約伯倫理 第 680 章

Verse 9. — 'He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.' 42. The weak members of the Church are sometimes stripped of righteousness for a time. — That all these things befit the person of the blessed man set in affliction is not in doubt. But since the words of the history are plain, they need no exposition according to the letter. It is fitting, therefore, that they should be investigated through mystical senses. For he says: 'He has stripped me of my glory.' Now the glory of each one is his righteousness. And as a garment covers from the cold, so righteousness guards from death. Whence not without reason is righteousness compared to a garment, when it is said through the Prophet: 'Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness' (Ps. 131:9).

But because in the time of her affliction holy Church loses in her weak members this garment of righteousness, which protects before God, it is rightly said: 'He has stripped me of my glory'; that is, righteousness has been taken away from the weak — righteousness which could not be taken from them if it had clung to their inmost marrow, but which could be removed precisely because, after the manner of a garment, it clung outwardly. In this matter it must be asked how those can be called members of holy Church who were able to lose the righteousness they seemed to hold. But it must be known that for the most part righteousness is lost for a time by her weak members;

but when afterward, through the acknowledgement of their fault, they return to penitence, they bind themselves to that same righteousness which they had lost more firmly than was believed. Whereupon it is further added: 'And He has taken the crown from my head.' As the head is the first part of the body, so the mind is the chief part of the inner man. But the crown is the reward of victory, which is obtained from above, that he who has striven may be recompensed. Because, therefore, many, pressed by adversities, by no means endure in the contest, in them holy Church loses, as it were, the crown from her head. For the crown on the head is the heavenly recompense in the mind.

And there are many who, while they are afflicted by adversities, neglect to think upon the heavenly rewards, and cannot attain to the perfection of victory. In these, therefore, the crown is taken from the head, because the supernal and spiritual reward is removed from the thought of the mind, so that they now seek things outward and tranquil, and do not look for the eternal rewards which they had been accustomed to ponder. 43. The crown is taken from the head of the Church when prelates neglect spiritual goods. — Or certainly the priests are not without reason understood as the head of the faithful, because they are the first part of the members of the Lord.

Whence also through the Prophet the head and the tail are said to be cut off, where, namely, by the name of the head the priests, and by the appellation of the tail the reprobate prophets are designated. The crown, therefore, is taken from the head when the rewards of the supernal recompense are forsaken even by those very ones who seemed to preside in this body of the Church. And for the most part, when the leaders fall, the army that followed collapses more widely. Whence presently, after the losses of the greater ones, treating of the manifold ruin of the Church, he adds in what follows: