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Chapter 5GradH.1.5

De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae

The Feast of Love

Love stands at the center of the spiritual feast, restoring the hungry with the fragrance of all virtues and laying out peace, patience, kindness, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Love is good food, set in the center of Solomon's dish, fragrant with a variety of virtues, like the mingled scent of many spices — it restores the hungry and delights those it restores.1 For there are spread out peace, patience, kindness, long-suffering, and joy in the Holy Spirit; and if there are any other offspring of truth or wisdom, they appear in her.✦2

The Bread of Sorrow

Humility offers beginners the bread of sorrow and the wine of compunction, calling them to rise from sitting in grief.

Humility, too, has its own feast at the same table — the bread of sorrow and the wine of compunction — which Truth first offers to beginners, and to whom it is said: Rise after you have sat down, you who eat the bread of sorrow.✦34

Solid Food for the Perfect

Contemplation provides solid food and gladdening wine to the perfect, while imperfect souls are nourished with the oil of charity and simpler bread in the middle degree.

In that same place, contemplation offers solid food of wisdom from the fat of grain, along with the wine that gladdens the human heart — to which Truth invites the perfect, saying: Eat, my friends, and drink, and be drunk, most dear ones.✦ With the middle degree, he says, charity has spread a feast for the daughters of Jerusalem — that is, for imperfect souls who, while they still cannot take in that solid food, are meanwhile to be nourished with the oil of charity in place of wine, and with bread in place of the full meal.✦

The Middle Way

The middle way of progressing souls is too sweet for beginners held back by fear and too weak for the perfect who hunger for deeper contemplation, so they are content with honey-sweet morsels of love.

This is rightly described as the middle way, because its sweetness is neither within reach of beginners — fear holds them back — nor enough for the perfect, who long for the richer sweetness of contemplation.56 The first group, still needing to be cleansed by the most bitter draught of fear from the harmful moisture of carnal pleasures, have not yet tasted the sweetness of milk. But those already weaned from milk feast more gloriously on the entrance to glory. Only the middle ones — that is, those making progress — have now tasted certain honey-sweet morsels of love, so that for the time being they may be content, given their own tenderness.✦✦7891011

Read the original Latin

Bonus cibus caritas, quae media in ferculo Salomonis consistens, diversarum odore virtutum, velut diversi generis fragrantia pigmentorum, esurientes reficit, iucundat reficientes. Ibi siquidem apponitur pax, patientia, benignitas, longanimitas, gaudium in Spiritu Sancto; et si quae sint aliae veritatis seu sapientiae generationes, apparantur in illa.

Habet et humilitas in eodem ferculo suas epulas, panem scilicet doloris et vinum compunctionis, quas primo Veritas incipientibus offert, quibus utique dicitur: Surgite postquam sederitis, qui manducatis panem doloris.

Habet ibidem contemplatio ex adipe frumenti solidum cibum sapientiae, cum vino quod laetificat cor hominis, ad quem Veritas perfectos invitat, dicens: Comedite, amici mei, et bibite, et inebriamini, carissimi. Media, inquit, caritate constravit propter filias Ierusalem, propter imperfectas videlicet animas, quae dum adhuc solidum illum cibum minus capere possunt, interim caritatis pro pane, oleo pro vino nutriendae sunt.

Quae recte media describitur, quia eius suavitas nec incipientibus praesto est, prohibente timore, nec perfectis satis est, pro abundantiori contemplationis dulcedine. Hi adhuc a noxiis carnalium delectationum humoribus, timoris amarissima potione purgandi, nondum lactis dulcedinem experiuntur; illi iam avulsi a lacte, epulari ab introitu gloriae gloriosius delectantur, solis mediis, id est proficientibus, ita iam melleas quasdam sorbitiunculas caritatis expertis, ut illis interim pro sui teneritudine contenti sint.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Gal.5.22-Gal.5.23 — But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, Gal.5.23 — gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
  2. ↩Ps.127.2 — It is futile for you—rising early, staying late, eating the bread of anxious toil—for so He gives sleep to His beloved.
  3. ↩Song.5.1 — I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, friends; drink, and be drunk with love.
  4. ↩Song.1.5 — I am dark and lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.
  5. ↩1Cor.3.2;Heb.5.12-Heb.5.14 — I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able. But indeed, even now you are not able, Heb.5.12 — For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you still need someone to teach you the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. Heb.5.13 — For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. Heb.5.14 — But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
  6. ↩Matt.22.2-Matt.22.14;Luke.14.15-Luke.14.24 — The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding feast for his son. Matt.22.3 — And he sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were not willing to come. Matt.22.4 — Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.' Matt.22.5 — But they paid no attention and went off, one to his own farm, another to his business, Matt.22.6 — But the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. Matt.22.7 — But the king was angry, and he sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Matt.22.8 — Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Matt.22.9 — Go therefore to the main roads, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding feast. Matt.22.10 — And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. Matt.22.11 — But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding garment. Matt.22.12 — "And he says to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Matt.22.13 — Then the king said to his servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' Matt.22.14 — For many are called, but few are chosen. Luke.14.15 — When one of those reclining at the table heard these things, he said to him, "Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God." Luke.14.16 — But he said to him, 'A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many.' Luke.14.17 — And he sent his servant at the hour of the banquet to say to those who had been invited, 'Come, for it is now ready.' Luke.14.18 — And they all, with one accord, began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. I ask you, have me excused.' Luke.14.19 — And another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them. I ask you to excuse me.' Luke.14.20 — And another said, 'I have married a wife, and because of this I am not able to come.' Luke.14.21 — And the slave came back and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house was angry and said to his slave, 'Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame.' Luke.14.22 — And the servant said, 'Lord, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.' Luke.14.23 — And the master said to the servant, 'Go out into the roads and the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled. Luke.14.24 — For I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will taste my banquet.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The image draws on the Song of Songs tradition of Solomon's banquet table; 'ferculo Salomonis' evokes the rich, fragrant feast of wisdom. 'Caritas' is rendered as love per lexeme policy, though the theological-virtue sense of charity is fully present.
  2. 2 ↩The list of virtues echoes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 (peace, patience, kindness, joy), though the Latin includes 'longanimitas' and 'benignitas' with a Vulgate-specific ordering. 'Generationes' rendered as 'offspring' to capture the generative sense of virtues born from love.
  3. 3 ↩The quoted phrase 'Rise after you have sat down, you who eat the bread of sorrow' echoes Psalm 127:2 (Vulgate 126:2), 'Surgite postquam sederitis, qui manducatis panem doloris.' Final resolution pending Moses verification.
  4. 4 ↩Compunction (compunctio) is rendered as a devotional term: sorrow pierced by grace, not generic guilt or shame.
  5. 5 ↩quia rendered as 'because' (explanatory, introducing the reason the middle is so named); nec...nec rendered as 'neither...nor' correlative.
  6. 6 ↩suavitas ('sweetness') and dulcedo ('sweetness') distinguished in Latin; both rendered 'sweetness' with the comparative force of abundantiori carried by 'richer.'
  7. 7 ↩humoribus ('moistures/humors') rendered as 'moisture' in a metaphorical sense for residual carnal attachment.
  8. 8 ↩sorbitiunculas (diminutive, 'little sips/dainty morsels') rendered as 'morsels' to preserve the diminutive force.
  9. 9 ↩caritatis rendered as 'love' per default lexeme policy; theological-virtue sense noted.
  10. 10 ↩teneritudine ('tenderness/weakness') rendered as 'tenderness' to convey the sense of spiritual immaturity or fragility.
  11. 11 ↩id est rendered as 'that is' (fixed explanatory phrase); ita...ut correlative rendered with 'so that' (result clause).

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