The first source of Joy I mentioned is Temporal good; by which I mean riches, rank, office, and other dignities; children, relations, and alliances. All these are matters in which the Will may rejoice. But what vanity to rejoice in riches, rank, titles, office, and the like, after which men are striving! If a man’s wealth made him a better servant of God, he might rejoice in his riches; but riches are rather occasions of sin, as the Wise Man saith: ‘Myson... if thou be rich, thou shalt not be free from sin.’* It is very true that temporal goods are not necessarily, in themselves, occasions of sin, yet generally, by reason of our frailty, the heart sets itself upon them, and falls away from God, which is sin. The wise man therefore says, that the rich shall not be free from sin.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, calls riches thorns,f that we may learn that he who shall set his Will upon riches will be wounded by sin. Those fearful words recorded by S. Matthew, ‘Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven,’{ show us plainly that a man ought not to rejoice in his riches, because they expose him to so greata danger. David also bids us withdraw ourselves from riches, saying, ‘ If riches abound, set not your heart upon them.’§ I will not allege further proof in a matter so clear, for when shall I have said all the evils of them that Solomon hath said? Solomon was a man full of wisdom and of great riches, and he knew well what they were when he said, ‘I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit
* Ecclus. xi. 10. t+ S. Matt. xiii. 22. ~ ¢ S. Matt. xix, 23. § Ps. lxi. 11.
245«++ and a fruitless solicitude of the mind.’* And, ‘ He that loveth riches shall reap no fruit from them.’f And again,
‘Riches kept to the hurt of the owner.’{ An instance of this we have in the Gospel. A rich man, because his harvest was abundant, rejoiced in his expectation of years of comfort: * But God said to him, Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?’§ The Psalmist also teaches us the same
truth, saying, ‘Be not thou afraid when a man shall be
made rich... for when he shall die, he shall take nothing away; nor shall his glory descend with him;’ ||—that is, we are not to envy our neighbour because he-is grown rich, for his
riches will not profit him in the life to come; yea, rather let -
us pity him.
The sum of the matter is this: let no man rejoice in his own or in his brother’s wealth, unless it be that it tends to the better service of God. If rejoicing in riches can be made in any way endurable, it is when we spend and employ them for God; for there is no other way of making them profitable. The same principle applies to the temporal goods of title, rank, and office; all rejoicing in which is vanity, unless we feel that these things enable us to serve God better, and that they make the way to Eternal Life more secure. And as we can never be sure that these things enable us to serve God better, it will be vanity to rejoice deliberately in them, because such a joy can never be reasonable. For as our Lord saith: ‘For what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?’ There cannot be anything worth rejoicing in except that which
makes us better servants of our God.
Neither are men to rejoice in their children, because they
* Eccles. i, 14; ii. 26. + Ib. v. 9. t Ib. v. 12. § S. Luke xii. 20.. Ps. xlviii, 17, 18. q S. Matt. xvi, 26."
2.
246;
are many, rich, endowed with abilities and natural graces, and prosperous, but only in that they serve God. Neither the beauty, nor the wealth, nor the lineage of Absalom the son of David profited him at all, because he served not God. To rejoice in such a son would have been vanity. It is also vanity to desire children; as some do who disturb the world with their fretting; for they know not if their children will be good and servants of God. They know not whether the pleasure they expect from them may not be turned into pain, tranquillity and consolation into trouble and disquietude, honour into disgrace; and, finally, whether they shall not be to them greater occasions of sinning against God, as is the case with many. Christ has said of these that they compass sea and land to enrich themselves and to make themselves twofold the children of perdition: ‘You go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves.’ *
If a man’s affairs are prosperous, if his undertakings succeed, and all his wishes are gratified, he ought to fear rather than rejoice, for this is a dangerous occasion of forgetting, and offending against, God. It was for this cause that Solomon was cautious, saying: ‘Laughter I counted error; and to mirth I said: Why art thou vainly deceived?’f It is as if he said: when all things smiled upon me I counted it error and delusion to rejoice therein; for, beyond all doubt, it is a great error and folly on the part of man if he rejoices in the sunshine of prosperity, when he does not know for certain that it will lead to any durable good. ‘The heart of the wise is where there is mourning,’ saith Solomon, ‘ and the heart of fools where there is mirth.{ Vain rejoicing blinds the heart, makes it inconsiderate and thoughtless, but
* S. Matt. xxiii. 15. + Eccles, ii. 2. t Ih. vii. 5.
247mourning opens our eyes to the vision of our loss and gain.
This is the reason why the wise man saith that ‘anger is better than laughter;’* and that ‘it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting; for in that we are put in mind of the end of all, and the living thinketh what is to come.’ f
It is also vanity for a wife or a husband to rejoice in marriage, for they know not whether they shall serve God the better in that state. Yea, rather they should feel humbled, because, as the Apostle saith, marriage leads them to set their affections upon each other, and not to give their heart whole unto God. This is why he said: ‘Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.’{ He that is married ought to live with freedom of heart, as if he had not been married. The Apostle teaches the same doctrine with regard to all temporal goods, saying: ‘ This, therefore, I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that they also who have wives be as if they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed: not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not.’§ The Apostle teaches that to rejoice in anything which tendeth not to the service of God is vanity and without profit, for all joy which is not in God brings no good to the soul.