Works (CSEL) 14 part 12/28

He who prays thus—his groaning is not hidden from the Lord. Indeed, the groaning of holy Peter was both known and heard, when he wept most bitterly; for surely it was not the bitter tears, but the bitter feeling that poured them forth. Even in the faithless Ahab the groaning would have found grace, had not abiding envy heaped up the offense. For it is not the perfunctory groaning that is commended, but that which brings conversion; for it is written: 'If you turn and groan, you shall be saved.' Let us also set before the Lord all our desire. What is desire? For I have read desire of a good thing: 'With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you,' and: 'As the deer desires the fountains of waters.'

But I think that he who does penance, who afflicts himself, ought not to enumerate his good deeds, but the sins committed by him. Indeed, by those little verses, as I judge, we are taught this, in which he says: 'O God, I will declare my life to you; you have set my tears in your sight.' For he does not, as it were, announce an innocent life, where tears are poured forth, which are wont to undertake an embassy for offenses. Unless perhaps we should understand it thus: that even if anyone be innocent, he cannot be secure, having daily contests against the most grievous foes; and therefore even where the conscience shines glad, yet the battle is one of tears. According to these little verses, then, we can take it as 'concupiscence' rather than 'desire';

for the Greek used ἐπιθυμίαν, and both 'concupiscence' and 'desire' are called ἐπιθυμία; but 'concupiscence' is said both of good and of evil: 'My soul has longed and fainted for the courts of the Lord'—for good; but in the law otherwise: 'For I had not known concupiscence, unless the law had said: You shall not covet'—surely for evil. Indeed, let what follows teach us, that 'sin, taking occasion, wrought through the commandment all concupiscence' in man's affection. Yet we can also take it thus: 'Before you I set all my desire,' that is, 'To you I make manifest what I desire to obtain,' so that it seems to be referred to the order of his petitions, not to boasting of virtues; for boasting is insolent even in the upright, while supplication is praiseworthy even in the sinner.

The prophet also added this, that, when his heart was troubled, his strength forsook him. Great is the danger if the heart, by which we believe unto righteousness, be agitated. Yet just as in great dangers of sicknesses, if pain is felt and its sensation expressed, the remedy of health is shown—for to feel pain is more tolerable than not to feel it; for the one is a mark of life still remaining, if you feel pain, the other a token of utmost death, if there be no sense of pain—so the heart too shows the signs of health when it recognizes the causes of its disturbance. Indeed, the heart of David was troubled against Nabal, a pestilent man, and he found grace.

Abigail came to meet him, to soften the agitation of his indignation and to receive the sanctification of blessing. But Nabal, with hard and rigid heart, could not bear his wife's word, and stupefied he grew stiff and met his death. But what was the strength that forsook the prophet—of the flesh or of the mind? If of the flesh, health is by no means to be despaired of; for strength is made perfect in weakness. On which a certain arbiter and combatant of the struggle of mind and body disputed not slightly, knowing how to temper the contest of both, so as to restrain the flesh if he perceived it stronger, lest it lead the mind captive into the law of sin. He therefore recalled the flesh, but joined to it the strength of the mind; thus he deserved to attain the crown.

Therefore, what the prophet says—if the strength of the flesh forsook him, the strength of the mind prevailed. But if we take it that the strength of the mind forsook him, no wonder if, in the most grievous temptations with the heart troubled, a man thinks himself forsaken by the strength of his own mind. Let him himself teach you, saying: 'The Lord is my strength and my praise.' He sought the Lord therefore, and so, lest he should deserve to be forsaken, he thought he must seek him the more often; and wherever he wavered, he thought himself forsaken. Thus the apostles rouse the sleeper, lest he sleep to his own harm—not because they believed he had slept. Thus Elisha—to use examples from of old—'Where,' he says, 'is the God of Elijah?'—not that he thought him absent, but because he sought his presence in benefits.

Thus Jeremiah followed him as a physician, saying: 'Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. I have not labored in following after you.' Thus the Church sought him in the Song of Songs and asked the daughters of Jerusalem to awaken her love; she sought that she might find him whom by her love she held fast and never felt to be absent. Thus, then, David too did not complain that he was forsaken by Christ, but judged that, with him present, he could not be troubled. Indeed, that you may know it is to be understood rather of Christ, he added: 'And the light of my eyes, even it is not with me.' What is the true light of all but Christ, of whom John says:

'That was the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world,' since he it is who enlightens both the eyes of the body and the gaze of the mind. Let us therefore pray that he may ever pour his light into us and be ever with us, as he was with David. And so he dared to say: 'For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.' He surely, as a prophet, had seen a great light; let his lamp shine for us, that we may not go astray; and the lamp is the word, just as the true light is the word which enlightens the whole world. Indeed, 'your word, O Lord, is a lamp to my feet,' and the prophet too sought that lamp—not a lantern, but a lamp.

John found and pointed out the lamp; with a lantern the persecutor came and pointed out his man; for a lantern has its light enclosed, not free. The light of the Jews was as a lamp under a bushel, or torches under a covering; it can be seen, but is not seen. But we, with unveiled face, behold the eternal glory of the Lord, that we may be transformed into his image from glory to glory by the Holy Spirit. The crowd of persecutors therefore came with lanterns, and so their eyes could not see the enclosed light; they came with torches, which have more of murky smoke than of brightness in their flame. Indeed, with torches the corpses of the dead are wont to burn. The Jews therefore were already bringing fire upon themselves, who persecuted the author of salvation.

They came with arms, signifying by arms that they should perish by the arms of the Romans, even to the destruction of the whole city and temple—they who refused the peace of the Lord. 'My friends and my neighbors drew near against me and stood, and my neighbors stood afar off; and they that sought my soul used violence, and they that sought my hurt spoke vanities, and meditated deceits all the day long. But I, as one deaf, heard not; and as one dumb who opens not his mouth, and I became as a man not hearing, and having no reproofs in his mouth.' I shall see who they are that may subtly discuss these things.

To me, especially in this first verse, the Lord's meaning seems to be held: that in temptations a man's own household become his enemies. This, then, holy David confesses purely and sincerely and with grief. For it is true grief and the confession of the inmost heart, when all those things are enumerated by which the secret bowels of the mind are pierced with the most bitter feeling and embittered by domestic gall. The prophet therefore laments that he is assailed by friends and neighbors, by whom surely he ought not to have been assailed, but helped. This indeed accords with holy Job's complaint, since he too reproached those three kings, comforters of evils, who brought him greater contests when they had assembled out of friendship's grace to console him;

which surely we must guard against. For consolation ought to be gentle, not harsh, such as may rather soothe grief and assuage its heat than stir up agitation. Surely the medicine of the body itself may teach us, which is wont to apply softer remedies to inflamed wounds, by which it may relieve pain. And so wounds are first soothed, afterward lanced, lest the very hardness offend and the incision exasperate the wound. How much more, then, does it befit us to take heed, that when we come to console, we should not speak lightly or perfunctorily! For seven days Job was silent, and his friends were silent, nor would they have spoken had not Job in grief burst into speech. For we must consider where to begin, lest in the very discourse your consolation give offense;

even silence itself is medicine, and one swift in speech rather wounds. Why do you wonder if he wounds another, when he is himself often wounded, since 'from much speaking sin does not flee'? For if even the physician awaits the time of healing, that the aids of medicine may be applied when the sicknesses are digested, lest the disease, still sharp and unripe—as they assert—resist the remedies of treatment and be unable to perceive the benefit, how much more does it befit us to investigate, that the healing word may come forth from us opportunely, which may seem not to kindle grief but to soothe it! The force of grief presses on, the heart of the afflicted woman who has lost her husband or her children by untimely death is crushed: why do you hasten, when she does not hear you, unless the grief abate?

Often we have seen quarrels stirred up over consolations. You have come to grieve, not to wrangle. The very order of speech must be sought, lest you incur sin before God while you desire to console a man—lest, when he says to you: 'Hear these things' and many others which profit nothing, he answer: 'Hear, O comforters of evils'—lest in another's grief you bring on a contest of garrulous disputation, lest you fail to come near when you ought, lest you come near and your speech be too harsh. Indeed, let holy Job teach you what is said about such things: 'Most grievous temptations have come upon me together; those who considered me surrounded me. My brothers have departed from me; they have known strangers rather than me; my friends have become without mercy.'

Here, then, is the natural meaning, even of the holy prophet David: he complains that he is assailed by friends, abandoned by neighbors. But let not the mystical sense of piety shrink from this either, so that he might have said it of the angels who stand guard over those who fear the Lord, to deliver them from temptations which they cannot bear. How, then, do they stand afar off who have been assigned for help? But they do not separate themselves; rather, he who is pressed by temptations thinks them far away, whom he desires to be present nearer to him, and supposes them to feign indifference, while they await the time for helping at the nod of their commander, who has bidden his athlete contend longer, that he might conquer the more gloriously.

And this seems to fit better with what follows, since while the angels relaxed the watches of their protection, the enemies lay in wait, seeking to find in his soul something that might harm. For then the power of graver temptation is permitted them, when a graver fault of the soul is found. Whence you have that passage in the Book of Kingdoms, the word spoken by King Ahab to Elijah, when the prophet vehemently rebuked him and announced death to him: 'Have you found me,' he says, 'O my enemy?' And Elijah answered: 'I have found you, because you have done wickedly in the sight of the Lord.' You see, then, that injury must not be done rashly to kings, either by the prophets of God or by the priests, unless there be graver sins for which they ought to be reproved.

But where the sins are graver, there the priest seems not bound to spare, that by just rebukes they may be corrected. Yet David in this place says that they seem to have found nothing, and therefore his enemies spoke vanity, since they found nothing that they might speak in accordance with the truth. 'Or surely because, though I sinned, yet I was purging my sins by the grief of repentance; in which they were speaking with me deceitfully, that by reproach they might confound me and call me back from conversion.'

And see whether he meant rather this: that they had sought out his evils, but, when they wished to accuse, were forestalled, because he himself laid bare his own wounds, standing forth as his own accuser, and therefore the force of their accusation was weakened; and that they spoke vain things of the truth, which could no longer harm one who had confessed his fault. 'Shut out, therefore, from the malice of accusation, they employed deceit, that they might rise up,' he says, 'against me and insult me, to goad me to some agitation; whose deceit, seeing it, I as one deaf heard not.' Consider the force of the saying. He did not say 'because I pretended not to hear what they said,' but he said 'I heard not'—both that by the intention of his mind he shut out the voice of the speaker, and that he did not open his mouth, like one dumb.

Blessed is he who can have such virtue, that when provoked he is not angered, when stirred he is unwilling to avenge himself. The enemies do this, to provoke us to wrath; they curse, that we may curse; they accuse, that we may hurl back the charge; they revile, that they may rouse us to a return of insult. Whence Peter excellently set down concerning the Lord Jesus in his epistle, that 'when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.'

To his likeness and image the righteous man, desiring to fashion the ordinances of his own life, when accused is silent, when injured forgives, when provoked feigns not to notice and opens not his mouth, that he may imitate him who 'as a lamb was led to the slaughter and opened not his mouth,' and who, when he might have had something to retort, chose rather to be silent than to speak. For the Lord Jesus himself, truly, when he was accused, was silent, and when he was struck, struck not in return. Indeed, when struck he answered: 'If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you smite me?' See how, as one truly weak and as one who could not avenge himself, he spoke with a kind of childlike feeling.

So therefore you too, if you have wherewith to refute the one who accuses, will be better off keeping silent, lest by a return of refutation you betray your own agitation; for it is better to overlook an injury than, when you refute, to avenge it. Good is the dumb man who knows not how to speak evil, from whose mouth a charge knows not how to come forth. This is the dumb man who is truly blessed, who while he is silent speaks within himself: 'The Lord gives me a tongue of learning, that I may know when it behooves me to speak a word.' Such things Zechariah spoke within himself, when he had been struck dumb; and truly, because it had not profited him to speak, he was struck dumb lest he speak, and that he might speak he was heard by Christ.

Indeed, he wrote that Christ would hear, and he received back the voice which Christ granted, and Christ added the grace which he had not before, that he might prophesy of him to whose commands he had not before believed. Why do I speak of the Lord of all the powers, when even the woman Susanna—not troubled by the weakness of her sex—uttered her voice in those very things by which she knew herself condemned to the peril of death? She was accused and was silent, she was led to death and covered herself with silence, that she might not lay bare her shame. Yet within herself she spoke to God, who heard her the more as she was silent—she who, had she wished to speak, perhaps would not have been heard. And you too, therefore, who have purposed to make satisfaction to the Lord your God for your debts, cleanse yourself before him alone in your inner heart; behold him who can wash away sins.

He helps you who thinks you ought to be reproved. So when David was being cursed, and his commander Abishai wished to avenge the wrong done to him, David said to him: 'Let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him, that the Lord may see my humiliation and repay me good for this cursing.' You see, then, that you are helped by those who revile you, so that the Lord may hear you and remit your sin. For since you yourself ought to be your own accuser, to heap up your own disgraces and offer your very self to punishment, how can you desire to deny the charges laid against you? Repentance seeks patience, and patience softens great offences. How can you be angry with others when you yourself are guilty before your own conscience? How can you be roused to indignation when you ought rather to be an object of pity?

He who is reproved—and, what is more, reproved by his own self—ought to heal his own wounds, not to wound another. No one heals himself by wounding another. 'Physician, heal yourself.' If you are a physician, how much more, being guilty, ought you first to heal yourself! You confess your own sin, yet you set yourself up as physician over another's; even if what you throw back at him be true, it is not the time for it; for to the sinner God has said: 'Why do you declare my righteous statutes?' You have usurped to yourself the right to arraign by the law, you who yourself have stood against the law. Why do you waste the time for tears? Why, in contending, do you hear or speak idle words, when it is written for you: 'You shall not accept an idle report,' since you have read in the Gospel that for every idle word judgment must be undergone?

Even if another speaks, be silent; even if another reviles, stop your ear. David by keeping silence overcame his adversaries, and because he became as a dumb man he recovered his voice, for, turned to the Lord, he spoke saying: 'For in you, O Lord, have I hoped; you will hear me, O Lord my God. For I said, Let not my enemies ever exult over me.' Mark each point. David kept silence, his enemies spoke, they provoked him that he too might say something. They said, 'Let us hear your voice'; but within himself he spoke in silence. What need is there that those should hear it to whom it can do no good? 'In you, O Lord, have I hoped; to you alone do I speak; hear me, you who are able to hear.'

'From you I have ever asked that my enemies may not at any time exult over me, because, though I have sinned, you remit sin; though I have fallen, you raise up again—that those who rejoice over others' sins may have no ground to exult.' For we who have sinned the more have gained the more, since your grace makes men more blessed than our own innocence does. We have this same weight of meaning also in the book of the prophet Micah: 'Rejoice not over me, my enemy, because I have fallen; for I shall rise again.' The fall of weakness is not grievous, if there be not also the will's deliberate purpose of not rising from it. Have the will to rise: present is he who can make you rise again.

David therefore said in his heart, asking that he might be heard by the Lord and that his enemies might not exult over him, asking also that he might persevere in the purpose of his conversion, lest, while the steps of his resolve—as it were the feet of his soul—were being shaken, his adversaries might speak proud and boastful words against him, as those do who long to insult. Yet, even though he be moved as a man, he says that he is ready for the scourges, that he may by punishment at least atone for his error. Even if the Lord's scourges should cease, he records that he is nonetheless scourged by his own grief, so that fault may find nothing to condemn which a good confession has forestalled. This, then, is what he says:

'And while my feet were being moved, they spoke great things against me'—because they are so quick to the mockery of insult that at the very shaking of my feet they had their boastfulness ready. Or certainly thus: while my feet were being moved, supposing that I was falling, they spoke things already proud and boastful. Yet because he himself in the later verses said that his feet were almost moved, lest any scruple arise from this, consider that here we are taught the disposition of repentance, while there the notion of his error is excluded—that the riches and the more prosperous success of the wicked ought not to move us. Now this manner of expression is found thus in the divine Scriptures. For so also elsewhere:

'When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, we became like those that are comforted'—although the holy man wishes himself to be approved not in the display of words, but in the power of the Spirit. The sense, therefore, must always be looked to by us, which sense even the frequent translation from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Latin, is wont to weaken. And so, against all the foregoing, a fair remedy is this: that he is ready for the scourges and offers himself to the Lord, that he may bear whatever scourges have pleased God. I read indeed that holy David chose a kind of scourge which he might bear with equanimity; but he chose it because the necessity of choosing one of three conditions was laid upon him.

But where no command is laid upon him, the servant of God is ready for all things, whether he undergo bodily sickness, or flight from the face of the enemy, or the death of his sons—whom he is not afraid to send ahead, because he can receive them back undismayed. For he knows that, if here he be punished with a temporal penalty, he may lighten in the future the punishment of everlasting affliction. He asks, therefore, that his petition may be received and that he himself may be chastened, so that he may be received; for the Lord chastens every son whom he receives. If you would see your own servant confessing his own sins and of his own accord offering himself to punishment, you would be moved, you would forgive: and do you despair of the Lord's compassion?

The judge himself, who in very many cases is not permitted to refrain from the sword because he is bound by the laws, can nevertheless grant a remission of penalties; and do you still tremble as to what you should ask of the Lord of the laws and the author of mercy, to whom his will is law and the right of pardoning is his—provided that you ask for your own sins to be pardoned to you, and do not consider your own honors or blush before your friends, lest you seem to have bowed your dignity? The friend of God, the prophet of God, a king chosen by God himself and anointed to kingship, offered himself willingly to the scourges and did not blush; and do you blush?

This shame will not greatly avail you when you come to the judgment of God; rather you will repent of this bashfulness when, set in the sight not only of men but also of angels and of all the heavenly powers, you begin not to deny your own sins. How will you excuse yourself, when you have committed so great things? You will plead the weakness of your condition, because no one is without sin. It will be answered to you: 'You ought then to have done penance; I had given a remedy—why did you refuse it?' You will weave in your shame, that you blushed for your honors. He will say: 'If you blushed for me before your friends, I too will blush for you before my Father who is in heaven.' Learn that it is true which is written, that there is a shame which brings sin.

David set his grief before his own sight, that he might never forget it; David himself proclaimed his own iniquity; David thought about his sin, not about his wealth; David did not blush to recount his own sins, lest he should blush for them when set in my judgment: and will you blush? Job my servant would not be today at rest if he had blushed before those three kings his friends; nor would David himself, if he had blushed to confess his own faults. Therefore, because he did not blush to lay open his sins to me, neither will I blush to unlock to him my secrets.

And because each of them did not blush to place the price of his deeds in my power, to commit himself to my judgment and will, neither will I blush concerning such servants, so that I should call them friends who have been zealous to do my will. And therefore, since they before were in mourning, now are in consolation; you, because you are in delights, now shall be in torments. A great chasm is fixed between you, so that neither can the grace given to them pass over to you, nor your penalty pass over to them. Do you hear, then, what David says? Hear it, while it is permitted you to correct and amend; if here you amend, there you shall rest. Let not the sweet things of the world and the pleasant things of this age delight you; they are wont to vomit up bitter gall.

Not pleasant things did he seek who was set in the kingdom, who chose the death of the saints rather than the life of the wicked. 'My enemies,' he says, 'live and are strengthened over me, and they are multiplied who hate me unjustly; those who repay me evil for good detracted from me, because I followed after righteousness.' But how much more illustrious was he who died daily, that he might make his people live, and offered his body to the wounds of death, as he himself says, 'in deaths often'! For an honorable death is the redemption of life, and the strengthening even of a dishonored or unharmed life; but the issue of death is in the hand of life. And therefore the apostle preferred to die daily, that he might prove the merit of his life; for it is written: 'Praise not a man in his life.'

For those who live, die; those who die, shall rise again. Nearer therefore to salvation is he who dies that he may rise, than he who lives that he may die. And who is it that dies daily, except he who carries about the death of the Lord Jesus in his own flesh, that all his sins may die in him? But the enemies of David were strengthened and multiplied in this age; yet there is no fit strengthening except that of him who is strengthened in Christ. In short, those are strengthened in the world who hate the just man unjustly; therefore not a just hatred, but an unjust one, since they hated unjustly. But mark the distinction. In the later verses he says, 'they who hate me without cause'; here he has, 'they who hate me unjustly.' But there it is from the person of Christ, here from his own person;

where he speaks from the person of Christ, he is hated without cause; where from his own person, unjustly. For a man can be invulnerable to some one wound—say, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity—yet lie open to other wounds; but in Christ there could be no cause by which he could receive the wound of any sin, being immune from guilt, whole from offence, and unstained by any vice. There are, however, those who think that both psalms are run through from the person of Christ, who was making satisfaction to the Father for our sins. Here, then, he was saying that he was assailed against righteousness, there against grace. And he well adds, to prove that he was unjustly assailed: 'because I followed after righteousness.'

How great is the force of this word in the addition of a single syllable, that he should say he 'followed after' (subsecutum) righteousness, not merely 'followed' (secutum) it! For he who follows close after is nearer than he who merely follows, and one nearly equal than one unequal; and the succession of an heir is called more than a mere accession. And yet, although he follows close after righteousness, he thinks it to be not of his own virtue but of heavenly grace, if he be not forsaken by Christ; and on that account he prays the more earnestly, saying: 'Forsake me not, O Lord; my God, depart not from me'—that is: men have forsaken me, my friends have assailed him whom they loved, my neighbors have not drawn near.