273/10 [Luke
22:31-32] And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan has sought after you
all to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not
fail. Lest the eleven apostles boast or attribute to their own power that
they were almost the only ones amongst so many thousand Jews who were said to
have stood by the Lord in his trials, he also shows them, that if they had not
been protected by the succouring aid of the Lord they could have been destroyed
by the same tempest with the others. But when Satan seeks to test them, and to
shake them, like one who cleans wheat by winnowing, the Lord teaches that no
one’s faith is tested by the devil unless God allows it. Of course, it is Satan’s
part to seek to sift the good, /383/ to paint after their affliction
with surges of malice. For where he is his jealousy longs to try them, there he
seeks, as if craving their assent. But when the Savior, praying for Peter,
entreats not that he not be tempted, but that his faith not fail—that is, that
after his fault of denial he rise again to his former condition by doing
penance—he recommends that it is useful for the saints to be tested by the
flames of trials, so that either they may be seen to be tempted because they
were strong, or, having recognized their frailty, through their temptations,
that they may learn to become stronger, and so, after they have been tested,
that they themselves may also receive the crown of life, which God has promised
to those who love him.
274/9
[Luke 22:32b] And you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your
brothers. Just as I myself, he says, protected your faith by praying, lest
it fail when Satan puts you to the test, so remember also to raise up and
strengthen any weaker brothers by the example of your penance, lest they
perchance despair of forgiveness. He exhorted the same thing after the
resurrection when Simon Peter declared for the third time that he loved him (for
it was fitting that the love of a third confession was clean the fear of a
third denial), and likewise on that third occasion Christ entrusted to him the
feeding of his sheep. (Bede, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke [trans.
Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis; Translated Texts for Historians 85; Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2025], 594-95)
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