2. Every Good and Every Perfect Gift Is from Above
Chapter Two
Prayer
From your hand, O God, we desire to receive everything! You stretch it out, your mighty hand, and catch the wise in their foolishness. You open it, your gentle hand, and fill everything that lives with blessing. And even if it seems that your arm has become shorter, increase our faith and our trust, so that we still hold fast to you. And if at times it seems that you draw your hand away from us, oh, we know well that it is only because you close it—that you only close it in order to open it again and fill everything that lives with blessing. Amen.
It is written in the Epistle of St. James the Apostle, chapter 1, verses 17–22:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will, he gave birth to us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every person be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These words are so beautiful, so inviting, so moving, that it assuredly would not be the fault of the words if they did not find a way into the listener’s ears, if they did not find any resonance in his heart. They are by one of the Lord’s apostles, and insofar as we ourselves have not deeply perceived their meaning, we still dare to trust that they are not casual and idle chatter, not a meticulous expression of a flimsy thought, but that they are faithful and unfailing, tried and tested as the life of the apostle who wrote them. They are not said occasionally, but with special emphasis, not in passing, but accompanied by an urgent admonition: “Do not err, my beloved brethren” (v. 16). We dare to trust, then, that they not only have power to lift up the soul but also strength to carry it—these words that bore an apostle through a turbulent life. They are not said without connection to other words. That the apostle says, “Do not err, my beloved brethren,” is to warn against the terrible delusion that God would tempt a person, to warn against the allurement of the heart that would tempt God. Thus we dare to be convinced that the words are also powerful to unmask allurement, powerful to stop the errant thought.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Again and again these words have been repeated in the world, and yet many live as if they had never heard them, and it would perhaps have had a disturbing effect on them if they had done so. Carefree, they go on their way. A friendly lot in life makes everything so easy for them, every wish fulfilled, every task making progress. Without knowing how, they are in the midst of the movement of life, a link in the chain that binds a past to a future. Unconcerned about how it happens, they are borne on the wave of the present. Resting in the law of nature that lets a human life develop in the world, as if it spreads a carpet of flowers over the earth, they go on living, cheerful and contented in life’s variation. At no moment do they wish to break away from this, to honestly give each his due: thankfulness to the one to whom they attribute good gifts, helpfulness to the one they think has need of it and in the way they think it useful to him. They certainly know that there are good and perfect gifts. They also know where they come from, because the earth gives its growth and the sky gives rain early and late, and family and friends intend the best for them, and their wise and sensible plans make progress, which is natural, since they are wise and sensible. For them, life has no mystery, and yet their life is a mystery, a dream, and the apostle’s earnest admonition, “Do not err,” does not bring them to a standstill. They have no time to pay attention to it or to the words, and what does the wave care about whence it comes or whither it goes? Or if certain ones among them, in consideration of something higher, paid attention to the apostle’s words, they would soon be done with them. They would let their thought be occupied with them for a moment, and then they would say, “Now we have understood them; do bring us new thoughts that we have not understood.” Nor would they be wrong, for the apostle’s words are not difficult. And yet, they showed that, after having understood them, they wished to abandon them; in this way, they had not understood them.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These words are very soothing and alleviating, and yet how many were they who rightly knew how to soak up the rich nourishment of comfort from them, rightly knew how to appropriate it! The worried ones, those whom life did not allow to grow old and who die as children, whom it did not suckle with the milk of success but weaned early; the mourning ones, whose thought sought to pierce through the changing to the lasting—they felt the apostle’s words and respected them. The more they were able to sink their souls into them, to forget everything on account of them, the more they felt themselves strengthened and full of confidence. Yet it soon turned out that this strength was a disappointment. However much confidence they gained, they still did not gain power to pierce through life. Sometimes the worried mind and the confused thought turned to that rich comfort; sometimes they sensed the contradiction again. At last, perhaps, it seemed to them that these words were almost dangerous to their peace. They awakened a confidence in them that was continually disappointed; they gave them wings that surely could lift them up to God but did not help them in their walk through life. They did not deny the inexhaustible comfort in the words, but they almost feared it even though they praised it. If a person owned a glorious piece of jewelry, and there was never a time when he would deny that it was glorious, then certainly he would get it out now and then, enjoy it, but soon he would say, “I cannot adorn myself with this for everyday use, and I wait in vain for the festive occasion that would properly suit it.” Undoubtedly, then, he would set the piece of jewelry aside and, with sadness, contemplate that he owned such a piece of jewelry and that life did not grant him with the occasion to take it out with rightful joy.
So they sat there in quiet sorrow. They did not harden themselves against the comfort in those words. They were humble enough to admit that life is a dark saying, and just as they, in their thoughts, were swift to hear if an explanatory word might ring out, so were they also slow to speak, slow to anger. They did not have the audacity to cast away the words, if only the opportune hour would come. If this came, then they would be saved. That was their opinion, and you, my listener, said it was bound to happen. Or is there only one spirit who witnesses in heaven, yet no spirit who witnesses on earth! Do only heaven and the spirit that flies away from the earth know that God is good! Does life on earth know nothing of it! Is there no harmony between what happens in heaven and what happens on earth! Is there joy in heaven, only sorrow on earth, or really only the news that there is joy in heaven! Does God in heaven produce the good gifts and save them for us in heaven, so that one day we can receive them in the next world! Perhaps this is the way you talked in your heart’s curiosity. You did not demand that, for your sake, signs and wondrous works should take place. You did not childishly demand that every one of your wishes should be fulfilled. You only asked for a witness, whether early or late, because your worried soul hid a wish. If this were granted, then all would be well, then your thanks and your praise would be eternal, then the festive occasion would have come, then you would, with your whole heart, give testimony to the saying that all good and all perfect gifts come from above.
But see, that was denied you, and your soul became restless, tossed about by the passion of the wish. It did not become defiant and wild; you did not impatiently cast off humility’s harness; you had not forgotten that you are on earth and God is in heaven. With humble prayers, with burning desire, you sought to tempt God, as it were: this wish is so important to me; my joy, my peace, my future—all hang on this. For me it is so very important; for God it is so easy, since he is, after all, almighty. But it was not granted. In vain you sought tranquility; you left no stone unturned in your fruitless restlessness. You ascended suspicion’s staggering pinnacle in order to be on the look-out for an emerging possibility. If you believed you saw one, then right away you were ready with prayers, so that, with their help, you could fashion the actual from the apparent. But it was a mirage. You climbed down again; you gave yourself over to sorrow’s numbing dullness—that the time is bound to pass, as surely as it came. And it became morning, and it became night, but the day you longed for did not come. And yet you certainly did everything. You prayed early and late, more and more deeply, more and more temptingly. Alas, and still it did not happen.
Then you gave up on it. You wanted to make your soul be patient; you wanted to wait in quiet longing, if only you could gain certainty that eternity would bring you your wish, bring you that which was your eyes’ wish and your heart’s demand. Alas, this certainty was denied you as well. But then when the busy thoughts had worked themselves weary, when the fruitless wishes had worn out your soul, then perhaps your being grew more quiet, then perhaps had your mind, secretly and unnoticeably, developed in itself the meekness that receives the word that was implanted within you and that was able to render your soul blessed, the word that all good and all perfect gifts come from above. Doubtless, then, you confessed in all humility that God assuredly did not deceive you when he received your worldly wishes and miserable covetousness, swapped them for you and instead gave you divine comfort and holy thoughts; that he did not treat you unfairly when he denied you a wish, but in compensation created this faith in your heart; when instead of a wish, which, even if it conquered everything, was at most able to give you the whole world, he blessed you with a faith by which you won God and overcame the whole world. Then you acknowledged with humble joy that God was still the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, who not only created the world from nothing but did something even more wonderful: he created the incorruptible nature of a quiet spirit from your impatient and inconstant heart. Ashamed, you then confessed that it was good, so very good for you that God does not let himself be tempted; then you understood the apostle’s admonition and why it is connected with the delusion that would tempt God. Then you realized how wrong your behavior was. You wanted God’s ideas about what was right for you to be your ideas, but, in addition, you wished that he would be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father. You wanted to distort, as it were, God’s eternal nature in your childish impatience, and you were dazzled enough to enchant yourself, as if you would be helped if God in heaven did not know better than you what was helpful for you, as if some day you would not discover to your horror that you had wished what no human being would be able to bear if it happened.
Let us for a moment speak inadequately and in a human way. If there was a person in whom you had rightful confidence because you believed he wanted what was good for you, but you had one idea of what was beneficial for you and he another, is it not true that you would try to persuade him? You would perhaps entreat and implore him to fulfill your wish. But when he continued to refuse your wish, then you would cease to beg him. You would say: “If my petitions were to move him to do what he did not consider to be right, then something even more horrible would happen—that I would have been weak enough to make him just as weak. Then I would have only lost him and my trust in him, even if I would have called his weakness love in the moment of intoxication.”
Or perhaps this was not the case with you; perhaps you grew too old to entertain childish ideas about God, too mature to possibly think about him. Maybe you would move him by your defiance. That life was a dark saying you readily admitted, but you were not, following the apostle’s admonition, quick to hear if a clarifying word might ring out. Contrary to his admonition, you were swift to anger. Is life a dark saying? Then let it be. You should not care about the explanation—and your heart shall be hardened. Your appearance was perhaps calm, perhaps friendly, your conversation even kind. But deep down in the secret workshop of your thoughts you said—no, you did not say it, but there you heard a voice that said: “God does tempt a person.” And the cold of despair made your spirit shiver, and its death brooded over your heart. When at times life stirred again in your inner being, savage voices raged there, voices that did not belong to you but nevertheless rang out from your inner being. For why was your complaint so unyielding? Why was your scream so penetrating? Why was even your prayer so aggressive? Or was it not because you believed that your sufferings were so great, your sorrows so devastating, and that consequently your complaint so just, your voice so mighty, that it had to ring throughout the heavens and summon God from his secretive depths, where, as it seemed to you, he sat, calm and indifferent without paying attention to the world and its destinies? But heaven shuts itself off from such presumptuous talk, and it is written that God is not tempted by anyone. Your speech was powerless, as powerless as your thought, as powerless as your arm, and heaven did not hear your prayer. But when you then humbled yourself under God’s tremendous hand and, spiritually broken, sighed: “My God, my God, great is my sin, greater than can be forgiven”—then heaven opened again, then God, as a prophet writes, looked down from his window at you and said: “Yet a little while; yet a little while and I shall renew the face of the earth”—and see, your face was renewed, and God’s merciful grace had nurtured in your barren mind the meekness that receives the words. Then you humbly confessed before God that God tempts no one, but that everyone is tempted when he is lured and drawn by his own greedy desires, just as you were tempted by proud and haughty and defiant thoughts. Then you were horrified that your confused notion—that God tempts a person—is supposed to make life clearer. For then life to you would become a dark saying, then you would indeed listen to this explanation, which, as you would have to admit, simply made everything unclear. Then you, humbled and shamed, confessed that it was good that God does not allow himself to be tempted, that he is the almighty God who can crush every presumptuous thought, that in your despair you had not found an explanation of life’s dark saying, which no person is able to maintain.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These words are so comprehensible, so simple, and yet how many were they who rightly understood them, who rightly understood that they were a magnificent coin, which is more glorious than all the world’s treasure, but also pocket change, which is usable in life’s everyday circumstances.
“Every good and every perfect gift is from God.” The apostle uses two phrases. “Every good gift,” he says and, in turn, signifies the inner nature of the gift—that it is healthy and blessed fruit, which does not hide any unwholesome or harmful additive. “Every perfect gift,” the apostle says and, in turn, signifies the closer relation into which the good gifts, with God’s assistance, enter with the individual who receives them, so that in and of themselves goods do not become trouble and perdition to him. Two other phrases correspond to these. “The gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights.” “It is from above,” the apostle says and thereby turns the believer’s thoughts up toward heaven, where, indeed, every good thing—the blessing that satisfies the mouth and the one that satisfies the heart—has its home; up toward heaven, from where the good spirits proceed for the salvation of human beings; up toward heaven, from where good intentions return as heavenly gifts. “From the Father of lights,” says the apostle and, in turn, means that God penetrates everything with his eternal clarity, that he understands people’s thoughts from afar and knows their ways clearly that his eternal love hurries ahead and prepares everything and thus makes “the good gift” into a “perfect gift.” For God in heaven is not like a person who, if he had a good gift to give, nevertheless gave it away in darkness and in uncertainty—glad, no doubt, because it was a good gift and he a glad giver, but also sad because he did not know whether or not it would really be of benefit to the other.
“Every good and every perfect gift,” says the apostle. “Every”—what does this mean? Does the apostle mean thereby that heaven’s extensive fortification is a great storeroom and, nevertheless, that heaven only holds good gifts? Does he mean that God takes from this rich supply and now and then dispatches, according to time and occasion, sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other, to one more, to the other less, to the odd one nothing at all, but what he sends is good and perfect? Let us heed the ensuing words: “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” If that is what the apostle had wanted to convey, then, instead of these words, he probably would have added: “from the God of love, the God of mercy and comfort, the giver of good gifts” or however he would have expressed it otherwise, better and more pithily than we are able to do it. He almost certainly would have admonished the believers to gratitude according to time and occasion, inasmuch as the good gifts were allotted to them. He does not do this. What he warns against is the delusion that God would tempt a person, the delusion that God would let himself be tempted. What he emphasizes is that God is the constant who remains the same, whereas everything else changes. He admonishes us to love God in such a way that our nature might become like his, that we might attain God in constancy and rescue our soul in patience. He says nothing in these words about the nature of the specific gifts, but he talks about God’s eternal relation to the believer. When joy enlightens life and everything is bright and clear, he warns against this enlightenment and counsels us to attribute it to the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. When sorrow casts its shadow over our lives, when dejection makes our vision woozy, when the cloud of worry takes him away from our eyes, then the apostle’s admonition—that with God there is no shadow of turning—rings out. What the apostle warns against is disturbing God’s blessed nature through the restlessness of temptation, as if his heart had become either cold or weak. What he impresses is that, as God’s almighty hand made everything good, so he, the Father of lights, ever constant, at every moment makes everything good, everything into a good and perfect gift for everyone who has enough heart to be humble, enough heart to be trustful.
But doubt is cunning and scheming, not at all noisy and defiant, as it certainly is described at times. It is inconspicuous and subtle, not brazen and presumptuous, and the more inconspicuous it is, the more dangerous it is. It does not deny that these words are beautiful, that they are comforting; if it did this, the heart would rebel against it. It merely says that the words are difficult, almost inscrutable. It wants to help the worried mind to understand the apostolic saying that all good and all perfect gifts are from God. “What does this want to express? What else but that everything that comes from God is a good and a perfect gift, and that everything that is a good and a perfect gift is from God.” This explanation is, indeed, simple and natural, and yet doubt has subtly concealed itself in it. Therefore it goes on: “In order that a person might be able to find peace in these words in his lifetime, he must be able to decide either what it is that comes from God or what can be justly and truly called a good and a perfect gift. But how is this possible? Is every human life, then, a continual chain of miracles? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to forge its way through the unmanageable number of derived causes and effects, to penetrate any intervening thing, and in that way to find God? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to decide with certainty what is a good and a perfect gift for him? Is it not wrecked on this again and again? How often has humankind, how often has every single person, lived through the painful experience that it is a folly—one that does not go unpunished—to want to dare what has been denied to humanity?” Then doubt was finished with its explanation of the words and, moreover, finished with the words. It had transformed the apostolic, authoritative saying into blustery talk that went from mouth to mouth without pith and meaning. It was modest enough not to demand that the words should be erased and handed over to eternal forgetfulness. It wrested them from the heart and left them to the lips.
Was it like this, my listener? Are these words perhaps not the work of an apostle of the Lord? Are they perhaps the work of that spiritual host below heaven? Was it a curse that rested upon them—that they were to be homeless in the world and find no place in a person’s heart? Was it their destiny to perplex people? Is it not possible to stop that alarming movement in which thinking exhausts itself and yet never goes further? Was it perhaps nevertheless the case that God does tempt a person, even if in no other way than by proclaiming a word that only confuses his thinking?
The Apostle Paul says, “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.” It is, if anything, to warn against an earthly shrewdness that would enslave believers in the service of ceremony that the apostle says these words. At the same time, what does the apostle do? He raises the believer’s mind above earthly and finite worries, above worldly shrewdness and doubt, by means of a devout contemplation—that we always ought to thank God. For, after all, the thankfulness that the apostle talks about cannot be a thankfulness that is to be shown from one person to another, and those false teachers also thought that the faithful, by violating the ceremony, sinned against God. Should not the same apply to every person’s relation to God—that every gift is a good and a perfect gift when it is received with thankfulness?
Is it not true, my listener, that you interpreted those apostolic words in this way and that you were not confused about what was a good and a perfect gift or about what came from God. For, you said, every gift is good when it is received with thankfulness from the hand of God, and from God comes every good and every perfect gift. You did not anxiously question what it is that comes from God; you happily and openly said: “This thing, for which I thank God.” You did not trouble your mind with thinking over what was a good and a perfect gift, because you confidently said: “I know what it is that I thank God for, and therefore I thank him for it.” You interpreted the apostolic words as your heart expanded. You did not demand to learn much from life. You only wanted to learn one thing—always to thank God and, in turn, to learn to simply understand that all things serve for good those who love God.
Are, then, the apostolic words that every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights—is it a dark and difficult saying? And if you think that you cannot understand it, do you then dare to maintain that you have wanted to understand it? When you doubted about what came from God or about what was a good and a perfect gift, did you risk the attempt? And when the easy play of joy beckoned you, did you thank God for it? And when you were so strong that it was as if you needed no help, did you then thank God? And when your appointed portion was little, did you thank God? And when your appointed portion was sufferings, did you thank God? And when your wish was denied, did you thank God? And when you yourself had to deny your wish, did you thank God? And when people did you wrong and hurt you, did you thank God? We are not saying that the wrong of such persons thereby stopped being wrong. What would be the purpose of such corrupt and wicked talk? Whether it was wrong you will determine yourself. But have you attributed the wrong and insult to God and by your thanksgiving received it from his hand as a good and a perfect gift? Have you done that? Well, then you have worthily interpreted the apostolic words to the honor of God and to your own salvation. For it is beautiful that a person prays, and many a promise is said to the one who prays without ceasing, but it is more blessed always to give thanks. Then you have worthily interpreted those apostolic words more gloriously than if all the angels spoke in flaming tongues.
But who had such courage, such faith? Who loved God in this way? Who was the joyous and steadfast warrior who stood such a long time at life’s post that he never slumbered? And if you did that, my listener, have you not concealed it from yourself? Have you then said to yourself: “I well understand the apostolic words, but I also understand that I am too cowardly or too proud or too sluggish to want to understand them properly”? Have you admonished yourself? Have you taken into consideration that, even if this seems to be a hard saying, the timorous person also has a deceitful heart and is not an upright lover? Have you taken into consideration that there is a judgment also upon the despondent, but the humble heart does not come to judgment? Have you taken into consideration that the melancholy person, too, does not love God with his whole heart, but the person who is happy in God has overcome the world? Have you at least watched over yourself? Have you observed the apostolic words in sacred fashion? Have you treasured them in a pure and beautiful heart and for no price, for no shrewdness of cunning bribery, wanted to ransom yourself from the deep pain of having to confess again and again that you never loved as you were loved? That you were faithless when God was faithful; that you were lukewarm when he was aflame; that he sent good gifts, which you perverted to your own injury; that he asked about you but you would not answer; that he called to you but you would not listen; that he spoke to you as a friend but you ignored it; that he spoke to you earnestly but you misunderstood it; that he fulfilled your wish and, as thanks, you produced new wishes; that he fulfilled your wish but you had not wished for the right thing and were quick to anger? Have you really felt how sad it is that you, in order to describe your relation to God, need so many words? With this in mind, have you at least been honest with yourself and with your God in your relation to him? Have you not postponed the reckoning, not rather preferred to be ashamed of yourself in your solitude? Have you been ready to endure the reckoning’s pain? Have you borne in mind that he loved you first? Have you yourself been quick to judge that he should not continue to love you, while you, in turn, were slow to love? If you have done this, then you will probably win the courage to give thanks from time to time, even when what happens is strange in your eyes—the courage to understand that every good and every perfect gift is from above, the courage to explain it in love, the faith to receive this courage. For it, too, is a good and a perfect gift.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These words are so restorative, so healing, and yet how often did the penitent soul allow himself to be healed by them, how often did he understand their discriminating earnestness but also their merciful grace.
Or, my listener, was there perhaps in your own life no occasion to find these words difficult? Were you always contented with yourself, so contented that you perhaps thanked God that you were not like other persons? Did you, perhaps, become so wise that you grasped the profound meaning in the meaningless talk that it was wonderful not to be like other persons?…What was it, then, that made them difficult? If a person is himself a good and a perfect gift, if, indeed, he is only receiving and has received everything from God’s hand! How could he, then, receive anything but good and perfect gifts? Yet, when you stooped under the lot of the ordinary human being, then you confessed that you were neither good nor perfect—that you do not only relate to others as receiver but, in everything, what you received underwent a transformation. Can the like, then, be understood by anything other than the like? Can the good remain good in anything other than the good? Can healthy food preserve its nourishment in the sick soul? A person is not in purely receptive relationships. He himself is communicating, and it became difficult for you to understand how the unwholesomeness that came from you could be anything other than trouble for others. You well understood that it was only in giving thanks to God that everything became a good and a perfect gift for you. You maintained that other persons also must appropriate everything in the same way. But, then, was even the love that gave birth to gratitude—was even it pure? Did it not transform what was received?
Hence, can a person do more than love? Have thought and language any higher expression for loving than to give thanks always? Not at all. It has an inferior, a humbler expression, for even the one who always wants to give thanks nevertheless loves according to his own perfection, and a person can only love God in truth when he loves him according to his own imperfection. Which love is this? Repentance’s love is more beautiful than any other love, since you love God in it! It is more faithful and more heartfelt than any other love, because in repentance it is God who loves you. In repentance you receive everything from God, even the thanksgiving that you bring him, so that even this is what the child’s gift is in parents’ eyes—a jest, a receiving of something one has given oneself. Was it not like this, my listener? You would always thank God, but even this was very imperfect. Then you understood that God is the one who does everything in you and who vouchsafes to you the childlike joy over the fact that he considers your thanksgiving as a gift from you. He bestows this joy upon you when you have not been afraid of the pain of repentance and the deep sorrow in which a person comes to rejoice in God like a child, when you have not been afraid to understand that this is love—not that we love God, but that God loves us.
And you, my listener, you who in a simpler and humbler way understood the profound meaning of the thought that you were not like other persons, was it so easy for you not to understand the apostolic words? You fully grasped that every good and every perfect gift comes from God. Alas! Could you not grasp that it could become anything other than a wound to you? Dew and rain are, indeed, a good gift from above, but if the poisonous herb understood itself and could talk, it would perhaps say: “Oh, stop! Go back to heaven again, so that I may perish of drought. Do not refresh my root, so that I do not thrive and increase and become even more dangerous!” And you neither understood yourself nor the apostolic words. For if it were so, then it would not be true that every perfect gift comes from God, then God would not be greater than a person’s distressed heart. And how, then, could every good and perfect gift come from him?
Perhaps there was something in your life that you wished undone. If this were possible, then, you would take every perfect gift from God’s hand with joyful thanksgiving. Just by thinking about it, your joy was so great that it was as if it would tempt God to undo what had been done. But God is tempted by no one. Perhaps you strove to forget it, so that your thanksgiving ought not to be weak and like a snuffed-out candle. Alas, and if you could forget it, then how would it be possible for you to understand the apostolic words? If it were possible for you to forget it, then not every good and perfect gift would come from God, after all. You would close yourself off from the blessing, not by what you had done, but by your poor and self-absorbed and capricious understanding of the words, just like the one whose wish was denied would close himself off from the blessing by wanting to think that the wish that was denied was also not a good and a perfect gift, even though it seemed much harder to you than to him to dare to understand it.
Perhaps you understood the apostolic words in a different way—that punishment from God is a good and a perfect gift too. Your inner wrath wanted to come to help the divine wrath, as it were, so that the punishment would consume you. And yet, the punishment that you suffered was different than you had imagined it. Perhaps it reached more persons than you, but, nevertheless, you were the guilty one. Perhaps its grip went beyond you, but, nevertheless, you were the only one who should have been its object. Even if you, in secret, admitted that divine providence knows how to hit a person, knows how to make itself understandable to him, even if no one else understood it, the apostolic words became obscure to you. It was as if the punishment itself became a new temptation. What was punishment and what was incident became ambiguous to you. If it were only incident, then your soul demanded punishment; if it were nothing but punishment, then you could not take it on. You would forsake everything, every wish, every desire. You would give up the notion that, in your soul’s extreme exertion, you had done your best—the assurance that it was good, that it was other than folly and sin. You would suffer every punishment, but you could not bear the more that was linked to it. Was it also a good and a perfect gift? Then your soul was darkened. Could you not understand the words? But what did you do then? Did you cast the words aside? Oh no! You held them fast in all your distress. And when all the devils stood ready and willing to save your soul from the madness of despair, explaining that God is not love, is it not true that you then clung tightly to the words, even if you did not understand them? For you still faintly hoped in them, and to relinquish them was more horrible than anything else.
Did you do this, my listener? Then, even if the external person was harmed, the inner person was renewed nonetheless. Then you understood that every good and every perfect gift is from above when it is received with thanksgiving. You understood that repentance is a thanksgiving, not only for punishment, but also for what is given out, and that the penitent who only wants to suffer punishment will still not, in the deepest sense, love according to his imperfection. Just as the Lord himself says, “This very day,” so does the Lord’s apostle say: “This very day, every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, this very day, and this in spite of the fact that he is the same today as he was yesterday.”
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” These words are so beautiful, so appealing, so moving; they are so consoling, so comforting, so simple and comprehensible, so healing and curing. Thus we pray to you, O God, that you would make the ears of those who have not venerated them up to now willing to receive them; that, in accordance with the words’ knowledge, you would heal the misunderstanding heart so that it understands the words; that you would bow the erring thought under the words’ saving obedience; that you would give the penitent soul the boldness to dare to understand the words; and that you would make those who have understood them more and more blessed by them, so that they understand them again and again. Amen.