Moralia in Job 1225

37. The wicked are brought forth for the testing of the just. — What else is to be understood by snow or hail, but the cold and hard hearts of the depraved? For just as charity is wont to be signified in sacred speech by heat, so malice by cold. For it is written: As a cistern makes its water cold, so she has made her malice cold (Jeremiah 6:7). And again: Iniquity shall abound, and the charity of many shall grow cold (Matthew 24:12). In the cold of snow, therefore, or in the hardness of hail, what can more fittingly be understood than the life of the depraved, which both grows cold through torpor, and strikes through the hardness of malice? Yet the Lord bears with their life, because He preserves them for the testing of His just ones. Whence He also rightly added:

Which I have prepared for the time of the enemy, for the day of battle and of war. So that when our adversary the devil strives to tempt us, he may use their manners as it were his own weapons against us. For through them, raging, he torments us, but, unwitting, he purges us. For to our sins they become scourges, and while we are struck by such a life of theirs, we are freed from eternal death. Whence it comes to pass that even the lost life of the reprobate profits the life of the elect, and, while their perdition serves our benefit, it comes about by a wondrous dispensation that for the elect of God not even everything that perishes perishes. 38. Some of them are elect, and called to the highest things.

This too can be understood in another way, so that, since it seems joined to the preceding words, it does not depart from the exposition of the verse above. For because He had made known that the good can be turned to evil, and the evil to good, He at once went on to add: 'Have you entered into the storehouses of the snow, or have you beheld the storehouses of the hail, which I have prepared against the time of the enemy, against the day of battle and of war?' By the cold snow or the hard hail, as has been said, we understand the hearts of the wicked. But because Almighty God has chosen His saints from among such men, and knows how many elect He still keeps stored away amid the life of the wicked, He fittingly declares that He has treasures in the snow and in the hail. For a 'treasure' (thesaurus) is so named from a 'laying up' (a positione).

And He looks upon many who long lie hidden in a cold life, whom He brings forth into the midst when He commands, and shows them shining white with the splendour of righteousness through supernal grace. For it is written: 'You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow' (Ps. 51:9). Those whom He has prepared for the day of battle and of war He long keeps covered within the bosom of His foreknowledge; but when He has suddenly led them forth, He strikes the resisting breasts of His adversaries with their words and refutations, as though with certain hailstones. Whence it is written elsewhere: 'At the brightness before Him the clouds passed, hail and coals of fire' (Ps. 18:13). For at His brightness the clouds pass, because the holy preachers run through all the spaces of the world with the clear light of their miracles.

They are also called hail and coals of fire, because they both strike through rebuke and kindle through the flame of charity. The saints' free reproof, too, is fittingly expressed by the nature of hail. For hail, when it comes, strikes; when melted, it waters. Now holy men both strike the hearts of their hearers, terrifying them, and, soothing them, pour themselves in. For how they strike, the Prophet testifies, saying: 'They shall speak of the might of your terrible acts, and they shall declare your greatness' (Ps. 145:6). And how they water while soothing, he went on to add: 'They shall utter the memory of the abundance of your sweetness, and shall exult in your righteousness' (ibid., 7).

In the snow, therefore, or in the hail there are treasures, because many who are cold with the numbness of iniquity, once taken up into supernal grace, shine in the holy Church with the light of righteousness, and beat down the wicked knowledge of the adversaries with the strokes of their teaching. Whence it is aptly added: 'which I have prepared against the time of the enemy, against the day of battle and of war.' For Saul had been snow and hail through cold insensibility; but he was made snow and hail against the breasts of the adversaries, whether by the whiteness of righteousness or by the reproof of severe eloquence. O what a treasure the Lord had of him in the snow and hail, when He secretly saw as His own elect, even then, one placed amid the life of the wicked!

Oh, against how many breasts of adversaries did He take up this hail in His hand, by which He laid low so many hearts that resisted Him! 59. Let no one be lifted up, let no one despair. Let no one, therefore, be exalted over his own works, let no one despair of those whom he still sees to be cold, since he does not see the treasures of God in the snow and the hail. For who would have believed that he who at the death of Stephen guarded the garments of all who stoned him would go before the stoned Stephen through the grace of the apostolate (Acts 7:58)?

If, therefore, we have recourse to these hidden gifts or judgments, we despair of no one at all, nor do we in our heart prefer ourselves to those over whom we have been set for a time; because, although we now see how far we have advanced, we do not know how far, when they begin to run, they may go before us. Well, therefore, is it said to blessed Job: 'Have you entered into the treasures of the snow, or have you beheld the treasures of the hail, which I have prepared against the time of the enemy, against the day of battle and of war?' As if it were plainly said: 'Prefer yourself to no one on account of your works, because concerning those whom you behold still cold through fault, you do not know how many workers of righteousness and defenders of the right faith I am about to make.' And because this comes to pass through the coming of the Mediator, it is rightly subjoined: