Caput XVII

Mercy Awaits Our Return

Divine mercy stands ready to receive us fully if only we would turn back to God with equal readiness.

And we don't say this so that we'd give up hope for them if they should wish to turn back. Because, therefore, divine mercy is at hand and always awaits the hour of our conversion — mercy that is prepared to receive us to the fullest measure — oh, if only we were equally prepared to turn back!¹ if only we were prepared to turn back.

The Chaff of Empty Religious Talk

Odo warns against placing confidence in those called religious who despise the pure bread of the Gospel, echoing the chaff-and-wheat imagery of John the Baptist.

But we also don't place much confidence in those who are called [religious], because it's not the chaff of their words that concerns us — it's that they despise the most pure bread of the holy Gospel itself.^✦²

The Right to Lament Sin

Drawing on Jeremiah 48:10, Odo justifies grieving over wickedness, for it is cursed to withhold one's voice from rebuking sin.

We say this, nevertheless, for this reason: because it is a certain kind of consolation to those who grieve if they are allowed to cry out against the causes of their grief — for it is written: Cursed is the one who holds back his sword from bloodshed (Jer.^✦³ 48:10) — that is, [cursed is the one who restrains] his voice from rebuking sin.^✦ We say, therefore, what we can, so that we may show at least some grief over the perversity of the wicked.

Christendom Bent from Its Upright Posture

Odo grieves that Christendom, which should have grown stronger, has instead collapsed so that religious life seems to have failed entirely.

Is it not right to grieve, because Christendom — which the more advanced it has been, the more it ought to have been strengthened — is instead bent sideways from its upright posture, so that its religious life seems to have failed in every respect?⁴

Hastening Toward Gehenna

All people rush headlong toward evil through every action, despising God's commandments and performing even obedience for empty glory rather than for God.

We are all, in fact, hasty and headlong in running toward evil, and as John says in his first book on compunction: it is not through one failing alone but through all our actions that we hurry toward the fire of Gehenna — and so great a contempt for God's commandments has crept in that we're not afraid to offend God through whatever evil works we please; but even the very things we appear to do in obedience to his commands, we do more for empty glory than for him.⁵⁶⁷⁸

Sections Without Extant Text

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Rebuilding the Soul Against the Devil

While the devil seeks to destroy us, we rebuild the soul through deeds, voices, and bodily gestures that reveal the inner person.

. . . [The devil] would destroy us; we, on the contrary, rebuild [the soul] through our deeds, our voices, and the very gestures of the body — by which the inner emotions of a person are always revealed through the outer [self].

The Yoke of Christ and the Shame of Pride

Having been bought by Christ, we submit under His yoke—yet we shamefully read the Gospel warning about self-exaltation with boastfulness.

To Him, then — as to a master who has bought us as His own servants — we now submit; and the necks we snatched from his mockery through the Lord's cross we now place under His yoke, so that we may serve Him with those very good works. And so much so that — and it shames me to say it — we read that very word of the holy Gospel, in which it is said: Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled (Matt.^✦ 23:12) — we read it with a certain boastfulness.

Augustine and Jerome on True Worship

Augustine warns that taking more pleasure in music than in the words of divine responsories is sinful; Jerome insists worship must be sung with the heart, not with theatrical voice.

For blessed Augustine testifies in his book of Confessions that it is a punishable sin for anyone to take more pleasure in the musical setting of the divine responsories than in the meaning of the words. Saint Jerome too, in his letter to the Ephesians, argues that in the Church neither throat nor voices are to be cultivated with sweet and theatrical modulation — because what must be offered to God is sung not with the voice but with the heart.^✦

Psalm-Singing: Pleasing God, Not Human Ears

Liturgical singing was established so that, as David's music drove the evil spirit from Saul, singers might drive diabolical desire from listeners' hearts—yet we now please human ears instead of God's.

We, on the other hand, are more concerned with pleasing human ears than divine ones by our singing — yet the practice of psalm-singing was established for this purpose: that just as David, by playing the cithara, checked the wicked spirit in Saul, so singers, by their modulation, might drive every diabolical desire from the hearts of those who listen.^✦⁹¹⁰

Read the original Latin

Neque enim hoc dicimus, ut eos si converti voluerint desperemus. Quia igitur divina misericordia praesto est, nostrae conversionis horam semper exspectat, quae tantopere parata est ad recipiendum, quantum, o utinam! parati essemus ad convertendum. Sed et de his qui dicuntur non satis confidimus, quod illi furfures istorum verborum curent, qui candidissimum etiam sancti Evangelii panem fastidiunt. Dicimus tamen eo quod dolentibus quoddam consolationis genus est, si causas doloris sui delatrare permittuntur, eo quod scriptum est: Maledictus qui prohibet gladium suum a sanguine (Jer. XLVIII, 10): id est vocem suam ab increpatione peccati. Dicimus ergo quod possumus, ut nos de pravorum perversitate saltem aliquid dolere monstremus. An non merito dolendum est, quod Christianitas, quae quanto provectior est, tanto magis roborari debuit: sic econtra ab statu rectitudinis incurvatur, ut ejus religio cuncta defecisse videatur?

Omnes enim festini et praecipites ad malum currimus, et ut Joannes in primo libro de compunctione dicit: Non per unum, sed per omnes actus nostros ad ignem gehennae festinamus, et tantus divinorum praeceptorum contemptus irrepsit, ut non solum per mala quaelibet opera Deum offendere non metuamus: sed hoc ipsum quod de ejus mandatis facere videmur, magis pro vana gloria quam pro illo geramus . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

. . . destrueret; nos econtra et factis, et vocibus et ipso gestu corporis, quo semper interioris hominis affectus per exteriorem produntur, ipsam reedificamus. Ipsi quippe velut empta mancipia subjacemus, et cervices nostras ab ejus ludibriis per Dominicam crucem ereptas, ita nunc eidem subjugamus, ut illi de ipsis bonis operibus serviamus, adeo ut quod dicere pudet, ipsum illud sancti Evangelii verbum, quo dicitur: Omnis qui se exaltat humiliabitur (Matth. XXIII, 12), cum quadam jactantia legamus. Siquidem beatus Augustinus in libro Confessionum perhibet quia poenaliter peccat, qui in divinis responsoriis modulatione magis quam sensu verborum delectatur. Sanctus quoque Hieronymus in epistola ad Ephesios disserit, quod non sunt in Ecclesia guttur, et voces dulci ac theatrali modulatione colendae, quia Deo non voce sed corde cantandum sit.

Nos vero econtra modulatione magis humanas aures quam divinas pensamus: cum ad hoc institutus sit psallendi usus, ut sicut David citharizando nequam spiritum compescebat in Saul, ita cantores modulando quaelibet diabolica desideria de cordibus audientium expellant.

Scripture echoes

↩Matt.3.12;Luke.3.17 — His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Luke.3.17 — His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
↩Jer.48.10 — Cursed is the one who does the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed is the one who keeps back his sword from bloodshed.
↩Jer.48.10 — Cursed is the one who does the work of the LORD deceitfully, and cursed is the one who keeps back his sword from bloodshed.
↩Matt.23.12 — Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
↩Eph.5.19 — speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord
↩1Sam.16.23 — And whenever the spirit of God came upon Saul, David would take the lyre and play it with his hand, and relief would come to Saul, and it would be well with him, and the evil spirit would depart from him.

Notes

1 ↩The exclamatory 'quantum, o utinam!' is left incomplete in the source; the sense is an unfinished wish — 'how greatly [it is prepared], oh, if only [we were]!' — rendered here as an exhortation to match the implied meaning.
2 ↩'furfures istorum verborum' (the chaff of their words) is a metaphor contrasting empty outward speech with the true nourishment of the Gospel.
3 ↩'delatrare' (to bark out / cry out against) carries the sense of giving voice to grievances, not mere complaint.
4 ↩'Christianitas' here refers to the collective body of Christian faith and practice, not a political entity.
5 ↩compunctione rendered as 'compunction' per lexeme policy: grace-pierced sorrow for sin, not generic guilt.
6 ↩enim (token 1) rendered as 'in fact' to capture its explanatory force without stiffness.
7 ↩ut at token 9 introduces an indirect statement after dicit, rendered as 'as' rather than 'that' to preserve the comparative/attributive sense.
8 ↩ut at token 35 follows tantus and is rendered as 'that' (result clause), though purpose is syntactically possible.
9 ↩pensamus rendered 'are concerned with pleasing' to capture the contrast between human and divine ears; the rare verb penso (weigh/esteem) is extended contextually.
10 ↩The David–Saul cithara episode echoes 1 Samuel 16:23; final scriptural resolution deferred to tx-08.

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