And, behold, there was lifted up a cover of lead: and there was a woman that sits in the midst of the basket.
Read Chapter 5
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Each one will have the weight of his good deeds hung in the balance, and for a few moments of a good work or a degenerate deed the scale often inclines to this side or that. If evil inclines the scale, alas for me; if good, pardon is ready at hand. No one is free from sin, but when good deeds prevail, the weight of sins is lessened; they are cast into the shadow and covered up. So, in the day of judgment, our works will either succor us or plunge us into the depths, like people weighted down with a millstone. Iniquity is heavy, supported, as it were, on a talent of lead; avarice is hard to carry; so too all pride and appearance of fraud. Urge the people of the Lord to hope more in the Lord, therefore, to abound in the riches of simplicity, in which they may walk without a snare, without hindrance.
For virtue is something light and exhilarating. All who live according to it “fly along the clouds,” according to Isaiah, and “like doves” with their young, but sin is heavy, seated, as one of the prophets says, upon a “talent of lead.” If such an interpretation of Scripture appears to anyone to be forced and unfitting, because he does not think the miracle of the sea was written as an aid to us, let him listen to the apostle saying that he wrote symbolically, both for the people of his own time and “for our correction.”
