about God or the spiritual life. And then they harden themselves, and if any
CHAPTER 5: Persecution Reproach and the Worlds Praise
about God or the spiritual life. And then they harden themselves, and if any adversity happens to them, it is to gnash their teeth, and to blaspheme before God.
We therefore see how and in what sense our Lord Jesus Christ here curses the rich, and those who are drunk, those who laugh, and those whom the world praises. Job said in the midst of his afflictions, If we have received good things from the hand of God, why do we not receive evils as well? What Job said then, it is certain that he had meditated for a long time, and had kept this treasure to produce it in time and place. So what is needed? Although God spares us, and gives us ease, however much we think about it, only if it does us good; we must also be ready to receive evil from his hand: and not with regret or by force, but with a docile and good spirit, to conform to his will in everything and in everything. For he must govern us, not according to our appetite, but according to what he knows to be proper and expedient for us. And in this we have reason to be concerned, that he will turn everything to our salvation. This then is what we have to remember from this passage, when our Lord Jesus Christ curses, and the rich, and those who are merry, and those who are drunk. So that we learn to use so much of the goods that we have in hand, that it is not to get drunk in this world, that is to say to be like idiots there. That if we have something, let us know that we must not nevertheless be buried, neither in gold, nor in silver, nor in fields, nor in meadows, like those who think that it is their last goal to have everything they want. It is certain that such are already like those who have passed away: for they bury themselves in these perishing goods, so much so that they cannot look up to heaven. Let us therefore think of ourselves, and let us be careful not to be cursed from the mouth of the Son of God, but let us expect from him all blessing and all our life, so as not to come to this misfortune which is here pronounced. And that we learn by this, to pass through this world, so that we are there as strangers: and that he who possesses (as Paul says) is as if he had nothing, It is true that those who have enough to spend a lot, also have greater temptations, to which they could succumb: and yet let them learn to have recourse to God, and that all that he gives them is to attract them more and more to him: to inflame them in his love, and to incite them to obey him: and that they have no such desire for the goods which are given to them, that they are wholly given to the world.
So in the midst of all our abundance we must not get drunk, so much as to strangle us, and let this curse be upon us, Woe to you who are drunk: but let us know that we must be satisfied in another way: namely, by contemplating the