約伯倫理 第 395 章

Verses 20, 21. Until thy mouth be filled with laughter, and thy lips with jubilation. 88. The laughter of the saints after mourning. Jubilation. For the mouth of the just shall then be filled with laughter, when their hearts, the weepings of their pilgrimage being ended, shall be satisfied with the exultation of eternal gladness. Of this laughter Truth says to the disciples: The world shall rejoice, but you shall be made sorrowful; but your sorrow shall be turned into joy (John 16:20). And again: I will see you, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you (ibid. 22). Of this laughter of holy Church Solomon says: She shall laugh in the last day (Prov. 31:25). Of this again it is said: To him that feareth the Lord, it shall be well in the latter end (Sir. 1:13).

But that will not be the laughter of the body, but the laughter of the heart. For the laughter now is of the body, arising from the wantonness of dissoluteness; but the laughter of the heart shall then be born of the gladness of security. When therefore all the elect are filled with the joy of manifest contemplation, they leap up, as it were, to the mirth of laughter in the mouth of the mind. But we call it jubilation, when we conceive in the heart so great a gladness as we do not unfold by the efficacy of speech; and yet the exultation of the mind sounds forth by the voice that which it does not explain by speech. But well is the mouth said to be filled with laughter, the lips with jubilation, because in that eternal fatherland, when the mind of the just is caught up into exultation, the tongue is lifted up into the song of praise.

Since they see so much as they are not able to tell, they jubilate in laughter, because unable to unfold it they resound with what they love. [Vet. XL.] 89. The punishments of the reprobate never to be ended. The force of the particle 'until.' But 'until' is said, not because Almighty God does not relieve the malignant up to the point at which He takes His elect into the joys of jubilation, as though afterward He should rescue from punishment those whom before, deserting in guilt, He condemns; but because He by no means does this even before the judgment, when it might seem doubtful to men whether it should come to pass. For that after the jubilation of His elect He should not reach out His hand to the malignant is established from the very strictness of the last examination. For thus it is said also through the Psalmist: The Lord said to my Lord:

Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool (Ps. 110:1). Not that the Lord by no means sits at the right hand of the Lord after, striking His enemies, He subjects them to His power, but that He presides in eternal blessedness over all, even before He tramples down the hearts of His rebels. In which it is surely established that, His enemies being subjected, He also reigns without end and afterward. Thus through the Gospel it is said of Mary's spouse: And he knew her not, until she brought forth her firstborn son (Matt. 1:25); not that he knew her after the Lord's nativity, but that he by no means touched her, even when he did not know her to be the mother of his Creator.

For because he was by no means able to touch her, after he recognized that the mystery of our redemption was being celebrated from her womb, it was assuredly necessary from that time that the evangelist should bear testimony concerning that of which, on account of Joseph's ignorance, doubt might have arisen. So then it is now said: God will not cast away the simple, nor reach out His hand to the malignant, until thy mouth be filled with laughter, and thy lips with jubilation. As if it were openly said: He neither deserts the life of the simple before the judgment, and by deserting them strikes the minds of the malicious, nor does He pass this over before it appears. For that He should torment the reprobate without end, and that His elect should reign forever after He has appeared, is assuredly not in doubt. There follows: