The viper and the moray as marriage lessons

The viper, the most dangerous of reptiles, goes to meet the moray eel of the sea for marriage, and by hissing announces his presence, calling her up from the depths for the nuptial embrace. She obeys and unites herself with the venomous one. What does this account mean for me? That even if the housemate is harsh or savage in character, one must bear the yokemate and accept no pretext for tearing apart the union. Is he a striker? But he is a husband. Is he a drunkard? But he is united to you by nature. Is he harsh and hard to please? But he is already your member, and the most honored of your members.

Let the husband also hear the counsel that belongs to him. The viper vomits out its venom out of reverence for marriage; do you not put away the harshness and inhumanity of your soul out of reverence for the union? Perhaps the example of the viper will serve us in yet another way: the coupling of the viper and the moray eel is a kind of adultery against nature. Let those who plot against the marriages of others learn, then, what kind of reptile they resemble. My one aim is that the Church be built up from every side. Let the passions of the licentious be restrained, instructed by examples from land and sea.

Here the weakness of my body and the lateness of the hour compel me to stop my discourse, though I could still add many things worthy of wonder for those who love to hear—about the things that grow in the sea, and about the sea itself. How water solidifies into salt; how the precious stone, coral, is a plant in the sea, but when brought out into the air it hardens into the solidity of stone; from where nature placed the costly pearl inside the cheapest of creatures, the oyster. For the treasures that kings desire are scattered along shores and beaches and rough rocks, lying inside the shells of oysters. From where do the pinnae produce their golden wool, which no dyer of flowers has ever imitated until now? From where do the murex shells bestow their royal purple on kings, shells that have surpassed the flowers of the meadows in beauty of color?

"Let the waters bring forth" (Genesis 1:20). And what necessary thing has not come to be? What costly thing has not been granted to life? Some things are for the service of human beings; others are for the contemplation of the wonder in creation. Others are fearsome, disciplining our slackness.

"God made the great sea creatures" (Genesis 1:21). They are not called great merely because they are larger than a shrimp or a sprat, but because they rival the greatest mountains in the bulk of their bodies. They often present the appearance of islands whenever they swim up to the very surface of the water. Yet these creatures, enormous as they are, do not linger near shores or beaches, but inhabit the ocean called the Atlantic. Such are the animals created for our fear and astonishment.

But if you hear that the remora, the smallest little fish, so easily stops the largest ships sailing with spread sails and driven by a fair wind, keeping the vessel motionless for a very long time as if it were rooted in the middle of the sea—do you not receive in this small creature the same proof of the Creator's power? For not only swordfish, sawfish, dogfish, whales, and hammerhead sharks are fearsome, but also the stingray's barb, even when the stingray is dead, and the sea hare are no less fearsome, bringing swift and inescapable destruction.