Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
4. AND HE GAVE TO PHENENNA HIS WIFE, AND TO ALL HER SONS AND DAUGHTERS, PORTIONS.—Understand not of garments, as the Hebrews will, according to Angelomus, but of the flesh of victims sacrificed to God. Excellently St. Ambrose, on Psalm 33, verse 15, citing Lamentations chapter 3, verse 29, concerning Christ suffering; patience.
So Origen, Angelomus, Lyranus, Abulensis, Vatablus and others: for although in the holocaust the whole flesh of the victim was burnt to God, yet in the peace-offering only the fat with the kidneys was burnt to God by fire, the rest of the flesh falling to the offerer, who feasted on it before the tabernacle with his household, and from it, as from a sacred banquet, gave each his portion, as is plain from Leviticus chapter 3 and 7.
Note here, and imitate, the religion and piety of Elcana, who three times a year with his wives and all his sons went from Ramatha to Silo (from which it was seven miles distant), and there immolated victims to God, and thence religiously feasted with his household. Abulensis adds, Question 10, that he often came, “He shall put his mouth in the dust, if perhaps there may be hope,” reading in its place: “He shall give his mouth to burial.” “He shows,” he says, “a certain silence of patience beyond measure, as if he would bury his own mouth lest he speak; and as with a mound of virtues he blocks it up, lest it utter a cry of grief: so great a weight does he ascribe to patience, which hope fosters, that he buries and shuts in the very voice, as in a tomb and sepulchre, which no injury can wring out or rouse.”
The same Ambrose, book 2 On Duties, chapter 7: “How many insults,” he says, “laid on by the people did Moses swallow? With what mild speech did he call them after the injuries? How did he console them in their labours, soothe them with oracles, cherish them with works? Rightly was he esteemed above men; and so that they could not look upon his face.”
He gives a likeness fitting this matter and place: “You see,” he says, “in a house, when two doors stand opposite and in a straight line, and a violent wind blows; if you close one, the wind can do nothing, but a great part of its force is cut off. So now also there are two doors: your mouth, and the mouth of him who afflicts you with insults and reproaches. If you close yours, you extinguish the whole spirit; but if you open it, it cannot be restrained.”
Tertullian gives another, in his book On Patience, chapter 8: “Every injury,” he says, “whether struck by the tongue or by the hand, when it meets patience, will be discharged by the same outcome as a dart hurled and blunted against a rock of most constant hardness. For it will fall there, a work vain and fruitless, and sometimes, rebounding on him who sent it, will rage with a reciprocal impetus. For one hurts you in order that you may grieve; because the fruit of the hurter is in the grief of the hurt; therefore when you have overturned his fruit by not grieving, he must himself grieve at the loss of his fruit.”
8. AM NOT I BETTER TO THEE THAN TEN (that is, many) CHILDREN?—For I am a noble, wealthy, peaceable man, who loves you, so that in me you may have all consolation and every good that you can hope for from many sons. The Hebrews relate that Phenenna had borne ten sons, who surrounded and adorned Elcana’s table, according to the saying: “Thy children as olive plants round about thy table,” Psalm 127, verse 3. And that Elcana here alludes to them, to console the barren Anna, who groaned at the sight of so many sons of Phenenna, and mourned her own barrenness. But this is uncertain: for ten here is taken for many.
9. SO ANNA ROSE UP AFTER SHE HAD EATEN, etc.
10. AS ANNA HAD HER HEART FULL OF GRIEF, SHE PRAYED TO THE LORD, SHEDDING MANY TEARS, AND MADE A VOW.—It was midday, says St. Chrysostom, in his homily On Anna, that is, after dinner, which is the time all men give to recreation, but she gave to prayer: which the Franciscans and other Religious imitate, who pray and sing psalms immediately after dinner. Hence also St. Jerome, epistle 7 to Laeta: “Let her so eat,” he says, “that straightway after food she may be able to read, pray, sing psalms.”
“If you wish,” he says, “to learn the vigil of the soul, go to Anna.” And in homily 79 to the People: “Anna,” he says, “could not have prayed unless she had been like those who fast at the table, etc. It is therefore necessary that we, both when seeking the table and when leaving it, give thanks to God. For one prepared for this will never fall into drunkenness or insolence, will never burst with surfeit, but, having the expectation of prayer laid upon his senses as a bridle, will take of all that is set before him with due modesty, and will fill the soul with much, and the body with much blessing. For the table of the Lord, taking its beginning from prayer and ending in prayer, will never fail, but, more abundantly than a fountain, will bring us all good things.”
Again, Anna prayed weeping, and armed her prayers with compunction of the inmost heart and abundant tears, as St. Gregory and Origen observe.
Thirdly, “she made a vow”: such should our prayer be; so will it overcome God, and obtain from Him whatever it asks, as Anna obtained. Moreover this vow of Anna was that she would make her son, if he were given her, a Nazarite, that is, a Religious of that age, who should not cut his hair and should not drink wine and strong drink, and that all his life, as was said of Samson, Judges 13, 5, and who should minister to God in the tabernacle all the days of his life, whereas the other Levites ministered only in turn, which slowly, because of their multitude, went round and came back. For the Levites, like the Priests, were distributed into their courses, that is, classes.
Moreover Anna, by vowing to make Samuel a Nazarite, vowed that he would not go to the funerals of father and mother, and would observe the other ceremonies of the Nazarites, says Abulensis, although Cajetan denies it, who thinks that she vowed the Nazariteship of Samuel only as to the uncut hair and abstinence from wine and strong drink. The same I have said of Samson, Judges chapter 13, verse 5.
13. NOW ANNA SPOKE IN HER HEART, AND ONLY HER LIPS MOVED, AND HER VOICE WAS NOT HEARD AT ALL.—She prayed, namely, with a fervent heart, so that the words rose from the heart to the mouth, but so silently and softly that the voice was not heard. Whence St. Chrysostom, homily 19, magnifies the fervour of Anna’s prayer, that it was not loud outwardly but attentive, that it proceeded from a temperate and almost fasting mind, that it was before the doors of the temple, that she bore insult patiently, etc. Hear Cassian, Conference 9, chapter 26: “Sometimes the mind is so hidden in silence within the secret of deep taciturnity that the amazement of a sudden illumination shuts in every sound of the voice, and the astonished spirit either holds in all its senses within, or sends them out, and pours out its desires to God with unspeakable groanings. At other times it is so filled with abundance of compunction and sorrow that it cannot otherwise discharge it than by the evaporation of tears.”
“the cicada of the nights,” he says; for cicadas sing at night not with a mouth, which they lack, but with the heart and breast, and take their food by the same. For as Pliny says, book 11, chapter 26: “This one among living things is without a mouth. In place of it there is a certain pointed thing like a tongue, and that in the breast, with which they lick the dew. The breast itself is hollow, and with this they sing.”
Hear again Chrysostom, homily 9 on Anna: “That,” he says, “is the most powerful supplication when the voices are borne upward from the inmost parts; this is chiefly the mark of an exercised mind, to accomplish prayer not by strain of voice but by fervour of spirit. So also prayed Moses; to whom, though nothing sounded by voice, God nevertheless said: Why criest thou to me? Some men hear only this outward voice, but God hears even before it those who cry within. So it can come about that even those who do not cry aloud are heard, so that one walking through the marketplace may pray most earnestly, and in a company of friends, doing anything else, may call upon God with a vehement cry.”
Hear finally St. Cyprian, in the book On the Lord’s Prayer: “Anna, bearing a type of the Church, prayed to the Lord not with clamorous petition, but silently and modestly within the very hiding places of her breast. She spoke not with the voice but with the heart, because she knew that God so hears,” etc.
HELI THEREFORE THOUGHT HER TO BE DRUNK,—that is, intoxicated. So Scripture says, because Anna, from the great grief of her affliction and the fervour of her prayer, moved her lips so that she seemed like a drunken woman to twist her mouth and distort it exceedingly, says St. Chrysostom, homily 79 to the People. For the mind, seething with grief and affliction, breaks out into uncouth and unseemly gestures, such as those of the drunken. But Heli did not know Anna’s affliction, and seeing her after dinner make such gestures, suspected that she had drunk too freely at the meal. Besides, Anna wept: but many when drunk are wont to weep, either from joy or from remembrance of their troubles: for wine easily stirs tears, and itself is resolved into vapours and tears.