On enduring adversities, a double comparison.
The world is just like a winepress; it is under pressure; but, if you are dregs, you go through the gutters; if you are oil, you remain in the vat. For it is necessary that pressures exist. Look at the dregs, look at the oil. Sometimes pressure happens in the world: for example, famine, war, scarcity, dearness, poverty, mortality, theft, greed; the pressures of the poor, the toils of cities: we see these. And they have been predicted to come, and we see that they are. We find people murmuring among these pressures, and saying: Behold, how many evils there are in Christian times! How abundant the good things were before Christian times! There were not so many evils. This escapes as dregs under pressure and runs through the gutters; its mouth is black because it blasphemes: it does not shine. Oil glistens. But you find another person under the same pressure, and the same crushing which squeezed him; is it not the same crushing that squeezed him? You have heard the voice of the dregs, hear the voice of the oil: Thanks be to God! Blessed be your name! All these evils wherewith you crush us were predicted; we are secure because we know that good things will also come. When both we and the wicked are corrected together, your will is being done. We know you as the Father who makes promises, we know you as the Father who chastises; instruct us and grant the inheritance which you have promised at the end. We bless your holy name because you have never been a liar; all things, just as you predicted, you have delivered. From these praises emanating from the same pressure the oil runs into the vat. However, as the whole world is a winepress, another comparison is also made: Just as gold and silver are tested in the furnace, so the righteous are tested by the temptation of tribulation, and a comparison is made with the furnace of the goldsmith. In a narrow pot, there are three things: fire, gold, and straw. And there you see an image of the whole world; there is straw, there is gold, there is fire; straw is burned, fire blazes, gold is tested. Likewise, in this whole world there are the righteous, there are the wicked, there is tribulation; the world is like the goldsmith’s furnace, the just like gold, the wicked like straw, tribulation like fire. Would gold be purified if the straw were not burned? It happens that the wicked are reduced to ashes; for when they blaspheme and murmur against God, they become ashes. There, purified gold – that is, the righteous who bear all the vexations of this world tolerably and praise God in their tribulations – are gathered into God’s treasures; for God has treasures where he sends the purified gold; he also has sordid places where he sends the ashes of the straw. All this comes out of the world. You, see what you are. For the fire must come; if it finds you as gold, it will remove impurities; if it finds you as straw, it will burn you and reduce you to ashes. Choose what you will be. For you cannot say: I will be without fire; you are already in the goldsmith’s furnace, where the fire must come. It is more necessary for you to be there, for without fire you can by no means exist.
The patience of God must be used by us, and it must be imitated.
Why then do we not believe, brothers, that the end of the world and the day of judgment will come, so that there each one of us receives what he has done in the body, whether good or bad, when we see so many promised things fulfilled and given? Why do we not choose for ourselves, while we live, that where we shall always live? Suppose that because we have been negligent, today let us be diligent. We ought not to be negligent; you do not know what tomorrow will be. The patience of God admonishes us to amend our life if it has been bad, and to choose better things while there is time. Do you think that God sleeps and does not see those doing evil? But perhaps he teaches us patience by showing patience first. He finds a man perhaps having made progress, and not doing what he did before, that is, evil. This one endures some malicious person and wishes that God would remove him; and murmurs against God, because he retains his enemy perhaps doing harm and does not remove him. He has forgotten that God has dealt patiently with him, and, if he had wanted to act severely earlier, there would not have been anyone speaking now. Do you demand the severity of God? Since you have crossed over, let another also cross; for neither because you have already crossed over have you destroyed the bridge of God's mercy; there is still one who will cross. He made you good, when you were evil; he also wishes another to be good from evil, just as you were made good from evil. Thus all come in their own time; but some do not wish to come, others do come. To such the Apostle says: But by your hard and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will repay each one according to his works. Then if the evil one wishes to persist in evil, he is not your companion, but he will test you; for if he is evil, and you are good, you are proven good by enduring the evil; you will receive the crown of your perseverance, but he will have punishment for his persistence in evil. Let us patiently wait for God's good patience, his fatherly discipline. He is a father, he is kind, he is merciful; more so if he lets us flow, then he is truly angry with us.
We ought to commit ourselves to God in adversities without complaint.
"Attend, brothers, and see these amphitheaters, which now are falling. Luxury built them; do you think piety built them? It was not built by anything other than the luxury of impious men. Do you not want what luxury built to eventually fall, and what piety builds to rise? God permitted these to be built so that men might at some time become aware of the evils they were committing. But because they did not want to recognize it, the Lord Jesus Christ came; He began to proclaim their evils to them, began to overturn what they held in high regard; and they say: The Christian times are bad. Why? Because that which was killing you is being overthrown. But, they say, all good things were abundant when these were happening. Indeed, so these good things might be made from them. If therefore you know that God once gave you abundance, and you used it badly and to your destruction, see that this abundance made you abound and lose your soul. Does not a strict father come and start to say: This child is undisciplined; I entrusted him with this or that, how did he lose it? If we do not give the seed of the earth unless it is good, lest the seed perish, how do you want that God gives His abundance to us undisciplined and neglectful of our life to use badly, and you do not want God to cut off the overflow of men? My brothers, a physician knows how to cut off a rotten member so that other parts may not rot. He says, one finger is cut off; because it is better for one finger to be less than for the whole body to rot. If a human physician does this by his art, if the art of medicine removes a part of the members so that all do not rot, why should God not cut off whatever He knows to be rotten in men, so that they may reach salvation?"
Exhortation to Patience.
Therefore, brothers, do not be weary when God chastises, lest He abandon you and you perish forever; but rather, let us ask Him to moderate the very scourges and temper them so that we do not fail under them; and let us ask that He corrects with salvation, measures, and afterwards grants what He promised to His saints. See what Scripture says: "The sinner provoked the Lord; for the greatness of His wrath, He will not seek out." What does "for the greatness of His wrath, He will not seek out" mean? Because He is greatly angry, He will not seek out, that is, He will let them perish. Therefore, if He is greatly angry when He does not seek out, He is also greatly merciful when He chastises. He chastises when He binds our heart to Himself. Therefore, let us hold on to His salvation and not flee from His scourge; this is what He teaches us, admonishes us, and builds us up in. His own Son, who came to comfort us, what good did He endure here? Tell me. Certainly, He is the Son of God, the Word of God, through whom all things were made; what good did He endure here? Is He not the one, who, when He cast out demons, heard such insults as to be told: "You have a demon"? The Son of God, who cast out demons, was told by the Jews: "You have a demon." Now the demons were better, who confessed the Son of God, than those men; for both the demons confessed and those men did not confess. But such was His power, and such His greatness, and such His patience, that He endured all. He was scourged, heard insults, received blows, was spit upon in the face, crowned with thorns, crucified, at last hung on the cross, mocked, deceived, killed, buried. The Son of God endured so much here; if the Lord, how much more the servant? If the Master, how much more the disciple? If He who created us, how much more we His creatures? Who gave us an example, imparted patience to us. Why do we fail in that very patience, as if we had lost our head, who went before us to heaven? For this reason, our head went before us to heaven, as if saying: "Behold, this is the way, come: through troubles, through patience; this is the way I handed down to you." But where does the way lead, by which you see me ascend? To heaven. Whoever does not want to go this way, does not want to reach that destination; whoever wants to reach me, let them come by the way I showed. And you cannot reach except by the way of troubles, pains, tribulations, distress. Thus, you will reach the rest that cannot be taken from you. Do you want this temporary rest and to turn away from the way of Christ? Observe the torments of that rich man who was tortured in hell; for he also desired present rest and found eternal punishments. Beloved brothers, choose rather the harsher things, which will have eternal rest without end. Turn to the Lord.