The Mourners

Beati qui lugent, quoniam ipsi consolabuntur. Ac si diceret: Ad gaudium via est luctus, ad consolationem desolatio, ad inveniendam animam perditio, ad possidendam abjectio, ad amandam odium, ad servandam contemptus. Si vis teipsum cognoscere, te possidere, intra ad teipsum, nec te quaesieris extra. Aliud tu, aliud tui, aliud circa te. Circa te mundus, tui corpus, tu ad imaginem et similitudnem Dei factus intus. Redi igitur, praevaricator ad cor. Foris pecus es, ad imaginem mundi: unde et minor mundus dicitur homo: intus modo ad imaginem Dei, unde potes deificari. Itaque in semetipsum homo reversus, sicut junior ille prodigus filius, ubi se invenit, nisi in regione longinqua, in regione dissimilitudinis, in terra aliena, ubi sedeat et fleat, dum recordetur patris et patriae? Si porcos pascit, et esurit, nonne lugendi materiam in se reperit? Si multi mercenarii in domo patris sui abundant panibus, et ipse filius exsul et pauper fustra ventri siliquas quaerit, nonne facile oculis lacrymas invenit? O Adam, ubi es? Forte sub umbra adhuc, ut teipsum non videas, folia fatuitatis consuis, ut pudenda tegas: quae foris sunt circa te, et quae tui sunt videns; aperti enim tibi sunt oculi tales. Intus conspice, te vide; ibi sunt, quae magis pudeant quae exteriora pudere te faciant. Redi intus, praevaricator, ad animam; vide et plange eam subjectam vanitati et iniquitati: et ne possit emergere, captivitati. Exi foras ad carnem: vide et luge eam sunjectam corruptioni, mortalitati, et ne possit exsurgere, infirmitati. Et ne longum faciam, dilectissimi, nemo intrans in semetipso, nemo seipsum, agnoscens, nemo abyssum suae miseriae, suae ignorantiae, suae difficultatis, suarum passionum, penetrans, suam conscientiam metiens, magis, ubi facile lugent homines, in alicujus propinqui sui funere afficitur ad lacrymas, compungitur ad luctum, movetur ad planctum, quam in ipsius sui, eo maxime propinquo, quo intimo. Cur alterius miseretur, qui sui non miseretur? Constat ergo, fratres, foris non? esse a nobis, retro quoque, et non ante, nostri demum vel oblitos, vel prosus ignaros, quoties ridemus, jocamur, otiosis delectamur, pascimur fabulis, et verbis moventibus risum indulgemus, comessationibus et ebriatatibus crapulamur, caeterisque corporis mollitiis effluimus. Unde semper sobriae sapientiae curae fuit, ad domus luctus, potius quam ad domum convivii invitate, hic est in se, qui erat extra se, hominem revocare, dicens: Beati qui lugent. Isaac, Cisterciensis Abbas, Sermo II, In Festo Omnium Sanctorum Source: Migne PL 194.1695c-1696b

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be consoled. 1 As if he said: The way to joy is grief, to consolation desolation, to the soul's finding ruin, to its possession abjection, to its love hate, to its guarding contempt. If you wish to know yourself, to possess yourself, go within yourself, lest you seek yourself outside. You are one thing, what is yours another, what is outside is something else. Around you is the world, yours is the body, within you are made to an image and likeness of God. 2 Return, then, sinner to the heart. Outside you are cattle, an image of the world, whence man is said to be a 'little world,' within you are an image of God, by which you are able to deified. Thus returning into himself a man is like that younger son, the prodigal; and where did he find himself, but in a land far off, in a region of dissimilarity, in a foreign place, where he sat and wept while he remembered his father and his fatherland? If you pasture pigs, and hunger, is it not that the matter which gives rise to grief is found in yourself? If many hired servants abound with the bread of the father, and the son himself, an exile and pauper, vainly seeks swill for his stomach, is it not that he finds tears come easily to his eyes. 3 O Adam, where are you? Likely beneath the shadows still, that you do not see yourself, sporting leaves of foolishness, that you obscure modesty, 4 looking at the things which are outside you and are of you, for your eyes are open to such things. Look within, see yourself, there you are, which should ashame you more than that which without makes you blush. Return within, sinner, to your soul; see and weep that it is subject to vanity and iniquity, and that it is not able to emerge from its captivity. Go outside to the flesh, see and weep that it is subject to corruption, death and it is not able to rise up from infirmity. And lest I go on too long, beloved, no one enters into himself, no one knows himself, no one penetrates to the abyss of his wretchedness, of ignorance or difficuties, or passions, no one grasps his conscience, more than when he freely weeps over men, some kinsman at whose funeral he is struck with tears, he is driven to grief, he is moved to groans, in himself, and the more near the man, so the more deeply. Why do you have pity for another when you will not pity yourself? Be firm, brothers; be not outside yourself, or behind, nor before, nor eventually forgetful, or utterly negligent, as often as we laugh and joke and delight in idleness, and feed on fables, and by words allow ourselves to moved to smiles, when we stuff ourselves with food and drink, and drift away on account of softness of the body. Whence it was always the care of sober wisdom to call to the house of tears rather than to the house of feasting, 5 He who is in Himself, who was outside, calling out to man, saying: 'Blessed are those who weep.' Isaac of Stella, from the Second Sermon for the Feast of All Saints 1 Mt 5.5 2 Gen 1.26 3 Lk 15.11-32 4 Gen 3.7-9 5 Eccles 7.2