Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Hence Blessed Peter Damian, book 5, epist. 3, which in order is 72, draws a most useful and most holy moral doctrine: “There is one thing,” he says, “which the mind of every faithful man ought carefully to attend to, and to turn over within itself with ever solicitous inquiry, namely, whether what he does pleases God, and whether God delights in his life or works. For what profits whatever a man does, if this does not please God? So of David it is said: God hath sought him a man according to his own heart. For if now the Creator is not delighted in man, man afterwards will not be able to delight in the Creator.”
Furthermore St. Hilary on Psalm 53 [?], and St. Bernard, serm. 34 on the Canticle, teach that David was above all “a man according to the heart of God,” because he was so benevolent toward his enemies. So also St. Dionysius, epist. 8 to Demophilus: “What,” he says, “made that David, the parent of God, worthy of divine friendship? Surely, since he was good and kind toward enemies: I have found, says that supreme Good and lover of kindness, a man according to my own heart.”
AND THE LORD HATH COMMANDED HIM TO BE PRINCE OVER HIS PEOPLE,—“Hath commanded,” that is, ordained, established with himself, decreed in his heart and as it were enacted as a precept; but has not yet promulgated it. So God says to Elias: “I have commanded the ravens,” that is, I have decreed, ordained, “to feed thee,” 3 Kings 17:4. St. Gregory gives the reason: “He commands usefully to others,” he says, “who already knows perfectly how to obey God; who commands only what proceeds from the counsel of inmost truth.”
St. Gregory adds that a Prelate ought not to covet rule, but be as it were compelled to it by command. “Because,” he says, “chosen men come to the honor of primacy not from ambition, but are brought by constraint, it is well said: And he commanded him to be prince, as if to say: To the honor of prelacy he did not come by ambition, but ascended constrained.” Then, ordering that to public honor every most perfect man be diligently sought, he adds: “Let it be commanded him to be prince; that he may not out of covetousness seek to climb the order of sublimity, but from humility may fear it, and so fear for himself in humility that he may recognize with the more devotion that he is subject to the command of God.”
BECAUSE THOU HAST NOT OBSERVED THAT WHICH THE LORD COMMANDED.—The whole cause, therefore, why God took the kingdom away from the stock of Saul was that Saul had not plainly and fully conformed his heart and will to the heart and will of God, which Samuel had explained to him, namely that he should wait for him, and sacrifice through him, and consult God. For God willed that Saul should honor Samuel as his priest and prophet; that he should be the go-between between Saul and God: as God had commanded Josue to do nothing except by the counsel and oracle of Eleazar the pontiff, Num. 27:21.
Morally, learn here first how fully and perfectly God, as Lord of all, wills to be obeyed by himself and his own to the letter, without excuse and interpretation. Whence he so gravely punished Saul, who did not do this: because he was the first king of Israel appointed by himself, by depriving him of the kingdom; that David and the other kings thereafter might learn wisdom from his example, and learn to obey God and the Pontiff fully in all things.
So the first man, Adam, eating the forbidden fruit, was punished by his own death and that of his posterity, that they might learn by his example to obey God plainly. So the first angel, Lucifer, unwilling to humble himself and obey God, fell into Tartarus. See here, therefore, how dangerous primacy is, and learn not to covet it. For in the first God sets the examples of those who come after: wherefore he wills the first to be exacted, that they may be a mirror to those who follow; a mirror, I say, of virtue or of his chastisement. For as the Poet says:
Resist the beginnings; the medicine is prepared too late, when evils have grown strong through long delays.
Not in the first place, therefore, but “in the middle thou shalt go safest.” The firstborn of Abraham, Ismael, vexing the younger Isaac, was driven out of the house of Abraham. The firstborn of Isaac was Esau, who was despoiled of the right of primogeniture by his brother Jacob. The firstborn of Jacob was Ruben, who, on account of incest, was cast down from his rank. The firstborn of Adam was Cain, who, slaying his brother Abel, became a vagabond and fugitive. The firstborn of David was Ammon, who, for incest with his sister Thamar, was killed by his brother Absalom, 2 Kings chap. 13, 24 and following.
So the Ecclesiastical primacy, or Pontificate, is “the burden of burdens”; wherefore it is to be shunned, not ambitioned. Blessed Peter Damian, book 1, epist. 20, who writing to Cadalous, who coveted the Papacy, nay was the Antipope (who called himself Honorius II): “For truly,” he says, “since every religious man shrinks from undertaking the burden of so laborious a see, and scarcely consents to be placed in it by any prayers of men; why dost thou, the burden of burdens, as holy Pope Leo said, not only not prepare to flee from it, but even by offering prayers and price anxiously strive to thrust thyself in?”
St. Gregory here, book 4, chap. 4, speaking of Saul elected king and hiding at home: “Let the priest see,” he says, “with what mind the summit of the holy Church is to be fled, if kings so cautiously fled to climb the summit of the world.” So St. Gregory himself fled and hid himself, until, betrayed from heaven by a pillar of fire, he was seized for the pontificate. So of St. Cornelius the Pontiff St. Cyprian writes, book 4, epistle 2: “Who neither asked nor wished the Episcopate itself, nor by force, like others whom the swelling of their arrogance and pride inflates, seized it; but quiet and modest, and such as those usually are who are divinely chosen to this place, suffered violence, so that he received the Episcopate constrained.” Furthermore “the burden of burdens,” which the Pontiff undertakes. So St. Bernard declares, book 2 On Consideration to Pope Eugenius: “Thou art he to whom the keys were handed over, to whom the sheep were entrusted. There are indeed other doorkeepers of heaven, and shepherds of flocks. They have flocks assigned to themselves, each one his own: to thee all are entrusted, not to one, one. Nor only of the sheep, but also of the shepherds, thou art the one shepherd of all. And if this is so, how great will be the burden, how great the load to sustain, so to speak, the whole globe of the earth on the shoulders!”
The same, book 4: “Consider thyself,” he says: “the form of justice, the mirror of holiness, the pattern of piety, the asserter of truth, the defender of the faith, the Doctor of the Gentiles, the leader of Christians, the friend of the Bridegroom, the ordainer of the Clergy, the Shepherd of the peoples, the Master of the foolish, the refuge of the oppressed, the advocate of the poor, the hope of the wretched, the guardian of orphans, the judge of widows, the eye of the blind, the tongue of the dumb, the staff of the old, the avenger of crimes, the fear of the wicked, the glory of the good, the rod of the mighty, the hammer of tyrants, the father of kings, the moderator of laws, the dispenser of canons, the salt of the earth, the light of the world; the priest of the Most High, the Vicar of Christ. Who would not fear and tremble hearing these things,” that he should dare to covet the burden of the Pontificate, formidable even to angelic shoulders?
Finally St. Chrysostom (or whoever the author is) in the Imperfect Work on Matthew, hom. 35: “To desire Ecclesiastical primacy,” he says, “there is neither reason nor cause; because it is neither just nor useful. For what wise man hastens of his own accord to subject himself to servitude, labor, grief, and, what is greater, such danger, that he must render an account for the whole Church before the just Judge, unless perhaps one who neither believes the judgment of God nor fears it, abusing his Ecclesiastical primacy as a secular one, and converts it into a secular one?”
15. AND SAMUEL AROSE, AND WENT UP FROM GALGAL TO GABAA OF BENJAMIN,—Saul went the same way with the army, as follows; but Samuel went before, to show himself angry, and to bend Saul to the acknowledgment of his fault and to penance. “Because, namely, as St. Gregory says, in the king whom he had rebuked he did not at all recognize the humility of penance by which he might be constrained to remain, etc. The king is left in the ministry, that he may be corrected by the very separation of the Prophet; for very often those whom the words of the Preacher do not correct fear to be divided from the familiarity of Preachers, or from the unity of the holy Church. Preachers are hard, but the separated come to their senses.”
Samuel went to Gabaa to join the Prophets dwelling there, as was said chap. 10, verse 5, and to give himself with them to the praises of God, and pray for Israel, and by his presence at least encourage the people going the same way with Saul to battle against the Philistines to fight bravely. Mystically St. Gregory: “What is it,” he says, “that is said of Samuel: he arose and went up, but what we observe in more perfect men, who so look on our defilements that they are in no way soiled by them? So they are angry with us that, quiet within, in their secret they may swiftly climb to the heights. For they are strong and powerful, and those who bear their great and strong things lightly are not burdened by our infirmities.”