Moralia in Job 226

Verse 21. — 'Who wait for death, and it comes not.' 5. Those who desire to die to the world are often compelled to serve human offices. Not without gain to themselves and to others. — For they long to mortify themselves utterly, and to be extinguished from every life of temporal glory; but by the hidden judgements of God they are often compelled either to preside in governance, or to be occupied with the honours enjoined upon them, and amid these they unceasingly await their fullest mortification. But the awaited death comes not, because their being still lives, even unwillingly, unto temporal glory, which nevertheless they endure for the fear of God. And within, indeed, they keep the desire of piety, but without they fulfil the ministry of their order;

so that they neither withdraw from perfection through their intention, nor contradict the Creator's disposition through pride. For it is wrought by the marvellous loving-kindness of the Godhead, that he who tends with a perfect heart toward contemplation is occupied with human offices; that both his perfect mind may profit many weaker ones, and, from the very point at which he beholds himself imperfect, he may rise up more perfect to the summit of humility. For sometimes holy men, from that very source whence they endure the losses of their own desires, reap greater gains, others being converted; because, while they are not permitted to be free for God as they long, it pleases them to snatch along with them others among whom they are mingled.

It comes to pass, then, by the marvellous dispensation of loving-kindness, that from the very point at which they esteem themselves more destroyed, they rise up richer unto the building of the heavenly fatherland. 6. God often defers the fulfilment of pious desires, that they may grow. — But sometimes they by no means attain to the desires they have conceived, for this reason: that by the very delay intervening, they may be enlarged toward those same desires with the bosom of the mind loosened; and those things which, if fulfilled, might perhaps have been diminished, are, by a great disposition, so ordered that, being repulsed, they grow. For they so long to be mortified, that they may already, if it be permitted, perfectly contemplate the face of their Creator. But their desire is deferred, that it may profit; and it is nourished in the bosom of its own delay, that it may grow. Whence, well, the bride, panting in the desire of her bridegroom, cries out:

'By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, and found him not' (Cant. 3:1). The bridegroom hides himself when he is sought, that, not being found, he may be sought the more ardently; and the bride who seeks is delayed, that she may not find, so that, rendered more capacious by her delay, she may at length in more manifold measure find what she sought. Whence blessed Job, when he had said: 'They wait for death, and it comes not,' in order to set forth more subtly this very desire of those who seek, straightway adds: