Commentaria in Leviticum
“Perseverance,” says St. Bernard, letter 199, “is the nurse of merit, the mediatrix of reward, the sister of patience, the daughter of constancy, the friend of peace, the knot of friendships, the bond of unanimity, the bulwark of holiness. Take away perseverance, and neither service has its reward, nor benefit its thanks, nor fortitude its praise. It alone is that to which eternity is rendered, or rather which renders man to eternity, as the Lord says: He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”
Verses 16 and 17. All the fat shall be the Lord’s, by a perpetual law for your generations, and in all your habitations.—So that no generation and no house could exempt itself from this law.
Neither blood.—Note: All blood was forbidden to the Jews, not only that of sacrifice, namely the blood of the victim, of which strictly speaking this passage treats, as will presently appear from the fat, but any other, for example of a sheep, a goat, a hart, which they slew at home for eating. For they were to pour out their blood on the ground and not eat it, as is plain from Deuteronomy 12:16, and here chapter 17, verse 13, where and in verse 11 the reason of this law is hinted; namely, because the life of the flesh is in the blood, that is, because the blood is the vehicle, the nourishment and the guard of life and of the vital spirits; but life is God’s alone: it is fitting, therefore, that the blood too should yield to God alone, even if it be not the blood of a victim; for if it be of a victim, it is clear that it is most just that it all be poured out in sacrifice to God the author of life. So Theodoret. The second reason is that God willed the Jews to exercise gentleness. Therefore He forbade the eating of the blood of beasts, in which the animal’s life consists; but permitted the eating of flesh bloodless and lifeless. So Hesychius and Abulensis. See what was said on Genesis 9:4 and following. Hence the Apostles also forbade the first Christians the eating of blood, Acts 15:29, that so the Jews might more easily live together with the Gentiles and grow together into one Church. For the Jews shrank from the Gentiles as barbarous, because they ate blood.
Nor shall you eat the fat at all.—He forbids eating all fat, and God demands it for Himself.
Understand fat, not that which cleaves to the flesh and is mixed with it, but that which is gathered and condensed apart in the entrails. Again, understand the fat of a victim immolated, or that could be immolated. The Hebrews, therefore, could eat no fat of sheep, goat or ox, even if the beast was slain at home for eating, because these animals were clean for sacrifice and could be immolated to God; but the fat of other clean animals, which were not immolated to God, the Hebrews could eat. They could therefore eat the fat of the roe, the hart, the buffalo, the tragelaph, the pygarg, the oryx, the camelopard; for these were clean for eating, but not for sacrifice, as will appear in chapter 11. So St. Augustine here, Question 2. The Jews, however, to keep this law more exactly, abstained from all fat whatever, even of the hart, the buffalo, etc., and cast it away, as they are still said to do. But the law does not command this.
The reason of this law was that fat is most apt for fire, and is the best portion of the victim: it was fitting, then, that this should yield to God, if it were the fat of a victim immolated; but if it were the fat of a beast not immolated but which could be immolated, it was fitting that out of reverence for God they should abstain from this fat too, though not immolated, because this fat was from animals which could be immolated to God. And God willed this that thus the Hebrews might always have the exercise of religion and the worship of God, and might worship and venerate Him continually even at home in this way. From this fat sacred to God flowed that phrase of Scripture, which calls a sacrifice pleasing and worthy of God a sacrifice of fat things, and prays that our holocaust be made fat. For fleshy and well-fed victims abound in fatness and fat.
Mystically and tropologically, as Hesychius and Radulphus say, the fat is the desire of the soul, the affection, devotion and intention, which in every work by which we desire to please God and merit the grace of God is to be directed to God; whoever, therefore, in a good work which he does seeks not the glory of God but his own, or temporal gain, withdraws and eats the fat belonging to the Lord. The middling and married (who are signified by the peace-victim) ought, then, in their business and works at least to offer this fat, namely this sincere intention, to God; for by it indifferent works, such as building, ploughing, digging, etc., become holy and meritorious, and acts of religion, of charity, etc. Few soldiers, rustics and mechanics know or advert to this: hence for gain they bear much, labour much, but in vain, because with God they will lack reward, since they have not referred their labours to Him. Let Pastors and Catechists therefore teach them this, that in one and the same work, by this pious intention, whereby they offer the work to God and undertake it for the honour and love of God, they may acquire gains both eternal and temporal. “As a building,” says St. Gregory, “rests on columns, and columns on bases, so our life rests on virtues, and virtues on intention. When the heart is corrupted in intention, the middle and end of the following action is securely possessed by the crafty enemy; for he sees the whole tree bearing fruit for him which he has wounded at the root with the tooth of venom. With the greatest care we must watch lest the mind, serving good works, be polluted by a reprobate intention.” And St. Bernard, in the treatise On Precept and Dispensation: “That the inner eye may be truly single,” he says, “two things I think necessary to it: charity in intention and truth in choice; for how shall that eye be single which through ignorance of the truth does evil unknowingly? His eye is good, because pious; yet not single, because blind. And there is one who does good both willingly and understands prudently: his eye I should call single, as one to whom neither good is wanting, neither good zeal nor knowledge; but that eye is wicked which, perverse and equally blind, does good and believes evil.”
Apply the tropologies of these first three chapters also to the following.
Lastly note: As in the holocaust, so also in the peace-victim a libation of incense, salt, oil, wine and meal was used, and that in a fixed measure, and with the rite which I spoke of in the preceding chapter, verse 13, of which more in Numbers 15:4.