EXPOSITION OF PSALM 1. God set forth, as the highest incentive to virtue, the delight of future blessedness; while the devil devised that delight should be a vehement spur to error. Of both judgments the first man of the human race, Adam, affords the proof: he was placed by the Lord God in the paradise of pleasure, that he might enjoy eternal delight and so spur on the virtue of his future offspring -- for it was not unknown to God that this place would give occasion to error, and that to the rest there ought to be set forth a hope of salvation, by which they might strive to be restored to the seat snatched away from the human race -- and the same Adam, through the form of the serpent, which prefigured the allurements of delight, was deceived by his wife's persuasion.
Having therefore seized the occasion, the adversary wrought death for me through delight. And so what had been granted by divine grace unto life was turned for me into death; and the enemy obtained the more ready consent of man to his fall, because he held out the appearance of nature. For God's works delighted Him, the first beginnings of nature delighted Him, which the Lord, beholding, said: 'Very good.' The angels praise the Lord, the powers of heaven sing psalms to Him, and before the very beginning of the world the Cherubim and Seraphim, with the sweetness of their tuneful voice, say: 'Holy, holy, holy.' Innumerable thousands of angels stand by, and the elders and a great multitude, like the voices of many waters, sing in concert: 'Alleluia.'
A more expressive account holds that the very axis of heaven revolves with a certain sweetness of perpetual harmony, so that its sound is heard in the farthest parts of the earth, where there are certain secret places of nature. Nor does this seem foreign to the practice of nature, since a voice sent forth re-echoes with more pleasing applause from the groves or the mountains, and they give back with sweeter sound what they have received. In the very crags and stones too nature has found something to delight; some are delighted by their gleam, others by their use or beauty. The very wild beasts and birds are soothed by the delight of a pleasanter place or a more melodious voice; for suckling infants too, either sternness is a terror or coaxing a pleasure. Delight, then, is natural.
Whence holy David also, who perceived from what state and by what fraud man had been cast down -- for if he had held fast the grace of that eternal and heavenly delight infused into him by the Lord, and had not, caught by worldly allurements, lost it, he would never have undergone the injuries of so wretched a calamity -- therefore, striving to repair and reform it, instituted for us, by the office of psalm-singing, the likeness of the heavenly manner of life.
For although all divine Scripture breathes the grace of God, yet the book of Psalms is especially sweet; since Moses himself, who described the deeds of the ancestors in plain speech, nevertheless, when he had led the people of the fathers across the Red Sea with memorable wonder, and beheld King Pharaoh sunk beneath the waters with his hosts, raising his genius to greater things -- because he had attained things greater than his own strength -- sang a triumphal song to the Lord. Miriam too, taking up a timbrel, exhorted the rest, saying: 'Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously is He honoured; the horse and the rider He has cast into the sea.' Moses himself also, when he had read the law of the Lord, that he might fix the memory of it in the breasts of his hearers, spoke by way of a song, saying:
Hear, O heaven, and I will speak; let my discourse be awaited like the rain, and let my words come down like the dew, like the shower upon the grass and like the snow upon the hay.' God, then, is delighted by song, not only to be praised, but also to be reconciled. Hence Moses too made use of song chiefly then, when he was calling heaven and earth to witness, so that the world might the more eagerly hear his salvation chanting with the sound of heavenly grace, and that observance of the law might, by the sweetness of holy delight, take root forever in human minds. In short, the tables of the law, before they were confirmed by song, were broken and shattered through the indignation of Moses;
but when they were consecrated by such a seal, human anger had no place, because sanctification, by its sacred sweetness, shut anger out. So the song of the Lord, like a gentler dew, came down from heaven, and infused the faith of men, like grass, with a certain shower of spiritual grace. These two songs, then, in the books of Moses, like two eyes of the world and lights of heaven, illumine the whole body of his work. But David indeed was chosen by the Lord principally for this office, that what in others seems rare and to stand out above the rest of the work, in him might shine forth continuous and unbroken. We read one song in the book of Judges, the rest run through after the manner of history, by which the deeds of the ancestors are set forth.
Isaiah wrote one song, by which he might soothe the hearts of his readers; in the rest he thundered with the terrible trumpet of rebuke. Even his very enemies could not cast that song against him, though for other sayings they persecuted him even unto death. Daniel wrote one, Habakkuk one; Solomon himself, the son of David, although he is said to have sung innumerable songs, yet left behind one alone which the Church has received, the Song of Songs; the same man wrote the Proverbs. In the others, then, one may note single things. History instructs, the law teaches, prophecy announces, rebuke chastises, morality persuades; in the book of Psalms there is the advancement of all, and a certain medicine of human salvation.
Whoever reads it has wherewith to cure the wounds of his own affliction by a special remedy. Whoever wishes to look on, as in a common gymnasium of souls and a kind of arena of virtues, finding the various kinds of contests there prepared, may choose for himself that one for which he understands himself the more fit, that he may the more easily arrive at the crown. If anyone is eager to review the deeds of the ancestors and wishes to imitate them, within a single psalm he receives the whole sequence of his fathers' history comprehended, so that he may acquire a treasury of memory by a brief reading. Those things too seem easier which are unfolded more briefly.
That too is of what great loftiness, that in a brief interval he distinguished the adversities of offences and interwove the prosperities of reconciliation, so that you might at once recognize what injury the offence of unbelief brings, and what a ready faith confers! If anyone explores the force of the law, which wholly consists in the bond of charity -- for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law -- let him read in the Psalms with how great an affection of love David, for the warding off of the whole people's reproach, alone exposed himself to grave perils; in which he will recognize a glory of charity not unequal to a triumph of valour. If anyone dreads the savagery of rebukes, let him hear David saying: 'O Lord, rebuke me not in Your anger, neither chasten me in Your fury,' and let him learn how he ought to temper the censure of an angry judge.
If anyone longs to learn an example of patience, let him read in the Psalms: 'If I have rendered evil to those who repaid me,' and let him observe that David foresaw the evangelical precept in spirit and anticipated it in virtue. So you have that proverbial saying, that the meek man is the physician of the heart. If anyone, moreover, wishes to be fortified against the assaults of the spiritual wickedness, what better than that he should know psalm-singing is his task? David sang as a youth and put to flight the wicked spirit of Saul, which before had gripped him. And of the virtue of prophecy what shall I say? What others announced through riddles, to him alone it seems to have been plainly and openly promised, that the Lord Jesus should be born of his seed, as the Lord said to him:
Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne.' In the Psalms, then, for us not only is Jesus born, but He also undergoes that saving passion of the body, rests, rises again, ascends into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father. That which no man would have presumed to say, this prophet alone announced, and afterward the Lord Himself proclaimed it in the Gospel. Moreover, all the writers of psalms set in their writings examples or certain sayings of those before them; the psalms have nothing except what is their own. What, then, is more pleasing than a psalm? Whence David himself beautifully says: 'Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good; let praise be joyful and seemly unto our God.' And truly so;
for a psalm is the blessing of the people, the praise of God, the laudation of the multitude, the applause of all, the speech of every man, the voice of the Church, the tuneful confession of faith, full devotion of authority, the joy of liberty, the cry of gladness, the resounding of joy. It soothes from wrath, it dismisses anxiety, it relieves from grief; it is arms by night, a teaching by day, a shield in fear, a feast in holiness, an image of tranquillity, a pledge of peace and concord, after the manner of a lyre producing one melody out of various and differing voices. The rising of the day re-echoes a psalm, the setting resounds a psalm. The Apostle bids women keep silence in the Church; yet a psalm they sing well even aloud; this is sweet to every age, this is fitting for either sex.
This the old men sing, laying aside the rigour of old age; this the sad veterans answer back in the gladness of their heart; this the young men sing without the envy of wantonness; this youths chant without the danger and temptation of slippery age; the young women themselves sing it without loss of matronly modesty; the little maidens, without a fall of their bashfulness, with the sobriety of gravity, modulate a hymn to God with the sweetness of a bending voice. This childhood longs to hold, this infancy rejoices to ponder, which shuns to learn other things by heart; it is a kind of play that yields a greater advancement of learning than when serious instruction is imparted. How great is the labour in the Church to make silence, when the lessons are read! If one man speaks, all murmur against him;
but when a psalm is read, it is itself the maker of its own silence; all speak, and none makes a din. Kings sing a psalm without the haughtiness of power; in this ministry David rejoiced to be seen; a psalm is sung by emperors, it is shouted in jubilation by peoples. Each strives to cry aloud that which profits all. At home a psalm is sung, abroad it is rehearsed; it is grasped without labour, it is kept with pleasure. A psalm joins the dissenting, unites the discordant, reconciles the offended; for who would not forgive him with whom he has sent forth one voice to God? A great bond of unity indeed, that the whole number of the people should come together into one choir. Differing are the strings of the lyre, but one is the symphony.
Among very few strings the fingers of the craftsman often go astray, but in the people the Spirit, the Craftsman, knows not how to err. A psalm is the commerce of nightly toil, the wage of daily rest, the instruction of beginners, the confirmation of the perfect, the ministry of angels, the heavenly warfare, the spiritual sacrifice. To a psalm even the rocks make answer; a psalm is sung, and even rocky breasts are softened: we see the exceeding hard weep, the unmerciful bent. In a psalm teaching contends with grace; at once it is sung for delight, it is learned for instruction. For more violent precepts do not endure; but what you have received with sweetness, once instilled into the inmost heart, is not wont to slip away. What is there that does not come to meet you as you read the psalms?
In these I read a song for the Beloved, and I am inflamed with the desire of sacred charity; in these I recognize the wine-presses of the divine mystery; in these I review the grace of revelations, the testimonies of the resurrection, the gifts of the promise; in these I learn to avoid sin, I unlearn to blush at repentance for my faults. So great a king, so great a prophet, has provoked me by his own example, so that I may either strive to lessen the sin I have committed or to beware of the one not committed. What, then, is a psalm but the organ of the virtues, which the venerable prophet, striking with the plectrum of the Holy Spirit, made to resound on earth the sweetness of a heavenly sound?
At the same time, when he, upon strings and chords -- that is, upon dead remnants -- modulated the distinctions of various voices and directed his song of divine praise toward heavenly things, he taught us assuredly that we must first die to sin, and then at last, in this body, that the various works of the virtues are to be discerned, by which the grace of our devotion might come through to the Lord, so that, while we are occupied with the intention of heavenly things, no lust of earthly vices might creep in, and at the same time the soul might shine bright with the sweetness of heavenly grace. Deservedly, then, the Lord, praising the minister of so great an office, says: 'I have found David after My own heart.'
They say also that those more skilled among players of the lyre sing inwardly -- as the fables tell of Aspendius the lyre-player -- and that the causes of the modulations and certain bars of the rhythms lie in the upper part of the psaltery. David therefore taught that we ought to sing inwardly, to sing psalms inwardly, even as Paul also sang, saying: 'I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the mind; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the mind,' and to form our life and acts toward the contemplation of things above, lest the delight of sweetness should rouse the passions of the body, by which our soul is not redeemed but weighed down; whereas the holy prophet recorded that he sang psalms for the redemption of his soul, saying: 'I will sing to You, O God, upon the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.'
My lips shall rejoice when I sing to You, and my soul, which You have redeemed. But let us now enter upon the opening words of this very psalm which has been set before us. 'Blessed,' he says, 'is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.' How apt, how opportune a beginning! For just as those who have undertaken to put on some solemn contest are wont to set forth a prize and to vaunt the nobleness of the crown, so that the contestants may assemble with greater zeal and strive also with more eager effort, so our Lord Jesus has set forth, as incentives to human virtue, the glory of the heavenly kingdom, the grace of perpetual rest, the blessedness of eternal life.
An emperor too, when he goes forth to war, promises the soldier a donative and promotions of ranks within the military grades, so that hope of advantage may steal away their toils and hide the fear of danger. As the herald, then, of the great Emperor, holy David exhorts the soldiers, calls them athletes, and sets forth the prize, saying: 'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.' He began from the prize, in order to lighten the burden of the coming contest; he set the reward beforehand, so that each one, leaping over in his heart the anxieties and toils of present things, might strive with eager haste toward earning the blessedness of things to come. 'Blessed,' he says, 'is the man.' What more could be granted to man than that beyond which nothing greater could, by apostolic authority, be ascribed even to God?
For God is called blessed, and alone mighty, and King of kings, and Lord of lords. He alone mighty, He King of kings, He Lord of lords, yet does not surpass the power of blessedness; He granted us a common partnership in that title of His, which has been deemed worthy of divine honour. Let us now consider for what reason he said 'blessed man' and not rather 'blessed human beings,' since either sex is called to grace. Has He perchance excluded women from the fellowship of blessedness, because He named the man alone blessed? Far from it; for neither did God exclude women from the fellowship of creation, because He first formed the man. For God said:
Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness; and God made man, he says, after the image of God He made him, male and female He made them.' In 'man' both are signified; in 'the man' the sex is expressed. But just as, when 'man' is said, both are comprehended, so, when 'the man' is named, the woman also, whose man he is, is understood. In short, 'she shall be called woman,' he says, 'because she was taken from her man.' There is added this further point, that of those whose nature is the same, the operations surely cannot be distinct, and of those whose work is equal, surely equal also is the reward. Scripture, then, by saying 'man,' did not pass over the partner of the marriage-bond, because by saying 'human being' it did not keep silent about the partner of nature.
And so, just as there we read that 'man' was made, and, though the nature is one, yet we cannot deny that the principal sex was created first, so here too, when we read 'the man,' we recognize from the principal portion the sex that is somewhat subordinate as well. Equal, then, are the pursuits of virtue, because equal is the prerogative of the creature. But why should you make a question of sex, where not the contests of the body, but of the soul, are demanded of you, which has no sex? Do not, then, in that case distinguish honour or divide the reward, where the sex is not distinguished. Yet not without good reason, if the one who was later in the fall is called first to the exercise. She who began ill ought to follow, not to go before; or, after the trial, let her be more modest.
Eve wrongly overstepped the order of nature; she ought to have awaited him who went before. The serpent cunningly began from the latter; therefore the prophet returns to the former, namely to him who surely would not have fallen, had he not followed the latter one. In short, he called us back from the fall before he summoned us to the palm of victory. 'Blessed,' he says, 'is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.' See, O man, wherein you may be called blessed: not in riches, not in powers and honours, not in nobility of birth or in comeliness and beauty, not in health of body -- in which there is nothing good belonging to nature; for not only do they have an easy change into their opposites, but they also furnish a means to fault for him who knows not how to use them.
For who is righteous on account of money, who humble in powers, who merciful on account of nobility, who chaste on account of comeliness? These things are rather alluring to sin than fruitful for the advancement of virtue. What, then, does he mean in preferring to say 'has not walked' and 'has not stood,' as of the past, when he might have said: 'Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, and stands not in the way of sinners, and sits not in the seat of pestilence'? Mark the doctrine; for he is not at once blessed who is not ungodly or a sinner, on account of the uncertain outcome. For it is not idly written: 'Praise no man before his death.'
Therefore, so long as any man is in this life, he cannot be praised with a definite declaration, since he may still lie open to error; but he who has closed his life without offence is by right reckoned with the appellation of the blessed, and enjoys the fellowship of the blessed. But perhaps you may say: 'For what reason, then, did he say elsewhere: Blessed is he who has understanding of the needy and poor? For he did not say blessed is he who shall have understood, but he who understands.' Because those who do a good work find in the very work that whereby they are proved, obtaining their recompense in the very work, inasmuch as a good deed is the fruit of a blessed conscience.
But those who refrain from evil are not at once blessed if they have turned aside from fault once or twice, but only if they have been able to escape the contagion of fault throughout the whole time of their safe estate. Now this occurs to us: why he preferred to call blessed not the man who has performed some office of piety, but the man who has refrained from the counsel of the ungodly. For he seems rather to be praised who has fulfilled the duty of virtue than he who has escaped sin, since neither ox nor horse nor stone is wont to be in sin or to sit in the seat of pestilence. But those things have not the fruit of blessedness which have not the sense of virtue; for how do they attain to the reward of the law which have not the affection of following the law?
I see, then, that the proposed sentence is about rational beings, that is, about us. But for us the beginning of good things is abstinence from sins, since we read: 'Turn aside from evil and do good.' For this is the order of discipline, that from the lower you should strive toward the more perfect, lest you be terrified by the mass of greater things, you who ought to be summoned by the beginning of lighter ones. For Scripture teaches us that the ascent of piety is like a ladder, by which holy Jacob, a man of exercise, who is set before us, saw the angels of the Lord ascending and descending; so that through him we might learn that we ought to advance the step of virtue little by little, and thus be able to strive from the lowest to the highest, if through small progressions we may step toward those things which seem loftier than human nature.
Keep these stairs always set before you. Do not fear, O man, to ascend these steps of discipline. The first step is near the ground, the next is like the first. Thus by equal steps one mounts to the heights. Do not disdain, O man, that first step as though it were the meanest. That first ascent separates you from the earth -- you tread the air, when you have lifted your footstep from the ground. Set in virtue, by rising you have left the earth; you leave the earth, if you turn aside from fault. The beginning, then, of advancement toward virtue is to abstain from sin. But that we may know this discipline to be of doctrine, hear the law saying: 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder'; for to the imperfect these precepts seemed suitable.
In short, the Lord Jesus Himself, knowing the imperfection of the man by whom He was asked by what works he might attain to eternal life, answered him: 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal,' and the rest. Then, to the man who said that he had done all these things, He added the more perfect, saying: 'Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven'; and He taught that there is so great a distance between turning aside from evils and imitating good things, that the man who judged the former easy for himself refused these latter. But because he had not even ascended those former steps, he could not therefore fit himself to these; for if he had loved his neighbour, he could have been able not to deny to the poor the supports of his patrimony.
And therefore ascend the first step of the law, that you may be able to come to the heavenly summit of the Gospel. Whence I judge that the holy prophet, being as it were set under the law and following the manner of the law in the first psalm, from his own person denounces rather the things to be avoided than sets forth the things to be followed; whereas in the fortieth psalm, which is spoken from the person of the Saviour, there is rather an exhortation to virtue than a repression of error; for it speaks of the passion of the Saviour. And therefore the dispenser of the Gospel also, as we may reckon, when we have heard Him saying 'Blessed are the merciful,' crowned mercy both in the psalm of His own passion and in the Gospel. But let us now set about the exposition of the psalm and inspect the prophetic power.
'Blessed,' he says, 'is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and in the way of sinners has not stood, and in the seat of pestilence has not sat.' We may say that there are three species of sins which we think are here expressed -- of thought, of deed, of persistence -- and that he is signified as blessed who has not even thought that which is evil. For how can he be blessed who must be convicted in the day of judgment by his own accusing thoughts? Even if he has deceived a man, fled the witness, escaped the accuser, yet he will not be able to avoid himself as his own accuser -- whom he ought most of all to fear, because he will have both an accuser and a confessing defendant.
Blessed therefore is he who has neither devised what is evil nor wrought sin — for at times we offend even without deliberate thought; for in much speaking we do not escape sin — and who has not persevered in sin. Or thus: he who has neither devised what would be error, nor stood firm in that thought, nor at least persevered in those thoughts which he perceived to be full of error. But whether these things rightly agree, the reader will judge. For he who has once thought evil ought neither to have stood firm in it nor to have persevered. Yet even if he did not persevere, he could not be blessed, because he stood firm in that which he wickedly devised;
and even if he did not stand firm, yet by the very fact that he thought evil, whether he has the fruit of blessedness — for this he must seek some merciful interpreter. Finally, since no one can say that he has a clean heart, granted that the thought be pardonable: is the working of sins likewise pardonable? Finally, if the standing be pardonable, is it also full of blessedness, on the ground that one does not persevere in the crime? Then again — he who has not thought what is wicked, how could he have stood firm or persevered in sin? So that he is blessed who has rightly kept these three; surely the order is reversed. For the first is that he should not persevere in sin, the second that he should not have stood firm in it, the third that he should not have devised what would be error.
For he who has not persevered could yet have stood firm; he who has not stood firm could have thought; but he who has not even thought is truly blessed. Hence I thought that another tradition also should not be passed over, by which we may assert that the three steps are made in their right order: that he who wishes to be blessed should not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, that is, should not walk in their thoughts; then should not stand in the way of sinners; thirdly should not sit in the seat of pestilence. You therefore, who in the Church have been made a Christian, or you who are striving toward grace, abstain from the counsels of the ungodly, that you may be able to say: Destroy not my soul, O God, with the wicked, nor my life with men of blood; and devise not the things that are ungodly. And what are these but the things that are contrived for an injury to God?
For piety toward God is first, toward parents second. And indeed the enemy frequently inserts diverse things into our minds; and therefore the prophet cautiously held that thoughts, rather than unforeseen infusions, are to be reckoned as crime. You have therefore abstained from the counsels of the ungodly; rightly so, yet you are not at once blessed. Beware also lest you stand in the way of sinners. With how great scrutiny are the words of divine Scripture set down! For because we are all under sin, He does not demand of you what is beyond nature, namely that you commit no sin — since not even an infant of one day is without sin — but that you do not remain in sin by some long-continued halting. Not all are ungodly; therefore you are called back from all the thoughts and conspiracies of the ungodly; but all are sinners;