So likewise another writer
admonishes, saying--"Weep over the dead, for the light has failed; and
weep over the fool, for understanding has failed" (Eccles. xxii., 10).
Weep a little for the dead; for he has gone to his rest; but the fool's
life is a greater calamity than death. And surely if one devoid of
understanding is always a proper object of lamentation, much more he
that is devoid of righteousness and that has fallen from hope toward
God. These, then, let us bewail; for such bewailing may be useful. For
often while lamenting these, we amend our own faults; but to bewail the
departed is senseless and hurtful. Let us not, then, reverse the order,
but bewail only sin; and all other things, whether poverty, or sickness,
or untimely death, or calumny, or false accusation, or whatever human
evil befalls us, let us resolutely bear them all. For these calamities,
if we are watchful, will be the occasions of adding to our crowns.
But how is it possible, you ask, that a bereaved person, being a man,
should not grieve? On the contrary, I ask, how is it that being a man he
should grieve, since he is honored with reason and with hopes of future
good? Who is there, you ask again, that has not been subdued by this
weakness? Many, I reply, and in many places, both among us and among
those who have died before us.
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