Moralia in Job 539

Verse 2.—Who cometh forth like a flower and is crushed, and fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in the same state. 67. The world is filled with as many flowers, soon to wither, as it has names. For man cometh forth like a flower, because he shines in the flesh; but he is crushed, because he is reduced to rottenness. For what are men born into the world but so many flowers in a field? Let us stretch the eyes of the heart over this expanse of the present world, and behold, it is full of as many flowers as there are men. Thus life is in the flesh, the flower in the hay. Whence it is well said by the Psalmist: Man, his days are as grass; and as the flower of the field, so shall he flourish (Ps. 102:15). Isaiah too says: All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of the field (Isa.

40:6). For man, after the manner of a flower, proceeds forth from the hidden place, and suddenly appears in public, and straightway is drawn back from the public into the hidden by death. The greenness of the flesh displays us, but the dryness of the dust withdraws us from sight. We appeared like a flower, we who did not exist; we wither like a flower, we who appeared but for a time. 68. Man at every moment of life advances toward death. He fails from the very source by which he progresses. And because man is daily driven by moments toward death, it is rightly added: And he fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in the same state. But since the sun also unceasingly runs its course, and never fixes itself in stability;

why then is the course of man's life compared to a shadow rather than to the sun, except because, having lost the love of his Creator, he has lost the warmth of his heart and has remained in the sole cold of his own iniquity? For according to the voice of Truth: Iniquity shall abound, and the charity of many shall grow cold (Matt. 24:12). He therefore who has not the warmth of the heart in the love of God, and yet does not hold the life which he loves, flees, that is, like a shadow. Whence it is also rightly written of him: For he hath followed a shadow (Ecclus. 34). But it is well said:

And never continueth in the same state, because while infancy passes to childhood, childhood to adolescence, adolescence to youth, youth to old age, and old age to death, in the course of the present life man is driven by his very increases toward his losses; and he ever fails from that very source by which he believes himself to be advancing into the span of life. For we cannot have a fixed state here, where we have come as those about to pass on; and this very living of ours is daily a passing away from life. This falling, indeed, the first man could not have had before his fault, for while he stood, the seasons passed by. But after he sinned, he set himself as it were upon the slipperiness of temporality;

and because he ate the forbidden food, he at once found the failing of his own state. Yet this changeableness man suffers not only outwardly but also inwardly, while he strives to rise up to better works. For the mind, by the weight of its own mutability, is ever driven toward something other than what it is, and unless it be held in its state by the strict discipline of watchfulness, it ever slips down into worse things. For that which forsook Him who ever stands, lost the state which it might have had. Whence now, when it strives toward better things, it labors as it were against the current of a river. But when it is loosed from its intention of ascending, without labor it is brought down to the depths. For because in ascent there is labor, in descent ease, the Lord admonishes those about to enter through the narrow gate, saying:

Strive to enter through the narrow gate (Luke 13:24). About to speak of the entrance of the narrow gate, He prefaced it with 'strive,' because unless the striving of the mind glows hot, the wave of the world is not overcome, by which the soul is ever called back to the depths. Since therefore man is born like a flower and is crushed, since he flees like a shadow and never remains in his own state, let us hear what he adds in this consideration. It follows: