Moral Reflections on the Book of Job, Volume 1

Br. Brian Kerns has been a Trappist for sixty years, seventeen years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and the rest at the Abbey of the Genesee in upper New York state, interrupted by a year at Oxford, North Carolina, and five years at Genesee’s foundation of Novo Mundo in Parana, Brazil. He hails originally from Pottsville, in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. For many years he worked in the library at Genesee and Novo Mundo, and he has interested himself in various translation projects, among which is the life of Dom Gabriel Sortais, abbot general of the Trappists in the early 1960s. That volume has also been published by Cistercian Publications, in the Monastic Wisdom series. The first four volumes of his translation of Gregory the Great’s Moral Reflections on the Book of Job were published by Cistercian Publications between 2014 and 2017.Mark DelCogliano earned a Ph.D. in patristic theology from Emory University in 2009 and currently teaches in the Department of Theology at University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has published several studies of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy, including Basil of Caesarea's Anti-Eunomian Theory of Names, and has collaborated on translations of patristic and medieval texts, such as Works on the Spirit: Athanasius and Didymus, St. Basil of Caesarea: Against Eunomius, and For Your Own People: ’lred of Rievaulx's Pastoral Prayer.

"One is hard-pressed to find a good English translation of Pope St. Gregory's Moralia in Job, and even harder-pressed to find an English translation that appeals to twenty-first century readers. Kearns presents a translation that is `clear, elegant, idiomatic, and readable without sacrificing accuracy.' It is precisely because of the universal themes present in the book of Job, and Gregory's contemplative and practical reading of them that make the Moralia in Job a classic: highly appreciated at the time and centuries thereafter, and with this new and refreshing translation, hopefully to be treasured by our contemporaries."Benedict M. Guevin, OSB, American Benedictine Review

• ContentsList of Abbreviations . . . ixIntroduction . . . 1Mark DelCoglianoLetter to Leander . . . 47Preface . . . 57Book 1 (Job 1:1-5) . . . 77Book 2 (Job 1:6-22)  . . . 117Book 3 (Job 2:1-13) . . . 183Book 4 (Job 3:1-19) . . . 235Book 5 (Job 3:20–5:2) . . . 306Scriptural Index . . . 388