Liber Primus, Caput Primum. Pontifici, tam variis occupationibus presso, condolet.
Liber Primus, Caput Primum. Pontifici, tam variis occupationibus presso, condolet.
So where should I begin now? I want to step back from your many occupations, because it's in these that I especially sympathize with you.1 I would say I grieve with you — if indeed you yourself are suffering too; otherwise I ought rather to have said I grieve, because there is no shared suffering where no one actually suffers.2 So if you are suffering, I grieve with you; if not, I still grieve — and most of all because I know that the limb that has grown numb stands farther from health, and a sick part that can't feel itself suffers more dangerously.3 But God forbid that I should suspect this of you. I know with what pleasures of sweet rest you were not long ago enjoying yourself. You can't have grown so unaccustomed to these things so quickly — not when the pain was taken from you so recently.4 A fresh wound doesn't lack pain. The wound hasn't calloused over yet, and it hasn't gone numb in such a short time. And yet, if you're not pretending otherwise, you never lack reason for honest grief, given the losses you face every day. You're torn, unless I'm mistaken, from the embrace of your Rachel; and every time that happens, your grief is bound to be renewed.✦ But when doesn't it happen? As often as you want, and to no avail? As often as you make a move, and get nowhere? How often you try, and you're not allowed to go further; you strain, and it comes to nothing; you reach out, and you're snatched away; and just as you begin, you fail; and while you're still getting started, you're cut down? "The children have come to the point of birth," says the prophet, "and the one in labor has no strength."✦ You know this, don't you? No one knows you better. You are worn down in spirit, and like a heifer trained to thresh, as Ephraim was taught — 'I will love the threshing' (Hosea 10:11) — if things are at peace for you, then your affairs stand thus.✦ Far be it: that is the portion of the one who was given over to a worthless mind.✦ From these things, truly, I wish peace for you — not with them. Nothing frightens me more for you than peace of that kind. Are you surprised that this could ever happen? Yes, I tell you — if, as is the way of things, the matter has through habit slipped into neglect.
Read the original Latin
Unde ergo jam incipiam? Libet ab occupationibus tuis, quia in his maxime condoleo tibi. Condoleo dixerim, si tamen doles et tu: alioquin doleo magis dixisse debueram; quia non est condolere, ubi nemo qui doleat. Itaque si doles, condoleo: si non, doleo tamen, et maxime, sciens longius a salute absistere membrum quod obstupuit; et aegrum sese non sentientem periculosius laborare. Absit autem ut de te id suspicer. Novi quibus deliciis dulcis quietis tuae non longe antehac fruebare. Non potes his dissuevisse tam cito, ita subito non dolore nuper subtractas. Plaga recens dolore non caret.
Neque enim jam occalluit vulnus, nec in tam brevi versum in insensibile est. Quanquam si non dissimules, non deest tibi jugis materia justi doloris a quotidianis jacturis. Invitus, ni fallor, avelleris a tuae Rachelis amplexibus; et quoties id pati contigerit, toties dolor tuus renovetur necesse est. At quando non contingit? Quoties vis, et incassum? quoties moves, nec promoves? quoties conaris, et non datur ultra; eniteris, et non paris; tentas, et abriperis; et ubi incipis, ibi deficis; et dum adhuc ordiris, succidunt te? Venerunt filii usque ad partum, ait propheta; et vires non habet parturiens.
Nosti hoc? nemo te melius. Attritae frontis es, et instar vitulae Ephraim doctus diligero trituram (Oseae X, 11), si pace tua, sic se habent res tuae. Absit: haec est pars illius, qui datus est in reprobum sensum. Ab his sane cupio tibi pacem, non cum his. Nihil plus metuo tibi pace ista. Miraris si unquam possit accidere? Etiam, dico tibi, si res, ut assolet, per consuetudinem in incuriam venerit.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Gen.29.25;Jer.31.15 — And it came to pass in the morning that, behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?" Jer.31.15 — Thus says the LORD: A voice is heard in Ramah—lamentation, bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
- ↩Isa.37.3 — They said to him, "Thus says Hezekiah: This is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace, for children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to deliver.
- ↩Hos.10.11 — Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh, but I have passed over the beauty of her neck. I will make Ephraim plow; Judah will plow for him, and Jacob will break up his ground.
- ↩Rom.1.28 — And just as they did not see fit to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a disapproved mind, to do what is not fitting.
Notes
- 1 ↩Libet rendered as 'I want to' rather than 'it pleases me' to keep a natural contemporary register; the impersonal Latin construction conveys the author's deliberate choice to turn his attention.
- 2 ↩Condoleo dixerim rendered as 'I would say I grieve with you' to capture the potential subjunctive's tentativeness; the author qualifies his sympathy by insisting that real sympathy requires the other person's own pain.
- 3 ↩The medical metaphor (membrum quod obstupuit / aegrum sese non sentientem) is rendered literally to preserve the author's image: spiritual numbness is more dangerous than felt pain.
- 4 ↩dissuevisse is a rare form (possibly from dissuesco, 'to become unaccustomed'); the sense is that the addressee hasn't had time to lose the habit of recent consolation. Rendered as 'grown so unaccustomed'.
De consideratione (On Consideration) companion
Make consideration a daily appointment
Bernard told Eugene to set aside time every day. Chosen Portion holds that time for you, free.
Bernard's core prescription — a fixed daily time reserved for examining the soul — is exactly the habit Chosen Portion installs with its daily devotional portion.
- One 10-minute daily portion for self-examination and prayer
- Reflection prompts drawn from historic texts, not improvised journaling
- A visible streak that protects the daily interval Bernard insisted on