In patrem tacentem

Oration 16. On His Father’s Silence Because of the Hail Plague. 1. Why do you dissolve an order that is praised? Why do you force a tongue that serves a law? Why do you summon forth a speech that yields to the Spirit? Why, leaving the head, have you hastened to the feet? Why, passing by Aaron, do you put forward Eleazar? I do not accept that a spring be stopped up and a winter torrent be carried along; that the sun be hidden and a star be shown; that gray hair give way and youth legislate; that wisdom be silent and inexperience act rashly. Nor is the greater rain altogether more useful than the lesser. For what? If the one, being more violent, sweeps away the land and damages the farmer in his capital, while the other, flowing gently and sinking into the depths, enriches the field, benefits the plowman, and nourishes the ear of grain for ripe fruit. Nor in words is the more abundant more profitable than the wiser. For the one perhaps departs after giving slight pleasure, and is dissolved together with the air that was struck, able to do nothing beyond this, and beguiles the greedy ear with eloquence. The other penetrates into the mind, and having widened the mouth, fills it with Spirit, and appears longer than its generation, and cultivates much in few syllables.

2. And I do not yet speak of the true and first wisdom, which this admirable farmer and shepherd bears off as the first prize. First wisdom is a life praiseworthy and purified for God, or being purified, for the most pure and luminous one, who demands from us only one sacrifice, purification, which is a heart crushed, and a sacrifice of praise, and a new creation in Christ, and a new man, and such things as Scripture loves to call it. First wisdom is to despise the wisdom that lies in speech, and in verbal turns, and in counterfeit and superfluous antitheses. But may it be mine to speak five words in church with understanding, rather than ten thousand with tongue and with a voice like an indistinct trumpet, which does not rouse my soldier to the spiritual war. This wisdom I praise, this I embrace, through which the ignoble were glorified, and through which the despised were preferred, and with which fishermen netted the whole world with the bonds of the Gospel, conquering the wisdom that is being abolished with the completed and concise word. For not the one wise in speech is wise to me, nor whoever has a well-turned tongue but a soul unstable and undisciplined, like those tombs which are fair and beautiful on the outside but rot with corpses within and conceal much foulness; but rather whoever speaks little about virtue but shows much by what he does, and adds credibility to his speech through his life.

3. I prefer beauty that is seen to beauty that is painted in words; and wealth that the hands hold to wealth that dreams fashion; and wisdom that is not made splendid by speech, but that is tested by deeds. For good understanding belongs to all who practice it, the saying goes, not to those who proclaim it; and the most exact touchstone of this wisdom is time, and the true crown is an old age of boasting. For if one ought not to call a man blessed before his end, as seems right to Solomon and to me, and it is uncertain what the coming day will bring, since our life below has many turns, and the body of humility is moved up and down and falls; how is it not also that he who has completed the greater part of his life blamelessly, and is already, as it were, in the harbors of the common sea of life, is safer than he who still has a long voyage, and therefore more blessed? 4. Do not, then, close the tongue that has uttered many good things, whose fruits are many, and whose offspring of righteousness are many; whose children are so many, and whose treasures are what—lift your eyes and look around: all this people, whom you begot in Christ through the Gospel. Do not begrudge us a few more good words, nor give us the prelude of future loss already. Speak, briefly, but to me dear and most sweet; not audible, but known by the spiritual shout, by which God hears Moses even when he is silent; and, "Why do you cry out to me?" is said to him who converses mentally. Complete for me the people with your nursling, and after that with the shepherd, and now also with the chief shepherd.

Teach me something about pastoral care, and this people about obedience; philosophize about the present blow, about the just judgments of God, whether we comprehend them or are ignorant of the great abyss. How both almsgiving is by weights, according to the holy Isaiah (for even the good is not without judgment, even if it seemed otherwise to those who have labored beforehand in the vineyard, not understanding the inequality in equality), and wrath is according to the measure of sins, called a cup in the hand of the Lord, and a draught of downfall drunk, even if something of its severity is removed for all, and the unmixed wrath is blended with philanthropy: inclining from the harsh toward the lenient for those disciplined by fear, and for those who from slight distress conceive and labor in travail, giving birth to a perfect spirit of salvation; yet still preserving the dregs, the last of the wrath, so that it may empty the whole upon those not healed by kindness, but rather hardened like the heavy-hearted Pharaoh, and the bitter taskmaster, kept as a specimen of God's power against the impious. 5. Tell me, whence come such blows and scourges? And what is the reason concerning these things? Is it some disorderly motion of the whole, uneven and ungoverned, a drift and irrationality, as if no one presides over beings, and chance brings these things, as it seems to the unwise wise, and to those carried aimlessly by the disorderly and dark spirit?

by some reason and order, just as the whole subsisted from the beginning, and was mixed, and bound together, and set in motion in an orderly way, known only to the one who set it in motion, so also is it moved and changed, guided by the reins of Providence? Whence come crop failures, and blights from winds, and hailstorms, our present blow and admonition? Whence come corruptions of the air, and diseases, and earthquakes, and upheavals of the sea, and terrors from the sky? And how is it that creation, made for the enjoyment of men, the common delight and of equal honor, is transformed into a punishment of the impious, so that by those things with which we were honored and for which we did not give thanks, we may also be disciplined, and come to know the power from what we suffer, since we did not know it from what we have well suffered? How is it that for some, sins are given double from the hand of the Lord, and the measure of evil is filled up by the double, according to which Israel also is chastened; while for others, through the sevenfold being paid back into the bosom, the sins are emptied? And what is the measure of the Amorites, not yet fulfilled? And how is the sinner either released or punished again: the one, perhaps being preserved from that place, the other being healed from this? And how is the righteous man either ill-treated, being perhaps tested, or well-treated, being preserved, if he is poor in mind and not greatly above visible things, and as conscience teaches each of these, the private and unerring judge? What is the blow, and whence? Is it a proof of virtue, or a test of vice, and that it is better to be bent as by punishment, even if it is not so, and to be humbled under the strong hand of God, than to be elated as by a trial?

Teach and admonish them not to be excessively distressed by the present blow, nor, having fallen into a depth of evils, to become contemptuous (for there is also such a passion among the many), but to be moderate in response to the admonition, and not to provoke a greater one through insensibility to this one. 6. Terrible is the barrenness of the land and the loss of crops—how could it not be, when they were already delighting in hopes and nearing the storehouses? And terrible is the untimely harvest, and the farmers frowning over their labors, and sitting as if beside corpses over the produce which the gentle rain nourished and the wild rain reaped; of which the reaper did not fill his hand, nor the gatherer of sheaves his bosom; nor did he receive the blessing upon them which passersby bestow upon farmers. And it is a pitiful sight: the land insulted, shorn, and lacking its own adornment. The blessed Joel laments this—the destruction of the land and the torment of famine, if anyone else has also dramatized it; and another prophet laments it, contrasting the former good order with the final disorder, in what he says when discoursing about the wrath of the Lord shattering the land: "Before him is a paradise of delight, and behind him a plain of desolation." Now these things are terrible, and beyond terrible, as long as they alone grieve the present, and there is not yet perception of a more grievous blow; since, just as in diseases, the present suffering is always more painful than the absent one; but even more terrible than these are the treasures of the wrath of God which they hold within themselves, of which may you never have experience.

Nor will you flee to the mercies of God, drawing the one who wills mercy with your tears, and turning aside the remainder of his wrath through repentance. These things are still gentleness, philanthropy, and mild discipline, and elements of a blow that educates childhood; they are still the smoke of wrath, the prelude of torments; not yet the consuming fire, the peak of the motion; nor the kindled coals, the final stages of the scourge; of which one part threatened, another was raised, another was forcibly restrained, another was applied; he educates alike by the blow and by the threat, and paves a path for his wrath, through an excess of goodness; beginning from the lesser things, so as not to need the more severe; but also educating by the greater, if he should be compelled to them. 7. I know a gleaming sword, and a drunken blade in heaven, ordered to slay, to despise, to bereave of children, sparing neither flesh, nor marrow, nor bones. I know how a bear, at a loss, attacks the impassible one, and how a leopard meets on the road of the Assyrians, not only those of that time, but also anyone now who is an Assyrian in wickedness; and it is not possible to flee the power and swiftness of his wrath, when he awakens against our impieties, and zeal pursues his enemies, knowing how to devour his adversaries. I know shaking, and trembling, and boiling, and shattering of heart, and paralysis of knees, and such are the penalties of the impious.

I pass over the courts of justice there, to which the clemency here hands one over, since it is better to be disciplined and purified now than to be sent to the torment there, when it is a time of punishment, not of purification. For just as it is better to remember God here, and this has been most excellently philosophized by the divine David, so there is no confession and correction in Hades for those who have departed. For God has confined life and action to here, but the examination of what has been done to there. 8. What shall we do on the day of visitation, with which one of the prophets frightens me, whether it be the pleading of God with us, or that upon the mountains and hills, which we have heard, or that which takes place in any manner and on any occasion, when he argues with us and sets himself face to face against us, arraying the sins, the bitter accusers, and bringing forward against us the benefits we have received, the laws we have transgressed, striking thought with thought, and correcting deed with deed, and demanding the likeness

dignity, having been muddied and confused by evil, finally leads them away condemned and sentenced by themselves, and not even able to say that we suffer unjustly, which here is sometimes sufficient for those who suffer as consolation for the condemnation. 9. But there, what advocate? What pretext? What false defense? What artistic plausibility? What contrivance against truth will mislead the court and steal the right judgment, which places everything for all in the balance—deed, word, and thought—and counterbalances the evil with the better, so that the tipping side may prevail, and the vote be cast with the majority, after which there is no appeal, no higher judge, no defense through subsequent deeds, no oil from the wise virgins or from those selling it for the failing lamps, no repentance of a rich man melting in flame and seeking correction through his own possessions, no deadline for reformation; but only, and finally, and terrible is the judgment, and more just than it is fearful, or rather more fearful for that very reason, because it is just. When thrones are set up, and the Ancient of Days presides, and books are opened, and a river of fire is drawn, and light is before, and darkness is prepared; and those who have done good will go to a resurrection of life, which is now hidden in Christ and later will be revealed together with him; but those who have done evil will go to a resurrection of judgment, of which those who did not believe have already been condemned by the Word that judges them.

and the ineffable light will receive some, and the contemplation of the holy and royal Trinity shining more clearly and purely, and the whole being mingled with the whole mind, which indeed I alone especially set as the kingdom of heaven; for others, along with the other torments, but rather before the others, there is the being cast away from God, and the shame in their conscience that has no end. And these things are later. 10. But now what shall we do, brothers, crushed and humbled and intoxicated, not from strong drink, nor from wine, which for a little while shakes and darkens, but from the blow which the Lord inflicted, who says: And you, heart, be shaken and disturbed; and who gives to the despisers a spirit of grief and compunction; to whom it is also said: Behold, you despisers, and look, and wonder, and be annihilated? How shall we bear his reproaches, or what answer shall we give, when, in addition to the multitude of benefactions for which we have remained ungrateful, he also reproaches us with the blows, and enumerates the healing from which we have not been cured? And he calls us children, but blameworthy children of good parents, and sons, but alien sons and limping from their own paths because of roadlessness and roughness: How ought you to have been taught, and from what source, and I have not taught you? Through milder remedies? I applied them. I passed over the Egyptian blood drunk from springs and rivers and every gathering of water, the first plague. I passed over the frogs, and the gnat, and the dog-fly, the subsequent scourges.

I began from the cattle, the oxen, and the sheep, with the fifth plague, and I struck even the irrational beings, still sparing the rational ones. The breaking was nothing to you; but you have become to me more irrational than the stricken, and more undisciplined. I withheld the rain from you; one part was rained upon; and the part on which I did not rain was dried up; and you said, "We shall act like men." I brought hail upon you, instructing by the opposite plague, and I reaped your vineyards, your thickets, and your produce; and I did not crush your wickedness. 11. I know that you are hard, and your neck is an iron sinew; these things perhaps he will say to me, who am not admonished even by the blows. The one who rejects rejects; the one who acts lawlessly acts lawlessly; the admonition from above is nothing; the scourges are nothing. The bellows have failed, the lead has failed, which I previously reproached you for through Jeremiah: "In vain the silversmith works silver; your wickednesses have not been melted." Will you not endure me, says the Lord, when I am angry? Or is my hand not strong enough to bring other plagues as well? Still with me there are blisters boiling from furnace soot, which Moses sprinkled into the sky, or if anyone like him, a servant of God's motion, instructs Egypt by disease.

Still the locust, and the palpable darkness, and the last plague in order, but first in pain and power, the destruction and loss of the firstborn, which to escape and to turn away the destroyer, it is better to anoint the doorposts of the mind, theory and practice, with the great and saving seal, with the blood of the New Covenant, Christ, and to be crucified with him, and to die with him, so as also to rise with him, and to be glorified with him, and to reign with him, both now and at his final manifestation; but not to be shattered, nor crushed, nor to lament, when the Evil One strikes us at an untimely hour and in this dark life, and destroys the firstborn and the offspring and movements of our life consecrated to God. 12. May it not be my lot, along with the other plagues, to be reproached also with these things by the Good One, as he goes with a sideward anger because of my sidewardness: "I struck you with jaundice, and with fever, and with gangrene; and nothing more. The sword from without bereaved you of children, and not even so did you turn to me," says the Lord. May I not become a vineyard of the beloved, after being planted and fenced, and secured with a hedge and a tower and everything, as far as possible, running wild and bearing thorns, and for this reason despised, so that the tower is demolished, the hedge is removed, and I am not pruned nor dug, but become for all a plunder, a common outrage, and a trampling. These are my fear and my word; and thus I am distressed at the plague, and I pray such a prayer as I will also add to what has been said.

We have sinned, we have transgressed, we have been impious, because we forgot your commandments and followed our own evil mind; because we have lived unworthily of our calling and of the Gospel of your Christ, and of his holy sufferings, and of his emptying for our sake; because we have become a reproach to your beloved one. Priest and people together have gone astray; we have all turned aside, we have all been corrupted together. There is no one who does judgment and justice, not even one. We have shut out your mercies, and your philanthropy, and the bowels of mercy of our God, through our wickedness and the evil of our practices with which we have conducted ourselves. You are good, but we have transgressed; you are long-suffering, but we are worthy of blows. We acknowledge your goodness, even though we are senseless; we have been scourged a little for what we have sinned. You are terrible, and who will withstand you? Trembling will seize from you mountains, and who will contend with the might of your arm? If you close heaven, who will open it? And if you loose your floodgates, who will hold them together? It is light in your eyes to make poor and to make rich, to give life and to give death, to strike and to heal; and your will is an accomplished deed. You became angry, and we sinned, says one of the ancients in confession. But for me it is also timely to say the opposite: We sinned, and you became angry; because of this we became a reproach to our neighbors. You turned away your face, and we were filled with dishonor. But cease, Lord; relent, Lord; be propitious, Lord.

Do not deliver us over entirely because of our lawlessness, nor discipline others through our own scourges, when it is possible for us to be chastened through the trial of others. Who are these others? The nations that do not know you, and the kingdoms that have not submitted to your power. But we are your people, Lord, and the staff of your inheritance. Therefore discipline us, yet with kindness, and not in your wrath, lest you make us few and a contempt among all who dwell on the earth. 13. With these words I draw forth mercy. But if it were possible to appease the wrath with whole burnt offerings or sacrifices, I would not have spared even these. But you yourselves also imitate a timid priest. Yes, beloved children, yes, partakers of divine admonition and philanthropy. Gain your souls with tears. Stay the wrath, making your practices better. Sanctify a fast, proclaim a healing. The blessed Joel commands these things to you along with us. Gather together elders, infants suckling at the breast, the pitiable age, and especially that which is worthy of the philanthropy of God. And I know what he commands both me, the minister of the Lord, and you, who have been deemed worthy of the same honor: to enter in sackcloth, and to beat ourselves night and day between the base and the altar, pitiable in appearance, more pitiable in voices, crying out earnestly both for ourselves and for the people, sparing nothing—neither toil nor word—by which God is appeased. Saying, "Spare, Lord, your people, and do not give your inheritance to reproach," and all that follows in the prayer.

having as much more of affliction as they do of rank, disciplining the people through themselves toward compunction, correction of evil, and the forbearance of God that follows these, and the withholding of the scourge. 14. Come then, all brothers, let us worship, and prostrate ourselves, and weep before the Lord who made us. Let us set up a common mourning, divided according to age and sex. Let us raise the voice of supplication; instead of the cry that is hateful to him, let us bring this into the ears of the Lord Sabaoth. Let us anticipate his wrath by confession. Let us wish to see him, both as angered and as relenting. Who knows, he says, whether he will turn back, and repent, and leave behind a blessing? I know this clearly, I, the guarantor of God’s philanthropy. And what is contrary to his nature—anger—he will let go, and proceed to what is according to nature—mercy. For toward the former he is forced by us; toward the latter he has the impulse. And if he strikes when forced, how will he not relent when using his nature? Only let us have mercy on ourselves, opening a path to the righteous bowels of the Father. Let us sow in tears, so that we may reap in joy. Let us become Ninevites, not Sodomites; let us heal evil, not be destroyed by evil. Let us hear Jonah preaching, not be overwhelmed by fire and brimstone. And if we leave Sodom, let us go up to the mountain, flee to Zoar, go in with the rising sun. Let us not stand in the whole surrounding region; let us not look around, let us not be fixed into a pillar of salt, a truly immortal pillar, and an accusation of a soul turning to evil. 15.

Let us recognize that to commit no sin at all is truly beyond human capacity and belongs to God alone—for I say nothing of angels, lest we give occasion to the passions and an opening for evil objections—while the incurable state belongs to the evil and opposing nature and to those who are energized by it. But to turn sinners back is the work of humans, yet of gentle humans, and of the portion that is being saved. For even if the dust drags along some evil, and the earthly frame weighs down the mind that is borne upward, or that is created to be borne upward, still let the image cleanse the mire and raise up the yoked flesh, lightening it with the wings of reason. And it is better neither to need such cleansing nor to be cleansed, with our first dignity remaining for us, toward which we hasten from the present discipline, and not to fall from the tree of life by the bitter taste of sin; but it is stronger, when we stumble, to be turned back than not to be disciplined. For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and the act of rebuke is paternal; but every soul that is without admonition is incurable. Therefore, not

It is grievous to be struck, but more grievous still not to be brought to one's senses by the blow. One of the prophets says, speaking of Israel, the hard and uncircumcised in heart: "Lord, you scourged them, and they did not feel pain; you disciplined them, and they were unwilling to accept discipline." And again: "And the people did not turn back until they were struck." And: "Why has my people turned away in a wicked turning, from which they will be utterly crushed and destroyed?" 16. Terrible it is, brothers, to fall into the hands of the living God; terrible is the face of the Lord upon those who do evil, annihilating wickedness with utter destruction; terrible is the hearing of God, perceiving the voice of Abel through the silent blood; terrible are the feet that overtake wickedness; terrible is the filling of the whole, so that there is nowhere to flee from God's motion, not by flying into heaven, not by going into Hades, not by escaping to the east, not by hiding in the depths or ends of the sea. And before me, Nahum the Elkoshite fears, in the things he publishes against Nineveh, the jealous God and the avenging Lord with wrath against his enemies, using such an abundance of severity that no second vengeance against the wicked is left. For when I hear Isaiah threatening the people of Sodom and the rulers of Gomorrah, and saying, "Why are you still struck, adding lawlessness?" I am filled with a little shuddering and confusion with tears. "It is not possible," he says, "to find an addition of a blow for the addition of sin; you have gone through everything, and you have exhausted every kind of blow, always calling forth some newer one through your own wickedness.

It is not a wound, nor a bruise, nor an inflamed blow; the blow, it is said, is entire in the body, and also incurable. For there is no plaster to apply, neither oil nor bandages. And I pass over the rest of the threat, lest I become heavier than the present blow upon you. 17. Yet let us recognize the cause of the evil. Whence did the fields dry up, the storehouses become disgraced, the pasture of flocks fail, the beauties of the earth diminish, the plains not be filled with fertility but with dejection, the valleys not multiply grain but be lamented, the mountains not drip sweetness, as later for the righteous, but be stripped and dishonored, and receive the curse of Gelboe from the opposite? It has become as the whole earth was in the beginning, before it was adorned with its own beauties. You visited the earth and made it drunk, but with an evil visitation and a destructive drunkenness. Alas for the spectacle! Our abundance is in straw, the seed is recognized by small remnants, and our harvest barely offers firstfruits to the Lord, being measured by months rather than by sheaves. Such is the wealth of the impious, such are the fields of those who sow wickedly: to look upon, as the ancient curse, more, and to bring in little; to sow and not to reap; to plant and not to press out; where ten yoke of oxen work, to produce one jar; and to hear of others' good fruitfulness while themselves are pressed by want. Whence these things, and what is the cause of the ruin? Let us not wait to be reproved by others; let us become examiners of ourselves. Great is the remedy for evil: both confession and flight from the fault.

I first, as I announced to my people from above, have also fulfilled the work of the goal. (For I did not conceal the coming sword, in order to preserve both my own soul and the souls of my hearers.) In like manner I will also announce the disobedience of my people, making their actions my own, if somehow I might thus obtain some compassion and relief. 18. One of us has oppressed a poor man, and has wrested away a portion of land, and has wickedly transgressed a boundary, either by theft or by tyranny, and has joined house to house and field to field, in order to take something from his neighbor; and he has striven to have no neighbor, as though he alone were to dwell upon the earth. Another has defiled the land with usury and accumulations, gathering where he did not sow, and reaping where he did not scatter; tilling not the land, but the need of the needy. Another has defrauded God, who gave everything, of the firstfruits of the threshing-floor and the winepress, and has become both ungrateful and senseless; neither giving thanks for what he has received, nor, if nothing else, securing the future through gratitude. Another has not pitied a widow or an orphan, nor shared bread and a little food with the needy—rather with Christ, who is nourished through those who are even slightly nourished; he who perhaps has much, and beyond expectation (for this is already the most unjust), and is cramped by his many storehouses, filling some and demolishing others, in order to build larger ones for future crops, not knowing that he is snatched away before his hopes, and will render an account of his present wealth and display, having become a bad steward of others' goods.

One turned aside from the path of the humble and veered into injustice, making the just man crooked. Another hated the one who reproached him at the gates and abhorred a holy word. Another sacrificed to his own net, which gathered much, and, keeping the plunder of the poor in his houses, either did not remember God or remembered him ill, saying, "Blessed is the Lord, for we have grown rich," and he supposed his lawlessness to be from him, from whom he will be punished. For because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience; because of these things, either heaven is closed, or it is opened badly; and much more so if, not even when struck, we turn back, and naturally approach what is drawing near. 19. What shall we say to these things, we who are grain-buyers and grain-retailers, and those who watch for the difficulties of the seasons so that we may profit, and revel in the misfortunes of others, and acquire, not as Joseph did the goods of the Egyptians for a greater economy (for he knew both how to gather and how to distribute grain well, just as he also knew how to foresee the famine and stand against it from afar), but as lawless men do the goods of their own people, those who say, "When will the month pass, and we will sell?" and "The Sabbaths, and we will open our storehouses?" those who corrupt justice with double measures and weights, and incline the leaden measure of lawlessness upon themselves? What shall we say to these things, we who know no limit to acquisition, who worship gold and silver, as in olden times they worshipped Baal, and Astarte, and the abomination of Chemosh?

Those who attend to the costliness and transparency of stones, and to the soft and flowing garment, a waste for moths, and the treasures of robbers, and tyrants, and thieves; those who exult in a multitude of slaves and four-footed beasts; those who spread themselves over plains and mountains, possessing some, acquiring others, and intending yet more, like the Solomonic leech that cannot be filled, similar to Hades, and earth, and fire, and water, and seeking another inhabited world for possession, and finding fault with God's boundaries as too small for their own desire and insatiability. What then of those who sit on high thrones, and raise the royal tent, and their brow higher than that of the theaters, and do not consider God over all, and the unapproachable height of the true kingdom, so that they might rule over subjects as fellow slaves, who need the same philanthropy? Consider also for me those who revel on ivory couches, at which the divine Amos rightly strikes, and who anoint themselves with the finest unguents, and beat time to the sound of instruments, and are attached to those who flee as if they were standing still, but do not grieve and suffer with the affliction of Joseph; whereas they ought to be kind to those who have fallen first, and to acquire mercy by mercy; to cry out for the pine, because a cedar has fallen, and to be admonished by the blow of their neighbors, and through the misfortunes of others to set their own affairs in order, having this much advantage over those who have gone before, that they might be saved through them, but not that others might be disciplined through themselves.

These things philosophize with us, O divine and sacred head, who have gathered much experience over long time, from which wisdom comes. With these things, discipline your people. Teach them to break bread for the hungry, to gather homeless beggars, to clothe nakedness, and not to disregard those of the same blood; and especially now, so that our good may come from need, not from surplus; for God rejoices more in such fruit-bearing than in the abundance of contribution and the magnitude of donation. In addition to these, and before these, be for me Moses, or Phinehas today. Stand for us, and propitiate; and let the breaking cease, whether through spiritual sacrifice or through prayer and reasoned intercession. Restrain the wrath of the Lord by your mediation; stop the course of the scourge. It knows how to respect the gray hair of a father interceding for his children. Pray concerning past evil; guarantee the future. Bring forward a people purified by plague and fear. Ask for bodily nourishment; ask before this also for the angelic nourishment descending from heaven. If you do this, you will make God your own, you will tame the sky, you will give both early and late rain. The Lord will give kindness, and our earth will give its fruit—the lower earth, the ephemeral fruit, and our dust, the eternal fruit, which we will store in the divine winepresses through you, as you bring forward us and our things, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory for the ages. Amen.