2 Samuel 18
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
2 Samuel 18:17
But they, as we have sometimes said before in other places, do not charge themselves with what they do to us; while, on the other hand, they charge us with what they do to themselves. For which of our party is there who would desire, I do not say that one of them should perish but should even lose any of his possessions? But if the house of David could not earn peace on any other terms except that Absalom his son should have been slain in the war which he was waging against his father, although he had most carefully given strict injunctions to his followers that they should use their utmost endeavors to preserve him alive and safe, that his paternal affection might be able to pardon him on his repentance, what remained for him except to weep for the son that he had lost and to console himself in his sorrow by reflecting on the acquisition of peace for his kingdom? — THE CORRECTION OF THE DONATISTS 8.32
2 Samuel 18:33
When King David had endured this affliction from his wicked and treacherous son, he had not only tolerated his uncontrolled passion but even lamented his death. He was not held ensnared by a carnal jealousy, since it was not the outrages inflicted on him, but rather the sins of his son that troubled him. For he had forbidden that his son be killed if he were conquered in order that opportunity for repentance might be reserved for him after he was vanquished. Since this was impossible, he did not grieve because of his bereavement in the death of his son but because he realized into what punishments such a wickedly adulterous and murderous soul was precipitated. — CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION 3.21.30
2 Samuel 18:33
Now what are we to do, seeing how many, with the help of the Lord, find the way of peace through your instrumentality? Surely we neither can nor ought to hold them back from this impulse toward unity, through fear that some, utterly hard and cruel to themselves, may destroy themselves by their own will, not ours. Indeed, we should pray that all who carry the standard of Christ against Christ and boast of the gospel against the gospel may forsake their wrong way and rejoice with us in the unity of Christ. But since God, by an inscrutable yet just disposition of his will, has predestined some of them to the ultimate penalty, undoubtedly it is better for some of them to perish in their own fires, while an incomparably greater number are rescued and won over from that deadly schism and separation, than that all should equally burn in the eternal fires of hell as a punishment for their accursed dissension. The church mourns their loss as holy David mourned the loss of his rebellious son about whose safety he had given orders with anxious love. He grieved over his son's death, with tearful utterance, although it was the penalty of a wicked impiety; but as his proud and wicked spirit departed to its own place, the people of God that had been divided by his tyranny recognized their king, and the completeness of their reunion consoled the grief of the father for the loss of his son. — LETTER 204
2 Samuel 18:33
But, as we have said elsewhere on occasion, these heretics refuse to take the blame for what they do to us and they lay the blame on us for what they do to themselves. Who of us would wish them to lose anything, much less that they be lost themselves? If the house of David could win peace in no other way than through the death of Absalom, David's son, in the war which he was carrying on against his father—although the latter had instructed his followers with great care to keep him safe and sound as far as it was possible for them to do so, that he might repent and receive pardon from his father's love—what was left for him but to weep for the son that he had lost and find comfort for his grief in the peace thus gained for his kingdom? In the same manner, then, our Catholic mother acts when others who are not her sons make war on her—because it is a fact that this little branch in Africa has been broken off from the great tree which embraces the whole world in the spreading of its branches—and although she is in labor with them in charity, that they may return to the root without which they cannot have true life, still, if she rescues so many others by losing some, especially when these fall by self-destruction, not by the fortune of war as Absalom did, she solaces the grief of her maternal heart and heals it by the deliverance of such numbers of people. — LETTER 185.32