Commentaria in Isaiam
Morally, St. Bernard, epistle 89, refers this to the virtue of silence: “To this worship of justice,” he says, “to this mother and guardian of all the virtues, I invite and urge you, and whoever like you desire to advance in the virtues: if not by the word of doctrine, at least by the example of my silence, that by being silent I may teach you to be silent, you who by being silent compel me to teach what I do not know.” And the Gloss: From justifying justice, it says, will arise peace of conscience, and from peace rest and silence, that is, that you may be silent, and in prosperity beware of boastful words, in adversity of murmuring ones. So also Dionysius understands silence of heart and mouth: “This we see,” he says, “chiefly fulfilled in cloistered men, who in the observance of silence establish the worship of justice, and reckon the breaking of silence a great transgression of justice.” Indeed St. Gregory, Pastoral Rule part 3, chapter 15: “The worship of justice,” he says, “is silence; because the mind is deserted by justice when immoderate talking is not spared.”
So St. Andronicus with his wife St. Athanasia, she in man’s habit and monastic dress, both in a very long pilgrimage to Jerusalem and in the same cell for twelve years, at Athanasia’s request, kept complete silence; and so restrained eyes, mouth and ears that he did not even know her by her face, as is related in his Life.
Hence of the spouse of Christ it is said in the Canticle 4: “Thy lips are like a scarlet lace, and thy speech sweet.” The scarlet lace is silence with charity, says Richard of St. Victor, as if to say: Thou excellest in the grace of silence; hence flows thy sweet speech: for the heart filled with spiritual delights through silence pours forth outwardly a good word of spiritual sweetness, of consolation, instruction, admonition and correction.
St. Ambrose, on Psalm 36, says that “patience in silence, the seizing of the opportunity to speak, and contempt of riches are the greatest foundations of the virtues.” Smaragdus, on chapter 6 of the Rule of St. Benedict: “Taciturnity,” he says, “is the virtue of humility, the sign of gravity, the nurse of virtues, the guardian of souls.” See what was said, chapter 30, verse 15.
Anagogically, St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius and Theodoret refer this to the heavenly rest and glory in heaven: for there the reward of the justice of the Saints will be, first, fullest peace on every side; second, silence and the highest quiet; third, security of beatitude through all eternity; fourth, the beauty of all peace and glory; fifth, tabernacles of confidence, in which the Blessed, dwelling confidently, fear no enemy, nor anything adverse; sixth, there will be wealthy rest.
Hear St. Augustine, Meditations, chapters 22 and 25: “O life which God hath prepared for them that love him! life that lives, blessed life, secure life, tranquil life, beautiful life, pure life, chaste life, holy life, life ignorant of death, life that knows not sadness, life without stain, without corruption, without anxiety, without disturbance, without change; life most full of all grace and dignity, where there is no adversary assailing, no allurement to sin, where there is perfect love and no fear, where the day is eternal and the spirit of all is one, where God is seen face to face, and with this food of life the mind is satisfied without fail.” And after a little he adds: “There is the sweet solemnity of all returning from this sad pilgrimage to thy joys; there the foreseeing choir of the Prophets, there the twelvefold number of the Apostles, there the victorious army of countless Martyrs, there the sacred assembly of holy Confessors, there the true and perfect lovers of solitude, there the holy women who overcame the pleasures of the world and the weakness of their sex, there the boys and girls who by holy ways surpassed their years. Different is the glory of each, but common is the joy of all; full and perfect charity reigns there: they burn with the love of God, they love and praise God continually; all their work is the praise of God, without end, without failing, without labor. Happy, then, and truly happy for ever, should I be, if after the dissolution of this little body I hear those canticles of heavenly melody.”
it will be, he says, to see God, to live with God, to live of God, to be with God, to be of God, who shall be all in all; to have God, who is the highest good. And where the highest good is, there is the highest happiness, the highest delight, the highest liberty, perfect charity, eternal security, and secure eternity: there is true gladness, full knowledge, all beauty and all beatitude: there is peace, piety, goodness, light, virtue, honor, joys, sweetness of gladness, perennial life, glory, praise, rest, love and sweet concord.”
19. But hail shall be in the descent of the forest.
“Hail,” that is, the wrath, scourge and storm of God, shall rage against the Jews and Jerusalem, that the forest, that is, their Synagogue grown wild, may be deserted, descend and be humbled. See Canon 26. He returns to the destruction of the Jews, of which he treated from verse 9 to verse 16.
Sanchez continues to take this of the disaster of Babylon: for he says it is called a forest because of the hanging gardens of Nitocris. The Septuagint render, but if hail shall come down, it shall not come upon you, as if they said: For the faithful all things will be prosperous; if any hail, that is, tempest, fall, it will fall upon the unbelieving and impious.
20. Blessed are you that sow upon all waters.
Sanchez explains thus, as if to say: O fortunate, who shall behold that day of the return from Babylon, when the heavens shall make Judea, before barren, thorny and uncultivated, fruitful with constant rain: it will be lawful for them to drive the yokes of oxen and asses over fields moist with heavenly dew, and, those labors being done to receive the seed, to commit the seed. Others, as if to say: So luxuriant will the crops be that, lest they choke one another by their abundance, they will send in oxen and asses to graze down the first luxuriant herbage.
But in our exposition there is an apostrophe to the Apostles and apostolic men, as if to say: O blessed you, who sow the Gospel upon all waters, that is, all peoples, sending in upon them oxen and asses, that is, the preachers and laborers of the Gospel and salvation-bearing harvest.
To send in the foot of the ox and ass is nothing else than to till the ground with the yoke of oxen or the yoke of asses: for they could not plow together with ox and ass, according to the law, Deuteronomy 22:10, but separately.
Again, he calls waters land healed by water and rain: for it is in such that seed is sown, not in pure waters. Note: The ox was among the ancients a symbol of plowing and thence of harvest and fertility, as appears from the oxen that appeared to Pharaoh in a vision, Genesis 41:2. Wherefore oxen yoked on a coin of the Emperor Vespasian, and others yoked on a coin of C. Marius, signify that they provided for agriculture and the grain supply for the support of the citizens. For among interpreters of dreams also, plowing oxen seen in imagination foretold the happiest crop and wealthy prosperity of affairs. The Romans moreover attributed so much honor to the ox that they declare that Italy itself was once named from oxen by the Italians. Indeed among them it was once no less a capital crime to kill an ox than a man. Memorable was the custom of the ancient Germans, who, for the wedding of a wife, sent yoked oxen, a bridled horse, and a shield with a sword, by way of dowry, that the wife, says Cornelius Tacitus, might be admonished that she came to her husband as a partner in labors and dangers, to suffer and dare the same in peace and in battle; for the yoked oxen, the horse made ready, and the arms given announced labor and war. So Pierius, Hieroglyphics 3. There exists an emblem of an ox with this inscription, “For altars and for fields,” representing a man leading a life both active and contemplative. For the ox works by plowing in the fields, and is sacrificed on the altars: hence he is a symbol of religion and of the contemplative life.
Symbolically, the ass, an unclean animal, signifies the Gentiles, the ox, a clean one, the Jews: he intimates, therefore, that both peoples will conspire in the faith of Christ and the Gospel. So St. Cyril, Jerome, Theodoret, Procopius and Gregory, book 35 of the Morals, chapter 11; Clement, Stromata book 8, at the beginning. For in the new law that old law was set aside: “Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass.”
Tropologically, St. Bernard, in the sermon on St. Benedict: “Blessed are they who sow upon all waters, even those above, by which are meant the angelic virtues and heavenly peoples. So indeed: since we are made a spectacle to Angels and to men. Let us then sow for men a good example by open works; let us sow for Angels great joy by hidden sighs;” and after a few words: “O race of Adam, how many have sown in thee, and how precious the seed! how badly wilt thou perish, and how deservedly, if so great a seed be lost in thee, and the labor of the sowers! The whole Trinity sowed in our land, Angels sowed likewise and Apostles, Martyrs and Confessors and Virgins sowed. The Son too sowed: for it is he who went out to sow his seed. So the whole Trinity sowed, the Father bread from heaven, the Son truth, the Holy Spirit charity.” St. Basil differently, on chapter 1 of Isaias: Blessed, he says, is he who rouses the ox, that is, the generous, to endurance of labors, and the ass, that is, the covetous and carnal, to trample on and overcome his desires. And St. Ambrose to Irene differently: “The horned ox,” he says, “has ferocity, the ass gentleness; because a beast that holds both severity and gentleness serves that by the one discipline may be preserved, and by the other the innocent may not be oppressed.”