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← Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works)/Book 2 · Liber Divinorum Operum — Pars 2
Chapter 31LDO.2.31

VISIO QUINTA, cap. XXXI

The Prophetic Silence Before the Cross

The voice of prophecy, long silent like a woman in labor, explains how it held God's secrets quietly before Christ's incarnation and now speaks openly after the cross, while the prophets themselves marveled at the hidden meaning of their own words and entrusted revelation to God's timing.

I was silent, I always kept quiet, I was patient — like a woman in labor, I will speak.✦ Here is what you should consider this way: I, filled with the prophecy of the prophets by the Holy Spirit, was silent in patience, kept quiet in gentleness — like a woman in labor, after her pain I will speak.✦ For before the incarnation of the Son of God I was silent as though mute, so that I held his secrets quietly within myself and did not bring them out into the open — just as fire contains a flame within itself, which is not stirred by itself but by the wind. But now, after the suffering that the same Son of God endured on the cross in the flesh, like a woman in labor I will speak, laying aside my sorrow — openly bringing forth in joy the things I had earlier kept hidden.✦ For the prophets themselves silently held back their own voices, because they did not fully understand what the meaning of their own utterance would be.✦ And so among themselves they would say: 'O! O! O! We do not fully see what we are speaking about; yet we know that God will reveal those things in his own time.✦

The Father's Joy and the Illumination of the Saints

After the prophets' patient endurance, God illuminates the meaning of their words, just as a mother rejoices at the child she bore, and the supreme Father declares his Son eternally begotten, so that prophecy now burns openly in the saints who expound it.

And so they patiently endured, entrusting those things to God's knowledge. But God, for the ministry of his own work, which he had made in his own image, afterward illuminated those things, just as a mother rejoices after giving birth when she sees the child she bore for herself, sighing toward him and saying: 'This is my son.'1 So also the supreme Father speaks concerning his Son: 'Today I have begotten you.'2 That 'today' is the eternity in which, according to his divinity, he is always equal to the Father; after whose incarnation prophecy burned openly in the saints, who, expounding the prophecy of the prophets, spoke openly, just as God also illuminated the firmament with shining luminaries.3 In another way: 'But God said:'

The Church as Land and Sea

The allegorical meaning of God's naming of dry land and seas is applied to the Church, gathered from many peoples and founded on faith, called by David the land of the living and by John the sea of glass mixed with fire.

Because what God called dry land, and what he named seas when the waters were gathered together, should be understood allegorically in different ways with respect to the Church—which, gathered from many peoples and founded on the firmness of faith, is called by David the land of the living, and by the apostle John in the Apocalypse a sea of glass mingled with fire—and in what sense these same testimonies ought to be taken.✦✦✦4

Read the original Latin

« Tacui, semper silui, patiens fui, sicut pariens loquar . » Hoc considerandum sic est: Ego prophetia prophetarum Spiritu sancto imbuta, tacui in patientia, silui in mansuetudine, sicut pariens post dolorem suum loquar. Nam ante incarnationem Filii Dei velut muta tacui, ita ut secreta ipsius in me silenter continerem, nec ea in aperto protuli, quemadmodum ignis flammam in se continet quae non per se, sed a vento movetur; sed nunc post dolorem illum quem idem filius Dei secundum carnem in cruce passus est, sicut pariens dolore abjecto loquar, ea scilicet quae prius occultaveram, in gaudio aperte proferens. Prophetae etenim voces suas silenter comprimebant, quoniam quae scientia locutionis eorum esset, pleniter nesciebant. Unde et apud semetipsos dicebant: « O. o. o. pleniter non videmus quae loquimur, scimus tamen quod Deus illa temporibus suis manifestabit?

» Et sic patienter sustinebant, scientiae Dei illa committentes. Deus autem ad ministerium operis sui quod ad imaginem suam fecerat, illa postmodum illuminavit, velut mater post partum laetatur, cum infantem viderit, quem de se genuit, ad ipsum suspirando dicens: « Hic est filius meus. » Sic etiam summus Pater de Filio suo loquitur: « Ego hodie genui te . » Quod hodie aeternitas illa est in qua secundum divinitatem Patri semper aequalis est; post cujus incarnationem prophetia in sanctis aperte flagrabat, qui prophetiam prophetarum exponendo palam loquebantur, sicut et Deus firmamentum lucentibus luminaribus illuminavit. Alio modo: « Dixit vero Deus: »

Quia id quod Deus vocavit aridam terram, et congregationes aquarum appellavit maria, juxta diversos respectus allegorice de Ecclesia accipiatur, quae de pluribus populis collecta, et fidei soliditate fundata, a David terra viventium, et a Joanne apostolo in Apocalypsi mare vitreum mistum cum igne nominatur, et quo sensu haec eadem testimonia accipi debeant.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Isa.42.14 — I have kept silent for a long time; I have held back and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant all at once.
  2. ↩Isa.42.14 — I have kept silent for a long time; I have held back and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant all at once.
  3. ↩Isa.42.14 — I have kept silent for a long time; I have held back and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant all at once.
  4. ↩1Pet.1.10-1Pet.1.12 — Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 1Pet.1.11 — searching to learn what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when it predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. 1Pet.1.12 — To them it was revealed that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things now announced to you through those who proclaimed the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.
  5. ↩Acts.1.7 — But he said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority."
  6. ↩Gen.1.10 — And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
  7. ↩Ps.116.9 — I will walk before the LORD in the lands of the living.
  8. ↩Rev.15.2 — And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The antecedent of 'illa' (those things) is ambiguous in context; it likely refers back to the prophetic secrets or the works of God previously mentioned.
  2. 2 ↩Quoted scriptural span: 'Ego hodie genui te' — likely an allusion to Psalm 2:7. Final resolution belongs to a later stage.
  3. 3 ↩The opening 'Quod' functions as a conjunction introducing an explanatory clause; the syntax is compressed and the antecedent of 'cujus' (whose) refers to the Son.
  4. 4 ↩The Latin sentence is a dependent clause (introduced by 'Quia' / 'Because') that lacks a grammatically completed main clause in this section, ending abruptly on the infinitive phrase 'accipi debeant'. The translation preserves this syntactic incompleteness.

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