Does the wild donkey bray when it has grass? or the ox lows over its fodder?
All Commentaries on Job 6:5 Go To Job 6
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
14. Who else are denoted by the term of ‘the wild ass,’ saving they who being set in the field of faith, are not bound by the reins of any ministration? Or whom does the designation of ‘the ox’ set forth, saving those, whom within the bounds of Holy Church, the yoke of Orders taken upon them constrains to the ministry of preaching? Now the ‘grass’ of the wild ass, and the ox's ‘fodder,’ is the inward refreshing of the faithful folk. For some within the pale of Holy Church are held after the manner of an ox by the bands of the employment taken upon them, others after the manner of a ‘wild ass’ know nothing of the stalls of Holy Orders, and pass their time in the field of their own will. But when any one in the secular life glows with aspirations after the interior vision, when he yearns for the food of the inward refreshing, when seeing himself starved in the darkness of this pilgrim state, he refreshes himself with what tears he may, it is as if ‘the wild ass brayed,’ not finding ‘grass.’ Another one too is subject to the obligation of the Order he has taken upon him, he spends himself in the labour of preaching, and longs to be henceforth refreshed by eternal contemplation; but forasmuch as he does not see the likeness of His Redeemer, it is as if the chained ox lowed at the empty manger. For because being set at the widest distance from the interior wisdom, we see nothing of the verdure of the eternal inheritance, like brute animals we go hungering after the longed for grass. Of which same grass it is said by the voice of our Redeemer, By Me if any man enter in, he shall be sated, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. [John 10, 9] But most often, which is wont to be a grievous woe to those that love, the life of the wicked is arrayed against the holy aims of the good, and when the soul is transported in heavenly aspirations, the purpose of mind, which we have began with well, is dashed to the ground, being crossed by the words and practices of the foolish; so that the soul, which had already soared up to things above in the efforts of contemplation, for the defeating of the foolishness of the froward, girds itself for the encounter down below.
