Job words; "... 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. (Gregory the Great)

15^th Week Ord. Friday Year II

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 ...