Homilies on First Corinthians 33 part 2/2

Jacob was guileless, dwelling in a house, and unpracticed in toils and dangers, living a certain relaxed and free life, and just as a virgin in her chamber, so also this man, sitting indoors, was for the most part constrained to keep the house, being freed from the market-place and from the tumults that come from the market-place and from all such things, and remaining continually in security and quiet.

What then? When the torch of love had kindled him, see how it made this guileless man who dwelt in a house into one who was enduring and fond of toil.

And hear these things not from me, but from the patriarch himself.

For, bringing a charge against his father-in-law, he says, 'These twenty years have I been with you.'

And how did those twenty years pass? For he adds this too: 'consumed

by the heat of the day and by the frost of the night, and sleep departed from my eyes.'

These are the words of that guileless man, who dwelt in a house and lived a life of ease.

And that he was also timid is plain from the fact that, when he expected to see Esau, he was half-dead with fear.

But observe how this same timid man again became, through love, bolder than a lion.

For, setting himself as a kind of bulwark before all the rest, he was ready to be the first to receive that savage man who, as he supposed, breathed slaughter, and to secure safety for the women by means of his own body;

and the man whom he had dreaded and shuddered at, he longed to be the first to see in the line of battle.

For his love for the women was stronger than this fear.

Have you seen how, being timid, he suddenly became daring, not by changing his disposition, but by being strengthened by love? For that even after this he was still timid is plain from his shifting from place to place.

But let no one suppose that what has been said is an accusation of the righteous man.

For to be timid is not a charge against him;

but to do, out of cowardice, any of the things one ought not to do.

For it is possible even for one who is timid by nature to become brave through godly reverence.

And what of Moses? Did he not flee in fear of a single Egyptian, and remove himself into exile? Yet nevertheless this same fugitive, who could not bear the threat of one man, once he had tasted the honey of love, nobly hastened—with none compelling him—to perish together with those he loved.

For 'if you will forgive their sin,' he says, 'forgive it;

but if not, blot me also out of your book which you have written.'

And that love makes the insolent gentle, and the licentious chaste, we no longer even need examples here;

for even if a man be fiercer than any wild beast, he becomes, through loving, tamer than any sheep.

For what was fiercer and more frenzied than Saul?

Yet when his daughter set his enemy free, he did not utter even one bitter word to her;

and he who had utterly slaughtered all the priests for David's sake, when he saw his daughter had let him escape from the house, was not angry with her even so far as a word, and that though so great a deceit had been contrived against him;

for he was held in check by the mightier bridle of love.

And just as love knows how to make men gentle, so also it knows how to make them chaste;

for if a man love his own wife thus, as he ought to love her, then though he be a thousand times licentious, he will not endure to look upon another, because of his longing for her.

'For love is strong,' it says, 'as death.'

So that licentiousness comes from nowhere else than from not loving.

Since then love is the maker of all virtue, let us with all diligence plant it in our own souls, that it may bring us many good things, and that we may continually possess its overflowing fruit, which ever flourishes and never withers.

For thus we shall also attain unto the eternal good things;

which may it be that we all attain, by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, might, and honor, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.