Gregory the Dialogist

For there are some who understand the good things they ought to do, but cease from doing them; they see what they ought to do, but do not follow it out of desire. To these, as we said above, it often happens that the adversity of this world strikes them in their carnal desires; they try to grasp temporal glory and cannot; and while they propose to sail through the deep waters, as it were, toward the greater concerns of this age, they are always driven back by contrary winds to the shores of their own dejection. And when they see themselves broken in their desires, with the world opposing them, they are reminded what they owe to their Creator, so that they return to Him with shame, whom they had abandoned in their pride for love of the world.

For often some who wish to advance toward temporal glory either waste away in prolonged illness, or fall crushed by injuries, or are afflicted when struck by heavy losses, and in the sorrow of the world they see that they should have placed no confidence in its pleasures, and reproaching themselves for their own desires, they turn their hearts to God. Of these indeed the Lord says through the prophet: "Behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will wall it in with a barrier, and she shall not find her paths; and she shall follow after her lovers, and shall not overtake them; she shall seek them, and shall not find them, and she shall say: I will go and return to my first husband, because it was better with me then than now." The husband of every faithful soul is God, because she is joined to Him through faith. But that soul which had been joined to God follows after her lovers, when the mind which has already believed through faith still subjects itself in action to unclean spirits, seeks the glory of the world, feeds on carnal delight, and is nourished by exquisite pleasures. But often almighty God mercifully looks upon such a soul and mingles bitterness with her pleasures. Hence He says: "Behold, I will hedge up your ways with thorns." For our ways are hedged with thorns when in what we wrongly desire we find the pricks of pain. "And I will wall them in with a barrier, and she shall not find her paths." Our ways are walled in with a barrier when hard obstacles in this world resist our desires. And we cannot find our paths, because we are prevented from obtaining what we wrongly seek. "And she shall follow after her lovers, and shall not overtake them; she shall seek them, and shall not find them"; because the soul does not at all attain the fulfillment of her desires from the malign spirits to whom she had subjected herself in her desires. But what great benefit arises from this salutary adversity He adds when it follows: "And she shall say: I will go and return to my first husband, because it was better with me then than now." Therefore, after she finds her ways hedged with thorns, after she cannot overtake her lovers, she returns to the love of her first husband, because often after we cannot obtain what we want in this world, after we grow weary in earthly desires from their impossibility, then we bring God back to mind, then He who displeased us begins to please; and He whose precepts had been bitter to us suddenly becomes sweet in memory; and the sinful soul who had tried to be an adulteress, yet could not through open act, resolves to be a faithful wife. Those therefore who, broken by the adversities of this world, return to the love of God and are corrected from the desires of the present life—what are they, my brothers, but compelled to enter?

How is it said in this place that the Lord makes the hypocrite to reign when through the prophet he complains especially about that, saying, “They have reigned but not of me: they have become princes, and I know them not”? For who that thinks rightly can say that the Lord does that of which he knows nothing? But because God’s knowledge is approval, his ignorance is disapproval.… In a marvelous manner then does God make hypocrites to reign and knows them not. He makes them by forbearance; by rejecting them he knows them not. Thus it is necessary, with reference to everything which is desired in this life, that the inner will should be first inquired into. And when the ear of the heart is anxious to catch its sound, let it know that it speaks not in words but in deeds. When then a post of authority is offered, it is necessary for a man first to question with himself whether his conduct is suited to the place, whether his doings are at variance with the distinction it confers, lest perhaps the just Ruler of all should afterward not regard his prayers in tribulation, because God “knows not” his very entering on that high office which is the source of all his tribulation.

By this solemnity the elect who, protected though they were in undisturbed rest, were yet being held within the bounds of the lower world, have been brought back to the pleasant places of paradise. By his resurrection the Lord fulfilled what he said before his passion, "If I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all things to myself." He who left none of his elect in the lower world did indeed draw all things to himself. He took from them all the predestinate. The Lord by his rising did not restore to pardon any unbelievers or those whose wickedness had caused them to be given over to eternal punishment; he snatched away from the confines of the lower world those whom he recognized as his own as a result of their faith and deeds. Hence he says truly by the mouth of Hosea: "O death, I will be your death; O lower world, I will be your bite." What we slay we cause almost to pass out of existence, but we take some from what we bite and leave the rest. Because he completely conquered death in his elect, he became death for death; but because he took away a portion of the lower world and left part of it, he did not completely slay it but took a bite from it. Therefore he said, "O death, I will be your death," as if to say, because I am completely destroying you in my elect, "I will be your death; O lower world, I will be your bite," because by taking some away I am partially piercing through you.

Purity of heart and simplicity are most precious in the sight of Almighty God, who is fully pure and simple in nature. Set apart from the ways of the world, the servants of God are strangers to its vain talk and thus avoid disturbing and soiling their minds in idle conversation.… We are drawn downward by mingling in continual conversation with people of the world. It is with good reason that Isaiah, after seeing the Lord, the King of hosts, accuses himself of this very fault. In a spirit of repentance he says, “Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips.” And why are his lips unclean? Because, as he explains immediately, “I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips.” Grieving that his own lips are unclean, he shows us that he contracted this defilement by living among a people that had unclean lips.To take part in the talk of worldly people without defiling our own heart is all but impossible. If we permit ourselves to discuss their affairs with them, we grow accustomed to a manner of speech unbecoming to us, and we end clinging to it with pleasure and are no longer entirely willing to leave it. We enter upon the conversation reluctantly, as a kind of condescension, but we find ourselves carried along from idle words to harmful ones, from trivial faults to serious guilt, with the result that our lips are more defiled with foolish words, and our prayers further and further removed from God’s hearing.… Why should we be surprised, then, if God is slow to hear our petitions when we on our part are slow to hear God’s command or pay no attention whatever to it?