivers. "Other citizens therefore of holy Jerusalem, understanding their captivity, observe human vows and the various cupidities of men, snatching, dragging, driving them this way and that into the sea. They see these things, and do not throw themselves into the rivers of Babylon, but sit above the rivers of Babylon. O holy Sion, where everything stands and nothing flows! Who cast us down into these things? Why did we leave Thy founder and Thy society? Behold, placed amid things flowing and slipping away, scarce anyone seized by the river, if he can hold to the wood, will escape, etc. Sit above the rivers, do not be in the river, do not be under the river, but yet sit humble. Thence you must weep, remembering Sion. For many weep with a Babylonian weeping, because they also rejoice with the joy of Babylon: because they rejoice at gains and weep at losses: both are of Babylon. You ought to weep, but remembering Sion. O that peace which we shall see with God! O that peace, and the holy equality of the Angels! O that vision and beautiful spectacle! Behold, in Babylon those things are beautiful which hold them, but let them not hold thee, let them not delight thee. The solace of captives is one thing, the joy of the free another." Truly that for which the Psalmist sighs, Psalm 83, verse 1: "How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord."
And your joy into mourning. — The Syriac: "into anguish."
Verse 10: Be Humbled in the Sight of the Lord, and He Will Exalt You
10. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord. — The Tigurine clearly: "humble yourselves"; the Syriac: "render yourselves humble before the Lord." James alludes to, indeed cites, that saying of Christ in Luke chapter 14, verse 11: "Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted"; just as Christ, humbling Himself below all things, was exalted above all things, Philippians 2:8. For, as St. Augustine says, tract 404 on John: "Humility is the merit of glory, glory is the reward of humility."
Note "in the sight of the Lord," as if to say: First, humble yourselves not feignedly, not outwardly, but sincerely and inwardly with the whole heart before the Lord, who looks upon the heart. Second, as if to say: strive after profound and intimate humility: for this stands out before the eyes of the strict Judge above all other virtues, says St. Gregory in the place already cited. Third, as if to say: humble yourselves not only before men by prostrating yourselves, confessing yourselves sinners, kissing feet, but also before God by suppressing and trampling on the pride of your mind; on this matter see Cassian, Conference 19, chapter 11, and St. Bernard, sermon 42 on the Canticles: "Humility," he says, "justifies us, not humiliation. How many are humbled and yet are not humble? Some are humbled with rancor, others patiently, and others gladly. The first are guilty, the next are innocent, the last are righteous: although innocence is itself a portion of righteousness, yet its consummation is in the humble. He who can say: It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, he is truly humble." Fourth, because true humility is nothing other than the true and practical knowledge of oneself and of God, namely that a man may know his own nothingness and the immensity of God. The truly humble person therefore looks not to men but to God: for considering himself in the eyes of God, and seeing himself to be an abyss of nothingness, ignorance, sins and vices, he casts himself down most profoundly before God: and if he has any good, he acknowledges it as freely given to him by Him, and refers it all back to Him as received. So St. Francis, for whole nights, said and meditated nothing else than: "Who art Thou, Lord? Who am I? Thou art the abyss of all good, I am the abyss of all evil and nothingness." Finally, the humble man, since he knows and reveres God, always thinks of God's presence, and acts and speaks in all things so humbly that he in no place offends the eyes of God who beholds him, but pleases and delights Him.
And He will exalt you — in heaven, and also in this life through grace, and often through fame and glory among men, especially after death, as if to say: Do not be afraid to strive after humility, as though it were going to be a depression and disgrace for you. For this is a well-known error which occupies many men: for that alone will exalt and adorn you, and that in such proportion and measure that as far as in descending you have humbled yourselves, so far in ascending you will be exalted: as Christ ascended above all the heavens because in dying He descended to the lowest hells. For He Himself, who is eternal truth and unchangeable faithfulness, promised this to His own, Luke 14:11. The first reason is, because the fitting reward of humiliation is exaltation. The second, because the humble most highly honor God: they therefore deserve in turn to be honored by Him. Hence Ecclesiasticus wisely says in chapter 3, verse 21: "As great as thou art," he says, "humble thyself in all things, and thou shalt find grace before God: for the great power of God alone, and He is honored by the humble." For the humble man, just as he sees and acknowledges his own utmost vileness before God, so also the highest majesty of God. Thirdly, because humility is a glorious thing, with which even pride itself seeks to cloak itself, lest it become contemptible, says St. Bernard De Gradibus humilitatis, in the ninth degree. I have given more reasons on verses 6 and 7. The counterpart to this saying of James is that of St. Peter I, chapter 5, verse 6: "Be ye humbled under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in the time of visitation"; and that of the Wise Man: "Glory shall uphold the humble of spirit," Proverbs 29:23, and Job 22:29. Thus the Virgin Mother of God, by the merit of humility, was made Mother of God and exalted above all the choirs of Angels. St. John was made the Baptist of Christ, because he thought himself unworthy to loose the latchet of His sandal. St. Peter, judging himself as a sinner unworthy of Christ's hospitality, was made Christ's Vicar and the first of the Apostles and head of the Church. St. Paul, considering himself the abortive and least of the Apostles, as he afterwards called himself, was made the vessel of election. Therefore St. Cyprian rightly says in the book On Zeal and Envy: "There cannot be among us contention for exaltation: from humility we grow to the heights; we have learned by what means we please." This way the heavenly Master built up for us, Mark chapter 9:34: "If any man desire to be first, he shall be (that is, let him be, or become) the last of all." Augustine fortifies the same in sermon 213 De Tempore: "Be little in thine own eyes, that thou mayest be great in the eyes of God." And St. Bernard, sermon 2 On the Ascension: "Humility alone is what exalts, alone what leads to life: this is the way, and there is no other besides it."
Note: This saying of James and several following are cited verbatim by St. Clement in Epistle 2 to James the brother of the Lord, and are attributed by him to St. Peter, not to James: hence those Epistles of Clement are not without scruple, as Bellarmine notes in De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis under Clement, especially because in Epistle 1 he says that St. Peter is already dead; whereas it is established that James, to whom he writes, was killed before St. Peter: hence the author of those Epistles seems to have judged James the brother of the Lord and the first Bishop of Jerusalem, to whom he writes, to be different from James the Apostle, the author of this Epistle, as I said in the Prooemium. The same fifth Epistle cites Plato as saying that all things of friends ought to be common, even wives; nor does he refute this, although in the Vatican exemplar it is not found: hence it seems to have been inserted by some smatterer and transferred here from book 10 of the Recognitions, where Clement himself cites and refutes the same.
Verse 11: Detract Not One Another, My Brethren
11. Do not detract one from another. — He passes from humility to detraction, as to the opposite vice. For the humble man esteems himself inferior to and worse than all; whence he detracts no one but himself: but the proud man detracts others, that he may appear greater and better than they, and thus stirs up hatreds, quarrels, and wars, which James reprehended in verse 1. Moreover, this vice of detraction is so prevalent and common that it occupies almost all households and faithful, even pious people, so that there is scarcely any longer conversation in which it does not insert itself; "and so great a lust for this evil has invaded the minds of men, that even those who have departed far from other vices fall into this one, as into the last snare of the devil," says St. Jerome in the Epistle to Celantia.
Now it occurs in five ways; first, by imputing a false crime to another; second, by exaggerating a true one too much; third, by disclosing a hidden one; fourth, by misinterpreting a good deed, or extenuating it, or praising it coldly; fifth, by being silent about virtues and praises, when one ought to make them known and recite them. This is a grave crime, because it takes away from one's neighbor his good name, which is better than wealth and the goods of fortune: hence it is greater than theft and akin to the homicide of one's neighbor: indeed, when it flows from hatred, it is spiritual homicide, says St. Peter according to Clement, Epistle 1 to James, because clearly it kills the soul of the speaker, and of the hearer, if he consents: indeed even of him who is detracted, if it stirs him in turn to hatred and to detracting.
Hence the detractor is called hateful and abominable to God, Prov. chapter 6, verses 16 and 17; Rom. 1:30. The reason is threefold. First, because he wounds not only charity, but also justice, which we owe to our neighbor: for he takes away from him his good name, which is a great good of his. Second, because he despises the law of God which forbids it. For the law of Christ is: "Judge not, and you shall not be judged," Matthew 7:1; and of Moses, Lev. 19:16: "Thou shalt not be an accuser, nor a whisperer among the people"; and of the Wise Man, Prov. 4:24: "Remove from thee the perverse mouth, and let detracting lips be far from thee." Again, the detractor and unjust censor unjustly usurps the judgment of God, to whom alone it belongs to judge the deeds and intentions of men, especially the hidden ones. Third, because no one is without sin. So when someone censures and judges the sin of another, by that very fact he condemns his own and judges himself worthy of similar censure. Add: the detractor perverts order: for he ought first to censure and amend his own faults, before he criticizes another's: hence he falls under that saying of Christ pronounced against the Pharisees: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," John 8:7.
Therefore St. Augustine rightly complains, sermon De Tempore: "The greatest part of the human race," he says, "is shown to be prompt and ready to reprehend with indiscriminate judgment, while yet not willing to be judged by others in the way they wish to judge others." He therefore violates that precept of nature and of Christ: "As you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner," Luke 6:31. And St. Jerome in the Epistle to Rusticus: "Detract no one, nor think yourself holy in this, that you tear others to pieces. We often accuse what we ourselves do, and eloquent against ourselves, we inveigh against our own vices, many judging of the eloquent." The same to Celantia: "This is indeed a vice which must especially be extinguished, and entirely excluded by those who wish to live a holy life. For nothing so disturbs the soul, nothing makes the mind so changeable and light, as readily believing everything and following the words of detractors with rash assent of mind. For hence frequent dissensions arise, hence unjust hatreds. This is what often makes even enemies of the dearest friends, while a malignant tongue dissociates harmonious yet credulous souls." St. Bernard, sermon On Simple Custody, calls "the tongue of the detractor" "a viper and a spear which pierces three at one blow. The tongue of the detractor," he says, "is indeed a two-edged sword, nay three-edged." See him also in sermon 24 on the Canticles. St. Chrysostom, homily 3 to the People, says that the detractor is to be avoided just as we avoid those who stir up dung, which excites nothing but stenches; according to the saying of the Wise Man: "Hedge in thy ears with thorns, hear not a wicked tongue," Ecclesiasticus 28:28.
St. Francis, says St. Bonaventure in his Life, Book 1, chapter 8, "abhorred the vice of detraction, the enemy of the fountain of piety and grace, as he would a serpent's bite and a most atrocious plague; and he affirmed it would be abominable to the most loving God, for the reason that the detractor feeds on the blood of souls whom he kills with the sword of the tongue. So much greater," he used to say, "is the impiety of detractors than of robbers, by as much as the law of Christ, which is fulfilled in the observance of piety, binds us to desire the salvation of souls more than of bodies."
He who detracts his brother, or who judges his brother, detracts the law and judges the law, — and consequently judges the Lawgiver Himself, God, that is, accuses and condemns Him: so Oecumenius. But in what sense? First, some explain thus, as if to say: The detractor condemns the law, because those whom the law tolerates as sinners that they may repent, the detractors immediately judge as ones to be punished, and cry out as worthy of punishment. Second, St. Thomas, II II, Question 75, article 1, ad 3: The detractor, he says, detracts the law, that is, despises it. For as he who keeps the law honors it, so he who transgresses, as it were detracts and defames it. Third, and genuinely, as if to say: The detractor judges the law in act not signified but exercised: because not by word but by deed he says the law has not rightly enacted that we should not detract anyone, nor judge anyone. He therefore judges the law not by formal and explicit judgment, but by virtual and tacit judgment, because in reality and in practice he judges that what the law forbids must be done by him here and now, namely that detraction must take place. Hence he seems to stain, criticize, and render reprehensible the divine law, as if it had commanded impossible or unsuitable things: so Dionysius, Cajetan, Catharinus, Salmeron here, and Cassian, Conference 16, chapter 16. For the law says: A brother is not to be judged by you. On the contrary, the detractor, knowing this law, in reality says: Yes indeed, a brother must be judged by me here and now. Therefore by judging his brother, he judges the law forbidding this judgment of a brother, and tacitly accuses and condemns it, as though it had wrongly forbidden this. In a similar way, he who steals tacitly judges the law which says: Thou shalt not steal; but more properly, he who judges his brother judges the law forbidding it, because he forms for himself a formal judgment about his brother, and judges him formally against the law: which the thief does not do, who judges no one. Finally, the detractor judges the law in terms when he detracts someone for works of virtue sanctioned or counselled by the law of the Gospel, and turns them into reproach and ridicule: which was then frequent, as it still is, when one calls a brother who is studying piety a hypocrite; when one who patiently bears reproaches is called a coward; when the silent man is called insane; when the modest man is called a simpleton and a fool; when one who gives all his goods to the poor is called a prodigal, and one who withdraws into a monastery is called insane. For by this very act he condemns the works of virtue and sanctity which the law commends, and makes them vices: he therefore enacts a new law contrary to God's law; but his own law is the law of vices: God's law is the law of virtue. So Oecumenius, Lyranus, Hugo, and Gagneius.
Therefore St. Bernard wisely admonishes in sermon 40 on the Canticles: "Beware," he says, "of being a curious explorer of another's conversation, or a rash judge, even if you catch something perversely done: nor judge your neighbor thus, but rather excuse him. Excuse the intention, if you cannot the deed; suppose ignorance, suppose surprise, suppose chance. But if the certainty of the matter refuses every dissimulation, nevertheless persuade yourself, and say within yourself: The temptation was too violent. What would it have done to me, if it had received over me a similar power?"
Verse 12: There Is One Lawgiver and Judge Who Can Destroy and Deliver
12. There is one Lawgiver and Judge, — namely God and Christ, that is, the God-man: leave judgment to Him therefore, and do not arrogate it to yourself, as if to say: When you judge your brother, you judge the law and the Lawgiver, and you sin against Him in two ways: first, because you tacitly refute His law; second, because you arrogate and usurp His judgment, since He alone is both Lawgiver and Judge of all, namely the first and the highest, from whom Moses, Abraham, Solomon, and the other kings and lawgivers, as His ministers, received their force and power to enact laws, according to that saying of Proverbs 8:15: "By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things: by me princes rule, and the mighty decree justice."
Who can destroy and deliver. — In Greek, σῶσαι καὶ ἀπολέσαι, that is, "to save and to destroy," namely both in the present life and in the future and eternal. So also the Syriac. James adds this to teach that it does not belong to men to judge their brothers, but to God, who will save and beatify forever His own who are obedient to His law (who namely do not detract or judge their brothers); but those who are disobedient, namely who detract and judge their brothers, and therefore tacitly judge the law and are injurious to the Lawgiver Himself, He will destroy and damn to Gehenna, so that by this hope and fear He may call all away from detraction and rash judgment. Again, He answers the objection of the one detracting and saying: If I do not chastise the sin and injury of my brother, it will remain unpunished. He answers that it will not remain unpunished, but is to be punished by God, as if to say: Therefore since the sinning brother has his own most severe Judge and Avenger, let Him suffice for you; do not judge him: but if He wishes to have mercy on him, and to convert and save him, you ought not to wish, nor can you destroy him. So Hugo. "The judgment of the tribunal of Christ is not the same as that of the corner of whisperers," says St. Jerome in epistle 39; and St. Ephrem, Paraenesis 4: "Let us not judge anyone," he says, "because we do not know his repentance: in earthen vessels gold is often hidden." The counterpart to this saying of James is that of Paul to the Romans 14:4: "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own lord he stands or falls." And verse 10: "But thou, why judgest thou thy brother? or why dost thou despise thy brother? for we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ."
Verse 13: Behold Now You Who Say: Today or Tomorrow We Will Go Into Such a City
13. But who art thou that judgest thy neighbor? — "Who," that is, what kind, how rash and audacious art thou, who, being a vile little man and subject to similar and often the same sins, yet darest to judge thy brother concerning them, and to usurp God's judgment of him. Thus David says: "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should have reproached the armies of the living God?" 1 Samuel 17:26.
Morally, note here how detraction and rash judgment of one's neighbor must be avoided. Therefore in the Lives of the Fathers, Book 5, little book 4, § 1, Abba Moses: "A man ought," he says, "to be as it were dead to his companion, that is, to die to his friend, so that he may not pass judgment on him in any matter."
And St. Anthony: "Do not judge," he says, "before the time: for all things ought to be reserved for the judgment of Christ, to whom alone hidden things are open. For one is the judgment of men, another that of God. Let each one examine and judge himself." So St. Athanasius in his Life.
An angel met Abbot Isaac, who had judged a certain sinner, saying: "Where do you bid me to send that guilty brother whom you have condemned?" Soon Isaac: "I have sinned," he said, "forgive me." To whom the angel: "Arise, God forgives you; but see that henceforth you judge no one before God judges him." So in the Lives of the Fathers, Book 5, little book 9.
In the same place another says: "My sins are running behind me, and I do not see them; and I come today to judge the sins of others." And another: "Whatever hour we cover the sin of our brother, God will cover ours; and whatever hour we expose the faults of our brothers, God will likewise expose ours." Another: "Do not judge the fornicator, if you are chaste: for in the same way you will have transgressed the law. For He who said: Do not commit fornication, said: Do not judge." Another saw the grace, which used to descend visibly upon a holy man in the celebration of the Eucharist, withdraw from him; admonishing him about this matter, when he acknowledged the fault of detraction and repented, the grace was seen to return to him. But most of all, that august sentence and promise of Christ ought to deter everyone from rash judging, Matthew 7:1: "Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned."
Memorable is the example which St. Anastasius Sinaita, Bishop of Antioch in the time of St. Gregory (whose Pastoral he translated from Latin into Greek), writes in his oration On the Holy Synaxis, and from him Baronius, vol. 7, year of Christ 599: "A certain monk," he says, "who had lived most negligently in great idleness, when he was sick unto death, not dreading it, departed loosed from his bonds with the greatest pleasure and with great thanksgiving. To him one of the Fathers sitting by said: Brother, we know that you have lived in the greatest negligence up to this point: whence then comes to you such great security? To whom he answered: It is so, I have lived most negligently: but the angels of God this very hour brought to me the chirograph of my sins; and they read out the sins which I had committed after I renounced the world, asking whether I acknowledged them. To whom I said: Most certainly I acknowledge them: but ever since I renounced the world and entered upon the monastic life, I have neither judged anyone, nor wished to remember any injury done to me. Therefore I desire and pray that the words of the Lord apply to me also, who said: Judge not, and you shall not be judged; and: Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you. After I said these things to the angels, they tore up the chirograph of my sins; and from there I now set out to the Lord with the greatest joy and security. When that brother had told this to the Fathers, he gave up his spirit to the Lord in peace." I have related more on Jeremiah 37:17.
Go to, — ἄγε. Which is a word of transition that is well-known, and begins a new discourse and subject, as if to say: Come, see your prudence, pride, and folly, which I am showing you. Whence in verse 16, concluding, he says: "All such rejoicing is malignant."
Who say: Today, or tomorrow we will go into such a city. — This sentence seems disparate from the preceding: for the ancients used to teach their ethical dogmas by disparate maxims, as is evident in Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. The Roman codices, however, connect these things in the same verse with the preceding, as if these refer to rash judgment, as if to say: Thou who art thou that judgest thy brother? Surely thou art a free, headlong, inconsiderate man, who promisest to thyself a long and free life; nor dost thou think that death looms over thee, in which thou wilt render an exact account to God the Judge of rash judgment and of all sins. But suppose we connect them so; this is nevertheless a general sentence, as Beda notes, in which James reproves the stupidity of many who, wholly intent on gains and the affairs of the world, reckon they will live a long time, and therefore arrange the future according to their own will, as though they were free and lords of life and time; nor do they think that all these things depend on the will of God, who has appointed for each a swift end of life and a fixed day of death, who will cut down all these arrangements and hopes; concerning which is celebrated that festive fable of the rustic, who carrying a jar of milk to the market silently thought to himself: I will sell my milk for so much, with the price I will buy a hen, she will produce chicks for me; I will raise them, and when grown larger I will sell them, with the price I will buy a piglet, which when fattened I will sell; and I will buy a calf, I will fatten and sell it. What shall I do with so much money? I will buy a colt for my son to ride. And exulting, he began to leap up and to express the appearance of his son exulting on the horse. Leaping up, he knocked the jar from his head, and poured out all the milk on the ground, and with the milk he likewise poured out all his hopes, his plans, and his joys. So today many devise great things, promise themselves great things, live by the breath of the court like chameleons, fashion for themselves the highest hopes, but chimerical ones; which either disease, or death, or some sinister chance overturns, and often cuts down at their very rising. Truly,
"Unknowing is the mind of men of fate and of future destiny."
An example of the rich man is found in Luke 12:17, who applauding himself and saying: "What shall I do, because I have no room where to gather my fruits? And he said: This will I do, I will pull down my barns and will build greater; and into them I will gather all that has grown for me and my goods, and I will say to my soul: Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take rest, eat, drink, make good cheer." But on the same day he heard from God: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: and whose shall those things be which thou hast prepared?" — namely an unmindful, ungrateful, and often unknown and uncertain heir.
Note: These future tense forms, "we will go, we will make, we will trade, we will gain," can be taken as optatives, "let us go, let us make, let us trade, let us gain," as Pagninus and the Tigurine version translate; for they signify not only their disposition concerning future things, but also (and more) their cupidity for gain, namely that they think and ambition not God, not heaven, but only gain; whom St. Ambrose deservedly pities in his book On Naboth, chapter 12: "You serve," he says, "you rich men, and indeed a miserable servitude, you who serve error, cupidity, avarice, which cannot be satisfied. Wealth is captive, poverty is free." And chapter 14: "They are tossed about by the heat of their desires, and fluctuate as in a kind of brine." For, as St. Chrysostom says, homily 39 on Genesis: "The sea does not so swell with waves, as we see such a soul harassed by thoughts and affections." And St. Gregory calls this the plague of flies inflicted on Egypt by Moses: "For the fly," he says, "is too insolent and restless an animal, in which what else is signified but the insolent cares of carnal desires?" Hence the Wise Man, blaming these, in chapter 15, verse 12: "They have esteemed," he says, "our life to be a sport, and the manner of life composed for gain, and that we must be acquiring everywhere, even from evil"; although evil gains always bring loss, as Hesiod and Menander say.
We shall spend a year there. — St. Ignatius, founder of our Society, said to a certain person who told him he would do something after some months: "Good God," he said, "do you think you will live so long?" — to whom death is certain, but the day uncertain, looms, and eternity. For what is a year of your life, but a ring which is always rotated in a circle, until it runs out to the number fixed for it by God? Hear Servius: A year, he says, is so called as if anus, that is, "a little ring," because it returns into itself:
"And the year rolls back upon itself through its own footsteps."
Or from ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνανεοῦσθαι, that is, from "to be renewed," because it is constantly renewed and made different.
Verse 14: For What Is Your Life? It Is a Vapor Appearing for a Little While
14. You who know not what will be on the morrow. — Great is the confidence of men, who arrange so securely about tomorrow, as though they had tomorrow in their own hand and dominion, when they do not know whether they will live tomorrow, possess their own goods, or enjoy liberty and health. Wisely therefore the Wise Man warns: "Do not boast about tomorrow, not knowing what the coming (ἐπιοῦσα, that is, of the morrow) day may bring forth," Prov. 27:1; and the Psalmist: "Thou art my God, in Thy hands are my lots, Heb. my times," Psalm 30:13. And Christ, Matthew 25:13: "Watch, because you know not the day nor the hour."
Therefore St. Gregory wisely warns, Book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter 49, that the devil ensnares men by promising a long life, and gives an example of a certain man: "Who while he was vehemently attending to dreams," he says, "long spaces of this life were promised to him through a dream. And when he had collected much money for the wages of a longer life, he so suddenly died that he left them all untouched, and he himself carried nothing from good works with him." So we see many being deceived by astrologers, who while they falsely promise great honors, take away the fear of death: hence it happens that those who believe them do not prepare themselves for death, because they expect from them the promised honors; and when death sets in, they are deprived not only of honors but also of present life, and often of eternal life.
Truly Pindar in the Nemean Odes, ode 8: "Vain hopes," he says, "have empty outcomes." The same in the Isthmian Odes, ode 3: "Time, while the days are rolled on, brings now one, now another vicissitude of things, but yet the sons of the gods are invulnerable"; and ode 5: "Mortal things." Wherefore Plutarch, in his book On Tranquillity, teaches that the wise man so moderates his life through prosperity and adversity that he neither becomes insolent in the former nor cast down by the latter: just as the musician so blends the strings and pipes, of which some give a sharp, some a deep, some a middle sound, that they produce a sweet harmony.
13. For what is your life, — that you should dare to dispose of it for tomorrow and the future with certainty? "What," that is, of what sort and how small, namely how unstable, brief, fleeting and wretched it is. "You live as though you would always be victors; never does your own frailty come to your mind," says Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, ch. IV: "You fear all things as mortals. You desire all things as immortals."
The same author, epistle 124: "Nothing," he says, "can be imagined more imprudent or foolish than that, having received a corruptible body, we should nevertheless propose eternal things to ourselves, and occupy with hope as much as the human lifespan can be extended." And shortly after: "Therefore the great soul, conscious of a better life, indeed strives to bear itself honestly and industriously in the station in which it has been placed; but it judges nothing of those things around it to be its own; rather, like a pilgrim hastening on, it uses them as things lent."
It is a vapor (that is, like a vapor, or similar to a vapor) appearing for a little while, and afterwards shall be destroyed. — The Greek ἀτμίς signifies first, "vapor"; second, "breath"; third, "smoke"; fourth, "exhalation"; fifth, "a thin breeze"; from ἀτμίζω, that is, "to evaporate, exhale, breathe out." He alludes to that axiom and exclamation, Ecclesiastes ch. 1, v. 1: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity," for which Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and all the rest, except the Seventy, as St. Jerome says in the same place, render, "vapor of vapors, and all is vapor." For what is vainer than vapor, which at once vanishes thinly into the breezes?
Furthermore, vapor, says Aristotle, I Meteorology, ch. 1, comes about when the moisture that is around the earth, evaporating from the rays and from the other heat that is above, is borne upward, where, being chilled, it is either dissolved into dew and rain, or, compressed, is densened and coalesces into snow, rain, ice and hail. Whence he calls this as it were a perennial river, which flows in a circle upward, when it becomes vapor, and downward, when it is dissolved into rain that falls upon the earth from which the vapor ascended.
Such a vapor is our life. For first, as a vapor is gathered together by heat, ascends and stands forth, but only briefly: so too our life subsists by heat, but only briefly, and it is, as it were, a spark of fire, as the Wise Man says, ch. II, v. 2.
Second, just as vapor is at once dispersed into the breezes and vanishes, so too our life. And it is this that St. James here properly intends.
Third, just as vapor is so slight, thin, and almost invisible that it seems not so much a thing as the shadow and likeness of a thing: so too our life, and indeed every created thing, in comparison with the uncreated and eternal Being, namely God, is only a shadow; whence God's name is: "I am Who am"; but ours is: "I am who am not," as I said on Exodus III, 14.
Seneca puts it admirably, in book XVII, epistle 101, when, having narrated the sudden death of Cornelius Senecio — a man wholly bent on riches, who was carried off in the very rush of his accumulating money — he adds: "Plant now, Meliboeus, your pears, set out your vines in order. How foolish it is to arrange one's lifetime! we are not even master of tomorrow. Oh, what madness it is to begin long-reaching hopes! 'I will buy, I will build, I will lend, I will collect, I will hold offices, then at last I will retire my weary and full old age into leisure!' All things, believe me, even for the fortunate, are doubtful. No one ought to promise himself anything concerning the future; even what is held slips through the hands, and chance breaks in upon the very hour we press. Time rolls on by a fixed law indeed, but through darkness. And what is it to me whether the matter is certain to nature, which is uncertain to me? We plan long voyages and, after wandering foreign shores, late returns to our homeland; military service and the slow rewards of camp labors, procuratorships and the advancement of offices through offices; while meanwhile death is at our side, which, since it is never thought of except as belonging to another, has examples of mortality continually thrust upon us — examples that stick no longer than while we wonder at them." And shortly after: "There stands indeed a fixed limit for us, where the inexorable necessity of the fates has set it; but none of us knows how near that limit is. Let us therefore so form our minds as if we had come to the very end: let us put nothing off, let us each day balance our accounts with life. The greatest fault of life is that it is always incomplete, that it is always being deferred from one thing to another. He who has each day put the finishing touch on his life has no need of time. But from this need is born fear, and the desire of the future, which devours the soul. Nothing is more wretched than the doubt of those tossed about as to where they may come out, how much may remain, or of what sort. How shall we then escape this tossing? In one way: if our life does not strain forward, but is gathered into itself. For he is suspended from the future to whom the present is in vain. But where, on the other hand, whatever was owed to me has been rendered, where the steady mind knows that there is no difference between a day and an age, then it looks down from above on whatever days and events shall come, and considers the succession of times with much laughter. What then will the variety and shifting of chances disturb, if a man be settled against things uncertain? Therefore, my Lucilius, hasten to live, and consider every single day a single life. He who fits himself in this way, whose life has each day been complete, is at peace. In those who live in hope, every nearest moment slips away, and a greed for time creeps on, and the most wretched fear of death which makes all things most wretched. Hence that most shameful prayer of Maecenas, by which he refuses neither weakness nor deformity, and finally even the sharp cross, provided that amid these evils his life-breath be prolonged."
Fourth, just as vapor is so weak that it is borne hither and thither by every breeze, even the slightest, so too our life is driven and changed by the slightest thing. Whence St. Gregory in the Prologue to the VI Penitential Psalm: "Laborious," he says, "is the temporal life, lighter than tales, swifter than a runner, fluctuating in instability, tottering in weakness; in which there is no strength, no constancy of purpose, no rest from troubles, no reclining from labors. Who in short is there whom pain does not torture, anxiety does not press, fear does not undermine? Laughter is followed by weeping, joy is accompanied by sadness; satiety succeeds hunger, hunger again drives out satiety; in the night day is longed for, in the day night is sought; in cold, warmth, in heat, coolness; before food, sighs; after food, tribulation, angers and indignations agitate, and innumerable motions disturb wretched men."
Fifth, just as vapor is obscure and gathers into a cloud, so too our life is full of ignorance, error, and imprudence. Whence St. Gregory, in book XXIII of the Morals, ch. XII, citing Isaiah ch. XXVI: "The prophet," he says, "felt himself pressed by a certain darkness in beholding the Lord, saying: My soul has desired Thee in the night — as if to say: In this darkness of the present life, I long to see Thee; but I am still hemmed in by the cloud of weakness. David too, beholding the murk of this night, awaiting the brightness of the true light, said: In the morning I will stand before Thee and shall see."
Sixth, just as vapor is confused, so too our life is confused and disturbed; and this by the pious counsel of God, says St. Gregory, XXV Moral., ch. XV, "that we may not love the road in place of the homeland; lest, while the traveler is delighted on the way, he forget what he was longing for in his homeland." The same, book XXXI, ch. XVII: "The just man," he says, "sees his life as mingled of goods and evils, and somehow confounds his thoughts with hope and fear."
Seventh, just as vapor, dissolved into rain, descends and returns to the earth from which by exhaling it ascended: so too our life and body, dissolved by sickness and death, returns to the earth from which it was taken; whence Solomon thus concludes his discourse on the vanity of the world, which he had experienced beyond all others, in Ecclesiastes XII, 1: "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction comes, etc. And the dust returns to its earth, whence it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, and all is vanity." Others, as I said, render: "Vapor of vapors, and all is vapor."
Eighth, just as earthly vapor putrefies, and is called "mustiness," says Aristotle, book V On the Generation of Animals, ch. IV: "Mustiness," he says, "is the rotting of an earthly vapor: for if the vapor, lifting itself up, congeals, it becomes hoar-frost; but if it putrefies, mustiness. So the comic poets call the mustiness of old age 'hoar-frost.'" Whence he infers: "You may rightly say that disease is an adventitious old age, but that old age is a natural disease." So too our life, by vapors — now bodily, dissolved into catarrhs, phlegms and flatulences; now spiritual, namely the lusts of the flesh — exhales, as it were, vapors, and is corrupted and putrefies.
Whence Avicenna and the physicians teach that in the mountains the air is purer, and that therefore men there live longer, more healthily, and more strongly: but in the valleys the air is more impure, on account of the continual vapors ascending from it, and that therefore the life of men dwelling in the valleys is less long-lived, healthy, and strong. In like manner, in this vale of tears our life is short, sickly, and weak, on account of the bodily vapors with which the body, and the spiritual ones with which the soul, are infected. But in the heavens, as in eternal mountains free from every vapor and exhalation, life is eternal, most healthy, most strong, and most glorious.
Furthermore, sacred Scripture, in order to represent to us the brevity, instability, slenderness, and misery of our life, uses various comparisons. First, it compares it to a moment, that is, to the tipping of a balance, whose pans continually rise and fall, Isaiah XL, 15. Second, to a drop of dawn dew, which is at once sucked up by the rising sun, just as life is by a fever or some other disease, Wis. IX, 13. Third, to smoke, Wisdom ch. II, 2: "Smoke is the breath in our nostrils, and speech a spark for stirring our heart; when this is extinguished, our body shall be ash, and our spirit shall be poured out like soft air, and our life shall pass like the trace of a cloud, and shall be dissolved like a mist that is driven away by the sun's rays." Fourth, to a shadow: "For our time is the passing of a shadow." Same place. Fifth, to a flower that withers at once, and to dry hay, Isaiah XL, 6: "All flesh is hay, and all its glory like the flower of the field." See what is said there. Job XIV, 1: "Man, born of a woman, living a short time, is filled with many miseries; who comes forth like a flower and is crushed, and flees like a shadow, and never remains in the same state." Sixth, to a drop and to dust, Isaiah XL, 15: "Behold the nations are as a drop from a bucket, etc. Behold the islands are as a tiny dust." Seventh, to nothing, ibid. v. 17: "All nations are before Him as if they were not, and have been counted by Him as nothing and emptiness." Eighth, to a span, that is, the measure of four cross-laid fingers, Ps. XXXVIII, 6: "Thou hast made my days measurable"; in Hebrew tephachoth, in the Septuagint παλαιστάς, that is, "of a span." Symmachus: "Thou hast set my days a span." Ninth, to a spider, Psalm LXXXIX, 10: "Our years shall be considered as a spider." The Greek ἀράχνη signifies rather "a web" than "a spider": as therefore the spider's web is swept away with a broom, so is our life by a dart, or by disease. In Hebrew it is hege, that is, "meditation," or "the speech of one speaking," as St. Jerome renders. But the Seventy translate "spider"; because it is a creature thoughtful and as if meditative. The Psalmist adds: "The days of our years in them are seventy years; but if in the strong, eighty years, and beyond that, their labor and sorrow." Tenth, to an image and to vanity, Ps. XXXVIII, 7: "Every man living is altogether vanity: yet man passes by like an image, and even disturbs himself in vain." Eleventh, to wind, Job VII, 7: "Remember that my life is wind." Twelfth, to rain or a river, II Kings XIV, 14: "We all die, and like waters slip away into the earth that do not return." Thirteenth, to a runner speeding past, a ship cleaving the sea, a bird flying through the air, and an arrow shot, Wisdom ch. V, vv. 9 and following.
Go now, mortals, raise up families, titles, palaces, citadels: believe yourselves eternal, you who are about to die tomorrow. Death will close the last act of your life: when you have come to the end of mortality, there will likewise be an end of honors and wealth: ambition will depart, there will be no place for avarice, every desire will be silenced forever. Why then do you grasp after fleeting things, which death will take away — nay, will utterly extinguish?
O the cares of men! O how much emptiness there is in things! O how narrow are the boundaries of mortals! O how narrow are the souls of mortals! You were created for eternity: why do you live for so brief a time? Destined for heaven, why do you bend over the earth like moles? About to possess God, why do you gape after the possession of the world?
"What has it profited to have drawn the mind from the pole, what to have lifted the head on high, if after the manner of beasts they wander pathless, if they shatter on common pasturage — acorns?" says Claudian, III On the Rape of Proserpina. The acorns are delights, wealth, honors, pomps: leave these to swine and beasts; seek the food of angels; reach for the nectar and ambrosia of Christ.
The Gentiles cry out the same with one voice. Manilius, book IV: "We die from birth, and the end depends on the beginning." Martial, book I: "If you are wise, Colinus, use your days entirely, and always think the last is at hand for you." Seneca, in Hercules Furens: "Live joyful, life hastens its swift course, and the wheel of the headlong year is turned with a winged day, etc. The Fates come in fixed order. To no one is it allowed to put off the appointed day, no one to stay it when commanded: the urn receives the peoples it has summoned." Menander: "Man is the dream of a shadow." "Man," says the Philosopher, "is the plaything of fortune, the spoil of time, the image of inconstancy, the example of weakness, the balance of envy and calamity, the residue of phlegm and bile." Again: "Man is a bubble." As children blow up shells full of soap and water, and stir up trembling bubbles which are soon dissipated thinly into the air: so too every grace and honor of our life is a bubble, which soon vanishes into the air. Are you then wooing a bride? You are wooing a bubble. Are you wooing the delights of the belly and of Venus? You are wooing a bubble. Are you wooing a Canonry, a Bishopric, etc.? You are wooing a bubble. Horace, book IV of Odes, ode 7: "We are dust and shadow."
Homer, in Plutarch's Consolatory Oration: "As is the race of leaves, so also is that of men"; for as those are knocked down by the wind, so men by a slight adversity. Zeno: "Man is the sport of God." "We die daily," says Seneca, epistle 24, "for daily some part of life is taken away, and even when we grow, life decreases; we have lost infancy, then boyhood, then adolescence: whatever time has passed up to yesterday is perished: even this very day which we live, we share with death." The same, book VI of Natural Questions, ch. XXXII: "Time flows on," he says, "and forsakes those most greedy of it; neither is what is to come mine, nor what has been: I cling to a point of fleeting time." And epistle 99: "Nothing is firm to the infirm, nothing is eternal and unconquered to the fragile; it is as necessary to perish as to lose." The same, in epistle 58, teaches that our life does not stand still but flows continually. "None of us," he says, "is the same in old age that he was as a young man: no one is the same in the morning that he was the day before: our bodies are swept along after the manner of rivers. Whatever you see runs along with time: nothing of what we see remains. I myself, even while I speak that these things are changing, have been changed. This is what Heraclitus says: We do not step into the same river twice." I have collected more on this matter at Ezekiel II, 1.
Appearing for a little while. — Appearing for a brief time: in Greek φαινομένη, as if to say: This life is a vapor that has no solidity, no substance or consistency as it were, but only a brief and short-lived appearance: just like the apparitions in the air, and the masks and ghostly figures represented in comedies, which have almost no subsistence but are merely apparent and fictitious things, which on this account are called by the Philosophers φαινόμενα, such as parhelia, or apparent triple suns, gaps in the air, halos, the colors of the rainbow, etc., concerning which Proclus in his Sphere, Aristotle in the Meteorology, and Aratus in his Phenomena: for these come about from the sun's rays variously received in vapor and cloud, and made transparent and reflected. So Augustus Caesar, dying, said that all the pomp of his life was a comedy now performed. Hear Suetonius in his Life, ch. XCIX: "Having questioned the friends admitted to him, whether he seemed to them to have played the mime of life suitably?" he added even the closing line: Δότε κρότον, καὶ πάντες ὑμεῖς μετὰ χαρᾶς κτυπήσατε, that is, "Give applause, and all of you, with joy, clap." For when the comedy is finished, the actors, bidding farewell to the spectators, say: "Farewell and applaud."
And afterwards shall be blotted out. — In the Greek there is an elegant and emphatic paronomasia between φαινομένη, that is, "appearing," and ἀφανιζομένη, that is, "vanishing," as if he said: This life is, as it were, a vapor appearing and suddenly disappearing, in such a way that no trace of it is seen, but it utterly vanishes and is wiped out: for this is ἀφανίζεσθαι; whence the Syriac renders, "which quickly appears and is cast down and vanishes." St. Anthony, in St. Athanasius, says wisely: "To trample down sloth," "let us recall the precepts of the Apostle, by which he testified that he died daily: in like manner we, weighing the doubtful life of the human condition, shall not sin. For when, roused from sleep, we doubt whether we shall reach the evening; and when we yield our bodies to rest, we do not trust the coming of the light, and everywhere mindful of the uncertainty of nature and of life, we may understand ourselves to be governed by the providence of God. In this way we shall not transgress, nor be carried away by any fragile desire; nor shall we even be angry against anyone, nor shall we strive to heap up earthly treasures: rather, by the fear of the daily departure, and by the constant meditation of the body's separation, we shall trample down all transitory things."
Do you want examples? Pliny, book VII, ch. VII, and Valerius Maximus, book IX, ch. XII, write that Anacreon the poet was strangled by a raisin-grape stuck too persistently in his throat, and the senator Fabius by a single hair caught crosswise in his throat as he was drinking milk. Chilon the Spartan, while embracing his son, victor at Olympia, breathed out his soul for joy in his son's embrace, says Pliny, book VII, ch. XXXII. Sophocles, declared victor in a contest of tragedy, expired for joy, says Valerius, book IX, ch. XII. Clidemus, while being crowned with gold as victor, suddenly died, says Tertullian, book On the Soul, ch. LII. Diagoras, when he saw his three sons win and be crowned at Olympia on the same day, and they took the crowns from themselves and placed them on the head of their father, breathed out his soul, says Gellius, book III, ch. XV. Go now, mortals, you who weave so frail a web of life, and promise yourselves the years of Nestor — you who tomorrow shall die.
Tertullian wisely says, On the Soul, ch. LII: "There is also that violence done to ships," he says, "when, far from the rocks, not battered by any whirlwinds, not shaken by any towering waves, with a flattering breeze, a gliding course, a rejoicing crew, by a sudden inner shock they sink down with full security. Not otherwise are the shipwrecks of life — events of even a tranquil death."
Verse 15: For That You Should Say: If the Lord Will, and if We Shall Live
15. For that you should say (he refers these words back to v. 13: "Behold now you who say: Today or tomorrow we will go into that city," etc., as if to say: You so dispose of your actions and your gains, as though you depended on no one, and so you say: We will go, we will trade, we will make a profit, when you ought to consider that life, and all your acts, hang upon the nod of God, and so you ought to add and say): If the Lord will; — that by this saying you may confess, reverence, and invoke God's providence, and submit and commit yourselves and all that is yours to Him with a humble and whole heart. For He is your Elohim, that is, "Lord, Creator, Provider, Governor, Preserver, Protector, Judge, and Avenger." Thus to their decrees and proposals it is the custom to add "If God will," not only Christians, but also Jews, Gentiles, and Saracens. The Christians, from the teaching of St. James here. Whence St. Augustine on Psalm XXXII, sermon 1: "Learn," he says, "to have in your heart what every man has on his tongue: what God wills. Popular speech itself is most often a salutary teaching." So St. Paul, I Corinthians IV, 19: "I will come," he says, "to you soon, if the Lord will"; and ch. XVI, v. 7: "For I hope to remain some little time with you, if the Lord shall permit"; Philippians II, 19: "I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon." This therefore is the Christian voice, this the Pauline voice: I will do this, God willing, if the Lord wills, if He permits, with God's help, by the grace of God, etc.
The Jews. As Judas Maccabaeus, about to enter battle, said: "As shall be the will in heaven, so let it be done," I Maccabees ch. III, v. 60. The same is the practice and phrase of the rest of the Jews, that, when about to do anything, they say: "If God will"; the origin of which our Serarius narrates here from Ben Sira. A certain man, saying, "Tomorrow I will enter upon my marriage," was admonished by a friend that he add: "If God will." But he replied: "Whether," he said, "God will or will not, I tomorrow shall sit with my bride in my chamber": and he sat with her the whole day; but in the night both of them died. When they found them dead, they said: "Truly Ben Sira spoke truly: The bride went up to the bridal-chamber, and knew not what would befall her." Whoever therefore desires to do anything happily, let him first say: "God willing," or: "If God will." Jeremiah speaks plainly, ch. X, v. 23: "I know," he says, "Lord, that the way of man is not his, neither is it of man to walk and direct his steps"; and ch. XVII, v. 7: "Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his confidence"; and v. 14: "Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed: save me, and I shall be saved: for Thou art my praise."
The Gentiles. Socrates taught his Alcibiades to say before any work, "If God will," as Plato says in the Alcibiades. See Brisson in the Formulae, book I, p. 57, where he shows that these expressions were familiar to Augustus, Cicero, Cato, Ennius, etc.: "If the gods shall be willing, with the gods being willing." Seneca, epistle 41: "God is near you," he says, "is with you, is within you. I say so, Lucilius: a sacred spirit sits within us, observer and guardian of our evils and goods: as we have treated him, so does he treat us: no man is good without God. Can anyone rise above fortune, unless aided by Him? He gives counsels magnificent and right." And lower down: "The lofty, moderate soul, passing over all things as lesser, smiling at whatever we fear and desire — a heavenly power agitates it: so great a thing cannot stand without the help of the divine." The same, book IV On Benefits, ch. VI: "Whence have you that breath which you draw? Whence that light by which you arrange and order the acts of your life? Whence the blood, by whose course your vital heat is maintained? Whence those things which provoke your palate beyond satiety with exquisite flavors? Whence these incitements of pleasure already grown weary? Whence that quiet in which you putrefy and grow flabby? Will you not, if you are grateful, say: — A god has made this leisure for us. For he shall always be a god to me: a tender lamb from our sheepfolds shall often soak his altar with blood: he has allowed my cattle to wander (as you see), and me myself to play what I wished upon the rustic reed."
The Saracens and Turks depend wholly on the will of God as on fate; and so they rush headlong and blindly into battles and dangers. For they are driven by this dilemma: Either God has decreed that I die in this battle, or be overwhelmed by this danger, or not: if He has decreed it, I cannot escape; if He has not decreed it, then I shall not die, I shall not be overwhelmed. For no good or evil can befall anyone unless God wills and sends it. But they reason fallaciously: for God does not decree many things except in view of the foreseen free disposition of men, their merit or demerit. Thus He has not decreed that you die in battle unless you cast yourself into it; He has not decreed that you be overwhelmed by danger unless you of your own accord throw yourself into it. But the Turks do not grasp this subtlety. Wherefore the Emperor Suleiman, when he had a refractory son who was disturbing the realm, and one of the chiefs counseled that he should remove him from their midst as ruinous to the commonwealth, at once ordered the man's head cut off in his presence, because he had not added, "If it shall so please God"; for afterward, following his counsel, he killed his son. So Father Salmeron here reports.
And if we live. — He is dealing with the proud, who trust in themselves and do not lean on God. He commands these to add: "And if we shall live"; that, mindful of their frailty and mortality, they may lower their plumes and profess that themselves and what is theirs depend on God. For otherwise the faithful in every deliberation and purpose tacitly understand the same; but those who are more religious and more modest add it expressly, after the example of the angel who said to Abraham: "Returning I will come to you at this time, life accompanying," Genesis ch. XVIII, v. 10.
The Gentiles wished to admonish and represent the same thing when they devised the three Fates as presidents of our life and death: of whom one carried a distaff wrapped with wool; another gradually drew threads from the wool and gathered them upon the distaff; and the third at last, when the moment of time set by fate was at hand, suddenly cut the threads and severed life, according to that line of the Poet: "Clotho holds the distaff, Lachesis spins, and Atropos cuts off."
Cicero, book III On the Nature of the Gods, makes the Fates daughters of Erebus and Night, and judges them to be the same as "fata" (the spoken fates). Hence that saying of Cleanthes: "The fates lead the willing, they drag the unwilling." And Virgil: "The Fates, agreeing in the steadfast power of the destinies." Scripture also alludes to this from time to time, as Ezechias, in Isaiah ch. XXXVIII, v. 12: "My life has been cut short as by a weaver: while I was just beginning, He cut me off." Ezekiel ch. XXXVII, v. 11: "Our hope has perished, and we are cut off." Where some render: "Our skein has perished, and we are cut down." Hence the first was called Clotho, from the office of winding, because she holds all things twisted and coordinated: for κλώθω in Greek is the same as "I wind around, gather into a ball, twist." The second was called Lachesis, that is, allotment, from λαγχάνειν, that is, "to obtain by lot," as though spans of life fell to men by lot; for she is the one who draws out the threads. Martial, book I, epigram 89: "When Lachesis shall have spun out for me my last years." We find a trace of this same name in the sacred monuments. For where the Hebrew text of Psalm XXX, 16, reads, "In Thy hands are my times," the Seventy rendered, "in Thy hands are my lots." Those most wise men no doubt wished (as Agellius learnedly observes there) to correct the fables of the Fates, and to bring them over to the true meaning. The poets asserted that the spans of life fell to each by fate, or came about randomly by his own lot; whence they called one of the Fates "Lachesis," that is, allotment. The Seventy refuted this lie, and said that every allotment is in the hand of God; that by Him the spans of life are given to mortals, by Him they are prolonged, and by Him at last they are ended according to His eternal counsel and judgment, even though these things may seem to happen to men by lot and as if at random, because we cannot investigate the causes of so great a variety, hidden in the secret bosom of the deity. The third Fate, finally, was called Atropos: which you may render literally as "unturnable," or, if you prefer better Latin, "inexorable, implacable, inflexible"; because that fated necessity of dying, when the appointed instant is at hand, can in no way be bent or altered. Whence Martial, book III: "It has fallen to no one to win over the three wool-spinning maidens by entreaty: they observe the day they have appointed."
Wherefore Seneca says wisely, epistle 61: "I do this," he says, "that a single day may be to me as the whole of life: thus I look upon it, as though it might be even the last." More wisely St. Gregory, homily 12 on the Gospels: "He who has promised pardon to the penitent," he says, "has not promised tomorrow to the sinner: therefore we must always fear the last day, which we can never foresee," according to that line: "Believe that every day has dawned for you as your last." Christ forewarned all, saying: "Watch therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour," Matthew ch. XXV, v. 13.
Verse 16: But Now You Rejoice in Your Arrogancies; All Such Rejoicing Is Wicked
16. But now you rejoice in your arrogancies. — In Greek ἀλαζονείαις, that is, "in your boastings and arrogances," by which you boast that on this or that day you will do these and those things, gain such great wares and profits. Second, the Gloss and Thomas Anglicus: "In your prides," they say, that is, in the riches that make men proud, and in which you take pride. "For pride is the worm of riches," says St. Augustine. For ἀλαζονεία is, of men promising more than they can perform, says Ulpian, in his commentary on Demosthenes. Hence for "you exult" the Greek has καυχᾶσθε; or, as others read, κατακαυχᾶσθε, that is, "you boast against another," namely God, as if you were procuring so many riches for yourselves by your own strength. Socrates wittily mocked Alcibiades, who was boasting of his estates, when he set before him a cosmographic map of Attica and asked him to point them out on it: when he could not point them out, Socrates said: "See," he said, "how small are the things which cannot be shown on so small a table." So Aelian, book III of Various Histories.
Every such rejoicing (in Greek καύχησις, that is, "boasting") is wicked, — suggested by the wicked spirit; in Greek πονηρά, that is, "evil, base."
Verse 17: To Him Therefore Who Knoweth to Do Good, and Doth It Not, to Him It Is Sin
17. To him therefore who knows good to be done, and does it not, to him it is sin. — St. James tacitly signifies that the faithful know these admonitions of his, as if to say: I believe you know these things; therefore I admonish you that you carry them out in deed. For he who knows the good which God and the law command, if he does it not, sins, and as one guilty shall be punished by God. Rightly St. Ephrem from this sentence concludes, in his sermon On Penance: If for one who knows good and does it not, it is sin to him; much more for one who knows evil and does it, it shall be sin. St. Bernard, sermon 36 on the Canticle: "To one who knows good," he says, "and does it not, it is sin to him; as though he were saying by way of comparison: To one taking food and not digesting it, it is harmful. For undigested food generates bad humors and corrupts the body, does not nourish: so also much knowledge taken into the stomach of the soul, which is memory, if it has not been cooked by the fire of charity, and poured forth and digested through certain limbs of the soul — namely manners and acts — etc., shall be reputed for sin, like food turned into harmful and depraved humors. Will he not endure swellings and twistings of conscience who is such a man, namely one who knows the good and does it not?"