Moralia in Job 407

Same verse: And walks upon the waves of the sea. 11. The persecutions of the Gentiles are to be broken by the power of miracles. For what is signified by the name of the sea but the bitterness of this world, raging in the slaughter of the good? Of which it is also said through the Psalmist: Gathering the waters of the sea as it were in a bottle (Ps. 32:7). For the Lord gathers the waters of the sea as it were in a bottle when, disposing all things by a wondrous governance, He curbs the threats of the carnal, shut up within their own hearts. The Lord walks, therefore, upon the waves of the sea, because when the storms of persecution raise themselves, they are broken by the astonishment of His miracles. For He who mitigates the swellings of human madness treads as it were upon the waves raised in a heap.

For when the Gentile world saw its custom being destroyed by the preaching of the new conversation, when the rich of this world saw the deeds of the poor opposing their own pride, when the wise of the age weighed the words of the unlearned as adverse to themselves, they straightway swelled up into the tempest of persecution. But those who, stirred by the adversity of words, leap forth into the storms of persecution, are, as we have said, tempered by admiration of the signs. The Lord, therefore, set as many steps in these waves as the miracles He showed to the proud persecutors. Whence it is again well said through the Psalmist: Wonderful are the surgings of the sea, wonderful is the Lord on high (Ps.

92:4); because against the life of the elect the world wondrously raised itself into the waves of persecution, but the Maker of things above laid these low still more wondrously by the uplifted power of the preachers; for He showed His ministers to be able to do more through miracles than the earthly powers had swelled up through wrath. Which the Lord also well shows through Jeremiah, narrating outward things while announcing inward ones, saying: I have set the sand a bound to the sea, an everlasting precept which it shall not pass; and they shall be moved, and shall not prevail; and its waves shall swell, and shall not pass over it (Jer. 5:22). For the Lord set the sand as a bound to the sea, because to break the glory of the world He chose the abject and the poor.

Whose waves, forsooth, of this sea swell up, when the powers of the age leap forth into the commotion of persecution. But they cannot pass over the sand, because they are broken by the miracles and the humility of the despised. But while the sea rages, while it is raised through the waves of its own madness, yet because it is trodden down by the manifestation of inward power, the holy Church profits, and rises up to the state of its own order through the increases of the times. Whence it is also aptly subjoined at once: