On the Trinity & Psalm Commentary 1 part 32/55

Or when we labor at the affairs of the world and the transactions of trafficking, then we make the house of God a house of trafficking, so that what ought to have been the seat of prayer becomes either a lair of robbers or a house of trafficking. Therefore the Lord is moved by this zeal, to cast out from the temple men of this kind. Men approved and acceptable to God have used this zeal too. For Phinehas also, on account of this zeal, merited the judgment of eternal peace. For when the children of Israel had committed fornication, and he had been roused by zeal for God unto their punishment, then the Lord said: 'Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the indignation of my soul is at rest: because he was zealous with my zeal.' That holy prophet Elijah, caught up in the body into a heavenly habitation, says:

'With zeal I have been zealous, because the children of Israel have forsaken you and have slain your prophets: and I am left alone.' And so this zeal holds the prophet too. For he sees the irreligious complaints over loss, the impious weepings of griefs, the profane forgetting of God's law: and therefore those who do these things are his enemies. For religious men can have no right of friendship with such people, when they must be shunned and detested with the hatred due to the irreligious. For this very thing is taught in another psalm, when it is said: 'Those who hate you, O Lord, I have hated, and over your enemies I pined away: with a perfect hatred I hated them.' To Abraham too the Lord said: 'He who curses you shall be cursed. And I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.'

If the enemies of Abraham are enemies of God, what ought we to be toward those whom we see to be enemies of God? He then brings the reason why he hates those who have forgotten God's words; for they are not empty, not earthly, not slight. For he says: 'Your word is exceedingly fiery: and your servant has loved it.' The Latin translation does not unfold the proper meaning of this word. For what with us is 'fiery,' in Greek is written pepyrōmenon. And pepyrōmenon means that which has been purged, as it were smelted, by fire. And whatever metals are smelted by fire contain in themselves no foreign and useless dross;

All that remains in them is true and perfect and purged of all contagion of faults, so that the word of God attests in itself the assurance of eternal goods. Hence is that which the Lord says in the gospels: 'One iota or one tittle shall not pass away from the law, until all these things be done.' For all God's words are true and are established neither idly nor uselessly; but, beyond all ambiguity of superfluous emptiness, they are made fiery, and fiery vehemently, lest anything be thought to be there which is not perfect and proper. These things therefore his servant loves. He not only does these things, but also loves them, because the work of love surpasses the work of obedience. For obedience alone is for the most part a matter of fear;

For the rest, love proceeds from nothing but the will of a devoted mind. Then he says: 'I am young and despised; yet I have not forgotten thy justifications.' The prophet indeed speaks these words in his own person, yet they befit also the people of our own time. And to what extent it may be believed that David said this of himself is made plainly clear. For Samuel the prophet was commanded by God to come to the house of Jesse, that he might anoint one of his sons as king. When he had arrived there, he bade all the sons of Jesse to be present. He then saw the eldest by birth, fair of appearance, eminent in bearing and stature; but he is thus warned by the divine answer: 'Look not upon his beauty and his stature, for man does not see as God sees. For man looks upon the face, but God upon the heart.'

The second is present, and the third is present, and all are present whom Jesse then had at hand; but none of those present came forth who might please. Yet since the prophet Samuel knew that He who had bidden him to be present was no liar, and understood from those who were present that none of them was beloved by God, he says to Jesse: 'Hast thou yet another son?' He answered: 'I have a little one, whom I left with the flocks.' This one, then, was chosen by the Holy Spirit and anointed as king; and out of the younger and the despised he received the glory both of prophet and of king. But to the people, who are both younger and were formerly despised, these things thus pertain.

For he was in the vices of the world, he was in the night of ignorance, he was in the rustic and rough and ruinous dwelling of the earthly body. But this one does not forget the justifications of God; this one, while the elder people is reprobated, is chosen as the younger into the inheritance of the family. For Jacob bought the birthright of Esau, which the latter, as one about to die, esteemed as useless to himself. The younger people knows these first-fruits of its birth to be eternal, and not able to be cut off by death. These, therefore, it does not forget, which the elder both despaired of and sold. Finally, this very thing he teaches in the following verse: 'Thy justice is unto eternity, and thy law is truth.'

The people that came forth from Egypt did not consider these justices—the people for whom the sea grew dry, for whom the pillar of cloud served by day and the pillar of fire by night, for whom heaven supplied the morning manna, to whom twenty-seven kingdoms yielded, for whom the Jordan stood dry, for whom the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of the army and the circling of the ark of the covenant. The people that is younger knows these justices of God to be eternal. These, because it knew them to be eternal, it bought by faith; these the elder, because it believed itself about to die, sold through unbelief. For to the younger people the law is truth. For truly now by that people the circumcision of the heart is repeated through the laws unto life; truly it passes through the sea of this world into the land promised to it; truly the eternal one partakes of the heavenly manna.

Truly, being reborn, it rejoices in the Jordan; truly, being about to be delivered, it sacrifices the paschal lamb by its blood; truly it is purged in the unleavened bread of sincerity from the leaven of ancient malice: no longer is there for it the shadow of the law, but the truth. But this younger people knows that because of this confession of the truth it is here pressed by many persecutions. For hence come, throughout all the world, the blessed testimonies of the faithful confessors and the holy martyrdoms. Hence many have been despoiled of their patrimonies, scattered in exile, bound, beaten, burned, slain; but by the happy meditation of the commandments they have ever conquered by the virtue of a confirmed faith whatever assailed them. And therefore he says: 'Tribulation and anguish have found me: but thy commandments are my meditation.'

Though battles press on, though exiles be threatened, though proscriptions be applied, though deaths—I do not say be inflicted—but be renewed by the contrivances of tortures, yet this ought ever to be the voice of the faithful man: 'Tribulation and anguish have found me: but thy commandments are my meditation.' It is not fitting that the meditation of God's commandments should be away from us, either through preoccupation, or through the forgetfulness that creeps in with time. 10. Then he says: 'Thy testimonies are equity forever: give me understanding of them, and I shall live.' He is not content that the testimonies of God be equitable and be esteemed and awaited only for the present: he hopes for their equity forever, and through the aforesaid tribulations and anguishes he strives to obtain those things that are eternal.

That rich man of the Gospel, esteeming nothing to be eternal, exchanged his present blessedness for a punishing death. But Lazarus the poor man, awaiting the eternal testimonies of God, is both held in Abraham's bosom and exchanges the misery of a laborious life for the honor of blessed rest. The prophet prays for understanding of these things—a gift, namely, chief among the many gifts of spiritual graces—and through it he entreats that he may be quickened. For just as now for the present he meditates on the testimonies and commandments of God, so he awaits the eternal ones; and just as he lives with the life of the body, so he demands that through the understanding which he has received from God he may live unto eternal glory. 'I have cried with my whole heart, hear me, O Lord; I will seek thy justifications,' and the rest.

Among the many precepts of evangelical doctrine, the Lord requires of us silence in prayer, that we should pray in silence and from the secret of the heart, and that in it there be the office of the mind rather than of the voice: the secrets of our prayer are addressed to God. Because He is the inspector of secrets, let them be heard. This, then, seems contrary to the evangelical instructions—that the prophet says: 'I have cried with my whole heart, hear me, O Lord; I will seek thy justifications.' But the prophet knows that there ought rather to be a cry of the heart, not of the voice, and therefore he cries from the heart. Here there is no sound of raised voice nor bodily hearing, but the cry of faith, the cry of the mind, to be borne up to the throne of God not by the effort of the voice, but by the spirit of faith.

For he cries to God with the heart who asks for great things, who prays for heavenly things, who hopes for eternal things, who lives by the offices of an innocent fear. So also in the beginning of this world the just Abel, even when slain, speaks great things and cries out. For it is written: 'The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me.' The complaint of the saints is not lowly, nor is the prayer of the faithful subdued. Lofty is that which it asks, exalted is that which it awaits, resounding with a cry is that which it prays. Pharaoh pressed the people of God with hostile columns, the Red Sea barred their flight, Israel, shut in on every side, already seemed brought to death with the enemy at hand and the sea before them.

Amid these things Scripture testifies that there was no voice of Moses to God: he stood sorrowful, he stood silent, but resounding in the secret of his own heart and crying out by the faith of his prayer. For the divine voice testifies this, saying: 'And the Lord said to Moses: Why criest thou to me?' That man was silent; but the prayer of his faith is a cry to God. The Apostle too knows this to be the cry of the Spirit in faithful men, when he says: 'For the Spirit cries in our hearts: Abba, Father.' This cry of silence penetrates even to the ears of God, but ears that hear not the cry but the faith: the faith which asks not for earthly riches, which desires not vain and fleeting glory, which prays not for the joys of the body that are to die.

The Apostle writes his letters with small characters, and this common form of letters and strokes is his; yet he knows these letters of his to be great, saying: 'See with what letters I have written to you with my own hand,' comprising in such letters the greatness of the thoughts and the usefulness of the precepts. The prophet therefore cries out from his whole heart. And because he cries from the heart that he may be heard, he prays: and having been heard he asks this, that he may search out the justifications of God. He knows these to be hidden and concealed and overshadowed by the shadow of the law. These he desires to search out, for which there is need of many and great things—of the cry of the heart, of the merit of being heard, of the labor of inquiry.

But he who cried out that he might be heard and might search out the justifications of God, now cries out that he may be saved and may keep the testimonies of God. But with what an order of modesty he held to! He did not straightway dare to hope that his cry might avail for the salvation of his injustice. First it was that he should be worthy to be heard; first it was that he should search out the justifications. The hearing had to be merited, the inquiry had to be applied: and salvation was to be hoped for after these. But we demand salvation as though it were a debt, and as though it were necessary for God to grant this very thing. We pray to Him with our first prayers. And would that we spoke with the cry of the heart! Our lips alone, while our thought wanders abroad, murmur what they do not know, and the mind, occupied in other matters, does not follow the office of the body.

But the prophet, when after so many prayers offered before, he had prayed that he might be saved, teaches the recompense of that very salvation, saying: 'And I will keep thy commandments.' This is the warfare of our faith, to keep the commandments and, as it were in a most faithful secret place, to preserve this treasure of the precept deposited and entrusted to us. But he who cried out and professed that he would keep the testimonies of God—that is, the things written under witness of heaven and earth and the angels—added yet also the merit of obtaining salvation, saying: 'I prevented in immaturity and I cried; in thy words I have hoped.' He did not await the old age that is feeble from vices, nor did he choose the time of a cold age, its heats grown lukewarm through long use and luxury;

but he prevented all ripeness of age by faith and religion, conquering youth by continence and restraining his wanton years, and anticipating the ripeness of old age by the tranquillity of a modest and chaste youth. And the prophet's cry is that of one hoping in the words of God, not sometimes, but always. For there is no end of our hope, but it is ever extended toward heavenly things and proceeds unto the eternal promises of God. It holds no time empty, none idle. Finally, this follows: 'And my eyes prevented the dawn, that I might meditate on thy words.' He who had prevented the cry by his immaturity now prevents the very days by his meditations. He watches at dawn; he does not wait for the poured-in light to rouse eyes weighed down with sleep.

He watches, and awaits with prayers the very returning rising of the light: now occupied with the sayings of the prophets, now intent upon the hymns of the psalms, now busied with the deeds of the patriarchs and the saints, meditating on every word of God at every time and with constant diligence. Then follows: 'Hear my voice according to thy mercy, O Lord: quicken me according to thy judgment.' Let us learn modesty from the sayings of the prophet, that by the aforesaid cry of the heart, the inquiry after the justifications, the keeping of the testimonies of God, the continence of youth, and the vigils of the pre-dawn meditation:

and through all these, placing all hope in the mercy of God, he finally asks that his voice be heard according to mercy, and requests mercy according to the judgment of God. But we, if we fast once, think we have done enough; if we give something from the abundance of our household means to a needy person, we believe we have fulfilled justice: fasting either to please men or to relieve bodies wearied by food, and amid the very fasts pondering debaucheries, murders, injuries, hatreds; and giving some trifling thing—while we do not sustain the needy man knocking at our doors, or while we pursue the reputation of goodness through the vain and idle opinion of men—and yet we think it owed to us that we should be heard.

But the prophet hopes for everything from God, awaits everything from His mercy. In the works of goodness he is himself perfect in every way, but he does not think this enough for his salvation, unless according to the compassions and judgments of God he obtain mercy. But he is never idle, and there are never lacking those near him who harass and pursue him: his whole life, according to the faith of Scripture, was among snares. But now too, whoever wishes to please God must needs displease the ungodly. And therefore he says: 'The wicked who persecute me have drawn near; but they are made far from thy law.' This indeed is believed to be said of himself, whose life was assailed on every side. But he who in this psalm holds the order of human instruction,

arranged all things for our instruction, that we might know that those who become authors of injury to the faithful are far from the law of God. For as great as is the increase of injury against the saints, so great is the departure from the law of God. But we must beware lest at any time anger move us against the brethren, lest at any time envy goad us, lest at any time rivalry provoke us, so that we do against them anything irreligious and contemptuous; for when we assist in doing them injury, then we depart from the law of God. Then follows: 'Thou art near, O Lord, and all thy commandments are truth.' In another place we read: 'I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off, saith the Lord.'

God is not contained by bodily places, nor is the immensity of the divine power confined by boundaries or spaces. He is present everywhere, and He is wholly wherever He is: He is not in any place in part, but in all things He is wholly. The blessed Apostle, answering before the assembly the Athenians who were ridiculous in the emptiness of their philosophy, says: 'We seek God not remaining far from us: for in Him we live and move and are.' And the Spirit of God, according to the prophet, 'has filled the world.' And again: 'Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.' Nothing is empty of God, He lacks nothing. He is everywhere after the manner of the bodily soul, which, diffused through all the members, is absent from no single part whatsoever.

Even though there is a certain private and royal seat of it in the whole body, yet it is poured into the marrow, the fingers, the limbs. Now if some members of the body being corrupted must be cut away, when those same members, dead from vices, will no longer have their use, that which is putrid and perishable of the flesh will be cut away without detriment to the soul. For the very soul of our body is mingled with the sound and whole members; and when the same have become putrid and must be cut away, it does not follow. These things indeed are compared superfluously to the divine nature by way of likeness: for it is incomparable. Whatever is eternal does not admit the appearance of a figured truth, being the exception of an unbeginnable divinity.

But an example of this kind is fitted to our understanding, that through it, according to the authorities of the heavenly sayings, we might understand the incorporeal and immense God to be mingled with this circumscribed and corporeal world, but not to be present in the vicious and in those dead through their own works. Nay more, further still we pursue the understanding of divine and invisible things from the contemplation of corporeal things and their natures. We see the sun tarrying in a certain part of the heaven, according as its course lies: and surely it is extended everywhere, is present everywhere, and, as great as it is throughout all, so wherever it is it is poured in as great. But if it fall upon the closed windows of houses, its light indeed is at hand, but the things that are shut up will deny to themselves its light.

In all the works of our life, therefore, we ought to be circumspect and open toward God; first, that He may deign to pour His light into our hearts made free and open through innocence; then, that we may believe ourselves to act within the bosom of His divinity, and that He is not absent when we are angry, when we strike, when we despise, when we curse, when we are drunk, when we lust, when we neglect things divine and human—sinning with the greater insult to Him within whom we do these things. But to this there is added also that His commandments are truth. There is nothing there doubtful, nothing uncertain; the whole is perfected by the completeness of truth: which are neglected with the greater peril, the more they are established by the precept of truth.

But to what extent the prophet had known this, he subjoined, saying: 'From the beginning I have known concerning thy testimonies, that thou hast founded them forever.' Although the prophet says this of himself, himself knowing the law of God from the beginning, yet they befit every age, which from the founding of the world has been instructed by the teachings of God.

For he who remembers the law of will appointed to Adam, who has learned the very creation of Eve, who has heard the malediction of the serpent, who has read of the tree of life closed off by the Cherubim with a flaming and turning sword, who knows the crying blood of slain Abel, who reckons the number of punishment both in Cain and in Lamech, who has scrutinized Enoch translated, Noah preserved, the blessing of Shem and Japheth and the curse of Ham, who understands Melchizedek the priest, Abraham chosen, Isaac promised, Jacob preferred, Joseph sold, Judah sanctified, Moses nourished and instructed and, after the vast mysteries of the law brought forth, dead in the word of God, and Joshua the divider of the promised land and author of the repeated circumcision—such a one will assuredly be able to say with the voice of the prophet:

'From the beginning I have known concerning thy testimonies; that thou hast founded them forever.' For in the life and deeds of all the men mentioned above the hope of eternal goods is contained, and through them we are imbued unto the doctrine of the evangelical preaching. But the things that have been founded are prepared for the building of the future house.

For we are built, according to the blessed Paul, upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, in whom the testimonies of God are founded forever, where shall be raised up that heavenly and royal city, the holy Jerusalem, which is the dwelling of the frequenting angels and of the first-born elect, whose foundations are living stones and precious gems living, rising, and reigning in Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. 'Behold my humility and deliver me: because I have not forgotten thy law,' and the rest.

The holy prophet has indeed set before us many and great examples of his faith and confession throughout the whole psalm, through which he has constituted himself a pattern to others of believing, acting, understanding, being ignorant, hoping, and praying, consummating the evangelical man by the perfect observance of the law. And although he either does or testifies or hopes all things that are either pleasing to the divine will or set before human hope, yet he remembers in what kind of observance the head and sum of all the commandments consists, and knows what was required by his Lord even of those very apostles to whom the keys of heaven were to be entrusted.

For when they were at variance among themselves in opinions and zeal, and each one presumed to himself the primacy in human contention, while each either wished or demanded to be more excellent than the rest, the Lord, showing whence the reward of this merit and name was to be sought, said: 'Whoever wishes to be greater among you, let him become the least of all: for everyone who humbles himself shall be exalted, and he who exalts himself shall be humbled.' In humility, namely, He taught that all the names and rewards of faith are contained.

It is therefore most profitable, in obeying the divine precepts, to restrain within ourselves all the emptiness of human insolence and petulance, broken and worn down, and, reckoning both the magnificence and the compassion of God, to contain ourselves within the modesty of humility. On which account this holy man, both king and prophet, and reckoned according to the flesh in the origin of His seed as belonging to God and his Lord, amid these assaults of the world and battles of spiritual wickednesses, cries out with this sole and singular pursuit of his prayer to the Lord: 'Behold my humility and deliver me: because I have not forgotten thy law.' He prays not that the wealth of the kingdom, nor the spirit of prophecy, nor any other names of human boasting be discerned in himself, but humility.

For he does not resist with weapons of war those who pursue him, nor, impatient of human indignation, does he seize the time of his own vengeance and of his power and kingdom. But knowing this to be the sentence of the divine will: 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,' he does not forget the law of God in retaining humility, but prays that he be delivered for this reason—because he is humble—declaring the memory of the law of God to be in the preservation of humility.

Reserving therefore all things to the divine judgment, and demanding to be delivered for the merit of his humility—he who was moved in nothing against the ordinances of God, against human hatreds, against the endurance of present troubles, and decreed that nothing concerning these was now to be judged by himself in this world—he consequently added these words: 'Judge my judgment and redeem me; quicken me according to thy word.' It is the voice of a great and secure conscience to ask the judgment of one's own judgment, so that for that which has been decided by himself and is pleasing to himself, he may also desire the examination of the divine sentence.

Here he is not turned aside by the opinion of a corrupted sense in judging either others or himself, nor does he depart from the judgment of truth through anger or favor or hatred or love, not being ignorant of this evangelical commandment: 'For with what judgment you have judged, it shall be judged concerning you.' But not even he fears the judgment of his own judgment who says: 'For I judged myself to know nothing except Christ Jesus, and Him crucified.' In this security, then, of his own judgment, the prophet, awaiting the time of redemption, prays that he be redeemed and quickened on account of the words of God. For, sold under sin, we are freed through redemption and justification in the blood of the Lord. This the legislation, this all the spirit of prophecy, this the hope of the patriarchs, this the voices of the angels declare.

This throughout all the time of the world the word of the divine utterance has testified: on account of which he prays that he be redeemed and quickened. But these same utterances of God, as they announce life and redemption to pious hopes, so they do not leave them to the ungodly. For the prophet's expectation concerning sinners is soon followed by these words: 'Salvation is far from sinners, because they have not sought out thy justifications.' The ignorance of the will has no pardon, because under the faculty of knowledge, not-knowing is the guilt rather of a knowledge repudiated than of one not found. For salvation is therefore far from sinners, because they have not sought out the justifications of God, since indeed these remain consigned to letters for no other purpose than that they might flow down to the knowledge and understanding of all.

But the prophet, knowing that while salvation is far from sinners who do not seek out the judgments of God, yet the Lord is near to those who are of a right heart, according also to that saying of the Apostle: 'You who were far off, are made near,' lest he too, and salvation from him, be far off, seeks the knowledge of the justifications of God. He is not ignorant how great a mystery of our salvation is expressed in these things through certain notions of eternal prefigurations in present matters;

namely, in the Hebrew servant serving only six years, and after this same six-year period both the whole land to be left to rest and its fruits to be assigned even to the beasts; in the law of the jubilee also, that is, of the fiftieth year, through which, both the contracts of debtors being relaxed and all fields returning to the rights of their masters, if perchance any had sold them, a new and heavenly remission and reformation of all things is foretold. And because salvation is far from those who have not sought out these things, the prophet, wholly detained in seeking them out and contemplating in a mirror the justifications of the divine and eternal mercy, subjoined: 'Thy compassions are many, O Lord, exceedingly: quicken me according to thy judgments.'