On the Beatitudes 1 part 3/6

And he who assigns the tributes to those under his hand, whenever he lays a tribute proportionate to their ability; and the master of a household, and the ruler of a city, and the king of nations—if each of these should govern those subject to him suitably, not being moved by irrational impulses through his authority, but judging his subjects with uprightness, and adapting his mind to the free choices of those under his hand—

all such things they attribute to the principle of righteousness, who define the just by such a disposition.

But I, looking to the height of the divine legislation, conjecture that something more than what has been said is to be understood in this righteousness.

For if the saving word is common to all human nature, but it does not belong to every man to be in the aforesaid positions (for to few belongs the reigning, the ruling, the judging, the being in authority over money, or the being set over some other administration;

but the multitude are among those who are subject and administered)—

how could anyone accept that to be the true righteousness which is not set before all alike by nature? For if the aim for the just, according to the reasonings of those outside, is equality,

yet pre-eminence involves inequality;

One cannot suppose that the account of righteousness rendered above is true, when it is at once refuted by the inequality found in the course of life.

What then is that righteousness which reaches all men? The desire for it lies open in common to everyone who looks toward the evangelical table;

whether one be rich or poor, whether he be slave or master, whether nobly born or purchased with silver, no circumstance whatever, neither one that abounds nor one that falls short, alters the account of the righteous.

For if such a thing were to be found only in one who is preeminent by some authority and superiority,

how then is Lazarus righteous, who was cast down at the rich man's gate, having no means for such righteousness—no office, no authority, no house, no table, nor any other provision for life through which that righteousness might be worked? For if to be righteous consists in ruling, or distributing, or administering anything at all, then he who is not in these things is altogether outside of righteousness.

How then is he counted worthy of rest, who possessed none of those things by which righteousness, according to the common notion, is characterized?

Therefore we must seek that righteousness whose enjoyment he who has desired it holds in promise.

For 'Blessed,' He says, 'are they that hunger after righteousness';

as for the participation in things toward which human nature has its appetitive impulse, we have great need of knowledge, so that in such edibles we may discern what is nourishing and what is deadly, lest that which seems to be taken by the soul in the guise of food should work in us death and corruption instead of life.

It would perhaps not be out of place, by means of another of the things sought in the Gospel, to articulate the sense concerning this matter.

He who in all things shared our nature apart from sin, and partook with us of the same sufferings, did not judge hunger to be sin, nor did He thrust from His own experience the affection that pertains to it, but received the appetitive impulse of nature that arises with regard to food.

For having remained without food for forty days, He afterward hungered;

for He gave to nature, when He willed, the season to work its own operations.

But the deviser of temptations, when he knew that the affection of hunger had come upon Him as well, counseled Him to entertain His appetite with stones;

and this is to divert the desire from the food that is according to nature toward the things that are outside nature.

For 'Say,' he says, 'that these stones become loaves.'

Has then the wisdom of God erred concerning the due provision for human life?

'Say that these stones become loaves.'

He says these things even now to those who are tempted by their own appetite, and by saying them he for the most part persuades those who look to him to make bread out of stones.

For whenever appetite oversteps the necessary limits of need, what else is it but the counsel of the devil, who then sets aside the food that comes from seeds and provokes the appetite toward things outside nature? They eat from stones who set before themselves the bread of covetousness;

those who prepare for themselves out of injustices tables costing many talents and swollen with excess;

whose preparation of banquets is a kind of pomp contrived for display, falling outside the things necessary to life.

For it is bread, or some other of the edible things which nature craves.

If then someone should bring gold to the mouth instead of bread, does he thereby remedy the want? So whenever one seeks out inedible materials before the things that may be eaten, he is occupied outright with stones, engaged in one thing while nature seeks another.

Nature speaks, through the affection of hunger all but sending forth a voice, that there is now need of food;

because it is necessary to restore again to the body the power that has been dissipated;

but you do not hearken to nature;

rather you are anxious that a great weight of silver may be yours upon the table, and you seek out the smiths of the material;

and you busy yourself with the story of the figures engraved in the materials, that by exactness the passions and characters may be brought out in the carvings through art;

so that one may recognize the wrath of the man-at-arms, when the sword is raised for the slaughter, and the pain of the wounded, when, doubled up at the mortal blow, he seems by his posture to be groaning;

and the eagerness of the hunter, and the ferocity of the beast;

and all the other things which vain men elaborately craft through such fussy artifice upon the materials of the table.

Nature sought to drink, but you make ready tripods costing many talents, and basins and mixing-bowls, and amphorae, and countless other things, having nothing in common with the need that is sought.

seasoning the food with a train of evils to serve as fuel for licentiousness? This is the adversary's counsel concerning food; these are the things he suggests, through looking toward the stones, in place of the customary use of bread.

But the destroyer of temptations does not banish hunger from nature as though it were a cause of evils, but, dismissing only the fussiness that enters in along with need at the counsel of the adversary, He left nature to be administered within its own limits.

For just as those who strain wine do not dishonor its usefulness because of the sediment mingled with it,

but, separating off the superfluous matter by the strainer, do not reject the use of what is pure;

so the Word, which is contemplative and discerning of the things foreign to nature, by the fineness of exact contemplation did not banish hunger, since it is preservative of our life;

but the fussy excesses that are entangled with need He strained off and cast away, saying,

that a man should know that bread to be nourishing which by the word of God is made proper to nature.

If then Jesus hungered, hunger would be a blessed thing, whenever in imitation of Him it is at work also in us.

If therefore we have learned what it is for which the Lord hungers, we shall assuredly know the power of the blessing now set before us.

What then is the food whose desire Jesus is not ashamed of? He says to His disciples after the conversation with the Samaritan woman:

'My food is that I should do the will of My Father';

and the will of the Father is manifest, who wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Therefore, if He longs for us to be saved, and our life becomes His food, we have learned to what end this disposition of the soul ought to be used.

What then is this? Let us hunger for our own salvation, let us thirst for the divine will, which is that we be saved.

How then such a hunger may be rightly achieved in us, we have now learned from the blessing.

For he who has yearned for the righteousness of God has found that which is truly to be desired;

and he has fulfilled the desire for it not by one only of the modes which are exercised in appetite;

for he longed for the participation in righteousness not only as food.

For the appetite would have been but half complete, had it stood upon this one disposition alone; but now He has made this good thing also something to be drunk, that it might display the ardent and burning quality of desire by the affection of thirst.

For in a way parched and inflamed at the time of thirst, we take the drink with pleasure as something that remedies such a condition.

Since then appetite is one in kind, in respect of both eating and drinking;

but the disposition toward each of these is different, so that the Word might lay down for us as law the utmost pitch of desire toward the good;

He blesses those who experience both these things toward righteousness, hunger and thirst, since the object of longing is sufficient to be fitted correspondingly to each appetite, and to become solid food for him who hungers, and drink for him who has been drawn to draw in the grace with thirst.

'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.'

Is it then blessed to have an appetite toward righteousness, but if someone is likewise disposed toward temperance, or wisdom, or prudence, or whatever other form of virtue there is, does the Word not bless him? Rather, what is said perhaps has some such meaning as this:

Righteousness is one of the things conceived under virtue.

And it is customary that often the divine Scripture, through the mention of a part, includes the whole;

as when it interprets the divine nature by means of certain names.

For it says, 'I am the Lord,' as the prophecy speaks in the person of God;

'this is My eternal name;

and a memorial to generations of generations.'

And by countless other names which signify the lofty and the God-befitting, the holy Scripture knows how to name Him, so that through these we may learn exactly that whenever it says any one thing, the whole catalogue of names is co-uttered with the one, in what is left unspoken;

but all are named through one name.

Therefore here too, when the Word says that righteousness is set before those who hunger blessedly, He signifies by it every form of virtue, so that it is equally blessed to be one who hungers for prudence, and courage, and temperance, and whatever else is comprehended under the same account of virtue.

For it is not possible that any one form of virtue, severed from the rest, should of itself alone be perfect virtue.

For that with which none of the things conceived as belonging to the good is contemplated together—there its opposite must by all necessity have its place;

and licentiousness is opposed to temperance;

and folly is the opposite of prudence; and for each of the qualities reckoned among the higher things there is in every case something conceived as its contrary.

If, then, not all things were contemplated together with righteousness, it would be impossible for what remains to be good.

For no one could speak of a foolish righteousness, or a rash one, or a licentious one, or of anything else that is regarded as belonging to vice.

But if the principle of righteousness is unmixed with anything worse, it altogether comprises within itself the whole of goodness;

and good is everything that is contemplated in accordance with virtue.

Therefore every virtue is here signified by the name of righteousness—that righteousness whose hungering and thirsting the Word blesses, promising to those who hunger and thirst the satisfaction of what they desire.

'For blessed,' He says, 'are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.'

But what is said seems to me to bear some such meaning as this:

None of the things eagerly pursued in this life for the sake of pleasure ever brings satiety to those who pursue them; but, as Wisdom somewhere says in a riddle:

The busy occupation with pleasures is a pierced jar;

into which those who are busied about these things are ever eagerly pouring, yet they display a labour unfillable and unending, always pouring something into the abyss of desire and casting in whatever leads to pleasure, yet never bringing their desire to satiety.

Who has ever known a limit to avarice, through the covetous obtaining what they eagerly sought? Who, mad for glory, has ceased upon attaining what he strove for? And he who has glutted his pleasure in sounds heard or sights seen, or in the frenzy and rage concerning the belly and what comes after the belly—

what has he found accruing to himself from this enjoyment? Does not every form of pleasure fulfilled through the body flit away the moment it is approached, not remaining even for the briefest time with those who have touched it? This, then, is the lofty teaching we learn from the Lord: that only the earnestness which arises in us according to virtue is something firm and substantial.

For he who has accomplished any of the lofty things—such as temperance, or moderation, or piety toward the Divine, or any other of the sublime and evangelical teachings—does not have upon each of his achievements a joy that is transient and unstable, but one that is firmly seated and abiding, and extending throughout the whole span of his life.

For temperance and purity, and steadfastness in every good, and refusal to share in evil, are always in operation, so long as one looks toward virtue; and one has joy extending together with that operation.

But in the case of those who are given over to unseemly desires, even though the soul continually looks toward licentiousness, yet the pleasure is not always present.

For satiety puts a stop to the gluttony concerning food, and the pleasure of the drinker is quenched along with his thirst; and the rest in like manner require a certain time and interval, so that, once the pleasure and the fullness have withered away, the appetite for what gives delight may again be summoned back.

But the possession of virtue, in those in whom it has once been firmly established, is not measured by time nor circumscribed by satiety;

it furnishes the perception of good things.

This, then, is what He teaches when He discourses from the lofty height of these conceptions: that we should not engage our desire with any such thing as sets before its eager pursuers no goal at all, in which the eagerness is vain and senseless;

just as with those who chase after the summit of their own shadow, whose running is borne toward what can never be attained, since the pursued always swiftly withdraws before the pursuer into that goal;

but rather we should turn our appetite there, where the earnestness becomes a possession of the one who is earnest.

For he who has desired virtue makes the good his own possession, beholding in himself that which he desired.

Blessed, therefore, is he who has hungered after temperance;

for he shall be filled with purity.

But this fullness, as has been said, produces not an aversion but an intensifying of the appetite, and both grow together in equal measure with one another.

For upon the desire for virtue there followed the possession of what was desired;

and the good that has come to be within brought into the soul an unceasing joy.

For such is the nature of this good, that it does not merely sweeten the one who enjoys it in the present alone, but furnishes an active joy in all the portions of time.

For the memory of a life rightly lived gladdens the one who has achieved it;

and so does the present life, when it is conducted through virtue, and the expectation of the recompense—which I suppose to be none other than virtue itself, which is both the work of those who do right and becomes the reward for their right doings.

But if it is fitting to lay hold even of a bold word:

it seems to me that perhaps, through this discourse concerning virtue and righteousness, the Lord sets forth Himself to the appetite of His hearers;

who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—but also bread coming down from heaven, and living water;

'My soul thirsted for God, the mighty, the living One;

when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' He, it seems to me, having been previously instructed by the power of the Spirit in these magnificent teachings of the Lord, spoke of the fullness of such an appetite as belonging to himself.

'For I,' he says, 'shall appear before Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when Thy glory appears to me.'

This, then, according at least to my reasoning, is the true virtue: the good unmixed with anything worse, that around which every conception of things thought of as higher is grasped—God the Word Himself, the virtue which has covered the heavens, as Habakkuk relates; and rightly were those who hunger after this righteousness of God pronounced blessed.

For in truth he who has tasted the Lord, as the psalmody says—that is, he who has received God within himself—becomes full of that for which he thirsted and hungered, according to the promise of Him who said:

'that I and the Father will come, and will make our abode with him'—the Holy Spirit having evidently taken up His dwelling beforehand.

Thus it seems to me also with the great Paul, who tasted of those ineffable fruits from paradise, and was both full of what he had tasted and ever hungering.

For he confesses that he has been filled with what he longed for, saying:

and, as one ever hungering, he stretches forward to the things that lie ahead, saying:

'Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect; but I press on that I may lay hold of it.'

For just as in the case of sensible food, if nothing of what is taken for nourishment were expelled as waste, but the whole were taken up for the increase of the body's stature, the bodies would be raised to a great height, the daily nourishment of itself augmenting their size;

so those who partake [of virtue], it ever increases their greatness by the addition it makes of itself.

Therefore, if the blessed hunger has been rightly understood by us, let us, having vomited up all the surfeit that comes from vice, hunger after the righteousness of God, that we may also come to the fullness of it, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Perhaps it is something of this sort that Jacob was instructed in, through a certain vision, by way of a riddle, when he beheld a ladder reaching from earth to the height of heaven, and God established upon it—even as now the teaching through the Beatitudes does also for us, ever raising toward the higher conceptions those who ascend by means of it.

For there too, I think, the life according to virtue was portrayed to the patriarch under the figure of the ladder, so that he himself might learn, and might instruct those after him, that there is no other way to be exalted toward God than ever to look upward and to have an unceasing desire for the lofty things, so as not to be content to remain in what has already been achieved, but to count it a loss if one does not lay hold of what lies above.

And here too, therefore, the height of the Beatitudes, one upon another, prepares him to draw near to God Himself, the truly Blessed One, who is established upon all blessedness.

And in every case, just as we draw near to the wise one through wisdom, and to the pure one through purity, so also we are made akin to the Blessed One through the way of the Beatitudes.

For blessedness is, in truth, the proper attribute of God;

wherefore also Jacob related that God was established upon such a ladder.

The participation in the Beatitudes, then, is nothing else than communion with the Godhead, to which the Lord leads us up through what is said.

'For blessed,' He says, 'are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

I know that in many places of the divine Scripture the holy men invoke the divine power by the name of 'the merciful One';

thus Jonah in his own prophecy;

thus the great Moses, in many passages of the law-giving, designates the Divine by this name.

If, then, the appellation of 'the merciful' is fitting for God—

what else does the word summon you to become than a god, as it were formed after the property of the Godhead? For if God is named 'merciful' by the God-inspired Scripture,

and the truly blessed thing is the Godhead—

then what follows would be evident to the mind, namely, that even if a man, being but a man, becomes merciful, he is deemed worthy of the divine blessedness, having come to be in that state by which the Divine is named.

'The Lord is merciful and righteous, and our God shows mercy.'

How then is it not blessed for a man to be called and to become that by which God is named from His doing? Nay rather, to be zealous for the greater gifts—this too the divine Apostle counsels through his own words;

but our aim is not that we should be persuaded to reach out after the noble things (for this lies of itself within human nature, namely, to be inclined toward the noble)—

but rather that we may not err in the judgment of the good.

For it is chiefly in this respect that our life goes astray: in that we are unable accurately to understand what is by nature good, and what is only supposed to be such through deception.

For if vice were set before life naked, and not tinged with some semblance of good, mankind would not desert to it.

Therefore we have need of understanding, for the comprehension of the text set before us, so that, having been taught the true beauty of the meaning contained therein, we may be formed according to it.

For just as the conception of the Divine is naturally implanted in all human beings —

that reverend conception, contemplated in Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit —

yet some have strayed into absurd suppositions, imagining such a thing to reside in the created order;

and for this reason a slight deviation from the truth has opened the way to impiety —

so also in the matter now before us, unless we grasp the true meaning, the loss we suffer from missing the truth will be no small one.

What then is mercy, and toward what is it exercised? And how is he blessed who receives back the very thing he gives? For 'Blessed,' He says, 'are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

Now the ready and obvious sense of the saying summons man to mutual love and compassion, because of the inequality and unevenness of the affairs of life, since not all live in like circumstances — neither in rank, nor in the constitution of the body, nor in the rest of their means.

For life is for the most part divided by contraries, being torn asunder by slavery and lordship, wealth and poverty, glory and dishonour, bodily infirmity and good health, and all such things.

In order, therefore, that what is lacking might come to equality with what is in excess, and that which is deficient be filled up by that which abounds, He lays down for men the law of mercy toward those who are in need.

For it is not otherwise possible to be moved to relieve one's neighbour's misfortune, unless mercy has softened the soul toward such an impulse;

for mercy is understood as the opposite of harshness.

As, then, the harsh and savage man is unapproachable to those who draw near, so the compassionate and merciful man is in some way blended in his disposition toward the one in need, becoming to that grieving person the very thing which the afflicted mind seeks.

And mercy is — if one were to interpret it by grasping it in a definition — a voluntary sorrow arising over the ills of others.

But if we have not set forth its meaning with precision,

perhaps it might be interpreted more clearly by another formulation.

Mercy is a loving fellow-feeling with those who are distressed at some grievous things.

For just as harshness and brutishness take their occasions from hatred,

so mercy in some way grows out of love, and would never come to be, except from it.

And if one were to examine accurately the proper character of mercy, he would find it to be an intensification of the loving disposition, mingled with the emotion of sorrow.

For the sharing of good things is eagerly sought by all alike, both by enemies and by friends;

but to be willing to share in painful things belongs only to those who are ruled by love.

But indeed it is agreed by all that, of the things pursued in this life, love is the most excellent.

And mercy is an intensification of love.

Properly, then, is he counted blessed who holds his soul in such a disposition, as one who lays hold of the very summit of virtue;

and let no one regard virtue as consisting in material means alone;

for in that case such a thing would by no means be an achievement, except for one who possessed some power for doing good;

but it seems to me more just to look for such a thing in the will's disposition.

For he who has willed the good alone, but is prevented from the noble deed by inability, is in no way inferior, in the disposition of his soul, to the one who has shown his intention through works.

How great a gain, therefore, this counsel is for life, if one takes the meaning of the beatitude in this sense, would be superfluous to expound, since even to mere infants the benefits accruing to life from this counsel are manifest.

For if, by hypothesis, such a disposition of soul toward the disadvantaged were to arise in all, there would no longer be the one who is above and the one who is below;

no longer would life be divided into the opposites of these names;

poverty would no longer grieve man;

for all things would be common to all;

and equality of rights and equality of speech would prevail as a civic order in the life of men,

since the one who governs would voluntarily make himself equal to the one who lacks.

And if this were to come to pass, there would no longer be left any occasion for enmity;

banished beyond the borders would be malice, falsehood, deceit, war —

all which are offspring of the desire for more. And once that unsympathetic disposition is expelled, there are utterly cast out together with it, as from some evil root, the shoots of wickedness.

With the removal of evils, the catalogue of good things enters in their stead — peace and righteousness, and the whole sequence of things conceived as belonging to the better part.

What, then, could be more blessed than to have life thus ordered — no longer entrusting the security of our life to bars and stones, but being made secure in one another? For as the harsh and brutish man makes those who have experienced his savagery hostile to himself,

so, on the contrary, we all become well-disposed toward the merciful man, since mercy naturally engenders love in those who partake of it.

Mercy, therefore, is — as the argument has shown — the father of goodwill, the pledge of love, the bond of every friendly disposition;

and than this security, what could be devised that is more strongly fortified for life? So that with good reason the Word calls the merciful man blessed, since so many good things are manifested in this name.

But that such a counsel is beneficial to life, it belongs to everyone not to be ignorant of;

yet to me it seems that the meaning intimates, through hidden things, something more than what is understood from the surface, in reference to the apprehension of the age to come.

'For blessed,' He says, 'are the merciful';

as though there were laid up hereafter for those who show mercy a recompense in kind for their mercy.

Therefore, so far as we are able, leaving aside this readily grasped meaning which is found by the many at the surface, let us endeavour in our discourse, as far as is possible, to peer into what lies within the veil.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Now there is indeed something even loftier than doctrines to be learned in this saying:

namely, that He who made man according to His own image deposited within the nature of that which was fashioned the sources of all good things, so that nothing of the good things is introduced into us from without, but it lies within our power to have whatever we will, drawing forth the good from nature as from some storehouse;

for from a part we are taught concerning the whole, that it is not otherwise possible to attain any of the objects of one's desire, unless one bestows the good upon himself;

wherefore the Lord says somewhere to those who hear Him, that 'The kingdom of God is within you';