Moralia in Job 13

Summary. 1. St. Gregory composes his book of the Pastoral Rule by lamplight. 2. And he restores the book of the Sacramentary, together with the Antiphonary, to a better form. 3. He gives thought at once to setting in order and regulating his own household. 4. Bidding farewell to laymen, he takes as his companions clerics and monks conspicuous for piety and learning. 5. How great was his care for the poor and for pilgrims. 6. He sets no laymen over the administering of the Church's patrimonies. 7. He feeds his flock with the word of God. 8. His manner of preaching. 9. He sends preachers to barbarians not yet Christian. — 10. A rigorous censor of bishops, but most of all of himself. (In the years 590 and 591.) 1. A little after he had taken up the pontificate, St.

Gregory composed his book of the Pastoral Rule, both that he might always have before his eyes whatever pertains to the office of a pastor in the governance of the Church, and that he might answer the complaints of his friends—especially of John, bishop of Ravenna—by which he was continually assailed on account of his long refusal of the episcopate. For in this work, plainly golden, he proves that the burdens of the episcopate are so many and so great, most greatly to be dreaded even by the strongest shoulders, that no one, unless bereft of his mind, could, considering them, aspire to the episcopal dignity, or even willingly undertake it when offered. But since those things which we have set forth concerning this book can be easily consulted, we here forbear the rest that might be said on this matter.

But it would be best to read this little work often, and to con it assiduously, that the precepts of the Christian life—of which it is a most abundant storehouse—might be drunk into the soul. Now let us behold how, according to the prescription of this most perfect rule, St. Gregory both lived and governed the Church. 2. Every high priest, taken from among men, is appointed for men in the things that pertain to God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices (Heb. v. 1). Understanding this, St. Gregory, as soon as he entered the pontificate, gave thought to the liturgy and to the ordering of sacred things according to rite. He therefore bestowed a better form upon the Roman Order of Gelasius I, with certain things removed, or added, or altered. To the Canon of the Mass he appended:

'And mayest Thou order our days in Thy peace, and command us to be snatched from eternal damnation and to be numbered among the flock of Thine elect.' Concerning the stations and processions to the basilicas and cemeteries of the holy martyrs which he himself instituted, and concerning the solemnities of Masses which he ordered to be celebrated over the bodies of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and concerning the many olive-groves granted for the lamps of the basilicas, and concerning the increased number of sacred ministers who should serve in these basilicas—John the Deacon is to be consulted.

The psalmody and ecclesiastical chant—which contribute much to the enlarging of divine worship and to the fostering of piety among the Christian people—he recalled from the rules of graver music to a more accurate harmony and modulation, having established a school of cantors and set the antiphonary in order. But of these things more fully in the prefaces to the book of the Sacramentary, the Antiphonary, and so forth (cf. John the Deacon, book ii, nos. 6 and 17; Bede, book ii of the History, ch. 1; ibid. ch. 9 and 20). 3. Since the Apostle brands with grave censure those bishops who know not how to preside over their own household, and judges him worse than an unbeliever who has no care for his own, most of all for those of his household (1 Tim.

ch. iii), Gregory at once bestowed his chief care upon the governance of his house and household, and so ordered his own life that he might set himself as an example to all of good works and of every virtue. Cheap was his furniture; his garments, according to the monastic norm, simple and plain; his pontifical vestments too, which he used when about to perform a sacred rite, were consonant with modesty rather than with magnificence. For he knew, according to the precept of the Apostle (1 Tim. iii, 2), that a bishop ought indeed to be adorned—but with chastity, with purity of morals, with charity, with doctrine:

but pomp, luxury, precious or soft raiment, are rather the marks of a proud courtier, or even of a wanton little woman, than of a bishop and successor of the Apostles. He took pains, at the very outset of his pontificate, that corrupt customs might be done away with—most of all those which even for a moment smacked of simony. (Cf. John the Deacon, book ii, no. 11 and following; book iv, ch. 80.) 4. A custom had prevailed among the pontiffs of an earlier age, that they employed lay boys for the ministry of their bedchamber; this Gregory first reproved by his own example, and afterwards condemned by a public decree in a Roman synod; and he ordered that chosen men from among the clerics and monks should minister to the supreme pontiff in the offices of the bedchamber:

'Namely,' says St. Gregory, 'that he who holds the place of governance may have such witnesses as behold his life in his private converse, and from their assiduous beholding may take an example of advancement.' John the Deacon records this decree, made in synod, in book ii, chapters 5, 11, and 15. And he says that the most holy pope, having removed secular persons from his bedchamber, chose for himself most prudent counselors and intimates: from the clergy indeed, Peter the Deacon, Aemilianus the Notary, Paterius, and John the Defensor; and from the monks, Maximianus, Augustine, Mellitus, Marinianus, Probus, and Claudius.

Furthermore, what manner of men these companions of the pope were, and by what virtues, what studies, what writings or deeds they became distinguished, you will learn both from John the Deacon, book ii, ch. 11, and from what is to be said below. Thus Gregory confirmed whatever he decreed by example rather than by authority. With these associates and fellow-soldiers Gregory ever kept the common life, relaxed nothing of monastic perfection, yet omitted nothing that pertained to the office and care of a pontiff.

A great part of his solicitude lay in promoting the studies of letters and of the best arts, which seemed to flourish again especially at Rome, and most of all in the pope's palace, since he received no one into his service or into his fellowship save one whom either the singular holiness of his life, or no mean skill in some of the liberal arts, commended. (Cf. John the Deacon, book ii, no. 12.) 5. Pilgrims, however, and the poor he received into hospitality (which he also with great zeal took care that the other bishops should provide), and to his table he not only invited but constrained them. His lavish liberality toward the needy he seasoned with a certain marvelous affability with which he addressed them, especially the aged, calling them, for honor's sake, fathers:

and that he might free those labouring in want from all bashfulness, whether in asking or in receiving, he was wont to say that what he poured out with so liberal a hand was given not by himself but by St. Peter—which will be plain from very many of his letters to be reviewed below. That courtesy he used chiefly toward noble men or matrons whom he knew to have been reduced to want, lest, while relieving their poverty, he should suffuse them with shame. To those following the monastic life he took care that all things necessary for their support should first of all be supplied, that with freer mind they might have leisure for God and for divine things. In seeking out and, as it were, hunting for the poor he was assiduous, exploring all their hiding-places; the more obscure dwellings, in which they lay as though buried, he searched out;

and if he chanced upon any whose mouths fear and bashfulness had pressed shut, he seriously rebuked them for having begrudged him the occasion of doing good. He kept by him most ample catalogues of the needy, once called 'matriculae,' to whom he abundantly supplied all necessaries. 6. That he might with the greater solicitude provide for the needs or comforts of the poor, he entrusted all the patrimonies of the Church—which throughout the whole Christian world were very many—to be administered and managed by clerics alone. For since these were without children, he hoped that it would come to pass that they would adopt the poor as sons and receive them.

But if any should dispense alms too sparingly, he was accustomed to visit them with sharper censure and punishment than if they had been plunderers of ecclesiastical estates. (Cf. John the Deacon, book ii, ch. 15.) Since, therefore, the laity took it ill that every access to ecclesiastical patrimonies and offices was barred to them by Gregory's most wise decrees, they attempted craftily to creep into the inheritance of Christ, and some even of the nobles took care to be enrolled in the clerical militia by tonsure; but against their feigned conversion the wise pontiff set new decrees, whereby it was provided that those who desired to be converted to the service of God should first be tested in the lay habit, and then be permitted to serve God in a monastery.

But after they had been trained in the monastic habit, and after the times prescribed by the sacred canons, they might lawfully be advanced to any ecclesiastical office whatsoever. Moreover he was wont to say that he who, forsaking the secular habit, hastened to come to ecclesiastical offices, did not leave the world but exchange it. (Cf. John, book ii, ch. 16.) 7. Concerning spiritual food, no less than concerning bodily food to be ministered to his sons, the best of pastors was ever solicitous. Indeed, among the chief duties of a bishop he rightly reckons the office of preaching and teaching, of which he treats most fully in the whole third part of the book of the Pastoral Rule, the most ample of all.

That he might therefore not be found wanting in this, as long as his bodily strength allowed, he expounded the Gospels and certain selected books of Holy Scripture in the public assembly, emulating his predecessors, than whom nothing was more of long-standing custom than, by example thus and by word, to profit their flock. Of his homilies there yet survive those which he delivered upon various lessons of the Gospel assigned to certain Sundays of the year or to solemnities, and those which were given upon the prophet Ezekiel. 8. In these there occurs nothing more soft, nothing more finely dressed; but pure and chaste eloquence flows, without paint, without allurement. Weighty words, graver sentences, such as befit both the majesty of Holy Scripture and the dignity of so great a priest;

testimonies inserted from the divine books with great discernment, not dragged in by force, but as it were brought forward of their own accord. These are the things that most commend the praised homilies. From the earlier set upon the Gospels, however, we have culled only a few sentences, and have thought them here to be subjoined as a specimen of the rest. Expounding, then, that holy doctor those words of Luke xxi: 'But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads,' he thus exhorts us to love and to long for the coming of Christ, and not to dread death: 'Those who love God are bidden to rejoice and be glad at the end of the world: because, forsooth, they soon find Him whom they love, while that which they loved not passes away.

For far be it that any of the faithful who desires to see God should mourn over the world's afflictions, when he knows that it is being brought to an end by these very afflictions of his. For it is written: Whosoever would be a friend of this world becomes an enemy of God (James iv, 4). He therefore who does not rejoice as the end of the world draws near, testifies that he is its friend, and by this is convicted of being an enemy of God. But far be this from the hearts of the faithful, far from those who both believe by faith that there is another life, and love it by their working. For to mourn over the destruction of the world belongs to those who have planted the roots of their heart in the love of it, who seek not the life to come, who do not even suspect that it exists.'

'But we, who have come to know the eternal joys of the heavenly fatherland, ought to hasten to them as speedily as possible. It is to be desired for us that we go the more quickly, and reach that fatherland by a shorter way. For with what evils is the world not pressed? What sadness, what adversity does not distress us? What is this mortal life but a road? And consider, my brethren, of what sort it is: to grow weary in the labour of the road, and yet to be unwilling that that same road be ended.' And after some things, describing the ageing world he says:

'Just as,' he says, 'in the years of old age the stature is bent, the dried-up neck droops, the breast is oppressed with frequent sighs, strength fails, the breath cuts short the words of the speaker (for even if languor be absent, oftentimes to the aged their very health is a sickness): so the world in its earlier years flourished as in youth, was robust to propagate the offspring of the human race, green in the health of bodies, fat in the abundance of things; but now it is depressed by its very old age, and, as though toward a neighbouring death, is pressed by growing troubles. Do not therefore, my brethren, love that which you see cannot long endure.' The rest may more conveniently be drawn from the fountain itself.

But to one who reads these homilies more attentively it will be evident with what wise counsel the Church has inserted them all—if you except one or two—into her cycle or office. When he preached on the birthdays (feasts) of the saints, he was not wont to run off into barren praises of them; but the things that could contribute to the right ordering of morals, these he took care to press home, as will be plain to one reading the homilies on the solemnities of St. Andrew the Apostle, of the holy martyrs Nereus and Achilleus, of St. Felicity, and so forth. (See homilies 5 and 28.) 9. Since he could not do it by himself, through his disciples—most of all through the nurslings of his own monastery—he disseminated and propagated the Gospel among barbarous nations not yet subjected to the yoke of Christ.

And indeed the pontiffs of an earlier age had strenuously done the same, inasmuch as they understood themselves to have been set over the whole Christian commonwealth; and hence from the Roman See the faith flowed forth throughout the whole world. But never with such felicity, with such ease, as when Gregory sat at the helm of the ecclesiastical ship. I dare to say that Peter, bidden by the Lord to launch out into the deep and let down the nets for a draught, scarcely ever enclosed within the seine a greater multitude of fishes than then; inasmuch as he took nearly the whole of Britain—the greatest of all the islands once known—by nets cast once or twice, and drew it to the shore, that is, to the safe station of the true faith. 10.

If St. Gregory bestowed such diligent labour on gathering new Churches to Christ, he was much more solicitous about rightly ordering the old ones; and above all he took care that worthy pastors should be set over them. If it should chance that these were sometimes lacking in their office, he admonished them with fatherly charity; but the contumacious he pursued more sharply. Yet toward no bishop did he exercise a severer censure than upon himself. Who would not admire this most excellent man, whom the whole world looked up to, when by public confession—and that made from the pulpit—he reproved in himself the lighter offences, as he thought them, in these words: O how hard are these things which I speak:

'for by speaking I strike myself, whose tongue neither holds preaching as is fitting, nor does my life, in so far as it suffices to hold it, follow my tongue. I who am often entangled in idle words, and, torpid and negligent, cease from the exhortation and edification of my neighbours. I who in the sight of God have become mute and wordy: mute in things necessary, wordy in things idle. But behold, the word of God concerning the life of the watchman compels me to speak. I cannot be silent, and yet by speaking I am sorely afraid of striking myself. I will speak, I will speak, that the sword of God's word may pass even through my own self to pierce the heart of my neighbour. I will speak, I will speak, that the word of God may sound even against myself through me.'

'I do not deny that I am guilty; I see my own torpor and negligence. Perhaps before the merciful Judge the very acknowledgment of my fault will obtain pardon' (Homily 11 on Ezekiel, no. and following). From the rest I refrain; for these few things sufficiently show that Gregory used, in reproving himself, a strictness more than censorial. Let these be for now the first outlines, as it were, of Gregory's pontificate. But the several things done by him, keeping so far as may be the order of years and of times, let us now unfold.