The Ruler Should Be Near to All in Compassion and Above All in Contemplation

The ruler should be a near neighbor to everyone in sympathy and raised above all in contemplation. In this way, through heartfelt loving-kindness, he may take the weaknesses of others on himself, and by the height of his contemplation rise even above himself in reaching for the unseen. Otherwise, either in seeking high things he will despise the weaknesses of his neighbors, or in fitting himself to the weaknesses of his neighbors he will give up reaching for high things. [a]

That is why Paul is caught up into Paradise and explores the secrets of the third heaven, and yet, though carried up in that contemplation of things unseen, he turns the vision of his mind back to the bed of those who are of the flesh, and directs how they should come together in their private intimacy. He says: “But because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband give the wife what is due to her, and likewise the wife to the husband.” And a little later: “Do not deprive one another, except by consent for a time, so that you may give yourselves to prayer; and come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you.” See: he is already initiated into the secrets of heaven, and yet, by stooping down to others with a tender heart, he looks into the bed of those who are of the flesh. The same eye of the heart that he lifts to the unseen in his elevation, he bends in his compassion on the private lives of those who are subject to weakness. In contemplation he rises above heaven, and yet in his anxious care he does not abandon the couch of those who are of the flesh. For he is joined at once to the highest and to the lowest by the bond of love; and though he himself is mightily caught up into the heights above by the power of the spirit, among others he is content, in his loving-kindness, to become weak. That is why he says: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” And again he says: “To the Jews I became as a Jew.”

Now he showed this behavior not by losing hold of his faith but by extending his loving-kindness. He put himself, in a figure, in the place of unbelievers, so as to learn from himself how they ought to be shown compassion, so that he might give them what he would rightly have wished to be given himself, had he been as they were. That is why again he says: “Whether we are out of our minds, it is for God; or whether we are in our right mind, it is for you.” For he knew both how to rise above himself in contemplation and how to adapt himself to his hearers by stooping down to them.

That is why Jacob, with the Lord looking down from above and oil poured on the stone, saw angels going up and coming down. This signifies that true preachers not only reach up in contemplation to the holy head of the church above, that is, to the Lord, but also come down in compassion to his members. That is why Moses often goes in and out of the tabernacle: he who is caught up in contemplation inside is busy outside with the affairs of those who are subject to weakness. Inside he considers the secret things of God; outside he carries the burdens of those who are of the flesh. And about doubtful matters he always goes back to the tabernacle, to consult the Lord before the ark of the covenant. In this he certainly gives an example to rulers: when they are unsure in the outside world how to arrange things, they should return to their own soul as though to the tabernacle and, as before the ark of the covenant, consult the Lord, if perhaps they may search within themselves the pages of the sacred word about what they doubt. That is why the Truth himself, shown to us by taking on our humanity, keeps on in prayer on the mountain but works miracles in the cities. In this way he lays down the path good rulers should follow: though already reaching for the highest things in contemplation, they should share in sympathy the needs of the weak. For love rises wonderfully to high things when it is drawn in compassion to the low things of its neighbors; and the more kindly it comes down to the weak things of this world, the more strongly it goes back to the things on high.

But those who are over others should show themselves to be such that those under them are not ashamed to open even their secrets to them. Then the little ones, tossed by the waves of temptation, may run to their pastor’s heart as to a mother’s breast, and, in the comfort of his encouragement and in the tears of prayer, wash away the defilement they see coming on them from the filth of the sin that batters them. That is also why, before the doors of the temple, the bronze sea for washing the hands of those who enter, that is, the basin, is held up by twelve oxen, whose faces stand out to view but whose hind parts are hidden. For what do the twelve oxen stand for but the whole order of pastors, of whom the law says, as Paul explains it: “You must not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain”? We see their open works, but what awaits them behind, in the hidden recompense of the strict judge, we do not know. Yet when they prepare their patient stooping down for cleansing their neighbors’ sins in confession, they hold up, as it were, the basin before the doors of the temple. So whoever is trying to enter the gate of eternity may show his temptations to his pastor’s heart and, as it were, wash the hands of his thought and of his deed in the basin of the oxen.

And very often it happens that while the ruler’s mind, by stooping down to them, learns of the trials of others, it is itself attacked by the temptations it hears about, since the same water of the basin in which a multitude of people is cleansed is without doubt itself defiled. For in taking in the pollution of those who wash, it loses, as it were, the calm of its own purity. But the pastor should by no means be afraid of this, since, under God, who weighs all things exactly, the more compassionately he is distressed by the temptations of others, the more easily he is rescued from his own.