Verse 6
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
Qui seminant in lacrimis, in exsultatione metent.
The prophet has asked God to lead back all the captives to their homeland and now he urges those same captives to begin with a good will the work of walking and making their way up (to the their homeland); they should not allow themselves to be detained by a love for those things which they possess in the foreign land (of their exile) because they will find more numerous and far better things in their homeland. He employs here an extremely apt similitude of sowing and reaping. For a sower ordinarily sows in tears, that is, with sorrow and grieving, because he thinks he is casting his seeds into the ground and does not know whether he will ever receive any return from it; and hence he seems to labour and grow weary only to lose what he has : but when the (time of) harvest comes, he reaps with great joy, because he sees that his wheat, which seemed to be lost when it was sown, not only has not been lost but has been returned to him with a huge increase. But this exhortation is chiefly of relevance to those exiles on a spiritual journey. For those who actually love their captivity and, enslaved by their love of this world, think nothing about their heavenly homeland, they regard the journey undertaken by the just to their heavenly homeland as a waste of time and of no value. For those who truly are exiles and are making their way up to their heavenly homeland, these people give freely to the poor who will never return what they have received, they labour without fee or reward, as the Apostle did, and they willingly go without pleasures : all this seems to be foolishness to those who do not know what they (the sowers) are preparing. But this is nothing other than sowing in tears so that they may afterwards in their own time reap in joy : and if those who still love their captivity would only consider this carefully, they would certainly change their minds and would themselves start upon the journey upwards, and they would on the way sow all their things, with a certain sense of sorrow, so that they might after a little while reap in joy in their heavenly homeland.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
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