Moralia in Job 193

The same. 'Let it not be counted in the days of the year, nor numbered in the months.' 12. What is to be understood by the name of day, month, and year in the words of Job. By the year we not unfittingly understand the preaching of heavenly grace; for just as in a year time is completed by the gathering together of days, so in heavenly grace the manifold life of the virtues is fulfilled. By the year can also be understood the multitude of the redeemed; for just as a year is drawn out from the multitude of days, so from the gathering of all good men that innumerable whole company of the elect is fulfilled. For Isaiah proclaims this year of the perfect multitude, saying: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me:'

'He hath sent me to announce good tidings to the meek, that I might heal the contrite of heart, and preach indulgence to the captives, and opening to those who are shut up, that I might preach the acceptable year of the Lord' (Isaiah 61:1). For the acceptable year of the Lord is preached when the future people of the faithful, to be illumined by the light of truth, are foretold. But what is meant by the days, save each single mind of the elect? What by the months, save their multiplied Churches, which make one Catholic Church? Let that night therefore not be counted in the days of the year, nor numbered in the months; for the ancient enemy, weighed down by the darkness of his own pride, indeed beholds the coming of the Redeemer, but by no means returns with the elect to pardon. For hence it is written:

'For nowhere doth He take hold of angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold' (Hebrews 2:16). [Recension XII] For our Redeemer became not an angel but a man, precisely because, without doubt, that had to be done which He redeemed; so that He might both forsake the lost angel by not taking hold of him, and restore man by taking hold of him in Himself. [Old recension XI] These days that remain in the inner light can also be understood as the angelic spirits, and the months as their orders and dignities. For each single spirit, because it shines, is a day. But because they are distinguished by certain fixed dignities, so that some are thrones, some dominions, some principalities, some powers, for this very distribution of the hosts they are called months.

But because the ancient enemy is by no means brought back to the merit of the light, by no means to the order of the heavenly hosts, he is numbered neither in the days of the year nor in the months. For the blindness of his consummated pride so weighs him down that he no longer returns to those supernal hosts of the inmost brightness. He is never again mingled with the standing dignities of the light, because by the merit of his own darkness he is ever pressed down to the depths. And because he remains an outcast forever from that frequenting of the heavenly homeland, it is rightly further added: