Moralia in Job 1252

47. Preachers cannot spiritually beget except by weeping. — For they roar, while by their bending down in the manner of life they beget the souls of hearers unto the light, because they cannot remove us from eternal torments except by weeping and grieving. For holy preachers now sow in tears, that they may afterwards reap the harvest of joys. Now they are as hinds in the sorrow of travail, that they may afterwards be fruitful with spiritual offspring. For that I may say one thing out of many, I see Paul as a certain hind in his travail emitting the roars of great grief. For he says: 'My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you, I could wish to be present with you now, and to change my voice, because I am perplexed in you' (Gal. iv, 19).

Behold, he wishes to change his voice in his travail, so that the word of preaching may be turned into the roar of grief. He wishes to change his voice, because those whom he had already begotten by preaching, he was groaning to bring forth again by reforming. What a roar this hind emitted in bearing, when she was compelled to cry out to those returning back after her, saying: 'O senseless Galatians, who has bewitched you; and are you so foolish, that having begun in the Spirit, you are now made perfect by the flesh?' (Gal. iii, 1). Or indeed: 'You did run well; who has hindered you, that you should not obey the truth?' (Gal. v, 7). What a roar there was in the travail of this hind, who bore with so many difficulties sons long conceived, and sometime came to know that those born had returned to the womb of malice?

Let us consider what of grief she had, what of labour, who even after she was able to bring forth what she had conceived, was again compelled to revive those extinguished. (Old version XXII.) 48. Unless they descended to our infirmity and bent down, they would not procreate sons in the faith. They ought to be wise unto sobriety. — But it is most especially to be noted that these hinds bend down that they may bring forth, because assuredly, if they stood erect, they would not be able to bring forth. For unless holy preachers, from that immensity of inner contemplation which they receive, descended to our infirmity by the most humble preaching, as by a certain bending down, they would never at all procreate sons in the faith. For they could not profit us, if they persisted in the erectness of their loftiness.

But let us see the hind bending herself that she may bring forth: 'I,' he says, 'could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal; as to little ones in Christ I gave you milk to drink, not meat' (1 Cor. iii, 1). And straightway he pursues the causes of that same bending down, saying: 'For you were not yet able, but neither indeed are you now able' (Ibid., 2). But let us behold this hind, who is bent down for our sake, erect. He says: 'We speak wisdom among the perfect' (1 Cor. ii, 6). And again: 'Whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God' (2 Cor. v, 13). But when he is beside himself to God, we by no means grasp his excess. Therefore, that he may gain us, he is bent down to us. Whence there he fittingly subjoins: 'Or whether we are sober, it is for you' (Ibid.).

For if holy men were willing to preach to us those things which they receive, when they are inebriated in supernal contemplation, and did not rather temper their knowledge by a certain moderation and sobriety, who could receive, with the still narrow bosom of understanding, those flowing waters of the supernal fountain? Now these bent-down hinds are elsewhere called heavens, of which it is said: 'Lord, bow your heavens, and come down' (Psalm cxliii, 5). For when the heavens are bowed, the Lord descends, because when the holy teachers draw themselves down in their preaching, they pour the knowledge of the Godhead into our hearts. For the Lord would by no means descend to us, if his preachers remained inflexible in the rigour of contemplation.

Therefore the heavens are inclined that the Lord may descend, the hinds are bent down that we may be born in the new light of faith. These bent-down hinds are in the Song of Songs called the breasts of the bride, as it is written: 'Your breasts are better than wine' (Cant. i, 1). For these are the breasts which, fixed in the ark of the bosom, give us milk to drink, because they, cleaving to the secrets of the highest contemplation, nourish us with subtle preaching. Therefore, that they may draw us back from eternal groaning and grief, the hinds are now bent down, and in their travail emit roars. But because those very ones who are born through the holy preaching of the Fathers sometimes go before their own teachers in suffering, so that, while these still remain in this life, they themselves are already consummated by martyrdom, fittingly there follows: