Commentaria in Isaiam
Remains, and for ever shall remain, the judgment of Judas, and the injury of Christ spurned, O Eternity! how immense, how incomprehensible thou art! O Eternity, how rarely art thou turned over in the minds of men! As long as the earth shall be earth, as long as heaven shall be heaven, as long as Angels shall be Angels, as long as God shall be God, so long shall Judas and the damned burn in the sulphurous fire, in the flaming burnings, and of their torments there shall be no end for ever and ever. Think of this while gluttony, lust, ambition tickle thee; say: I am not so foolish as to buy for a drop, for one moment of pleasure, an eternity of pain, an eternity of punishment, and of too late, alas, repentance: for the pleasures, delights and loves of this time are not worthy to be compared with the punishment to come that shall be revealed in the damned. For what is momentary and light in the pleasure of drunkards, the proud, the lustful, works in them an eternal weight of torments. Truly St. Augustine, sermon 4 On St. Laurence: “Who would not wish to be burned for an hour by the fire of Laurence, that he might not suffer the eternal burning of Gehenna?” St. Bernard to his sister, On the Manner of Living Well, sermon 67, prescribes this effective remedy against lust: “Let the memory,” he says, “of the burning of Gehenna extinguish in thee the burning of lust.”
Abbot Olympius, when he dwelt in a very small cell, which heat and a stinging crowd of gnats assailed, being asked why he stayed in it so long, said: “Gladly do I bear these things, that I may be rescued from future torments. I bear the gnats that I may escape the immortal worm; and the fire, shuddering at the punishments of everlasting burning.” So Sophronius in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 111.
The Venerable Bede in the History of the English relates that a certain old man, restored to life, retired into the desert, where he led a life more than human austere and religious. His neighbors rebuked him for killing himself. To whom, dissolved in tears, he said: “O that it were given you to see what I have seen! I affirm most certainly that these pains are nothing to those eternal ones which I saw.”
In the Lives of the Fathers, book 7, page 44, twelve Anchorites, coming together, each told his own meditation and daily spur to virtue. At last the twelfth, having heard the eleven, said: “You are earthly Angels and heavenly men. I, judging myself unworthy of these, have sentenced myself to hell, saying: Be with those with whom thou art worthy to be; thou shalt shortly be numbered with them. I see therefore there equal groans and ceaseless tears, which can be reported by none. I behold some gnashing their teeth, and leaping with the whole body, and trembling from head to foot. And throwing myself on the ground and embracing the ashes, I beseech God that I may never experience such falls. I see also a sea of boiling fire, immeasurable, with weeping and roaring all about, so that some think the waves of fire reach to heaven, and in that dreadful sea countless men cast down: and all of them crying and howling together with one voice, such howlings and voices as no one on earth had ever heard: and like dry brushwood all burned: the mercy of God turning away from them on account of their injustices. And then I lament the race of men, that dares to speak or give heed to anything, with such evils laid up for the world. And on these things I keep my mind fixed, meditating on mourning, judging myself unworthy of heaven and earth, and reckoning what is written: My tears have been my bread day and night.”
Another distinguished Abbot, living rigorously in the desert, when asked: “How do you endure this labor?” answered: “All the labor of my time that I endure here is not fit to be compared with one day of the torments which are prepared for sinners in the world to come.” In the same place, book 5, chapter 7, On Patience.
Theodoret in the Philotheus, chapter 26, tells that he saw Thalelaeus, who, being of very large body, shut himself in a narrow enclosure which was two cubits high and one wide, so that he could not raise his neck, but sat always bent, with his face against his knees: and so he had already sat ten continuous years. Theodoret asked him: “Why do you afflict yourself so?” He answered: “I am liable to many sins, and I have heard of the pains which are prepared for them in the future: I have chosen, therefore, rather to chastise my body here with a moderate penalty than to wait for those far greater, both in quantity and in quality. For those are involuntary: but what one suffers unwillingly is far more grievous than what one undergoes of his own accord and willingly. For the will makes the pain less, nay makes it welcome and pleasing.” Finally, meditating deeply and often on these things, Blessed Abbot Isaias, volume 2 of the Library of the Holy Fathers, oration 29, laments thus: “Woe to us, who must pass through the fire boiling over the waves of the sea, that each of us may receive in his body according as he hath done, whether good or evil!
Woe to us, who do not consider that dark and matterless burning, and the eternal and bitter weeping and gnashing of teeth. For with the brightness of the flame taken away, God leaves in that fire the force of burning and the darkness, whereby the impious and sinners may be the more tormented.
Alas for me, my wretched soul! because continual grief and torment afflicts my heart: because malice has changed prudence, corruption has overcome incorruption, falsehood has covered truth, death has been above life: earthly, perishable, brief things have been exchanged for heavenly and everlasting; things abject and worthy of hatred have been held sweeter and more pleasant than the true charity and gravity of Christ.
Woe to us, who after writings of lamentations, and the end of the world now approaching, neither return to our senses nor do penance for what we committed in youth, but wretchedly lay greater and heavier burdens of sin upon our old age day by day.”
15. He that walketh in justices.—Here he gives the way of escaping the devouring fire and the everlasting burnings; namely, if one walk in justice, and so on. Moreover all this hangs together and is completed in the following verse, as I shall say there.
That casteth away avarice by oppression.—In Hebrew, who spurns the wealth of oppressions, that is, wealth which the avaricious wring out by force and calumny. So Vatablus.
And shaketh his hands from all bribes.—“There are three kinds of receiving gifts,” says St. Gregory, Morals book 9, chapter 26, “to which men hasten by fraud: for the gift from the heart is favor courted by thought; the gift from the mouth is glory through flattery; the gift from the hand is reward through giving. But the just man shakes his hands from every gift: because in what he does rightly he seeks to receive neither vain glory from the human heart, nor praise from the mouth, nor a present from the hand.” This sense is symbolic and moral. Literally, Isaias speaks of judges and the like, who do not accept the gifts that entice them to give sentence against or beside justice.
That stoppeth his ears lest he hear blood.—bloods, that is, slaughters, that is, wicked men talking and plotting of a murder to be done. Otherwise Sanchez, as if to say: lest he hear flesh and blood, that is, lest he obey the concupiscence of the flesh.
So also St. Gregory, Morals book 23, chapter 25: “What is it,” he says, “to stop one’s ears lest he hear blood, but not to give consent to the sins that persuade, which are born of blood and flesh? He shall dwell on high; because although the flesh still holds him among lower things, he has already fixed his mind among the heights. The fortifications of rocks shall be his highness; because he who tramples on the desires set before him by earthly intercourse lifts himself to the heavenly country by the examples of the fathers who went before. And because through the gift of contemplation he is filled with spiritual grace, it is fitly added: Bread is given him, that is, he receives the refreshment of spiritual grace, because by hoping for heavenly things he hangs himself away from the lowest goods.”
And shutteth his eyes that he may see no evil.—that is, who does not approve whatever is opposed to rectitude, says St. Gregory in the place already cited; let him see, then, that is, by seeing approve. It is a metalepsis, as if to say: To such an upright, just and honest man God will not be formidable, nor hell a terror; because such a one shall dwell on high.