For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender shoots thereof will not cease.
Read Chapter 14
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
5. Now because this is self-evident according to the letter, we must refer the sense to the things of the interior, and search how they are to be made out after the spiritual signification. Thus in Holy Scripture by the name of ‘tree’ we have represented sometimes the Cross, sometimes the righteous man, or even the unrighteous man, and sometimes the Wisdom of God Incarnate. Thus the Cross is denoted by ‘the tree,’ when it is said, Let us put the tree into his bread [Jer. 11, 19, V.]; for to ‘put the tree into the bread’ is to apply the Cross to the Body of our Lord. Again by the title of ‘the tree’ we have the just man, or even the unjust man, set forth, as the Lord saith by the Prophet, I the Lord have brought down the high tree, and exalted the low tree. [Ez. 17, 24] Forasmuch as according to the word of the self-same Truth, Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted [Luke 14, 11]: Solomon also saith, If the tree fall towards the South, or toward the North, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. [Ecc. 11, 3] For in the day of their death the just man does ‘fall to the South,’ and the unjust ‘to the North,’ in that both the just man in favour of the Spirit is brought to joy, and the sinner, together with the apostate Angel, who said, I will sit also upon the mount of the testimony, in the sides of the North [Is. 14, 13], is cast away in his frozen heart. Again, the Wisdom of God Incarnate is represented by ‘the Tree,’ as where it is written thereon, She is a tree of life to them that lay hold on Her. [Prov. 3, 18] And as She Herself says, If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? [Luke 23, 31] And so in this place whereas a tree is preferred before man, what is man taken for but every carnal person? and what is denoted by the title of ‘the tree,’ but the life of the righteous? For there is a hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will be green again. For when in a death of painful endurance the just man is hard bestead for the truth, in the greenness of everlasting life he is recovered again; and he who here proved green by faith, there becomes green in actual sight [speciem]. ‘And his branches shoot,’ in that it is most often the case that by the sufferings of the just man, all faithful persons are redoubled in the love of the heavenly country, and they receive the greenness of the spiritual life, while they are glad that he did courageously here in God’s behalf.
