Commentaria in Judices
Mystically: The dew of faith and of the grace of God first rained down upon the fleece of Gedeon, that is, upon the Jews, Gedeon’s fellow-tribesmen, up to Christ: but when he preached, this dew among the Jews, on account of their unbelief in Christ, dried up, and was transferred to the rest of the earth, that is, to all nations, who eagerly received the faith and grace of Christ. So Origen, Theodoret, Procopius, Rupert here and St. Augustine, serm. 108 On the Time; St. Ambrose, book On Widows, and in the preface to book I On the Holy Spirit, and Chrysostom on Psalm 71, on those words: “He shall come down like rain upon the fleece, and as showers falling gently upon the earth.” There is signified here, then, the election of the Gentiles and the reprobation of the Jews, who before had been watered with the dew of the divine law and election: “Hence it is that now the whole world shall be moistened with the dew of faith,” says St. Ambrose. Hear St. Jerome to Paulinus: “After, the fleece being dried, the whole world was bedewed with heavenly dew, and many coming from the East and West sat down in the bosom of Abraham, God ceased to be known only in Judea and his name great in Israel, but into all the earth the sound of the Apostles went out, and their words unto the ends of the world.” More fully St. Augustine, book On the Unity of the Church, chap. 5: “I do not see,” he says, “what else is here figured and foretold, unless we understand the floor to be the world, the place of the fleece the people of Israel. This gift among that people was in the fleece, that is, in a covering, and as it were in a cloud of secrecy, because it had not yet been revealed. But now we see the world, the dew being now revealed, made fat through the Gospel of our Lord, which was then figured in that covering; but that nation, having lost the priesthood which it had, because it does not understand Christ in the Scriptures, has remained as in a dry fleece.”
Symbolically, St. Ambrose, book On Widows, after the beginning, taking by the fleece the humanity of Christ, from which the dew of divine life was received in the Incarnation: “This fleece,” he says, “dried in death, the blood being pressed out as dew, by the same watered through his grace the whole world.” The same, preface to book I On the Holy Spirit: “The Lord, therefore,” he says, “has now come, and the rain has come. The Lord has come bringing with him heavenly showers, and therefore now we drink who before were thirsty, and drink that divine Spirit with an inward draught. This, then, holy Gedeon foresaw, that the true and spiritual dew the Gentiles and nations also were to drink by the reception of faith, and therefore he explored it more diligently.”
And St. Irenaeus, book III, chap. 19: “Wherefore,” he says, “the dew of God is necessary for us, that we be not burnt up (by the fire of temptation and concupiscence) nor made unfruitful.” This dew of the divine word we receive specially through sermons, readings, prayers, inspirations of God, but really through the Eucharist, in which we eat the very flesh of Christ the spotless Lamb, and unite it to ourselves, and are clothed as with the purest fleece, and thence suck out all the dew of heavenly grace, and above all put on his humility and meekness (of which the woollen and soft fleece is the symbol).
“Ecclesiastics,” he says, “who in the manner of a fleece are joined to the Lord, are and ought to be soft, humble and kind, were wont to be moistened beyond others with the dew of divine grace; the floor, that is, secular people, in respect of them were undevout, dry and hard, but truly today we see the contrary; the floor is dewier than the fleece, seculars are more devout than regulars, laity than clergy, subjects than Prelates, as is found.” In imitation, the miracle of the fleece defended from the surrounding moisture was renewed in St. Bernard, who, writing the first epistle to Robert his nephew in the open air, while it rained round about, did not wet the paper, says Baronius, tome 12, in the year of Christ 1125.
Lately the Superior of a certain ancient and numerous Order, exhorting his men to the primitive fervour of virtue, began shrewdly thus: “At first conscience flourished in us; from conscience cut short, science followed; thence both being cut off, we have become mere beings, that is, stocks and stones. We must therefore return to our former conscience, that we may fill it first with the spirit and holiness of our fathers.” This vice is common to created things, that they gradually degenerate, wither, fail, and growing old return into the nothing from which they came: wherefore ecclesiastical and religious men must often renew themselves, to recall, preserve and increase the fleeting primitive spirit of their vocation, as we see them do. Indeed in this age, in which Luther, like a new Madianite, indeed the Leader of the Madianites, deformed the Church of God by his heresy, gluttony and luxury, and like Zeb, that is, a wolf, tore and rent the sheep and lambs of Christ, God also set against him St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, as a new Gedeon, and by the grace of Christ we see, to the great joy of all, all the Orders of the Church with great zeal reforming themselves, and with vast strides of soul pressing to the primitive vigour and rigour of their institute. To God be praise and glory. Let us all go on strenuously in this way in which we have begun, that each may strive to imbue the withering fleece of his religion with the dew of divine wisdom and grace, that we may emulate the life of Angels to which we are called, and be heavenly men and earthly Angels; that, namely, we may burn with love with the Seraphim, shine with knowledge of divine things with the Cherubim, made spiritual judge all things with the Thrones, rule ourselves with the Dominations, bravely resist our inordinate motions and the suggestions of wicked spirits with the Virtues, govern the kingdom of the soul in justice and peace with the Powers, duly provide for our subjects with the Principalities; if we have great things, communicate them to our neighbours with the Archangels; impart lesser aids to the needy with the Angels.
Secondly, the same miracle of the dew and fleece was as it were renewed in St. Arnulf bishop of Metz, from whom the whole lineage of the family of Pepin and Charlemagne, as well as nobility and sanctity, descended as from a fountain. For he, in the year of Christ 485, asking pardon of sins from God, cast a ring into the river, saying: “I shall know myself absolved from the bonds of guilt when I shall recover this ring which I cast away”; and after some time, finding this ring in a fish brought to him by a fisherman, he knew his sins forgiven, and gave thanks to God. So Paul the Deacon narrates in his Life, and says that he received it from the mouth of Charlemagne, and adds: “Nor did this venerable father ask a sign from the Lord unlike that Gedeon, for he wished to take an indication by the fleece placed on the floor whether he could have victory over his enemies in war; this man, casting the ring into the deepest eddy of the river, desires to try whether he had already gained the victory over his enemies. Strong indeed were those whom he conquered, but those whom this man overcame were stronger.”
Finally from this fleece of Gedeon arose the history or fable of the Argonauts, who are said by Eusebius, Genebrardus and others in their Chronicles to have flourished sixty years after Gedeon under the Judge Abesan. These were 54 heroes who sailed in the ship called Argo to Colchis to carry off the golden fleece; their leaders and chiefs were Jason, Castor, Pollux, Hercules, Orpheus, of whom Virgil, Eclogue IV:
Then there shall be another Tiphys, and another Argo to carry chosen heroes.
See Diodorus, book V, chap. 3, and Hyginus. Again, looking to both of these fleeces, namely of Gedeon and of Jason, Philip surnamed the Good, Duke of Burgundy, father of Charles the Bold, in the year of the Lord 1430, on the third day of the Ides of January, instituted the most celebrated order of knights of the Golden Fleece, consisting of the noblest and bravest heroes, who should raise up the fallen dignity of the Christian faith, and, as new Gedeons, cast down and cut down the altars of Baal, that is, the Turkish Mosques, says Serarius, and the conventicles of heretics. So Pontus Heuterus, book IV, the Burgundian William of Menne, book I On the Golden Fleece, chaps. 1 and 2; Hadrian Barlandus, Alvarus Gometius, James Meyer, and others who have written Belgian and Burgundian affairs.
38. WRINGING THE FLEECE, HE FILLED A VESSEL WITH THE DEW.—That he might know for certain that the fleece was dewy, indeed swollen with dew; for this sign he had asked of God. Mystically, how our mind ought to be a shell, first filling itself with the dew and water of grace and virtue before pouring it upon others, not a channel, which sends out all the water it receives, keeping nothing for itself, St. Bernard finely teaches: “Be a shell, and not a channel... nothing but to pour out from fullness, and do not wish to be more bountiful than God. The shell imitates the fountain: it does not flow into a stream, nor spread into a lake, until it is satisfied with its waters, etc. Fill first, and so with care pour out. Kindly and prudent charity is wont to overflow, not to run out.” Whence St. Ambrose, preface to book I On the Holy Spirit: “Water,” he says, “is the dew of heavenly grace. Let this water therefore come, O Lord Jesus, into my soul, into my flesh, that by the moisture of this rain the valleys of those that remain, and the fields of the inmost heart, may grow green. Let thy dewy drops come upon me, bringing the grace and immortality. Wash the steps of my mind, that I may not sin again. Wash the heel of my soul, that I may be able to abolish the curse, that I may not feel the serpent’s bite with the inner foot, but as thou thyself didst command those following thee, that I may tread on serpents and scorpions with unhurt step.”