Where Is Your Blessedness?

Ubi est ergo beatitudo vestra? Testimonium enim perhibeo vobis: quia is fieri potuisset, oculos vestros eruissetis et dedissetis mihi. Ergo inimicus vobis factus sum veritatem dicens vobis? Beatus est qui ambulat in virtutum via, sed si ad virtutes usque pervenerit. Nec prodest a vitiis recessisse, nisi optima comprehendas. Quia non tam initia sunt in bonis studiis laudanda, quam finis. Sicut enim in vinea multi usque ad praelum uvae gradus sunt: et primum necesse est ut vitis gemmet in pampinis, spem promitat in floribus: dehinc ut flore decusso, futuri botri species defrometur, paulatimque turgescens uva parturiat, ut pressa torcularibus dulcia musta desudet. Ita et in doctrina singuli beatiduinum sunt provectus: ut audiat quis verbum Dei, ut concipiat, ut in utero animae ejus adolescat, et ad partum usque perveniat. Ut cum pepererit illum, lacte enutriat, et per infantiam, pueritiam, adolescentiam, juventutem, ad perfectum virum usque perducat. Cum ergo singuli, ut diximus, gradus, juxta provectus suos habeant beatitudinem: si finis, et ut ita loquar, extrema manus operi defuerit, totus labor irritus fiet; et dicetur: Ubi est ergo beatitudo? Quamvis, inquit, vos eo tempore quo Evangelium juxta carnem susceperatis, beatos dicerem quod in initiis fervebatis: tamen nunc quia non video aedifiio culmen impositum, et pene nequaquam jacta fundamine, cogor dicere: Ubi est ergo beatitudo vestra, qua vos beatos arbitrans ante laudabam? Vere enim et ipse fateor, quia sic me vobis humilia praedicantem vel persecutionis conflictatem, in principio dilexistis: ut si fieri posset, hyperbolice autem sunt accipienda quae loquitur, eruissetus vobis oculos; et mihi, ut omnium vestrum luminibus plus cernerem, dedissetis. Optabatis quippe vos caecos esse per ineffabilem in me charitatem; ut plus in meo corde Evangelii lumen oriretur, emolumentum meum vestris damnis crescere volebatis: et hoc illo tempore, quo vobis quasi parvulis atque lactentibus, sive propter infirmitatem carnis vestrae parva et humilia annuntiabam, sive propter meae carnis injurias, non dignus videbar fide. Nunc vero quia ab elementis et syllabis et lectione puerili coepi vos ad majora studia provocare, ut libros teneatis in manibus, ut plena eruditionis, et sensuum verba discatis, recalcitratis, irascmini, gravis vobis videtur esse perfectio doctrinarum: et intantum in alios mutati estis affectus, ut me quem quasi angelum et Christum suscepetatis, cui volebatis oculos vestros tradere, nunc habeatis inimicum: quia vobis plenam annuntio vertitatem. Eleganter autem sententiam terminavit, dicens: Ergo inimicus vobis factus sum veritatem dicens vobis? ut ostenderet initia praedicationis, non tam veritatem fuisse, quam umbram et imaginem veritatis. Similis est huic illa sententia nobilis apud Romanos poetae:   Obesequium amicos, veritas odium parit  Sanctus Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Epistolam ad Galatas, Liber II, Cap IV Source: Migne PL 26 381c-282c

Where is your blessedness? Witness I have given to you, that if it were possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. 1 Blessed is he who walks in the way of the virtues, but only if he has come to the virtues. It does not profit to withdraw from vice unless the best things are gained. Because not so praiseworthy are the beginnings of good pursuits as the end. For as in a vineyard many grapes grow for the wine press, first it is necessary that the vine puts forth buds, promising hope in the flower, from which the flower is shaken off that the form of the future fairness be shaped, and little by little the grape matures and then it is pressed in the wine press and the sweet wine flows forth. Thus in each teaching there is a progress in blessedness, that he who hears the word of God conceives it and as in the womb of the soul it grows and so it comes to birth. Then when it is born, it is nourished on milk and passes through infancy and childhood and adolescence and youth until it arrives at the perfect man. When, then, as we have said, there is an advance by stages to blessedness, if the end, as I have said, of the work the hand does not obtain, all the work is in vain, and so the Apostle says, 'Where is your blessedness?' Although, he says, in that time you took up the Gospel according to the flesh, and I named you blessed because in the beginnings you were keen, however now because I see that you have not placed the roof on the building, and clearly have not lost the foundation, I am forced to ask, 'Where is your blessedness,' you who before I praised judging you blessed. Truly I confess, you loved me in the beginning when I preached simple things or the trials of persecution, that if it were possible, and here we understand him to be speaking in hyperbolic fashion, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, that with the lights of all of you I might discern more. You desired to be blind in ineffable love of me, that more in my heart the light of the Gospel rise, wishing to grow from your ruin for my reward, and in that time, when you were as children and milk drinkers, on account of the weakness of the flesh, I spoke of little things and simply, or on account of the wounds of my flesh, I seemed not worthy of faith. However, now because I have begun to call you from letters and syllables and childish reading to greater studies, that you hold the books in your own hands, that you be full of learning, and you learn the meaning of the words, you are recalitrant, you are angry, and the perfect teaching seems to be a burden to you, and you have been so far changed in your disposition that I whom you once welcomed as an angel and as Christ, to whom you wished to give your eyes, you now have as an enemy, because I announce the full truth to you. Elegently he ends the exposition, saying, 'So I am made an enemy to you speaking the truth to you?' That he show the beginning of the preaching, was not so much the truth, as a shadow and an image of the truth. And in a similar noble manner this was spoken to the Romans by the poet: Fawning makes friends, truth births hate. 2 Saint Jerome, Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians, Book 2, Cap 4 1 Galat 4.15 2 Terence Andria 1.68