Section 4

Let us remember these tears. This is how we should raise our daughters and our sons: weeping when we see them caught in evil. Let every woman who wants to be loved remember Paul’s tears and groan. Those of you who are considered fortunate, who are in bridal chambers and surrounded by pleasure, remember them. Those who are mourning, exchange one kind of tears for another. Paul did not mourn those who had died, but those who were perishing while still alive.

Shall I speak of other tears? Timothy also wept, for he was Paul’s disciple. That is why Paul wrote to him, “Remembering your tears, so that I may be filled with joy.” Many people even weep from joy. Such tears therefore also contain joy, and very intense joy. Tears arising from this kind of sorrow are not burdensome; indeed, they are much better than tears caused by worldly pleasure. Listen to the prophet saying, “The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.”

Where are tears not useful—whether in prayers or in exhortation? We bring them into disrepute because we do not use them for the purposes for which they were given. When we plead with a brother who is sinning, we should weep, grieving and groaning. When we exhort someone and he pays no attention but continues toward destruction, we should weep. These are the tears of philosophy. But when someone becomes poor, or suffers bodily sickness, or dies, this is different: such things are not in themselves worthy of these tears.

Just as we bring laughter into disrepute when we use it at the wrong time, so we do the same with tears when we use them at the wrong time. The proper excellence of anything appears when it is directed toward its fitting purpose; when directed toward an alien purpose, it no longer does. Wine, for example, is given for gladness, not drunkenness; bread for nourishment; sexual union for the procreation of children. Just as these things have acquired a bad reputation through misuse, so have tears. Establish this rule: use tears especially in prayer and exhortation, and see how desirable they become. Nothing wipes away sins as tears do.

Tears even make the bodily face beautiful. They draw the person who sees them toward compassion and give the face dignity in our eyes. Nothing is sweeter than eyes filled with tears. The eye is the noblest and most beautiful member we possess, almost the visible organ of the soul. When we see it mourning, therefore, we are moved as though we saw the soul itself grieving.

I have not said these things without a purpose. I want you to stop attending weddings filled with dancing and satanic performances. Look at what the devil has devised. Since nature itself has kept women away from the public stage and the shameful things performed there, he has brought the theater into the women’s quarters—I mean effeminate male performers and prostitutes. The custom surrounding weddings has introduced this corruption—or rather, not marriage itself, God forbid, but our own foolishness.

What are you doing, man? Do you not know what you are doing? You take a wife for chastity and the bearing of children; what place, then, do prostitutes have there? “So that the celebration may be greater,” someone says. But is this not madness? You insult the bride; you insult the women who have been invited. If they are entertained by such things, the very entertainment is an insult. If there is some honor in watching prostitutes behave shamefully, why do you not drag the bride there too so that she may watch? It is plainly indecent and disgraceful to bring effeminate men, dancers, and this whole satanic procession into the house.

“Remember my chains,” Paul says. Marriage is a bond, a bond established by God; prostitution is a loosening and dissolution of that bond. You may brighten a wedding with other things—with abundant tables and clothing. I do not forbid these things, so that I may not appear excessively harsh, although Rebecca was content with a single veil. Still, I do not forbid them. You may make the occasion bright with clothing and with the presence of respectable men and respectable women.

But why bring in those mockeries and monstrosities? Tell me what you hear from them. Are you ashamed even to repeat it? You are ashamed to say it, yet you compel others to perform it? If it is good, why do you not do it yourself? If it is shameful, why compel someone else? Everything should be filled with chastity, dignity, and good order. Instead I see the opposite: people leaping about like camels and mules.

The bridal chamber alone is fitting for the unmarried young woman. “But she is poor,” someone says. Precisely because she is poor, she should possess modesty; let her character stand in place of wealth. She has no dowry to give—why make her contemptible in another way by her conduct? I approve of the custom in which unmarried young women attend to honor one of their own age, and married women attend to honor the woman who is now entering their state. This is well ordered. There are two companies, that of the unmarried women and that of the married: one group hands her over and the other receives her. The bride stands between them, no longer simply belonging to the first group and not yet established among the second; she is leaving one company and entering the other.

But what place do prostitutes have there? When a marriage is celebrated, they ought to hide themselves; they ought, as it were, to be buried, because prostitution is the corruption of marriage. Yet we bring them into our weddings. When you undertake other tasks, you treat even a word contrary to your purpose as a bad omen. When you sow seed or draw wine from the vats, you would not willingly utter a word suggesting vinegar. Yet here, when chastity is being established, you bring in the vinegar—for that is what prostitution is. When you prepare perfume, you allow nothing foul-smelling to come near it. Marriage is perfume. Why, then, bring the stench of the dunghill into the preparation of the perfume?

What do you say? Should an unmarried young woman dance and feel no shame before another young woman of her own age? She ought to show even greater dignity. She has come from the shelter of the household, not from the wrestling school. An unmarried young woman should not be displayed publicly at a wedding at all.