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| Chapter V. St. Ambrose, speaking of tears, explains David's saying, “Every night wash l my couch with my tears,” and goes on to speak of Christ bearing our griefs and infirmities. Everything should be referred to His honour, and we ought to rejoice with spiritual joy, but not after a worldly fashion.
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Chapter V.
St. Ambrose, speaking of tears, explains David’s
saying, “Every night wash l my couch with my tears,” and
goes on to speak of Christ bearing our griefs and infirmities.
Everything should be referred to His honour, and we ought to rejoice
with spiritual joy, but not after a worldly fashion.
21. And who can now
fail to understand that the holy prophet said for our
instruction: “Every night will I wash my couch and water my
bed with my tears”?3284
For if
you take it literally for his bed, he shows that such abundance of
tears should be shed as to wash the bed and water it with tears, the
couch of him who is praying, for weeping has to do with the present,
rewards with the future, since it is said: “Blessed are ye
that weep, for ye shall laugh;”3285
or if we take the word of the prophet
as applied to our bodies, we must wash away the offences of the body
with tears of penitence. For Solomon made himself a bed of wood
from Lebanon, its pillars were of silver, its bottom of gold, its back
strewn with gems.3286
What
is that bed but the fashion of our body? For by gems is set forth
the splendour of the brightness of the air, fire is set forth by the
gold, water by silver, and earth by wood, of which four elements the
human body consists, in which our soul rests, if it do not exist
deprived of rest by the roughness of hills or the damp ground, but
raised on high, above vices, supported by the wood. For which
reason David also says: “The Lord will send him help upon
his bed of pain.”3287
For
how can that be a bed of pain which cannot feel pain, and which has no
feeling? But the body of pain is like the body of that death, of
which it is said: “O wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?”3288
22. And since I have inserted a clause in which
mention is made of the Lord’s Body, lest any one should be
troubled at reading that the Lord took a body of pain, let him remember
that the Lord grieved and wept
over the death of Lazarus,3289
and was wounded in His passion, and
that from the wound there went forth blood and water,3290
and that He gave up His Spirit.
Water for washing, Blood for drink, the Spirit for His rising
again. For Christ alone is to us hope, faith, and love—hope
in His resurrection, faith in the laver, and love in the
sacrament.
23. And as He took a body of pain, so too He
turned His bed in His weakness,3291
for He
converted it to the benefit of human flesh. For by His Passion
weakness was ended, and death by His resurrection. And yet you
ought to mourn for the world but to rejoice in the Lord, to be sad for
penitence but joyful for grace, though, too, the teacher of the
Gentiles by a wholesome precept has bidden to weep with them that weep,
and to rejoice with them that do rejoice.3292
24. But let him who desires to solve the
whole difficulty of this question have recourse to the same
Apostle. “Whatsoever ye do,” says he, “in word
or deed, do all in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to
God the Father by Him.”3293
Let us
then refer all our words and deeds to Christ, Who brought life out of
death, and created light out of darkness. For as a sick body is
at one time cherished by warmth, at another soothed by cool
applications, and the variation of remedies, if carried out according
to the direction of the physician, is healthful, but if done in
opposition to his orders increases the sickness; so whatever is paid to
Christ is a remedy, whatever is done by our own will is
harmful.
25. There ought then to be the joy of the
mind, conscious of right, not excited by unrestrained feasts, or
nuptial concerts, for in such modesty is not safe, and temptation may
be suspected where excessive dancing accompanies festivities. I
desire that the virgins of God should be far from this. For as a
certain teacher of this world has said: “No one dances when
sober unless he is mad.”3294
Now if,
according to the wisdom of this world, either drunkenness or madness is
the cause of dancing, what a warning is given to us amongst the
instances mentioned in the Divine Scriptures, where John, the
forerunner of Christ, being beheaded at the wish of a dancer, is an
instance that the allurements of dancing did more harm than the madness
of sacrilegious anger.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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