De arte praedicatoria

With these authorities and reasons one can invite another to spiritual mourning: Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.¹ And elsewhere: Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.² James says: Be wretched, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow.³ Solomon says: It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting.⁴ Gregory: "Perpetual lamentations follow present joys. No one can rejoice here with the world, and reign there with God." There are three kinds of mourning by which a man must water his own mind: mourning for one's own sin, mourning for another's, and mourning for the delay of eternal blessedness. The first mourning concerns oneself, the second one's neighbor, the third God. Of the first it is said: Tears have been my bread day and night.⁵ Of the second it is said: Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is scandalized, and I do not burn?⁶ With this weeping Jesus also wept over Jerusalem, saying: If only you too had known!⁷ Of the third weeping it is read in the Psalm: By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, etc.⁸ These are the Lamentations of Jeremiah, by which he bewails the sin of the soul, bewails the assault of misery, and the delay of the homeland. With the showers of these tears a man must water the ground of his own mind, so that it may bring forth the fruits of good works, various flowers of virtue. These are the early and late rains; the early, that is, weeping for one's own sins, by whose watering the seed of good work rises up in the mind; but after the seed of penitence has come to the maturity of perfect righteousness, the late rain must be present, that is, weeping for the delay of the homeland, so that with such a seasoning of lamentation we may more fittingly reap the fruits of good works. These are the waves of grace through which the children of Israel passed as they went up into the promised land; for sinners, going out from the Egypt of vices, first pass through the Red Sea, in which their enemies are drowned, that is, they first undergo the waves of penitence, where the errors of vice are wiped away. Whence, through weeping, we ought here to sing the song of Moses, saying: Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, he has cast the horse and its rider into the sea.⁹

Then the children of Israel come to the torrent of Hermon, and the rocks bow down, when the faithful, placed in the desert of the mind, and freed from the cares of this world, and set on the throne of virtues, weep for the sins of others, feel compassion for their neighbors, judge another's error as their own, and thus the rocks bow down. At last the children of Israel arrive at the Jordan, and cross it with dry foot, when the faithful, established at the height of perfection, with the affections of the mind purified from the currents of carnal thoughts, enter into lamentation, on account of the loss caused by present misery. The first weeping is that of penitence, the second from compassion for one's neighbor, the third from compassion for oneself. O man, make your mind that book which Ezekiel saw,¹⁰ in which was written: Woe, lamentations, and songs. So that, if you have been entangled in sin, you may be turned to penitence; so that, if woe for mortal guilt has come first, the lamentation of penitence may follow; indeed, three lamentations: the lamentation of penitence, the lamentation of compassion for another, the lamentation for the delay of the homeland. O man, turn yourself to these groanings. Embrace these sorrows, turn yourself away from other earthly sorrows. If fortune is hostile to you, do not increase your sorrow because of her enmities; she has nothing with which to harm you, unless you supply her with strength. Certainly she does not harm you unless you harm yourself; you have supplied her with weapons if you grieve. Why do you grieve at the loss of those things which, in the midst of pleasures, are a cause of sorrow? which, in the midst of peace, are a cause of dissension? which, though they ought to be a comfort to security, are turned into fear? If you grieve for the death of a friend, grieve more for the danger to his soul, than for his exclusion from this temporal life; if you weep for him, pour out rather the tears of your mind for him to God, than an outward wailing to the world. If natural weakness invites you to mourning, do not surrender your mind to mourning. I do not forbid the tears that necessity naturally forces out, that human weakness expels; for these tears fall by an involuntary compulsion, without our willing it. Often, without violating the authority of the wise, tears have flowed for so long a time for a friend that neither humanity nor dignity was lacking in them; for it is permitted, while preserving gravity, to comply with nature; but although nature may invite you to mourning of the mind, do not let tears suffocate your mind, but in the midst of tears let your mind, steady and unmoved, read its own wretchedness, let mourning be conquered by the mind, let the mind absorb its own weakness, let the spirit thin out the flesh, let reason thin out sensuality. If death is imminent, do not grieve, but prepare yourself for the approach of death through steadiness of mind. Prepare yourself in such a way that you cannot fear death; so that after death you may begin to live, you who before death were living by dying. I do not say, however, that overcome by weariness you should flee toward death, for it is just as shameful sometimes to flee toward death, as it is to flee death. Let desire for eternal life invite you toward death; let desire for greater merit hold you back in life. Do not be dissolved by prosperity, do not be suffocated by adversity. Do not be like those women whom Ezekiel saw¹¹ mourning for Adonis. By Adonis, who is read to have died and afterward to have come back to life, over whose death the women seemed to mourn, and over whose revival they rejoiced, temporal prosperity is understood, which ceases in a moment, and rises again in a moment, because it is always in flux, and never remains in the same state. This dead thing the women mourn, this revived thing they rejoice over, that is, effeminate men, who are always changing with the play of fortune; who mourn when fortune mourns, and rejoice when she rejoices. Who have as many changes of mind as fortune has varieties. It is not this temporal mourning that should be embraced, but the eternal mourning that must be feared with all one's heart, where there will be weeping without remission, pain without interruption, labor without rest: where the whole soul will be in the weeping of conscience, the whole body in the mourning of misery, for from the first gate there will be crying out, from the second, misery.