Or perhaps we think that if the
Israelites had repented the almighty Son of God would not have been able to
save the world in another manner? Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who
has been His counsellor? Consider in the Gospel, where Christ reproaches
the cities in which He had worked so many miracles, how He had looked for the
repentance of the Jews and they would not: Woe to you, Corozain! He
says, Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been worked
the miracles that have been worked in you, they would long ago have done
penance in sackcloth and ashes. Truly I say to you: it shall be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you,
Capharnaum, shall ye be lifted up to heaven? You shall go down even to hell,
for if in Sodom had been worked the miracles that have been worked in you, it
would have remained until today; but I say to you that it shall be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Truly, the
foreknowledge of God does not fail. But neither is the liberty once granted to
man taken away so that he may never be judged on what he has not freely done.
God condemns the obstinacy of evil. He cherishes the conversion of the
penitent.
You object! Surely God could not
lie, He who predicted they would do what they did? We do not comprehend how
great is the omnipotent power of One who calls those things that are not, as if
they are. We should think Him capable of lying if those things which He
foretold were not fulfilled. Did He lie to the Ninivites, then? For He said: Three
days more and Ninive shall be destroyed, and it was not destroyed because
it did penance after the preaching of Jona. But understand this, the speech of
God is a sword, sharp on both edges. Ninive was to have been destroyed in one
way, and was destroyed in another. It was to have been destroyed by
annihilation if it had remained in its evil. Its iniquity was destroyed instead
because it did repent. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, God
says to men, so is my mind higher than your minds, and my thoughts than your
thoughts. It is written: Do not seek the things that are too high for
you, and do not search into things above your ability, the suspicion of them
has been the downfall of many. (Gaudentius of Brescia, “Tract Number Three:
Third Sermon on the Exodus,” in Gaudentius of Brescia: Sermons and Letters
[trans. Stephen L. Boehrer; The Catholic University of America Studies in
Sacred Theology (Second Series) 165; PhD Dissertation, 1965], 71-72)
