Moralia in Job 991

78. When God's ministers are despised, let them be silent, and take refuge in the mourning of penitence. Let discretion moderate abstinence. Let the vices of the flesh be extinguished, not the flesh. — Because the organ sounds through pipes, and the cithara through strings, by the cithara can be designated right action, but by the organ holy preaching. By the pipes of the organ we may not unfittingly take the mouths of preachers, but by the strings of the cithara the intention of those who live rightly. Which, while it is stretched toward another life through the affliction of the flesh, sounds like a string thinned in the cithara, through the admiration of those who behold it.

For the string is dried, that it may render a fitting song in the cithara, because holy men also chastise their body and bring it into subjection (1 Cor. 9:27), and are stretched from the lowest to the higher things. It is also to be weighed that a string in the cithara, if it is stretched too little, does not sound; if too much, it gives a harsh sound; because assuredly the virtue of abstinence is either wholly nothing, if a man subdues his body less than he is able; or is very disordered, if he wears his body away more than he is able. For by abstinence the vices of the flesh are to be extinguished, not the flesh; and each man ought so to preside over himself with moderation that the flesh may neither grow proud unto fault, and yet may hold firm to the effecting of uprightness in action.

Amid these things it is pleasant to behold the excellent preacher, with how great an art of teaching he, as strings stretched taut in a cithara, thins some of the souls of the faithful by stretching them more, and preserves others by relaxing them from their tension. For to some he says: 'Not in revellings and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness' (Rom. 13:13). And again he says: 'Mortify your members which are upon the earth' (Col. 3:5). And yet to a most dear preacher he writes, saying: 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thy frequent infirmities' (1 Tim. 5:23). Those strings, then, he stretches by thinning them, lest, not being stretched, they should not sound at all; but this one he tempers from its tension, lest, while it is stretched more, it should sound less.

79. There is a twofold manner of exhortation: one by words, the other by works. — But whether holy preachers in the Church, or any simple and abstinent persons, according as they receive strength, render to their neighbours in her the song of good exhortation. For the prudent watch skilfully for the fruit of preaching, and, that they may draw others to life, labour with the sound of great persuasion; and those who in her seem of slower wit, from the very merit of their own life, in as much as they perceive themselves able, take up authority of exhortation toward others, and cease not to draw to the heavenly country as many as they can.

But the holy Church, pressed by the last persecutions, when she considers her words despised by the reprobate, shapes the grace of her love unto laments alone, because indeed she weeps over those whom by exhorting she is unable to draw. Let her therefore say: 'My cithara is turned into mourning, and my organ into the voice of those that weep.' As if she openly confessed, saying: 'In the time of my peace I preached, through some, small things after the manner of the cithara, but through others, great and sonorous things after the manner of the organ; but now my cithara is turned into mourning, and the organ into the voice of those that weep, because, while I behold myself despised, I bewail those who do not hear the song of preaching.' These things the holy Church will do through certain persons at the end; these things she has already done through certain persons in her very beginnings.

For the first martyr, Stephen, endeavoured by preaching to profit the persecuting Jews; yet, when after the words of his preaching he saw them rush together to hurl stones, he prayed on bended knees, saying: 'Lord Jesus, lay not this sin to their charge' (Acts 7:59). What else, then, remained for him who had long narrated both small and great things, but that now the song of his cithara and organ was silent and had been turned into mourning, because those whom by preaching he had not drawn, by loving he bewept? Which indeed the holy Church ceases not daily to do, since she now sees the word of preaching to have become well-nigh everywhere silent. For some feign not to speak, others scorn to hear what is right.

But the mind of the elect, while it beholds the song of preaching to be silent, groaning and silent, returns to weeping. Let her therefore say: 'My cithara is turned into mourning, and my organ into the voice of those that weep,' because each of the elect, in proportion as the voice of holy preaching has become silent, so much the more grievously bewails the losses of the Church. Thus far blessed Job has described the evils which he endured; but from this place he begins to relate more subtly the good things which he did. Yet the words of his grief we run through with a historical and allegorical exposition, whereas the works of his virtues we for the most part hold according to the text of the history alone, lest, if we draw these to the searching out of mysteries, we should perhaps seem to empty the truth of the deed.