Works (CSEL) 16 part 29/34

piety, I say, is the tribunal of the just, the harbor of the needy, the refuge of the wretched, the pardon of sinners. He who has understanding is himself truly pious; for he understands the slipperiness of human frailty and quickly forgives one who errs. He understands the fellowship of nature and common usage given to us all, and therefore pays to the poor as a debt, does not deny it as though not owed. He understands that calamities come by turns, and therefore meets, as it were, those shipwrecked in this world with a kind of harbor of his humanity. This is perfect in men, this is full praise in God. Rightly did Solomon too, following his father's teaching, ask understanding of the Lord, saying: 'I am a humble child, and I know not my going out and my coming in.'

'And Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people, which Thou hast chosen, a great people, like the sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude. And Thou shalt give Thy servant prudence to hear and to judge Thy people with justice, and to understand between good and evil.' Whence it pleased the Lord, because he asked not for himself length of life nor abundance of royal riches, but wisdom to understand the judgments and the righteous decrees of the Lord; and therefore he governed so great a people with a peaceful reign, because he did not usurp, as Adam did, to know the difference of good and evil, but prayed for the grace of understanding it from Christ. For what it is divine to know, this must be merited from the Lord your God that you may know it. Had Adam too asked, as David asked,

he would by no means have fallen into those inextricable snares of error by which his whole inheritance is strangled. And therefore he died, and — what is graver — by the death of sin, because he usurped knowing before he had received the understanding by which he might be made alive. Understanding, therefore, gives life, like the Spirit, because understanding itself is the grace of the Spirit; and therefore the Holy Spirit works understanding as His own gift. 'And understanding is good to all who practice it'; by which we are taught that we ought not only to grasp with the mind, but also to carry out in deeds that which we understand. XIX. THE LETTER QOPH. Here begins the letter Qoph, the nineteenth, whose interpretation is 'conclusion,' and, as we find elsewhere, 'behold.' The letter differs, the sense agrees.

For he who is shut in ought to look about himself and not make light of the cause of his danger, especially when the crisis is deadly. Each one is shut in when his inward parts or inner throat swell up, when, the passage of the breath being blocked, the exchanges of breathing in and out are constricted. A woman is shut in when there is a prolapse of the womb, by which the seat of the chest itself is pressed; whence grave straits arise, and unless that chamber for receiving the seed is recalled to its proper place, it is wont to shut out life. So too one who is anguished in spirit and harassed by certain impending adversities is said to be shut in, by straits of mind no less than of body. For greater are the heats and fevers of souls than of bodies.

The man shut in, then, by the swelling of his inward parts seeks a physician, that he may be able to drive off the danger and loosen what is constricted. The physician, coming, tries everything, examines the inward parts. And you too, shut in by the fervor of your soul, look upon yourself with the inner eye. The force of the disease presses, the guilty conscience burns, the mass of sins weighs down, straits cut off the perception of the mind: know yourself, and seek the medicine of prayer; ask that there come that Physician who descended from heaven, who especially seeks out the sick, as He Himself says: 'The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are ill.' Have you wounds? Do not delay; with Him there is no postponement of healing. Have you sores? Do not fear; He is wont to heal with a word, not with the knife.

Look, then, with those eyes with which David sought and obtained help. 'I lifted up,' he says, 'my eyes to the hills; I sought whence help might come to me, and I found it nowhere but from the Lord.' For He who founded the world watches over the dwellers of the world. Look therefore, and always look, because the eyes of the just are ever toward the Lord. This too Jeremiah counsels you in his Lamentations, under this very letter, saying to Jerusalem: 'Arise and be wakeful in the night at the beginning of thy watch; pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up thy hands to the Lord for the souls of thy little ones who faint with hunger in the squares of all the streets.'

Does he not openly show the straits of the enclosure and counsel that, by the intent of the heart, in which is the gaze of the better eye, you should provide for yourself a saving remedy? In short, again below, under this letter, he says: 'For our time has drawn near, our days are filled, our end has come; lighter were they who pursued us than the eagles of the sky; in the mountains they were kindled, in the desert he lay in wait for us.' He demonstrated the supreme enclosure, and that there is no remedy except in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can bring medicine to the desperate. And as though pointing to Him, he says: 'The spirit before our face, Christ the Lord, was seized in our destruction; in His shadow we shall live among the nations'; and below:

'Thou shalt drink,' he says, 'and shalt be made still more drunken. He has visited thy iniquities, He has uncovered thy sins.' How briefly he expressed His coming and His passion and the remission of all sins! How openly he declared the future gathering of the nations! Hence that apostolic word: 'For blindness in part has befallen Israel, until the fullness of the nations should enter in, and so all Israel should be saved.' Come, Lord Jesus, but now no longer in shadow, but in the sun of righteousness. If the shadow profited, if the shadow of Thy passion sheltered, if the shadow of Thy body saved, how much shall the open brightness of Thy power be able to bestow! Through the shadow leprosy was cured; through the shadow too of that woman who touched the hem of the Lord's garment the flow of blood was stayed; through the shadow we have seen Thee.

When Thou hadst no comeliness nor beauty, Thy shadow was the flesh, which cooled the heats of our desires, which quenched the fires of our lusts, which tempered the burnings of avarice and of diverse passions. And what shall I say of the shadow of the Lord, when even the shadow of the apostles healed? For when Peter came, each one would offer his sick, whom the shadow of the passing apostle restored to health. Hear that the flesh of the Lord was a shadow: 'Behold, the Lord sits upon a light cloud and shall come into Egypt.' And David says: 'Under the shadow of Thy wings protect me.' He became, therefore, emptied, a shadow for us, whom the sun of iniquity had scorched. We saw Him, therefore, in shadow, while as yet the first faith was advancing.

But now He already illumines the whole world, and yet still we see Him through the shadow of His body, which is the Church, not yet face to face; for the eyes of the body cannot receive the splendor of the Godhead. This shadow too daily protects the whole circle of the earth. The enclosure, therefore, profited; for 'God shut up all things in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.' But let us now consider what is to be said in the conclusion, and whence the beginning must be made. 'I cried with my whole heart: hear me, O Lord; I will seek out Thy righteous decrees,' says David. When we suffer bodily afflictions, we are wont to cry out, that we may be able to call others to our defense. The holy prophet was hard pressed as the persecutors drew near to him.

Saul first, hostile, pursued him with an armed host; afterward his parricide son threatened him; not content with the exile of the fugitive, he sought to snatch away his father's life. But he could suffer less from those whom he saw present than from those whom he did not see. For the saints have a wrestling not only against flesh and blood, but also against the principalities and powers of this world and the rulers of darkness, who, after the manner of robbers, lie in wait for human affections in the night of this age. At that hour, therefore, holy David, when he saw grave assaults being made against him, cried out with his whole heart. For against the devil one must use not greatness of voice, but greatness of heart.

There is, however, also a voice of the heart, for there is also a voice of blood, which reaches to God; for God says: 'The voice of thy brother's blood cries to Me.' Our heart, therefore, cries not by the sound of the body, but by the sublimity of thoughts and the harmony of virtues. Great is the cry of faith; for in the Spirit of adoption we cry: 'Abba, Father,' and the very Spirit of God cries within us. Great is the voice of righteousness, great that of chastity, through which even the dead speak, and not only speak, but, like Abel, even cry out. But indeed the soul of the unjust does not cry even while living, because it is dead to God. There is nothing in it sublime, nothing magnificent such as theirs whose 'sound went out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.'

With a slender voice Moses spoke, and was heard more than all; daily he is heard in the Church. By those alone, that is, the Jews, he is not heard, who hear with the ear but do not hear. To another prophet it is said: 'Lift up thy voice with strength.' Hannah, however, did not cry in her heart as Moses did, but spoke, perhaps because she was asking for sons, that is, for things good indeed, but private, not public; she did not cry out, but because she was asking from the Lord, because she was offering Him whatever she might receive, she spoke to God; but Moses cried out, because he prayed not for himself, but for the whole people. Whence it was said to him by the Lord: 'Why dost thou cry out?'

He cried out with pious affection and profound feeling, and it resounded in heaven, asking by miracles things worthy of the heavenly powers, that he might change the elements of the world. In short, let us also review the sequence of the place itself. Pharaoh pressed on, and surrounded by countless chariots of the Egyptians, he bore down upon the Hebrews; on this side the encircling enemy, on that the intervening sea had shut in the people of God. There was no confidence in arms, no hope in strength. Only a pitiable complaint murmured, that it would have been more convenient for them to undergo the hard burdens of slavery in Egypt than to be consumed by a bitter death in the desert — a complaint bringing no help, but bringing very much offense.

Moses, therefore, stood, sorrowful, anxious, distressed by the dangers and complaints of the people, awaiting the faithfulness of the heavenly promises, and silently he pondered within himself by what aid the Lord, unmindful of the injury but mindful of grace, might at last come to their help. The Lord says to him: 'Why dost thou cry out to Me? I do not hear his sound, I recognize his voice; I read his silence, I detect his cry in his works.' The people cried out and was not heard; Moses was silent and was heard. It was not said to the people: 'Why dost thou cry out to Me?' For the people did not cry out to God, who cried out things unjust and unworthy of men; but to Moses it was said: 'Why dost thou cry out to Me?', that is: 'Thou alone criest out to Me who hopest in Me.'

'Thou alone criest out to Me who stirrest up My power; thou alone criest out to Me who awaitest that My name be proclaimed through the whole earth.' Moses, therefore, cried out in his heart, and every wise man cries out in his heart. In short, Wisdom calls together to the mixing-bowl with most exalted preaching, saying: 'Leave folly and seek wisdom.' Of great sublimity, of a great voice, is this preaching which promises wisdom to the foolish. And the Lord Jesus cried out: 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.' And truly He cried out great things, who called men to the kingdom of heaven, to that venerable drink by which the stream of eternal life is poured in. And you too, when you pray, pray for great things; that is, pray for things which are eternal, not perishable.

Pray for things divine and heavenly, that you may be as the angels in heaven. Do not pray for money, because it is rust; do not pray for gold, because it is metal; do not pray for possession, because it is earth; such a prayer does not reach the Lord. God does not hear except what He judges worthy of His benefits, but He hears a pious voice, full of devotion and grace. Not only, therefore, must one cry out in the heart, but one must cry out with the whole heart. For just as bodily one cries out well when one cries out with the whole mouth, so spiritually one must cry out with the whole heart, if we wish to offer great things and to obtain from the Lord what we ask. This voice the Lord demanded of the people, which the people did not know; and therefore the Lord said: 'This people honors Me with their lips,

but their heart is far from Me.' He, therefore, who has drawn near with the heart is himself heard by the Lord; the heart, then, must cry first, that the word may be able to be heard. But it is not enough to cry out to the Lord; one must also seek out His righteous decrees. And he seeks out the righteous decrees who ascribes to the divine providence that which is just in all creatures and especially in rational living beings. Whence comes the turtledove's zeal for chastity, which, having lost its mate, knows not to indulge in union — a thing which men cannot keep? Whence in very many living creatures so sober a care of preserving their offspring that, when they recognize the gift of conception, they think union is not to be repeated, lest there be an adulterous mingling of the seed already received?

The phoenix knows nothing of bodily unions, knows not the enticements of lust, but rises again from its own pyre, a bird surviving itself, itself both the heir of its own body and the offspring of its own ashes. The eagle, lest it nurture degenerate young, weighs them with diligent examination, and suspends its still tender offspring on its loving talon and offers them to the rays of the sun, so that, if perchance they bend their eyes from the force of the brightness, it lets them go as degenerate, loosening its talon to the sheer drop; but if indeed they can vindicate the vigor of their nature with a steadfast gaze against the rays of the sun, it carries back the offspring of worthy stock with a welcome burden. 'The birds of the sky neither sow nor reap, and God feeds them,' because they keep the righteous decrees of the Lord, claiming nothing as their own.

but are content to relieve their hunger with the fruit-bearing tree, which by the Lord's judgment was given as common food. From these, therefore, we recognize how the supports of divine providence would not be lacking to men, if we were willing to keep the righteousness of God. Would He who feeds the birds not feed men, whom He made to His own image and likeness? Are we not of more worth than they? By the prerogative of nature we are of more worth, but inferior by the diminution of grace and the injustice of transgression. Verse two: 'I cried out to Thee, save me, and I shall keep Thy testimonies.'

He repeats that he cried out to God, and promises himself a keeper of the heavenly statutes, which the Lord God sanctioned with heaven and earth as witnesses, so that transgressors might be convicted by the testimonies of the elements. How shall they look upon the heaven that is conscious of their transgression? How shall they expect fruits from the earth, which knows the ungrateful? See, therefore, how no small thing the prophet promises. In crying out, a faithful and ready affection is expressed; in keeping the testimonies, the virtue of continence, the diligence of obedience is declared. Third verse: 'I anticipated in ripeness and cried out; in Thy words I have hoped.' The Greek says 'en aoria,' which is 'before the hour, before the time.' He, therefore, who beseeches the Lord does not wait, as it were, for especially prescribed times.

not knowing that in supplications to the Lord there is any particular time, but he is always in them. Whether we eat or drink, let us proclaim Christ, let us ask Christ, let us think on Christ, let us speak of Christ; in our heart always, always in our mouth, let Christ be. But perhaps you will say: How is it written: 'There is a time for all things, and a time for every matter under heaven'? But the Lord Jesus is above heaven, circumscribed by no time. Let the Arian perfidy shut its mouth: a time, it says, for every matter under heaven; how much more is time under God, not above God! The generation from the Father has no time; for the work is not before its author, but the author is above the beginning of the work. Perhaps they will object that He said: 'My time is not yet come,' and again He said:

'Father, the hour has come' — but this hour is the hour of the passion. There is also a time of the virginal conception: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb,' because the virgin conceived under time and therefore at a prescribed age. He who prays, therefore, let him always pray, and if he does not always pray, let him always have ready the affection of one praying. The Lord Jesus passed the night in prayer, not needing the help of prayer, but establishing for you an example of imitation. He, praying for you, passed the night, that you might learn how to pray for yourself. Render back to Him, then, what He offered for you. Hear the prophet saying above: 'At midnight I rose to confess to Thee.'

And do you also rise, even at midnight, if you cannot keep watch always the whole night through, so that, while you pray in the night, the splendor of the true Sun may shine into your breast; for every soul that thinks on Christ is always in the light, the day shines if Christ breathes upon you. But because the following little verse expressed clearly the time of prayer, in this verse I think the time of actions and works is to be understood rather than of prayer. He outruns the ripeness of his age, whoever, placed in adolescence, puts on the gravity of an old man and governs his youthful years with a certain seasoned continence, and composes the fervor of his blooming body with a maturity of character, gray-haired as it were.

For what praise can he have, if he turn a body worn out with pleasures and now cold with the frost of old age to the late duties of devotion, his vigor already grown sluggish? There is no crown except where there has been the struggle of a harder contest, which few can attain, nor can all who have entered the stadium reach it. He is praiseworthy who has the contest within himself before the contest, who restrains his flesh, struggling against him, by the command of the mind, chastens it with sparing frugality and reduces it to servitude, lest with unbridled liberty it run riot and, untamed, fervent with cupidity, break the reins of the governing soul.

He is, therefore, in his hour an old man, if he exercise the duties of sober maturity; he is a young man running before his hour, if with the weight of an old man he suppress the incitements of pleasures and extinguish the enticements of seething cupidity; for 'the Lord is good to those who endure.' Jeremiah says also: 'It is good for a man who has borne the heavy yoke from his youth; he shall sit solitary and be silent, because he has lifted up the yoke of the word.' For whoever has borne the yoke from his youth and, willingly subjecting his more tender neck to the reins of mature governance,

shall sit solitary, withdrawn from the clamor of importunate passions, and quiet shall be silent — he for whom there is no longer any need to wrangle with the body or contend with diverse cupidities, because the soul that seeks God has lifted up the yoke of the word, the soul that has made captive to itself all the delights of youth. Whence perhaps also that word of the Lord: 'He shall not cry out nor contend, nor shall anyone hear His voice in the streets,' we can take not only of the silence of His defense and the contempt of acquittal and the endurance of His passion, but also of the suppression of all bodily pleasures. Whence elsewhere too it is written, that 'He did no sin.' Rightly, therefore, He was silent, set in the peril of death, who feared not the sting of death.

'In Thy words,' he says, 'I have hoped.' The Greek says 'ephēlpisa,' which is to grow ever in hoping and to add hope to hope. The just man always hopes, and even when set in adversities and afflicted with frequent troubles, he knows not how to despair, but the graver the things he has endured, the more he hopes and takes the increase of hoping, according to that oracle: 'Comfort, comfort My people, says the Lord. Priests, speak righteousness into the heart of Jerusalem; comfort her, because her dejection is filled and her sin is loosed, because she has received from the Lord's hand double for her sins.' How quickly he said that the fullness of dejection is the loosing of sin, and he repeated the cause of consolation, that the token of reconciliation is the greater,

the more numerous the penalty was than the fault. Job, burdened with so many bitternesses of misfortunes, heaped up hope with pious affection, asserting that the cause of the impious is distinct from that of the pious, whose light shall be extinguished; but light, according to Solomon, is always for the just. Whence it is gathered that the just man always hopes in the words of God and adds hope to hope; which Isaiah expressed more clearly, saying: 'Expect tribulation upon tribulation, hope upon hope.' He was speaking to those weaned and led away from the breasts, that is, to those who had passed through the first nourishments of infancy, now fit for stronger food.

Let it be an example, that Isaac the patriarch, when weaned, became so great that, though still set amid the rudiments of his earliest age, he nonetheless in no way shuddered at the sword of the parent about to strike. Abraham had several sons; he weaned no other, but only in this one is he read to have made a great feast. And well did the Scripture say 'a great feast,' because he was a type of Him on whom the hearts of the saints always feast. There follows the fourth verse: 'My eyes anticipated the morning, to meditate on Thy words.' Above he said: 'I anticipated en aōria,' that is, 'before the hours, before the time'; here he says 'in the morning,' signifying another time of praying and of singing psalms to the Lord, so that the former is according to what he says: 'At midnight I rose,' but this is according to that: 'I anticipated the rising sun.'

For it is a grievous thing if, while you lie idle in your bed, the ray of the rising sun should surprise you with the reproach of shameless sloth, and the bright light should strike your sleepy eyes, still dulled by drowsiness. The whole span of so great a time accuses us, passed in an idle night without the offering of any devotion or the oblation of a spiritual sacrifice. Do you not know, O man, that you owe to God each day the firstfruits of your heart and your voice? Your harvest is daily, your fruit is daily. Go forth, then, to meet the rising of the sun, that the dawn may find you already prepared, lest the first brightness of day rouse your eyes still drooping with damp slumber. 'Upon my bed in the night I sought him whom my soul loveth,' says the Church.

For this reason she was counted worthy to find him, for this reason to merit his grace, because she sought him even upon her bed. She sought him in the night. Therefore, having obtained the fullness of him, she speaks afterward to the Bridegroom: 'Come, my brother, let us go forth into the field, let us lodge in the villages; let us get up early to the vineyards.' Do you perceive how the Bride invites the Word of God to come into the lands and take away the sins of the world? This field was formerly a desert, foul with the brambles of our transgressions, bristling with thorns. There was a stronghold in which the exiled Adam bound the heirs of his posterity in perpetual banishment. To that place, then, the Church leads Christ, that she may set Adam free.

Then, when the exiles were set free, the field of this world began to have fitting cultivators, and that which was before barren was made fruitful by the planting of the eternal vine. Yet even so she does not range abroad gladly amid spiritual shoots, but calls Christ to those vineyards where there are men singing psalms and praying, where night and day a harmless fruit endures. 'There,' she says, 'I will give thee my breasts. The mandrakes gave forth their fragrance.' Many distinguish a certain sex among mandrakes, holding that there are both males and females, but that the females are of a heavy odor. She signifies, then, the Gentiles, who formerly stank, since they were the weaker, unmanned by a certain feebleness of unbelief, but who began to bear fruit of good fragrance after they believed at the coming of the Lord.

We read also that holy Rachel received mandrakes from her sister Leah, that she might allow her to sleep that night with holy Jacob. Reuben the firstborn had brought the mandrakes to his mother Leah, who, with her bleary eyes, received the figure of the Synagogue, because she could not see the grace of Christ, blunted as she was by the dim gaze of a feeble mind. By this it is declared that the fruits which the Synagogue had formerly received from the firstborn Son of God she yielded up to the Church. But because Leah, having obtained the company of that night, bore an heir of her posterity, the mystery is fulfilled, since, when the apostles believed, the remnant of the Jews were saved through the election of grace. Whence the Church says: 'New things and old, my brother, I have kept for thee. Who shall give thee to me as a brother,

sucking the breasts of my mother? Finding thee outside, I will kiss thee, and indeed they will not despise me. I will take thee and bring thee into my mother's house, and into the secret chamber of her who conceived me; thou shalt teach me.' Having therefore the instruction of the new and old Scriptures, and feeling herself not contemptible, she holds the Word not only in prayers in the secret of her heart, but kisses him also, as it were with certain kisses of grace, with the voices of the chanting choir. And so, made pleasing by the fragrances of pomegranates—that is, of diverse and innumerable fruits, and especially of faith—and supported by the riches of wisdom and glory and eternal life, which are on the left hand and the right of the Bridegroom, through the holy souls of the praising congregations she rouses Christ with their applause, saying:

'By your applause, O daughters of Jerusalem, why do you stir up and why do you awaken love until it shall please.' Whence the daughters of Jerusalem marvel at her—namely the holy souls of the patriarchs and prophets and the righteous of old, or the heavenly powers—saying: 'Who is this that cometh up made white, leaning upon her brother?' That is: with such solemnities the Church shines, and she who was before dark by day now glistens and gleams in the nights. The Lord himself also, delighted by so great a gift of those singing psalms, says: 'Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a signet upon thine arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy hard as hell; its wings are wings of fiery flame; many waters cannot quench

love, neither shall the floods overwhelm it.' He who hears so great a devotion of the Church judges the peoples now to be fit, who in our heart and arm may be able to bear his seal. For the Father, God, sealed him, and he who received his testimony has set his seal that God is true; and therefore those who work for the food that endures unto eternal life are sealed unto the image and likeness of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. As God, then, is true, do you too seal truth in your understanding and your work, that your mouth may not speak a lie, that your hands may not do the works of men which belong to this deceitful world, but those which are of God: that they may give bountifully to the poor, lift up the weak, honor the dead with the burial of the tomb.