Moralia in Job 990

77. Because of the fall of the lowly, the strong are scorched by the fire of their own zeal. — These things we do not neglect to weigh according to the history, since indeed the force of the discourse is plain from the pain of his suffering. But because, as we have often already said, blessed Job frequently so narrates deeds done as to foretell deeds to be done, this well befits the voice of the holy Church, who grievously feels in her weak ones the pain of the final persecution. And when others perish by that persecution, all the stronger ones are tortured with sorrow. For the outward cause is the earthly dispensation, but the inward is heavenly care. By the name of skin, then, the weak are signified, who now in her serve outward usefulness. But by the bones her strong ones are figured, in whom the whole frame of that body is made solid.

Because, therefore, whether enticed by gifts or afflicted by persecutions, many of the weak in her fall from the state of faith, and, after they have fallen, themselves persecute her, what else does she suffer but the blackening of her own skin, so that in those men she may afterward appear foul in whom before she seemed fair? For while those who before were wont to administer outward things well afterward rage against the elect of God, the skin of the Church, as it were, has lost the colour of its former righteousness, and has come to the blackness of iniquity. Which Jeremiah also laments under the figure of the choicest metal, saying: 'How is the gold become dim, the finest colour changed?' (Lam. 4:1).

The perverse, therefore, when they go out from her sacraments, very often take a place of honour among the reprobate, so that they who more atrociously despise her, as it were knowingly, may from their authority rage against the holy Church. Whence, when he had said, 'My skin is made black,' he added, 'upon me'; because those whom before she held white unto the beauty of righteousness, afterward she carries as black for the worse. But when the skin is turned to blackness, the strong who are in it waste away with the zeal of faith. Whence he fitly subjoins: 'And my bones are dried up because of the heat.' For thus in the earlier time also the strongest bone of the holy Church, Paul, burned with a certain dryness of grief, when to certain who were falling he said: 'Who is weak, and I am not weak?

who is made to stumble, and I burn not?' (2 Cor. 11:29). The skin, then, is made black, and the bones are dried up because of the heat, because while the weak leap forth to iniquity, all the strong are tortured by the fire of their own zeal. There follows: