Moralia in Job 489

Ver. 5. — A lamp despised in the thoughts of the rich. 49. The possession of riches is not in the crime, but covetousness. — What is here signified by the name of the rich, except the pride of the haughty, who have no regard for the Judge to come, while they swell with proud thoughts within themselves? For there are some whom wealth does not lift up through swelling, but exalts through works of mercy. And there are some who, while they behold themselves abounding in earthly riches, seek not the true riches of God, and love not the eternal fatherland, because they think it suffices them to be supported by temporal things. It is not, therefore, wealth that is in the crime, but the affection. For all things that God has created are good;

but he who uses good things ill assuredly acts so that, as through the gluttony of voracity, he dies by that very bread through which he ought to have lived. The poor man Lazarus had come to rest, but torments tortured the proud rich man (Luke xvi, 26). Yet Abraham had been rich, who held Lazarus in his bosom; who nevertheless, conversing with his Author, says: I will speak to my Lord, though I am dust and ashes (Gen. xviii, 27). How, therefore, could this man esteem his riches, who weighed himself to be dust and ashes? Or when would his possessions have exalted him, who felt such abject things concerning himself also — that is, their very possessor? 50. That those are counted rich who are in need and swell with haughtiness. To these the despisers of the world are contemptible.

— And again there are some to whom earthly things also are not supplied, and yet who are lifted up within themselves through the swelling of haughtiness. These neither does wealth carry up to the display of power, and yet the insolence of their character enrolls them among the reprobate rich. Whomsoever, therefore, the love of the life to come does not humble, in this place the sacred discourse calls rich, because in the vengeance of judgment also it makes no difference whether they swell with possessions or with character alone. Who, when they behold the life of the simple humble and abject in this world, at once mock them with lofty contempts. For they in no way consider this outward thing to be lacking to those toward which they themselves pant with all their efforts.

As fools, therefore, they despise those who do not have the things by which they themselves indeed, whether by having them or merely by loving them, die; and they reckon as dead those whom they think in no way to live carnally with themselves. For he who dies to the appetite of this world is assuredly esteemed by earthly minds to be in every way extinguished. Which the miracle of our Redeemer well signifies, when He frees a man from an unclean spirit, of whom indeed it is written: Crying out and greatly tearing him, it went out of him; and he became as one dead, so that many said that he was dead. But Jesus, taking his hand, lifted him up, and he arose (Mark ix, 25).

For he is shown as if dead who is freed from the power of the malign spirit, because whosoever now subdues earthly desires extinguishes in himself the life of carnal conversation; and he appears dead to the world, because he lacks the depraved possessor who stirred him through unclean desires. Whom many call dead, because those who know not how to live spiritually reckon him who follows not carnal goods to be utterly extinguished. 51. The just, without light to the eyes of the carnal, burn and shine before God. — But because those very deriders of the simple are also reckoned by the name of Christianity, being pressed by reverence of religion, they blush to exhibit the evil of public mockery.

Whence it comes to pass that, swollen and silent within themselves, they deride those whom through simplicity they think exceedingly abject and lowly. Well, therefore, is it said: A lamp despised in the thoughts of the rich, because the proud, while they know not how to weigh the good things that follow, as we said above, esteem as almost nothing him whom they do not see to have what they love. For it often happens that some elect person, who is led to eternal felicity, is here depressed by continual adversity: no abundance of things sustains him, no glory of dignities shows him honorable, no frequency of attendants is supplied to him, no pomp of garments arrays him before human eyes; but he is discerned as despicable by all, and is esteemed unworthy of the favor of this world.

Yet before the eyes of the hidden Judge he shines with virtues, glitters with the merits of his life; he fears to be honoured, yet does not flee from being despised; he chastens his body with continence, and grows rich in soul by love alone; he ever prepares his mind for patience, and, upright for the sake of justice, he exults over the insults he has received, suffers from his heart with the afflicted, and rejoices in the prosperity of the good as though it were his own; anxiously he ruminates in his mind upon the nourishment of the sacred word, yet, if questioned, he knows not how to speak anything with duplicity. Rightly therefore is the simplicity of the just man called both a lamp and a thing despised: a lamp, because within it shines; despised, because outwardly it does not shine. Within burns the flame of charity, yet outwardly no splendour of glory blazes forth.

He shines, then, and is despised, who, though ablaze with virtues, is reckoned as worthless. For the minds of carnal men are unable to weigh good things, save such as they behold in a carnal manner. Hence it is that his own father had despised the holy David, whom he refused to present before the eyes of the prophet Samuel. For when he had brought forward seven sons for the grace of anointing, and was asked by the prophet whether he had completed the number of his offspring, he answered with great despair: 'There is yet a little lad who feeds the sheep' (1 Kings xvi, 10, 11). And when he had been brought and chosen, straightway Samuel heard: 'Man looks upon the face, but God searches the heart' (ibid., 7). David, then, had been a lamp through his innocence; yet greatly despised, because to those who behold only outward things he did not shine.

But it must be known that every just man either has no temporal glory, or, if he has it, crushes it beneath himself, so that he may rise free above his own honour, lest, overcome by its delight, he should sink beneath it. Hence it is that that surpassing preacher had humbled before human eyes the glory of his apostleship, when he said: 'We have not used this power, although we might have been burdensome as apostles of Christ, but we became little ones in your midst' (1 Thess. ii, 7). Yet in his hearers the swelling pride of the rich still remained in the heart, when they said: 'His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible' (2 Cor. x, 10).

For those whom they knew to be able to say such things, they judged unable to live in common with them. And when they saw him living humbly, yet esteemed him otherwise by his speech, their own arrogance drove them to despise, through the words of his presence, the very man whom they had feared through his writings. What then was Paul, save a despised lamp among the thoughts of the rich, who, from the very source whereby he displayed a mastery of humility, received from untaught disciples the insults of pride? For in a dreadful manner the disease of the proud grew from that whence it ought to have subsided, while the puffed-up mind of the carnal spurned as unworthy that which the master showed to be worthy of imitation. Was he not indeed a despised lamp, who, shining with so many virtues, endured such great adversities from his persecutors (Eph.

vi, 20)? He discharges his embassy in a chain, and his bonds are made manifest in all the praetorium; he is beaten with rods, and is pressed by many perils from his own kindred and from the Gentiles (Phil. i, 13); he is battered with stones at Lystra, dragged by the feet outside the city, because he is reckoned to be dead (2 Cor. xi, 26). But how long is this lamp held in contempt? How long is it accounted despicable? Does it in no wise put forth its splendour, and never show with how great a brightness it glows? It shows it plainly. For when the lamp was said to be despised among the thoughts of the rich, straightway there is added: