Moralia in Job 280

Verse 7. 'Man is born to labor, and the bird to flight.' 15. As much as the flesh is afflicted with scourges, the mind is lifted to higher things. For man is born to labor, because assuredly he who is endowed with the reason he has received considers that it is utterly impossible for him to pass these times of his pilgrimage without groaning. Hence Paul well, when he enumerated his tribulations to his disciples, added: 'For yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto' (1 Thessalonians iii, 3). But in that the flesh is afflicted with scourges, the mind is lifted up to seek higher things; Paul again attesting, who says: 'And though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day' (2 Corinthians iv, 16).

Man, therefore, is born to labor, and the bird to flight, because thence the mind flies up to the highest things, whence the flesh labors the more grievously in the lowest. 16. The labor of the carnal is heavy, that of the spiritual is none. By the appellation of 'man' the life of the carnal can also be signified. Hence Paul says: 'For whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal?' (1 Corinthians iii, 3.) To whom a little after he subjoined, saying: 'Are ye not men?' (Ibid., 4.) In this life, therefore, man is born to labor, because every carnal man, when he seeks after things that pass away, afflicts himself with the weight of his own desires. For it is a heavy labor to seek this very glory of the present life, when sought, at some time to obtain it, and, when obtained, to guard it with circumspection.

It is a heavy labor to grasp with great toil that which he who grasps it knows cannot long stand. But holy men, because they do not love things that pass away, not only bear no weights of temporal desires; but even if any adversities arise, in those very pressures and languors of theirs they do not labor. For what is harder than scourges? and yet of the scourged apostles it is written: 'They departed rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus' (Acts v, 41). What labor, then, is there to their minds, to whom even the punishment of stripes is no labor? Man, therefore, is born to labor, because he truly feels the evils of this world, who gapingly seeks after its goods.

For he whose mind is suspended to the heights has under himself whatever is moved outwardly against it. And so it is well subjoined: 'And the bird to flight.' Because the soul withdraws itself from the affliction of labor by so much, as by hope it lifts itself to the highest things. Was not Paul, as it were, born like a bird to flight, who, sustaining so many adversities, said: 'Our conversation is in heaven' (Philippians iii, 20)? And again: 'We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens' (2 Corinthians v, 1). Like a bird, then, he had transcended the lowest things, whom, still lingering in the body upon earth, the feather of hope already lifted up into the sublime.

But because no one is able by his own strength to lift himself on high, so that when he is afflicted by things visible he may be raised up to things invisible, it is rightly added straightway: