Moralia in Job 1024

22. Charity alone makes us God's disciples. Arguments and signs of charity. That we are the disciples of Almighty God, the mere keeping of charity proves. For hence it is that through Himself the Truth says: By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John XIII, 35). Which love, if it truly fills our heart, is wont to be shown in two ways, namely, if we both love friends in God, and love enemies for the sake of God.

But it is to be known that love of an enemy is then truly kept, when we are neither cast down by his advancement, nor rejoice over his ruin. For often in the semblance of love the mind is deceived toward an enemy, and esteems that it loves him, if it does not stand contrary to his life. But the force of love secretly and truly questions either the advancement or the fall of the enemy. For concerning this matter the mind of man does not fully know itself, unless it has found that he whom it believes to be its adversary has changed the manner of his state either in decline or in advancement. For if it is cast down by his prosperity, and rejoices at the calamity of one who hates it, it is evident that it does not love him whom it does not wish to be better, and it persecutes with its wish even one standing, whom it congratulates as having fallen.

23. How we can, with charity unharmed, rejoice over an enemy's ruin, or grieve over his glory. What is to be guarded against in this matter. But amid these things it is to be known that it very often is wont to happen that, without charity lost, both an enemy's ruin gladdens us, and again his glory saddens us without the fault of envy, since both when he falls we believe that certain persons are well set upright, and while he prospers we fear that very many are unjustly oppressed. In which matter neither his decline now elevates our mind, nor his advancement casts it down, if our right thought considers not what is done in him, but what is done through him concerning others.

But for guarding these things a most subtle examination of discretion is greatly necessary, lest, while we carry out our own hatreds, we be deceived under the appearance of another's benefit. For if we were to rejoice not at all over an enemy's death, the Psalmist would not say: The just man shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance of the wicked (Ps. LVII, 11). But it is one thing to endure the impious, another to endure an enemy. For there are very many enemies who are not impious; and there are some impious who do not particularly seem to us enemies. But the human mind thinks everyone whom it endures as an enemy to be also impious and wicked, because envy the accuser exaggerates his faults before its own thought. But by whatever crimes he is burdened, he is believed to be less wicked, if he is by no means felt to be an adversary.

In which matter it is to be discerned that it is one thing which our enemy harms us, and another which he harms himself and others. For if he is good to others, perhaps not without our fault can he be evil to us; nor is his ruin at all to be rejoiced over, when it is certain that we alone have endured adversities from him. But when the enemy of us and of many is destroyed, the mind must needs rejoice over the rescue of our neighbours rather than over the destruction of the enemy. 24. We must condole with the misery of one perishing, and rejoice together with the justice of the Judge. For when an adversary is perishing, we ought subtly to weigh both what we owe to the ruin of the sinner, and what to the justice of the One who strikes.

For when the Almighty strikes any perverse person, both is the misery of the one perishing to be condoled with, and is the justice of the Judge to be rejoiced with, so that both the punishment of the dying may be to us for mourning, and again the equity of the judging God, thus displayed, may come to us for joy; so that we may neither prove ourselves adversaries to the perishing man, nor be found ungrateful to the judging God. Blessed Job, therefore, because in adversity he perfectly trampled all hatreds, may say: If I have rejoiced at the ruin of him who hated me, and exulted that evil had found him out; who, namely, both loving the enemy, while he condoled with the falling adversary, in the man's evils himself grew to good, so that from thence this one might grow to benignity, whence the evils which the other deserved had found him out.

But because very often some strike with cursing those whom they esteem their adversaries, since by strength they by no means can; in whom it plainly appears that they would do the graver things if they could, who do not in the least cease to imprecate those things which they are unable to do; blessed Job, showing himself alien even from the fault of cursing, went on and added: