Works (CSEL) 1 part 2/3

And therefore, since on the previous day our discourse was directed against the Jews—whom indeed the proofs of faith brought to this point, that Christ should be set upon a heavenly throne, which surely cannot befit a man—for it is not credible that any other than the Son of God sits at the right hand of God—surely no other than the Son of God is to be reckoned to sit at the right hand of the Father, all ambiguities removed. Again, since the Scripture has:

Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne—surely the same Son of God must be believed to have taken up flesh from Mary, in whom is the fruit of the prophetic womb, so that you may truly recognize the succession of his origin, and may not doubt that that Son of God, made afterward the son of man through the assumption of flesh, sits upon the heavenly throne. For Christ had no royal throne of this kind in this world, such that you should suppose another throne was promised to the seed of David—especially since the Lord himself said: My kingdom is not of this world. And so, hemmed in on every side, they divert thither the assaults of their faithlessness, asserting that it is incredible that God took up flesh; yet by what reasoning he could not have taken it up they cannot explain.

For I ask whether they reckon that flesh could not be taken up by God on grounds of impossibility or of injury. If of impossibility, then is anything impossible to God? For there is nothing that he willed to do and was unable to do. It remains, then, that he must be shown either to have willed or to have been unwilling. But what greater indication of will is there than what he himself said: I appeared openly to those who sought me not; I stretched out my hands to a people unbelieving and contradicting? If therefore he both willed and was able, do we suppose that he was unwilling on grounds of injury? And what injury does his divinity feel? For it is free from insult and is not subject to our passions; for the flesh could bring neither loss nor increase to the divinity.

Yet those who bring this objection—that the Son of God could not take up flesh—if they are Gentiles, how is it that they testify that their own gods, since they cannot deny they were men, were seen in human form? Or could their king, whom they set above all their gods, take on portentous shapes for the sake of love, while Christ could not take up the flesh of man, whom he made in his own image, and assume that most excellent work of his for the salvation of the world? And does it seem more becoming to them that the form of flesh was assumed for the sake of adultery of another's bed than for the redemption of all? But if a Jew brings this objection, how does he read:

Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted "God with us"? How does he read: Behold, it is I who was speaking, I am present? And how does he assert that he has read: Behold, like a panther and like a bear at a loss I will meet them? Could then the Son of God not take up flesh for the redemption of all, when they themselves cannot deny that, for the punishment of our sins, God put on a certain disposition of beastly cruelty—so that he who is by nature gracious and merciful, yet moved by the atrocity of our crimes, takes upon himself toward us a certain savagery of wild beasts?

But now, since I think enough has been answered to such great matters of the Jews both on the previous day and today, to you, most beloved brethren, the account of the prophetic deed must be rendered. For indeed, when this title of the psalm was first read—that Nathan came to David, when he had gone in to Bathsheba—we said that very many are offended by the course of this history, and therefore we undertook a threefold treatment of it; and I thought the division of the treatment should be made thus: that among the Gentiles the lapse of the human condition should not be denied, but the correction of the error should be established; among the Jews, however, that we should teach the holy David to have lapsed for this reason, lest the faithlessness of the Jews should halt further and should cease to believe him to be the Son of God whom they saw to have been subject, by the common condition, to sin; while Christians might be able to perceive the mysteries of the rising Church.

A threefold division therefore is made: the one according to nature, the second according to faith, the third according to grace. Weakness does not exclude from pardon, and faith excuses from guilt; while the sacraments long ago promised reconcile us also to the grace once pledged. David may have sinned, lest the whole world should go astray; he may have sinned for himself, that he might amend us all; lastly he may have sinned against his own body — for he who commits fornication sins against his own body — he may have sinned against his own body that he might be redeemed in the body of Christ. Behold, the man we thought could scarcely be defended we now see to be worthy of proclamation. For who is there who would not wish that the divine gifts within him be proclaimed rather than human works? For we judge, according to the Apostle, that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law.

Let David then be justified by faith, who through the law acknowledged his sin, yet by faith believed in the pardon of sin; let David be justified, because in his sin the mysteries of the Church that was to arise shone forth. Someone will say: for what reason did the chosen author of the Lord's lineage commit both adultery and murder? But I say something else: such a one had to be chosen to be the author of the Lord's body. For what is the Incarnation but the remission of sins? And therefore he could not be wholly without sin, that he might set forth the divine grace both by example and by proclamation. In short, by that same design Bathsheba and Tamar are reckoned among the authors of the Lord's lineage, of whom the one committed adultery, the other incest.

By that same design also Ahab and Jechoniah, as the evangelist Matthew has recorded, are numbered among the forefathers of Christ, so that He who was to redeem all men might begin His benefit from His own forefathers; and at the same time, lest He who subjected Himself even to the suffering of the body should seem to have sought the nobility of a spotless origin. For this is the vainglory of men, to seek another's glory and not their own; and yet even among men themselves the grace of virtue is greater than that of noble birth. At the same time an example had to be given, that all might understand that the disgraces of forefathers cannot be a dishonor to their descendants, since each one is able by the merit of his own virtue to wipe out the stain of his lineage.

You see how many and how grievously guilty men the genealogy of the Lord's generation embraces — from whose stock Christ was not ashamed to be born for your sake. And if you believe this, these are the gifts of the divine mercy toward you, and this is the mark of heavenly power; for sin abounded, that grace might superabound. David therefore was not exempted from guilt, that he might be chosen for grace. But now let us review the mysteries of this very history, and draw from the very fountains of the Scriptures; and that we may be able to look into the whole sequence of the mysteries, let us go back over the text of the history itself.

For thus indeed we recall it set down in the Book of Kings: that David, when he had seen Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, bathing, fell in love with her, and then commanded her to come to his house while the woman's husband was away. Not long after, her husband returned as a messenger of the war — a man truly devout and dutiful, who in time of war did not think he ought to enter his house, when he saw his comrades intent on the war and keeping watch not in domestic dwellings but in the tents of battle. Afterward he was recalled to the war by David's order, under this charge: that he should be set against the enemy warriors, so that by the man's death the king might have free opportunity of possessing the woman.

And here there is some shame for the sin and some abashment over the guilt, in that he sought a hiding-place for his transgression, and for the unjust killing did not claim authority for himself by the right of royal power, but rather sought to avoid the odium of it. I confess the guilt; but more bearable is that which is pressed down by shame than that which is proclaimed with insolence. Uriah, then, exposed to the warriors, died; but afterward those very men who had slain him were themselves destroyed, by David's command, when the city was stormed. This is the sequence of the history, in which one may behold profound mysteries. And since we have undertaken to deal with David not as one to be defended — for indeed he needs no help of mine — but as one to be excused, or rather to be proclaimed, lest I waver in so great a depth of mysteries, it is right that I use the words of him whose history I use.

Let me therefore use the prophetic responsory, saying: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inmost parts. For no one without the infusion of the Holy Spirit can behold such deep recesses of the divine mystery. Indeed, if so great a prophet asks that the gift of the Holy Spirit be poured into him, what ought I, a weak man, to do — especially since even the holy Apostle asks to be aided by the prayers of the people also, that a door may be opened to him for speaking the mystery of the word? Oh, that Christ would deign to open to me that door! Yet let us knock; for He is wont to hear those who knock, since He Himself has said: Knock, and it shall be opened to you. Oh, that He Himself would unbar Himself to me, since Christ is the Door.

He Himself is within, He Himself without; He Himself is the Way that leads, He Himself the Life to which we strive to come. Come then, Lord Jesus, and open to us Your fountains, that we may drink of the water which whoever drinks shall never thirst forever; or if we cannot yet draw from Your fountain, deign to grant that we may at least draw from the well, from which You promise drink to that Samaritan woman who still doubts. And You indeed promise to all from the fountain, but to those who doubt — as to that Samaritan woman — Your fountain is still a deep well. Let us too drink the water of the heavenly secrets; and since we have been counted worthy to reach Your fountain, let it be permitted us at least to behold the image of the heavenly mysteries.

And so, unless I am mistaken, by the prophet we shall understand the Holy Spirit, while by the adulteress we may reckon the various fornications of the synagogue. And therefore long beforehand we see revealed, out of the Holy Spirit and out of the family of the Jews — whose fathers were those from whom Christ came according to the flesh — that the Lord Jesus was to be begotten; who indeed, as a Jew, was born of an adulterous family, but, as the spotless One, of a virgin. The family of the Jews was under the law, as it were under a husband. The observance of the law had to be abolished, that truth and grace might be put in its place. We have one mystery. Receive also another — yet so that you remember that from the first conception of Bathsheba a little child was born who died, and that afterward Solomon was born:

the former a little child from a stolen conception, but the latter, Solomon, from the acknowledged profession of wedlock. It is clear, therefore, that by David is understood the prophet, by the prophet the prophetic people, of whom both the synagogue and that one who was first born; since he degenerated from his forefathers, being formed amid outrages and conceived through vices, the people of the Jews could not reach the age of resurrection, nor grow up into a perfect man, but failed in the slender smallness of their understanding and in a certain infancy of virtue.

But that other one, who was afterward conceived from a lawful union — the Christian people, that wise and peaceable one (for these are the meanings disclosed by the interpretation of Solomon's name) — reached the hoary age of a long-lived resurrection and that heavenly kingdom. Through the former people the law was dissolved; through the latter grace was restored. Receive also a third mystery. What the Hebrews call David, the Latins interpret as 'humbled.' But who is truly humbled save He who did not count it robbery to be equal to God, but, taking the form of a servant, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death?

This, then, is He who is signified by David: lofty by nature, but humbled through mercy; sublime in His divinity, but meek in His body. And so where He is humbled, there He is obedient. For from that source springs obedience, from which humility springs, and in that source it ends. For when He is said to have become obedient even unto death — death, however, not of His divinity but of His body — that obedience was surely not of His divinity but of His body, nor was that humility of His majesty but of His flesh. And so, as regards the assumption of the body, the apostolic reading has declared wherein the humility of Christ consisted:

But as regards the nature of His divinity, it was disclosed by the Gospel reading, which you followed with devout assent, when you heard the Son of God saying as it is read: I and the Father are one. For the Son and the Father are one in divinity, but the sacrament of the body and the eternity of the divinity are not one. Yet it was not the Apostle alone who said that the Lord was humbled, but He Himself also recorded that He was lowly, saying: Take My yoke upon you, for it is light, since I am meek and lowly in heart. And moreover it was marked not by interpretation alone, but also by plain designation, since it is written: I have found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him; and below: He shall say to Me, You are My Father; and: I will say to him, You are My son.

Therefore the David whom we were seeking we have found: a servant indeed in appearance, but the Lord in truth. This David, then, was walking about within his own house. And what house is this but surely Christ's, save that of which He says: In My Father's house are many mansions? Set, therefore, in that royal palace, He saw the human condition stripped bare, and, taking pity, fell in love with it. For it was as yet bare of virtues, since through the wiles of the serpent it had been stripped of the coverings of its own nature. For it does not seem likely that a woman should be stripped before the king's house, that a woman should bathe before the king's house, as though no other place more suitable for bathing could be found. It does not fit, it does not agree, it does not accord with faith: it is far from the truth, it is repugnant to sense.

Such a woman, so wanton, so brazen, the king could have shuddered at, not loved. Or could she, if not modest after a womanly fashion, not even have respected the king's gaze? Or before the king saw her, could not even his servants have kept her away? Therefore, if this cannot agree with faith, let us seek who this naked woman may be: namely, the human condition, stripped of all the garments of nature, lacking the mantle of immortality and despoiled of the veil of innocence. For he is naked who is stripped bare by sin and guilt. In fine, that first sinner of our race — and would that he had been the only one — before he sinned did not perceive that he was naked; after he sinned, he saw that he was naked, and therefore thought he must be covered with leaves, because he came to know that he was naked.

He became, then, naked to himself after he became guilty of sin. In him the whole human condition was stripped bare, subjected through the succession of nature not only to guilt but also to misery. So he perceived and saw himself naked. Whence such is our whole condition, that whoever has thought himself naked both sees and feels himself to be naked. In fine, he who covets riches is naked; he who despises them is wealthy. So much is each man's own perception his misery, and each man's own virtue free from injury. Therefore Christ first claimed the human condition for Himself in wedlock through the law, which afterward He repudiated. Whence He also says: What is the bill of your mother's divorce, by which I put her away? By this manner, then, Christ saw His own household naked, and loved it;

for Christ loves the holy soul. In fine, Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary; Christ loved His own Church, although she was naked, although as yet clothed with no adornment of virtues. In short, that we may know that the sequence of the Scriptures agrees with the design set forth, let us learn of the Church naked, let us learn of her seeking, hastening, and bathing herself before the house of Christ, when John was baptizing in the Jordan, saying: I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance, but He who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the people were being baptized unto repentance, the Church — now near to His house — was surely seeking Christ, that she might come to grace.

The Church therefore was seeking Christ in John, saying: Tell me Him whom my soul has loved — calling Him both the cause of her longing and the cause of her bathing, as you have it: I am dark and comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tent of Kedar, like the skin of Solomon. You have the reason why she is eager to bathe herself, because she records that she is dark. For, as it were to John questioning by what reason the great crowd thronging together was eager to be bathed, she answered, saying: I am dark and comely, O daughters of Jerusalem. Because she is dark, she desires to bathe; because she is comely, she does not fear to be seen naked. Do not look upon me, she says, because I am darkened, because the sun has not gazed upon me.

Therefore we are made dark when we are not seen by Christ, but when we are seen, we grow white. He, then, saw her — He to whom all things are naked and the hidden things of the breast cannot be concealed, since He is the searcher of heart and reins; to Him nothing is covered, nothing wrapped up. He saw His own Church naked, and as He saw her, He fell in love with her. He saw her naked and beloved, and, as a son of love, fell in love with her. See how He invites her, see how He calls her. Here are no reproaches of adultery, but the mysteries of chastity. You are wholly fair, He says, My neighbor, and there is no reproof in you. Come hither from Lebanon, My bride, come hither from Lebanon; you shall pass over and pass through from the beginning of faith. And rightly from the beginning of faith. Therefore where you have faith, you ought not to fear adultery;

for faith belongs to wedlock, deceit to adultery. But that she might be able to come from Lebanon, He first sent word beforehand, saying: Arise, come, My neighbor, My fair one, My dove, My perfect one. 'Neighbor,' surely by the longing of faith; 'fair,' by the beauty of virtue; 'dove,' by the grace of the Spirit. For the silvered wings of the dove signify that eternal power, and the dove's flight declared the presence of the Holy Spirit. Christ therefore calls her to Himself, that she may come, since she came already endowed with spiritual gifts, because, lo, He says, the winter is past, the rain is gone, it has departed; the flowers have appeared on the earth. See how the holy Church is invited.

The winter, He says, has departed — that she may not, being naked, dread the winter; not the winter of the season, but of weakness, which despoils the fertile field of the soul of every flower. For there is a winter, not of the earthly sun, there is a winter of the mind, when the chill steals into the soul, when the warmth of the spirit fades, when the vigor of perception is loosened, when excessive moisture overflows and weighs down the mind, when the inner sight grows dim. And therefore the Lord says: See that your flight be not in winter or on the sabbath. For it is good that the day of judgment or of death should come at the time when the soul's gentle mildness is in vigor, when the heavenly mystery shines with serene light, when our heart burns within us. For then Christ is present, as Ammaon and Cleopas testify in the Gospel, saying:

Was not our heart burning within us on the way, when He had opened to us the Scriptures? But the mind is in vigor when the flower too is seen on the earth. What is this flower of good fragrance but He who said: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys? Of whom it is also written in Isaiah: There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a branch shall ascend from the root, and a flower shall come forth from the branch. The root, surely, is the family of the Jews; the branch is Mary; the flower of Mary is Christ, who, when He shines forth in our earth and breathes fragrance in the field of the soul, or blossoms in His own Church, then we can neither fear the cold nor dread the rain, but await the day of judgment. And therefore the Church, that she might see this flower, hastened with all eagerness, as she herself testifies, saying:

By night on my bed I sought Him whom my soul loved; I sought Him and found Him not, I called Him and He did not answer me. I will arise therefore and go into the city, into the marketplace and the streets, and seek Him whom my soul has loved. I sought Him and found Him not. The watchmen who go about the city found me, they struck me and took my mantle from me. You see how she seeks Him whom she longs to find, so that she does not fear to be wounded. But these wounds are not to be dreaded, but to be desired, because they are the wounds of love, as she herself said: I am wounded with love. Good are the wounds of love. In fine, more profitable are the wounds of a friend than the voluntary kisses of an enemy. Rightly therefore is she naked.

Because she lost her mantle; or perhaps she is naked for this reason, that sometimes it is a mark of virtue not to have the breast covered, not to have the heart veiled. In fine, the veiled one — that is, the synagogue, which had a veil in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not unveiled, since in Christ it is done away — that veiled synagogue, I say, Christ looked down upon and spurned; whence even today a veil is laid over the heart of the Jews. But she who is turned with her whole mind to the Lord is naked and clear to view. For when anyone has turned to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away, that we, beholding the glory of God, may be able to see. In fine, elsewhere too to be naked is a token of virtue, since it is written: I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on?

I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? What tunic, then, she has put off and has not found how to put on, let us, if we can, disclose from the Scriptures. For there is a certain bodily tunic; there are certain veils woven of lusts; and therefore sometimes it is better to be naked in body than veiled in heart. Whence also Paul admonishes us that it is far better to be stripped than to be over-clothed, saying also elsewhere: Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed unto the knowledge according to the image of Him who created him. Therefore she who has been stripped and has her feet washed, and therefore she who has washed knows not how she can be defiled; for through grace she forgets what she had drawn in through nature.

Great, then, and righteous is this love of the woman bathing herself before David's palace. But she not only bathed, she also called, as we receive in the same book when holy Church says: Come, my brother, let us go out into the field, let us rest in the villages; let us rise early to the vineyards, let us see whether the vines have flowered. Therefore she not only bathes, but also provokes and invites Christ to come to her, saying: I will give you my breasts. And not only her own, but she also promises things new and old, as you have it: New and old, my brother, I have kept for you. And, as if impatient of love, she seeks the help of someone by whom Christ may be entreated to come. See her burning, see her longing. Who shall give you, she says, my brother, sucking the breasts of my mother?

And by what reason she seeks, by what grace she invites, and how she may be able to hold Him fast, she shows; and how she awaits Him as He lingers outside, she makes plain; and that He may enter her house, she implores, saying: Finding you outside, I will kiss you; I will take you and bring you into my mother's house and into the inner chamber of her who conceived me. You see how she is naked, who cannot have a covered inner chamber — the inner chamber, surely, of an undefiled nature, the inner chamber of an inmost conscience not marked by any rashness of vices. For the Church is an enclosed garden and a spotless, immaculate virginity, which therefore earns this grace from Christ, because she sought, desired, and found the word of God, keeping watch before the doors of wisdom, as she herself says:

Blessed is the man who hears me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, guarding the posts of my entrance; for my goings forth are the goings forth of life. Thus did Christ desire the beauty of His own Church and prepare to take her to Himself as wife. But because she was under the law — for under the law were Peter, John, and the rest of the apostolic band — He first thought we must be loosed from the hook of bodily observance.

For although the law is religious and just — as it is brought in under the person of Uriah, since he was so devout and chaste that, returning from war, he would not acknowledge his wife nor go in to her — yet when Uriah came to know the union of David, that is, of the humble husband, the Church, withdrawing from her union with the synagogue, was preparing a place for the marriage that was to come. Whence John also received the figure of the law, who, although he was of the fathers, announced that the ways of the Lord were to be prepared, and prophesied the union of the Church; and therefore he is brought in as slain, that he might show the failing of the lawful observance; for the law and the prophets were until John.

Therefore Uriah was now slain in the figure of the law, that the synagogue might be loosed from the snares of the law, since a woman who is under a husband is bound by the law to her husband while he lives; but if the husband is dead, she is loosed from the law of the husband. So while her husband lives she shall be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man; but if her husband is dead, she is freed from the law of the husband, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man. Therefore the human condition is no adulteress, which, although it was under the law, yet, the observance of the law being in a certain manner abolished, has been claimed into grace. But it was not Christ who abolished the observance of the law.

Whence Uriah did not slay David, but suffered himself to be slain by the warriors — that is, the rite of observance coming from the law was profaned through the incursion of the barbarians and the captivity of the Jews; this Christ suffered. In fine, Uriah is interpreted 'my light.' But what is the light of Christ save the law and the Gospel? — for if you believed Moses, you would believe Me also; for he wrote of Me — since the light of Christ went before in the law, whose grace afterward, in the Gospel, as in a sevenfold lamp filled all things of this world with the sevenfold Spirit. To this law, then, He took flesh and joined the Church to Himself. The light of which law the hostile people diminished, when they violated the holy things of the law.

The light of God therefore was diminished in the people of the Jews, because blindness in part befell Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved. There yet remains also a fourth mystery, which I beg you to receive with kindly ears, and to weigh our mind, not our words; for the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. Adultery was committed, murder was committed. This is what was said to the prophet: Take to yourself a rod of walnut. And elsewhere we read of a walnut staff, by which we understand a certain right and the summit of prophecy, which after the manner of a walnut is outwardly bitter in its husk, hard in the middle of its shell, but inwardly tender and fruitful.