Let them probe all the secrets of natural causes, and with the stubborn vigour of their studies search out the very inward workings of the heavenly motions; yet in that very effort of their toil they shall fail, refuted by spiritual teachings. For those who teach that all things are driven by chance movements shall hear from us that the God of eternal power abides not in things of chance, but is the Creator of the world, of an essence infinite even as His power is infinite; that He is from no one, but all things are from Him; that He governs and holds together all these very things. And whoever shall proclaim that the soul perishes together with the body shall hear that the soul is not earthly, but sprung from the breath of God and mingled with the elements of the body; and that death is not annihilation, but its departure from the body.
But whoever shall deny the resurrection of the flesh will learn that its restoration will not be difficult for Him to whom the first beginning was easy. Moreover, whoever takes from God the care of human conduct will come to know God as the Judge of an eternal kingdom; and that man was not created merely that he might exist—for of what use was man's mere existence to God?—but that, brought forth into the knowledge of God, he might hope for his own advancement from the knowledge of his Maker. And now, if the heretic would destroy the faith, he shall come to know that the Son of God has ever existed, separated from the Father by no interval of time; that He Himself is the Word, the Power, the Wisdom of God; that He was the Maker of the world, and the Fashioner of man;
that He washed away the first crimes of the world by the flood; that He gave the Law to Moses; that He was in the prophets and through them foretold those mighty mysteries of His incarnation and His passion; that He, rising again in the body, brought to the perishable flesh the brightness of spiritual glory, and absorbed into the nature of His divinity the beginnings of earthly corruption. Those who search out these matters shall therefore fail; and through a man instructed in the teaching of God and raising on high the humility of his heart, these heralds of the divine working shall be proclaimed, so that this excellence of God may be praised by the very confession of those who hear it. And therefore it follows thus: 'They have searched out iniquities; they have failed in their searching.'
'Man shall draw near, and a deep heart, and God shall be exalted.' For when the failure of the searchers is known, and a man of a deep heart draws near, the magnificence of the divine goodness is recognized; but how great a progress of spiritual teaching shall then be made! For who will not magnify God whom he has come to know as the Maker of this world? Who will not fear Him whom he knows to be Judge? Who will not wish to be reborn unto innocence, when the remission of sin is granted by the sacrament of a new birth? Who, once reborn, will not cease from sin and wish to remain in the innocence of a little child, when he knows that of such is the kingdom of heaven?
This our profession weakens the wits of the searchers; these are the darts of our teaching, which, being the arrows of the little ones through the beginning of the regenerate, wound the foolish disputations and ridiculous doctrines concerning God. Against these the gainsaying of a profane tongue cannot prevail; against the faith of all our disputations and exhortations there is both the trembling of those who refuse and the fear of those who hear. For when the works of God are proclaimed, then His deeds shall begin to be understood; then in these shall the just man rejoice; then shall all the upright in heart praise Him. And this very thing the psalm teaches thus: 'Man shall draw near, and a deep heart, and God shall be exalted. The arrows of the little ones have become their wounds, and their tongues have availed nothing against them.'
'All who saw them were troubled, and every man feared. And they declared the works of God, and understood His deeds. The just shall rejoice in the Lord, and shall hope in Him, and all the upright in heart shall be praised.' Against the wounding arrows of the little ones the tongue of the adversaries had nothing to say. And those who saw the little ones shooting are troubled and afraid, when they recognize themselves set in error, when they acknowledge the day of judgment and the recompense of the life lived in the body, when they hear the works of God and understand His deeds. In these lies the gladness of the saints; in these their most firm hope.
For these things those who are upright in heart praise God, knowing Him to be the Forgiver of sins, the Destroyer of death and the Vanquisher of the devil, the Judge of the age, the Bestower of eternity, our God and Lord, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. PSALM 64. Unto the end, a psalm of David. 'A hymn becometh Thee, O God, in Sion, and unto Thee shall a vow be paid in Jerusalem,' and the rest. Fittingly this psalm, which lies before us, has followed upon the former. For it too is 'unto the end,' and it announces the gathering of the nations who are to praise the Lord; and it too will confirm the faith of this our interpretation. And in its opening, according to his custom, the prophet lifts up his whole prayer unto God.
For with us every matter and every discourse must be entered upon with the confession of God. But the prophet, knowing that many, through the diversity of their pursuits, linger over vain things, requires of us a special and proper honour due to God, saying: 'A hymn becometh Thee, O God, in Sion.' Sion is indeed a mountain lying adjacent to Jerusalem; but this mountain and its name, and even the name of the city itself, we have always understood to be called the Church, which is the body of Christ; the Lord saying in the psalms: 'But I am appointed king by Him over Sion, His holy mountain.' And lest we should suppose Him established in the kingdom of this hill, it is said in the prophets and even in the Gospels: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh to thee.' And the Apostle:
'But that Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.' This hymn therefore befits God, that He may be innocent in the spiritual and ecclesiastical song of Sion, and sweet in the praises of God. But it condemns all kinds of superstitions that are outside the religion of God; for there are many set in the deepest abyss of error, who commend the perversity of their teaching by a certain probity of empty labour. For we see philosophers shivering with naked bodies; the magi even abstain from the very use of marriage; heretics live on the dry food of bread alone. But what, in the end, is the profit of this idle proposal? All this is empty and ridiculous, and, together with the very causes of its superstition, pitiable.
To God, then, must be vowed the contempt of the body, the guarding of chastity, the endurance of fasting. And therefore he says: 'And unto Thee shall a vow be paid in Jerusalem.' For only the vows of the Church's religion are profitable. When these shall be approved both by songs worthy of God and by zeal for the observance appointed in the Church, then shall we be worthy, on whose behalf the Holy Spirit may intercede with God; for the same Spirit both speaks and teaches through the prophet. And He Himself, according to the Apostle, intercedes for us with unutterable groanings; and therefore here it is said thus: 'Hear my prayer'—for it does not add 'mine,' that the person of a speaker might be understood. For although many, as though this were lacking, have added it, yet it does not stand in the authentic texts.
For the prophet speaks these things not of his own understanding, but under inspiration: 'Hear my prayer.' It follows that he should show whose prayer is to be heard, nor does he long defer our expectation; for he adds: 'unto Thee shall all flesh come.' Scripture designates the whole of the human race under the name of flesh, as in the Law: 'And God said, My spirit shall not remain in these men, for they are flesh'; and in the same: 'for all flesh had corrupted its way'; and in the prophet the Lord says: 'And I will pour out of My spirit upon all flesh'; and in the Gospel: 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.'
God, then, will hear the prayer of this human race, which was held fast by the vain doctrines of unhappy superstitions, when the precepts of the heathen imbued them all with a zeal for impiety, proclaiming God in wood and stone and metals, and placing the Maker of the world and the Parent of our soul within lifeless matter. This error, then, the nations confess, that the eloquence of philosophy detained them in error: knowing at last that their old faults and the crimes of their ancient impiety must be propitiated to God through Christ. For He, according to the Apostle, is our propitiation; for he says: 'whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood'; and again: 'He is the propitiation for our sins.'
All flesh, then, shall come to Him, saying: 'The words of the wicked have prevailed over us, and Thou wilt be propitious to our impieties.' But what, in the end, is the effect of this propitiation? Or what will it profit to have forsaken the heathen error and to have spurned the impious doctrine? And this too he did not conceal, saying: 'Blessed is he whom Thou hast chosen and taken up, that he may dwell in Thy courts.' All flesh indeed shall come, that is, we are gathered out of every kind of men; but blessed is whoever shall have been chosen. For many, according to the Gospel, are called, but few chosen. And the chosen are conspicuous in a wedding garment, resplendent with the pure and unspoiled body of a new birth.
And so election is not a matter of undiscerning judgment, but a distinction made from a choice based on merit. Blessed, then, is he whom God has chosen: blessed for this reason, that he is worthy of election. But it behooves us to know for what the blessed man was chosen; namely, for that which follows: 'he shall dwell in Thy tabernacles.' All perfection of the good is the rest of the heavenly dwelling. The Lord testifies that there are many mansions in heaven, but He prays the Father that the apostles may abide where He Himself is, saying: 'Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will that where I am, there they also may be with Me.' Out of the many mansions, then, He shares with His apostles that which is proper to Himself. The prophet knows how great a blessedness it is to be in the tabernacles of God, saying in another place:
'My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.' But the hope of the heavenly goods is not on this account taken away, if not all shall be chosen for the co-dwelling of God. For many mansions are prepared for the differing dignity of the dwellers. But although the dignity be diverse—for star differeth from star in glory—yet however many, and however varied, shall be held worthy of the dwellings, they shall obtain the fruit of faith and the honour of heavenly glory. For after the blessedness of him who shall have been chosen to dwell in the tabernacles of God, this follows: 'We shall be filled with the good things of Thy house: holy is Thy temple, wonderful in righteousness.' With these good things of the house, then, they shall be filled, because the blessed man shall dwell in the tabernacles of God.
And indeed, for the present, we may estimate what the good things of the house are, namely the gifts of the Church which Christ has granted to it according to its manifold fruit, because this too, according to the Apostle, is the house of God: 'that thou mayest know,' he says, 'how thou oughtest to conduct thyself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.' This, then, has its thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and hundredfold fruit. With these good things of the house of God, then, the faith of believers shall be filled, which for the present is adorned with the distributions of gifts. As it is written: 'To one, therefore, is given the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healings; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.'
But there are also other full and perfect gifts of the house of God, by no means to be estimated by the natures of carnal senses. These the Apostle, caught up even to the third heaven, has known, and he proclaims them, saying: 'that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man, which God hath prepared for those who love Him.' With these gifts, therefore, of the house of God we shall be filled. And he teaches the merit for receiving these fruits, saying: 'Holy is Thy temple, wonderful in righteousness.' For the Apostle teaches that all the bodies of believers are the temple of God, saying: 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy.'
This temple, therefore, is the temple of God by holiness and by righteousness, that it may be filled with the good things of the house of God, that it may be wonderful in the works of righteousness and of faith. But it will be ready at hand to understand the house of God also as the very man taken up by the Son of God, because in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, and through the property of nature the Father dwells in Him; each one, then, being filled with His good things, that is, with virtue, glory, and eternity—each one, I say, who shall have kept himself a temple holy to God and wonderful in righteousness. And so this is the hope of all, that we may be filled with the good things of the house of God, that we may be His holy and wonderful temple.
Blessed indeed are they who have already been chosen by God to dwell in His tabernacles; but it is fitting that we hasten into the fellowship of this blessedness, attaining it by works and by prayers. For which reason it thus follows: 'Hear us, O God our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth and in the sea afar off.' This prayer is not suited to the Jew. And although this book be of the Law, yet the prophecy is not of one nation. For this hope is of all the ends of the earth; and wherever the temperate zone of this habitable world extends, Christ is the hope for all. Nay more, the islands of the inner and outer sea find their rest in the power of this Name. For He is the hope of all the ends of the earth and in the sea afar off.
But hope must not be presumed out of emptiness, lest it be rather a presumption of things uncertain than an expectation of things known. And so, why the hope of all should be in Him, he teaches in what follows, saying: 'preparing the mountains in Thy strength, girded with power, and troubling the depth of the sea, the sound of its waves.' This saying does not pertain to the nature of earthly mountains: for these are made firm, not prepared; but preparation is the beginning of a work yet to be done. Furthermore, the preparation of the mountains here mentioned lies in the girding of power and in strength: but all the earth was bidden to subsist out of nothing, and that thing needed no girding of power, since it depended upon the ease of His command.
But it is useful to know where in the Scriptures mention is made of mountains. For the prophet says: 'Hear, all ye peoples, and let the earth give heed, and all that dwell therein. And the Lord God shall be unto you for a testimony, the Lord God from His holy house. Wherefore, behold, the Lord shall come down from His place, and shall come down upon the high places of the earth, and shall grind the mountains beneath Him, and the valleys shall melt like wax before the face of fire. For the impiety of Jacob are all these things, and for the sins of the house of Israel.' And again: 'The earth was moved and trembled, and the foundations of the mountains were shaken and moved, because God was angry with them. Smoke went up in His anger, and fire shall blaze forth from His face, and coals were kindled by Him.'
'And He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under His feet.' And in what follows: 'He sent forth arrows and scattered them; and He multiplied lightnings and troubled them.' And in these things, as far as the reading teaches, the Holy Spirit shows through the prophet the descent of the Lord from heaven, the fear of the earth, the trembling of the mountains, because the Lord was angry with them, smoke having risen from His anger, fire thereafter to be kindled from His countenance. In the smoke that rises, the matter is of past time; but in the fire to be kindled, the signification of the future is contained. Then, lest anything should be thought to have been said of a dull and immovable nature, the arrows sent forth scatter these mountains, and the multiplied lightnings trouble them.
In this name of mountains, therefore, we ought to understand every lofty power which, exalting and lifting itself up against God, has subjected itself to the wrath of God. God the Word, then, coming down, girding with power the man He had taken to Himself, first cast down these peaks of the mountains, that is, ground down the defiant loftiness of the devil and his own, whom, through this power of the first crushing, He prepared and kept for the punishment of the eternal judgment. But the prophet preserved this same account, saying: 'Smoke went up from His anger, and fire shall blaze from His countenance.' For smoke, for the present, wraps them who are to burn in the fire; and for this reason in the present psalm it is thus written: 'preparing the mountains in Thy strength, girded with power.'
The girding of power is fitted to that body which was in need of it. For virtue is not girded, but in the virtue of God the man whom the Lord took to Himself is girded with power. But it must be considered what follows the preparation of the mountains: 'who troubleth the depth of the sea, the sound of its waves.' He troubles not the sea, but the depth of the sea; nor its waves, but the sound of its waves. Now the sea, as the prophetic word teaches, is named for the world, as he says: 'The Lord shall bring on a terrible and great sword against the dragon, the crooked serpent, and shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.' And again: 'This great and spacious sea; there shall the dragon rest, whom Thou hast formed to make sport of him.' Or indeed that more absolute passage: 'I am come into the depth of the sea.'
'And the tempest hath overwhelmed me.' The mountains, therefore, that is, all the adverse and supereminent powers, are prepared for the punishment of judgment, and the foundations of the sea are troubled. For in the confidence of these hostile powers the world stood fast, and these lay hidden in the invisible depths of this world. But the sound of the waves is troubled together with the depth of the sea. For when the devil is troubled, all the ministries of his terror are troubled; and he himself, in whom the nations feared, the sound of the adverse powers, trembles. Let us recall the murmurs of the soothsayers and the disordered ravings of the frenzied, and how sometimes, with the sense of the hearers confounded, some uncertain and unknowable thing of the idols sounded late, and how the whole world at last resounded with the profane chant of ceremonies;
but now, when Christ the Lord is proclaimed, all these things are silent, confuted, and trembling, since these gods of the temples and of the nations are subjected to punishment by the power of the faithful; when they are tormented by the words of believers, are torn, are burned, and, being natures invisible and incomprehensible to us, are held fast, punished, and driven away by the word; when the soothsayers are silent, when the temples are dumb. Through these things, therefore, they are now prepared for judgment. And what does this preparation profit? It has indeed profited: 'the nations shall be troubled and shall fear': seeing, that is, their own gods dumb, and, at the mere laying on of our hands, groaning with the cries of their punishment. But after the troubling of the nations, others shall fear; for the troubling shall bring in fear. Shall all who are troubled also fear?
Not indeed all who are troubled shall also fear. Who, then, shall fear? Those who dwell in the borders. Scripture did not add, as it is wont, 'the borders of the earth'; for it was not here speaking of the borders of the earth. Hence, then, the reasoning of the discourse does not permit us to suppose that this was added. For it says: 'those who dwell in the borders.' Shall not even the nations which are within the borders also fear, and shall only the outermost parts of the lands fear God, while the rest, which are held in the midst, are strangers to His fear? But a border is not the thing itself, but the outermost part of a thing. And the outermost is that in which the thing itself ceases. Who, then, dwell in the borders?
Namely, those who, being set in the flesh, neither yet act wholly according to the flesh, nor yet altogether hold the end of sin through the habit of ceasing from sins, but, willing to cease yet not utterly ceasing, and still dwelling at the border—that is, at a certain nearest defection of sin, of the flesh—are neither absent from the flesh nor wholly exercise the inward things of the flesh. But the Apostle, though he be in the body, is a pilgrim away from the body. The Apostle, though he be in life, yet daily dies; but now it is no longer he himself that lives, rather Christ lives in him.
He has passed beyond all those borders of an ambiguous will, and dwells even outside the borders of the body and of sin by being a pilgrim away from the body while he is in the body, and by dying daily while he lives, and by living now no longer himself in himself, but Christ. But the trembling of those who fear arises from the uncertainty of an ambiguous dwelling, while they still fear as they dwell at the borders, not yet wholly passing beyond that which they already inhabit, and yet, by the will to cease, they already inhabit the border of ceasing. But let us see why those who dwell at the borders shall fear, and whence fear rushes upon them. Nor is this hidden; for it follows: 'and they shall fear who dwell at the borders, because of Thy signs.' All fear, then, is from the signs. But what shall these signs be? 'The outgoings of the morning, and in the evening Thou shalt make glad.'
'Thou hast visited the earth and made it drunk; Thou hast greatly enriched it. The river of God is filled with water; Thou hast prepared their food, for so is Thy preparation.' From these signs, therefore, fear has arisen. For in each single one of them there is a great sign. For after the preparations of the mountains in the girding of power, and the troubling of the depth of the sea and the sound of its waves, the progress of the Church into the delights of the morning and evening hymns is the greatest sign of the mercy of God. The day is begun in the prayers of God; the day is closed with the hymns of God, according to what is said: 'Let my praise be sweet to Him'; and again: 'The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.' There follows, then, this next sign also:
'Thou hast visited the earth and made it drunk; Thou hast greatly enriched it.' This earth which we use is not enriched, but out of the abundance of its fruits it enriches. The word, therefore, will not suit that earth, which both lacks the perception of being enriched and whose office it is to enrich. But God has visited the earth, that is, the birth of the human race; and it, being visited by God, grows rich with the multiplied gifts of graces, the Apostle saying: 'in all things ye are enriched in Him, in all utterance and in all knowledge.' For with these good things we are filled, and, drinking without ceasing, we daily draw the gift of heavenly goods, full of divine plenty and drunken. For the enriching has been shown to be that which above was called drunkenness.
And the fruit of this enriching and drunkenness is to be observed. And what, in the end, this is, is not passed over in silence: 'The river of God is filled with water; Thou hast prepared their food, for so is Thy preparation.' And concerning the river there is no room for doubt. For the prophet says: 'the rushing of the river maketh glad the city of God.' And the Lord Himself in the Gospels says: 'whoever shall drink of the water that I shall give him, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water springing up unto life eternal.' And again: 'He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers.' But this He spoke of the Holy Spirit, whom they that believed in Him were to receive. This river of God, therefore, is filled with water.
For we are inundated with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and into us from that fount of life the river of God, filled with water, is poured. We have also food prepared. And what is this food? That, surely, in which we are prepared for the fellowship of God through communion of the holy body, to be thereafter placed in communion of the holy body. For this the present psalm signifies, saying: 'Thou hast prepared their food, for so is Thy preparation': because by that food, though for the present we are saved, yet for the hereafter we are prepared. But the prophet keeps his custom, so as to distinguish the times of which he speaks. For the former discourse was as of the past; but the things which were yet to be done he recorded, by the faith and knowledge of what was to be done, as though already done.
But that he might teach all these things to be of the future time, he says: 'Make its rivulets drunk, multiply its generations: in its droppings it shall rejoice, when it springs up.' All this is the speech of one praying, and of one entreating that God may fulfill those things which have been called to mind. But the earth, once visited, is made drunk; and how now are its rivulets made drunk? Yet we ought to remember that if anyone shall drink of the Lord's water, rivers shall flow from his belly: therefore there is need of drinking the water, that rivers may flow. But we ourselves are made drunk when we receive the Holy Spirit, who is named a river. Hence, because from us the diverse rivulets of graces flow forth, the prophet prays that the Lord may make these same rivulets drunk:
that, these being made drunk and drenched with the gift of the divine bounty, our generations may be multiplied—the good earth, namely, according to the evangelical comparison, receiving the seed of the word, may grow rich with the thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and hundredfold fruit. But there is for us, being reborn through the sacrament of baptism, the greatest joy, when we perceive in ourselves certain beginnings of the Holy Spirit, when the understanding of the sacraments comes upon us, the knowledge of prophecy, the word of wisdom, the firmness of hope, the gifts of healings, and dominion over the demons subjected to us. For these penetrate us like droppings, which, once begun little by little, overflow with manifold fruit. In these droppings, therefore, when it springs up, the earth shall rejoice. But the droppings are multiplied, that they may become rivulets;
and the rivulets are made drunk, that they may become rivers. But it follows that the prophet should confirm all our expectation and teach what the preparation of the mountains, the troubling of the depth of the sea, the visitation of the earth and its drunkenness, and the fullness of the river shall have as their consummation. He therefore teaches in what follows, saying: 'Thou wilt bless, O Lord, the crown of the year of Thy loving-kindness, and Thy fields shall be filled with fatness. The borders of the desert shall grow fat, and the hills shall be girded with exultation. The rams of the sheep are clothed, and the valleys shall abound with corn; yea, they shall cry out and shall sing a hymn.' The year of the loving-kindness of God we have learned from the prophetic and apostolic teachings. For it was said in the person of the Lord:
'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, therefore He hath anointed Me; He hath sent Me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim to the captives remission and to the blind sight, to call the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of recompense': without doubt He declares the year of that eternal and blessed age. For this is the year of the Lord's goodness, in which those tireless times of a kindly recompense shall be inaugurated. Of this year of God, therefore, the crown shall be blessed, the most joyful and most sweet fruit of the earth that has been visited and made drunk. For this is the victory of Christ, the corruption of our bodies being driven away and the power of death destroyed. This crown of our sanctified earth is blessed with a flower—the Lord glorious in the choir and encompassing throng of His saints.