The mortal condition, the earthly frame, the muddy substance, worn down toward the measures of life by the uncertain toil of death, consumed with penalties, subjected to the rottenness of dust—this nature is not able to grasp, it dreads to believe, what today it is compelled to confess. So great a grace of gifts, so great an abundance of things near at hand, so great a bestowal of favors, human frailty cannot conceive. This, I think, is that uncertainty which the prophet foresaw with the mind's gaze, when, struck with such great fear, and having heard this, thus agitated with trembling, he said: 'Lord, I have heard thy hearing, and was afraid; I considered thy works, and was terrified.' He feared the hearing—not because the servant then found his Lord to be his fellow-servant, and heard in part:
or because, contemplating the fabric of this world so harmonious to itself out of discordant elements, he was terrified; but because, considering God's such great tenderness toward himself, he was then struck through with the trembling and dread of wonder. 'I considered,' he says, 'thy works, and was terrified.' He was terrified that he was then adopted as a son, when he had lost the confidence of his servitude. Finally, that you may know the affection of this prayer which the Godhead today instils and pours into you, that the prophet then received it by hearing from heaven, and was in a manner loosed by dread of this gift, see thoroughly what he said again:
'I kept watch over myself,' he says, 'and my belly trembled at the voice of the prayer of my lips.' After he had felt so great a bounty of the divine gift, he kept watch over himself, lest again in paradise he should endure himself as an enemy, a foe, a robber: he becomes more vigilant, more careful a keeper of himself, who felt that, after the loss of so great a thing, he had found again the heavenly treasure, as Paul says: 'We carry this treasure in earthen vessels.' 'I kept watch over myself, and my belly trembled.' By the belly the prophet names the inward parts of the heart, because as the belly is fed and filled with food, so the heart with perceptions: 'and my belly trembled at the voice of the prayer of my lips.'
If the understanding of the heart had poured forth the voice to the mouth, and the words were owed to the lips, why is it about to exhort his own vows, his own desires from this? He was terrified because he was speaking not by the prompting of his own heart, but by the utterance of the divine Spirit. Hear Paul saying: 'God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father'; and since, when he transmitted this heard word to the inward parts, he marveled that he had merited so much, and the whole inner man of him was in dread, he fitly added: 'And trembling entered into my bones,' because the very bowels of the prophet were shaken, 'and beneath me,' he says, 'my strength was troubled.' What is 'beneath me'?
Because one and the same man, now again lifted up by grace, lay beneath by his former nature, and earthly strength could not sustain the heavenly power. Mount Sion already smoked when God descended upon the mount to give the Law: what would flesh do, when God descended into flesh? The Father came to bestow the grace of the flesh, because man could not bear God, nor the servant the Lord. And because he is faithful in his words who said, 'Open thy mouth, and I will fill it'; open now your mouths, that he may fill them with such a prayer, with such a cry. Where are they who distrust God's promise? Behold how quickly the confession of faith is rewarded;
as soon as thou hast confessed God to be Father of his only Son, thou thyself art adopted as a son of God the Father, that thou mightest be heir of heaven, thou who wast held an exile of paradise and of earth. And therefore thou callest with confidence: 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' For once thou hadst a father who dissolved thee into mud, who led thee and dragged thee to the bars of hell. Let him know nothing of earth, let him be ignorant of the love of the flesh, let him not seek a father of dust, let him permit no vice at all in himself, who seeks again from God the Father his heavenly nature; that he who believes himself a son of God may in deed, life, character, and honesty answer to so great a lineage, lest, descending again to earthly things, he move toward the very injury of so great a Begetter. 'Hallowed be thy name.'
If the name of Christ gives sight to the blind, running to the lame, health to those worn with various weakness, life to the dead, and hallows thee thyself, O man, and the whole creation, how dost thou pray and demand the holiness of that very name? Because thou art called a Christian from Christ, therefore thou dost supplicate that the prerogative of so great a name be strengthened by the merits following after in thee. 'Thy kingdom come.' He commands devotion, he exacts desires, he himself requires vows, who holds in his own power the life of his coming. He is a faithful soldier who thirsts for the presence of the king whom he loves, and desires and covets so many triumphs of the kingdom. But here thou askest that the one who is to reign may come to thee and in thee—he in whom the devil held a citadel, death an empire, and hell long wielded power.
Let us pray therefore, beloved, that Christ may ever reign in his soldier, that the soldier may ever triumph in his King. 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.' Blessed is that day which joins, unites, and equals the will of earthly things with the heavenly, so that among unequal substances there may become one and the same will. This is faithful, unshaken peace and concord, persevering grace, since the household of the one Lord, set through diverse wills, is found one and the same also in mind. 'Give us this day our daily bread.' After the heavenly kingdom, who would ask for temporal bread? But 'daily' bread.
And thence he wills us to ask, in the sacrament of his body, the bread of viaticum, whence from this we may come to the perpetual day and to Christ's very table; so that whence we here have taken a taste, thence we may receive the fullness of food and every satiety. 'And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' He who so asks, and does not release debts, accuses himself even by that for which he prays; who asks that only so much be given him, so much remitted, as he himself remits, and grants at his own pleasure, thus invites God to a covenant: as much as he himself shall have furnished to another, so much let him too demand and require to be furnished to himself. Now debts are to be remitted, brethren, not of money only, but of all cases, faults, crimes—whatever a man can incur.
In these matters, when another has offended against thee, forgive; he faithfully seeks pardon for his own sin who gladly pardons the one who sins against him. 'And lead us not into temptation.' This we are compelled to ask in many ways, brethren, lest frailty, having dared too much and rashly presuming upon itself, gathering none of its own strength, should ill-guarded succumb in the conflict; and then lest God, being offended, deliver to temptations those whom he forsakes. 'But deliver us from evil.' He judges of himself humbly enough who implores to be delivered from evil by God. Sign yourselves. Understand, little sons, how great is the glory and power of the perfect, of the strong, when so great a virtue is opened in the very conception, so great a majesty in the birth.
Not yet born, he calls upon the Father, asks for holiness, seeks the kingdom, gives laws to the earth, equals earthly wills with heavenly, and for future labors already, being devout, demands his provision: 'Give us,' he says, 'this day our daily bread.' Blessed are you who have begun to conquer before the battle, to triumph before you live, to reach the Father's bosom, the Father's storehouse, before the mother's lap; to seize the whole pasture of the flock before the juice of milk; to sound your jubilation of victory before responding with a wail—so that, as the Apostle said, 'the weakness of God is stronger than men.'
But who will be able to recount the sacrament of so great a conception, where the Virgin Mother daily brings forth the world, nor leaves her offspring to labor, but from the earthly seed sends them ahead to glory?