Night
Office - Patristic Reading,
First Reading Job 6:1-30
Responsory Eph 4:15; Pro 4:18
Let us speak the truth in love + so that in all things we may grow into Christ who is our head.
V. The path of the just is like the passage of the dawn; it grows from first light to the full splendor of day.+ So that in ...
Second Reading
From the writings of Saint
Gregory the Great (Moralia in Job XXllI, 2: PL 76, 251)
The allurement of fragrant leaves
It is because the ancient Fathers resemble trees bearing abundant
fruit, being not merely attractive figures in themselves but productive also of
positive results, that their lives are so well worth considering. For in so
doing, we realize, as we wonder at the freshness and originality of people in
history, how much fecundity there is in allegory, and how the sweetness of fruit
to the taste can be anticipated from the allurement of fragrant leaves. No one has
ever had the grace of supernatural adoption except through his acknowledgment
of the Only-begotten. And so it is fitting that he who enlightens men and women
that they may merit to shine forth should himself be manifest in their lives and
their words. For when a lantern is lit in the darkness it is the, lantern itself
which is seen before all the rest, everything else that it lights up. Hence if we
really wish to discern what has been made visible, we must try to open the eyes
of our minds to the light itself. This lesson shines through the speeches of
the blessed Job, like a fleeting twinkle, even when those involved allegories are
edited out and forgotten, and the shadows of the darkest hours of night are as
it were removed. For he says: I know that my Redeemer lives, and in my flesh
I shall see God.
Indeed Saint Paul had found this same light in the night of history,
when he said: All were baptized in the power of Moses, in the cloud and in
the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink.
But they drank of the spiritual rock which lay in their path: and the rock was Christ.
If, then, the rock was a type or figure of the Redeemer, why should not the
blessed Job apply and use a figure of him whom he foretold and marked, indeed
identified, with suffering? Wherefore Job is not without reason said to be grieving
precisely because he bears in himself the likeness of him whom Isaiah had long
ago announced as taking our sorrows on himself. Moreover our Redeemer showed
himself to be one and the same person identified with his Holy Church which he took
up and manifested. For of him it is said: He is the head, Christ himself. And
again, of his Church it is written: And the body of Christ, which is the Church.
Hence the blessed Job, who presented the type and bore the mark of the
Mediator all the more faithfully for having prefigured his passion not merely in
speech but even in suffering, since in his words and deeds he finds support in
the idea of a redeemer, has lighted in a flash on the very significance of the
body itself. Believing Christ and his Church to be one person, let us view it
in the light of one person and everything he does, the body and its every act.
Responsory Ps 5:7; Is 6:3
Through the greatness of your love I have access to your house. + I bow down before your holy temple, filled with awe.
V. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. + I bow down ...
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