thus by much exercise and patience he is so strengthened that, as though insensible to pain, he cannot feel the blow; though struck he laughs, though provoked he threatens. But the inferior, if perchance he receives the striker's blow upon the scar of an old wound now healed over, feels his grief renewed. So it is with one to whom former sins are cast up, sins which he duly grieved over and wept for, so that by fitting satisfaction he might cover over the scar of his sins. If he is perfect, he keeps silent toward those who revile him, with no grief renewed in himself, because, even if he sinned, he is secure, since the gifts of God are without repentance, and therefore what he has once given he is not wont to revoke or renew, since he himself has said: 'I am, I am he who blots out iniquities, and I will not remember them.'
But if he is imperfect and unmindful of the heavenly precepts, his grief is renewed as though the scar were cut open. 'My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall blaze.' Graver wounds, as we know, are cured by a caustic remedy or by fire applied. Therefore the wise man is himself a physician to himself; yet, even though he is a physician, he burns his own wound, and therefore, if he is not fully brought to the state of unwounded health, his heart steams, has a fever, blazes up at the insults cast at him; and even if he keeps silent, he is at least chafed within. If a stone is rubbed against a stone, it strikes out fire. So then even a good conscience is kindled with shame, if the recollection of one's own faults is renewed in it, and in that very meditation a fire blazes up.
It is not an evil fire that singes but does not consume; such was the fire which Moses saw in the bush, when the bush burned but was not consumed. There is, then, a fire which diminishes sin and feeds upon guilt with its own burning. There is also a fire which is kindled by the meditations of the heavenly Scriptures, such as that of which Jeremiah speaks: 'And there was a flaming fire in my bones'; or that of which Cleopas and the one who journeyed with him spoke, when after the resurrection Christ joined himself to them and they conferred together in mutual speech, saying: 'Was not our heart burning within us, when he opened to us the Scriptures?' Therefore the Lord also came to send this fire upon the earth, by which he might enlighten the souls of all, kindle zeal, and burn away guilt.
'I spoke with my tongue: Make known to me, O Lord, my end, and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what is lacking to me.' Good is the fire which made the prophet speak. And see whether it is not that very fire which appeared when, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples being gathered together in one place, the Holy Spirit descended upon them with great force and they spoke with diverse tongues. For thus it is written, that 'their tongues appeared distributed as it were of fire.' This, then, is he who said to Jeremiah: 'Behold, I give my words in your mouth as fire.' This tongue of fire David also received, that, kindled with the ardour of divine knowledge, he might speak: 'Make known to me, O Lord, my end.'
He does not ask about his own death—for this is not the end for one who is to rise again—but he asks about that end of which the apostle spoke: 'For that is the end, when the Lord Jesus shall deliver up the kingdom to God and the Father, and shall make void all rule and authority, and when death, the last of all, shall be destroyed,' so that evils may fail and eternal goods may succeed. And therefore it is said: 'Sorrow, sadness, and groaning have fled.' This end Paul too sought to work in men, saying: 'Or who is it that gladdens me, except the one who is made sorrowful by me?' For by chiding he stirred up grief, sadness, groanings, that they might do penance, whereby they might merit irrevocable pardon and salvation, of which God would not repent.
That, therefore, is the true end which shall not be the end of one only, but of all. How then did he say 'my end'? But consider who is speaking. It is surely a man—either one out of mankind sharing the common substance, or one who is described after the pattern of all and is trained unto the perfection of the consummate man. Hence he also added that the number of his days, what it is, was made known to him, that he might know what is lacking to him—lacking surely unto perfection, not unto the life of this body, from which the prophet David desired to be released, saying: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar.' In short, he wished to know the number of his days, not also of his nights. For here
there are days and nights, but there only days, there perpetual and enduring light. And therefore he added: 'which it is.' 'Which it is,' he says, not 'which passes away'; for heaven and earth shall pass away, but faith abides, and the day of Christ, for he is the same yesterday and today and forever. But what number he seeks, hear: 'In my Father's house,' he says, 'are many mansions.' The Lord Jesus, then, gives to each his place, that is, a mansion fitted to each one's merits; for each in his own order. He went before, then, to prepare a place for those who believe in him; whence also he says: 'If I shall go and prepare a place for you, I will come again to you, and will take you to myself, that where I am, you also may be.'
'And where I go you know, and the way you know.' There is, then, a way by which the risen Christ ascended. And he indeed ascended above all the heavens to the seat of God, but men ascend from the first heaven to the second, and thence from the second to the third, and from that, through gradations, even to the seventh heaven and to the very vault and summit of heaven—those who are worthy. If, then, there is a number of ways and a number of mansions, surely there is a number of days through which one comes to the height of heaven. 'Behold,' he says, 'you have made my days old.' Another version has: 'You have made my days palaestae.' If, according to the Seventy translators, we take 'days' as 'old,' that is: we understand them spent according to the old man. But our old man is fixed to the cross;
therefore the old day too has passed away, and a new one has come. For one is the day of man, another the day of Christ, which Abraham saw and rejoiced, of which David too says: 'This is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and be glad in it.' The holy man, therefore, exults in the day of the Lord, in the new day in which God the Lord has shone upon us and given a new light, a harmless life, and a whole one to the renewed. Therefore the just man, secure of the new light and the grace of God, says: 'There shall be for me a new heaven and a new earth and a new light.' For neither a lamp nor the light of the sun shall shine there, nor of the moon, but the Lord shall give light upon his people. Those things, therefore, I desired, those I longed for, and therefore I did not seek the day of man.
But if we take 'days' as 'palaestae' (wrestling-grounds), from the very name we understand them full of struggle and toil, since wrestlers in the contest are called 'palaestae,' who wrestle for the crown. Therefore, since for us too the wrestling is not only against flesh and blood, but also against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, our days—that is, of this present life—are in toil and grief. Hence in the verses following he says: 'Our years were meditated upon like a spider.' 'The days of our years are seventy years in themselves, but if in strength, eighty years, and the most of them toil and grief.' Hence the apostle Paul also laboured more abundantly than the rest of the apostles, that by contending lawfully he might attain to the crown which he desired.
But nevertheless, since the architects' measures too are said to be called 'palaestae,' by which they measure buildings to reckon the number of the structure or the dimension of space, and the place in which the buildings are to be set—and since through Isaiah God spoke: 'Who has measured the water with his hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with his closed hand? Who has set the mountains in a balance?'—let us see whether perhaps this sense is to be gathered from these words: that God holds the days of all as known, to whom nothing is immeasurable, who comprehends all things by a certain measure of his knowledge, and to whom nothing is inestimable, nothing unexamined and uncountable, who says: 'But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.' This, then, is what the prophet says:
'Behold, you have known my days; my daily deeds do not escape you; you have set my sins before your eyes, and therefore my substance is as nothing before you.' For what is man, except that you are mindful of him? Man has been made like to vanity. Man is in sin, and if he has anything of probity and virtue, he is rightly preferred above the rest of earthly creatures and excels in the sight of the animals over which he is set; but in the sight of God his substance is as nothing. Hence also elsewhere he says: 'Because in your sight no living man shall be justified,' which Symmachus expressed more plainly, saying: 'And my life is as nothing before you.' But there are those who think the days are called 'brief,' because Symmachus put 'ontaria' (spans).
Now 'ontaria' means a span, and since God is said to have measured heaven with a span—a palm or span being the portion of the hand that measures and grasps something—they therefore reckon the days to be called as it were brief; whereas the knowledge of God can be understood as being by measure, as we said above, and this is the heavenly knowledge: that all things were made to measure. Not brief, therefore, but great days of the prophet can be understood, which God measured with the span by which he measured heaven. For he would not call the days of his life brief, who afterward says:
'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged'—unless perhaps because, on account of the sins of men, he made the days of this life shorter, which formerly were extended even to nine hundred and seven hundred years, so that now they are shut up within the span of a hundred years. Thus, then, it is to be understood: 'Behold, you have known my days as subject to sin'; for the days of this life, which is subject to sin, are brief, but the days of eternal life are without end. Or else thus—for it is ours to seek the truth by arguments, yours to choose what you will follow—:
'Lest sin should grow,' he says, 'you have shortened the days of human life by which we live on this earth'; and yet, though in this brief course of this life the end of sinners comes sooner through the swiftness of death, 'my substance is as nothing before you,' because, although we were made to the image and likeness of God, yet a certain earthly contagion weighs us down while we are set in this body—a contagion which would not weigh us down if we preferred rather to put off the old man, when we put on grace, than to put grace on over him; for the old man, when stripped off, would bring us less toil than when worn over.
For what we strip off, we cast away; what we put on over, we shut in; and therefore we groan and labour, until this mortal garment of the old man, made subject to error, is swallowed up by the newness of its spiritual life—so that, just as if much honey is poured over poison, the venom of the poison is dissolved with difficulty and far too late, and even much water long struggles with the gall of the poison, if it does not spit it out but swallows it. Therefore penance is laborious, grace is sweet, because sin is stripped off where grace is, swallowed up where penance is; there it is remitted, here it is hidden; and therefore it is written: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.' 'And he rested a little while,' groaning over the hardship of the human condition, because he had said:
'Yet truly all is vanity, every living man'; and after the Selah, recovering his spirit, he says: 'Although man walks in the image of God, yet he shall be troubled in vain; he heaps up treasure, and knows not for whom he gathers it.' See how before the harshness of his sentence he tempered it, and afterward made plain the reason of his utterance. He tempered it by saying that man walks in the image of God. Blessed is the man who walks after the likeness of God through faith; blessed because you have faith in yourself, more blessed if you had not avarice. The eternal good of the mind is one thing, the vain burning of carnal desire another; for faith fights for God, avarice for the tempter; the latter heaps up what may profit itself, the former what may benefit others.
What, then, is so vain as not to know for what heir one labours? For who knows whether either his own son or grandson survives? Often the heir written in the tablets of the testament goes before the testator to the tomb by an untimely death; or surviving he swallows up the inheritance, or as a spendthrift squanders it, or as an utter fool fails to guard it, or being proscribed loses it. If, then, you see anyone zealously gathering riches, say to him: 'He is troubled in vain; he heaps up treasure and knows not for whom he gathers it.' For he cannot carry away with him what he possesses, and when he dies he will leave his riches to others. Frequently an enemy and an ingrate succeeds him, and the successor insults the deceased; those whom the one loved this man persecutes, those whom the one nourished this man sells.
The Greek, however, does not have 'in the image of God,' but only 'in the image.' In what image, then, does man walk? Surely he walks in that to whose likeness he was made, that is, to the image of God; and the image of God is Christ, who is the brightness of glory and the image of his substance. Christ, therefore, is the image of the Holy One. To the image this image came into the lands, that we might no longer walk in the shadow but in the image; for he who follows the gospel walks in Christ. Therefore he says to his disciple: 'Get behind me, that you may follow me.' Therefore the people of the Jews erred, because they walked in the shadow; therefore the Christian people do not err, because they walk in the image, having for themselves the sun of righteousness shining.
A good image, not fashioned by the waxes of a glittering painting, but expressed by the fullness of divinity. In which image both the Father is seen together and the Son, because the unity of operation of both of them shines forth. And although Christ has now risen, yet in the gospel his image is still shown to us. I read that he raised Lazarus, and I believe it to be the work both of the Father and of the Son. The Son called, the Father heard, Lazarus walked. I read that the demons confessed him; and they confessed the Father too, who entreated the Son of God, and in him or through him they were cast out, as it is written: 'But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?' First, then, the shadow went before, the image followed, the truth shall be;
the shadow in the law, the image in the gospel, the truth in the heavenly places. The shadow of the gospel and of the congregation of the church was in the law, the image of the future truth is in the gospel, the truth is in the judgment of God. Therefore the things which are now celebrated in the church—of these the shadow was in the discourses of the prophets, a shadow in the flood, a shadow in the Red Sea, when our fathers were baptized in the cloud and in the sea, a shadow in the rock which poured forth water and followed the people. Was not that the sacrament of this most sacred mystery in shadow? Was not the water from the rock in shadow as the blood from Christ, who followed the peoples that fled from him, that they might drink and not thirst, be redeemed and not perish?
But now the shadow of the night and gloom of the Jews has departed, and the day of the church has drawn near. We now see good things through the image, and we hold the goods of the image. We have seen the prince of priests coming to us; we have seen and heard him offering his own blood for us. We follow, as we are able, the priests; that we may offer sacrifice for the people, weak though we be in merit, yet honourable by the sacrifice, because, although Christ is now not seen to offer, yet he himself is offered on earth, since the body of Christ is offered; nay, he himself is shown to offer in us, whose word sanctifies the sacrifice that is offered. And he indeed stands as our advocate with the Father, but now we do not see him;
then we shall see, when the image has passed away and the truth has come. Then no longer through a glass, but face to face, shall the things that are perfect be seen. Ascend, therefore, O man, into heaven, and you shall see those things of which the shadow or the image was here; you shall see, not in part, not in a riddle, but in consummation, not in a veil, but in light. You shall see the true light, the eternal and perpetual priest, whose images here you used to see—Peter, Paul, John, James, Matthew, Thomas. You shall see the perfect man, no longer in image but in truth; for as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly, surely they too now in glory or in comeliness, now in the grace of resurrection, not in the deformity of the body of death and corruption.
See that you do not carry the image of the earthly to where the light of the heavenly is. Here, if anyone keeps the images of a tyrant who has already been conquered and perished, he is rightly condemned. How then do you bring the image of an enemy and adversary into the city of the true Emperor, except that he himself should condemn you? And if you wish to bring in the image of the earthly, the prince of this world will gainsay you; he will say: 'This image is mine, and the things you offer are mine.' What will you do, when caught, when he says to you: 'Mine is avarice, mine is ambition, mine the riches whose image I recognize in you'? For he is both the adversary and the claimant. But if you should be like Jacob, you will say to Laban, who transfigures himself into an angel of light: 'Recognize whether I have found anything of yours in me.'
Then he will search, and finding nothing, refuted he will depart, because you have hidden and blotted out all the images of vices. Blessed is he who can say: 'The prince of this world will come, and in me he will find nothing of his own.' For he seeks the things that are his own, not those that are Christ's. If, then, you follow Christ, do not crave riches which you do not have, nor increase those you have, but let the poor man feel you rich toward him. Bring into your house the needy; break bread to the hungry and clothe the naked, that a treasure may be laid up for you in heaven which shall pass over with you. Christ became poor, though he was rich, that by his poverty he might make us rich.
Do not, therefore, be troubled in vain on account of riches—roused from sleep, pondering how you may guard your money, increase your wealth, set out by night, keep watch at the judge's door to plunder others' goods, stir up a lawsuit against the poor, dread the collector of tribute. That trouble is in vain. And therefore the just man said: 'And now what is my expectation? Is it not the Lord? And my substance is before you.' Our hope and our patience is Christ; he himself has become our redemption, he is our expectation, that each of us may say: 'Waiting I waited for the Lord, and he looked upon me.'
Look therefore upon us in your judgment; let your mercy look down upon us, so that we who distrust our own merit may be set free through your mercy, in whose power lies the very substance of our soul and our life. And for this reason let us not fear the death of the body, but rather him who is able either to preserve or to destroy our soul, whose substance is the virtue which God has poured into human breasts after his own likeness. Whoever therefore possesses that substance of his own soul says: 'From all my iniquities deliver me.' He does not confess the fall of a single crime who prays to be loosed from all his iniquities.
For he knows that, unless the Lord forgives, no one can be saved who is born under sin, whom the very inheritance of a harmful condition has bound fast to guilt. 'You have made me,' he says, 'a reproach to the foolish.' Who is the foolish one but he who commits sin and chooses evil instead of good? Therefore he who is the author of sins is himself the fool, rather than his minister. When therefore we sin, we are handed over as a reproach to the adversary, that he, like an enemy, may accuse us and betray us in the day of judgment. Let us then take up the reproach of the cross of Christ, which Moses took up and preferred to the royal treasures of Egypt, and therefore he was not given over as a reproach to the foolish. Other manuscripts read: 'Do not give me over as a reproach to the foolish.'
But David rather has this custom, that he should confess his own reproaches and sins, and not blush at his sins and reproaches, since he knows that in confession there is pardon, and in the condemnation of one's own sin there is righteousness. Finally, from what follows, this meaning is made plain, for he added: 'I was dumb and did not open my mouth, because you have made me' — that is: 'You have made me a reproach to the foolish; therefore I was dumb and did not open my mouth, lest I should contract greater sins. I acknowledged your will, that for a time I should blush and afterward be saved by asking pardon.' Sometimes, then, even reproach is profitable, since indeed even the destruction of the flesh is profitable, as the Apostle bears witness, saying:
'I have delivered him over to the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.' That reproach too is profitable David himself testified, saying to Abishai: 'Let the Benjamite curse me, for the Lord has told him to, that the Lord may see my humiliation and repay me good for this cursing.' And in very truth the Lord saw his reproach, in that he went weeping and barefoot with covered head, and he removed his reproach.
It is therefore clear that, when, given over to reproach, he fled and was humbled and barefoot made satisfaction to the Lord, and did not strike back the one who threw stones, and did not permit vengeance to be taken on the one who cursed him, and after these things was restored to his kingdom intact — it is clear both that the reproach was from the Lord, and that it is more profitable to endure reproach than to repel it. In the end the victory followed. Therefore reproach is profitable. But what does it mean that he added: 'because you have made me'? Does he not say that he was dumb and did not open his mouth precisely because he acknowledged the Lord's will, and therefore patiently bore it, that satisfaction might be made to the Lord through reproach for his sin? Whence too he added: 'Remove your plagues from me.' How does this agree with itself?
In the previous psalm he offered himself to the scourges; here he asks that the scourges be removed from him — unless it be that he has now paid off from the Lord's hand his double sins by blushing and by enduring reproaches. There are the prickings of his own heart and of his thoughts, there are also the scourges of rebukes. Yet let us see whether he said that the substance of his soul is before God for this reason, namely that the adversary would not assail it unless he had received power from the Lord; for what the Lord has made, he also protects. Finally, an angel is round about a man, to stand guard lest anyone harm him. The angel does not depart unless commanded by the Lord, that his athlete may contend.
Therefore, as it were upon the substance of the Lord, he presumes that pardon for his iniquities can be granted to him by his Creator, and so he asks, because he knows his Author to be merciful. Then, because he has been given over to reproach, he does not resist, but suffers the sinner to stand against him, and is silent in the conscience of his substance, which is good and can curb the fierceness of the body, so that virtue may succeed and guilt be laid aside. Finally, because he was made by the Lord, he reckons with confidence that pardon can the more readily be granted to him — he who could endure the strength of the Lord's hand. And this surely belongs to a good substance, even though he says he has failed before the strength of the Lord's hand. A strong hand, just as it strikes hard, so it heals quickly;
that which is strong to wound is strong also to heal. Whence he himself says: 'I will strike and I will heal,' so that he who has escaped healed may not remember his wound. Finally, this hand of the Lord took away all things from holy Job and restored all things to him, nay rather increased all things abundantly, so that it doubled what had been lost. And let it not disturb you that he said he had failed. There is one who fails and rises stronger; for the Lord supports all who fall and sets upright all who are cast down; for whoever is corrected rises with strength. Paul failed before the strength of this hand; the persecutor fell and rose up a preacher of the Gospel. This is what he says: 'Before the strength of your hand I have failed.' And he added:
'In rebukes for iniquity you have instructed man, and you have made his soul to waste away like a spider.' The Greek said 'huper anomias,' that is 'for iniquity,' and put the whole verse 'kata koinon' (in common), which is: 'In rebukes for iniquity you have instructed man.' Therefore the Wise Man said: 'Who will give me scourges for my thoughts and a seal for my lips?' — that he might himself scourge his own heart with his own thoughts and seal his lips, whereby he might both diminish his old sins and not, by speaking, renew others, and, instructed by his own rebukes, put on the exercises of virtue. Now the soul wastes away when sin is diminished, or when the soul wastes away, guilt is laid aside; it grows fat when sins are heaped up.
Whence the Lord says concerning sinners: 'My spirit shall not remain in these forever, for they are flesh,' and elsewhere Scripture says: 'The heart of this people has grown fat.' Therefore Jeremiah first saw a rod of the almond tree, then a boiling pot, so that the soul of the prophet, in its beginnings, might waste away, whereby guilt might depart that grace might come. But why first the rod, then the pot? Because he who is not corrected by the rod is cast into the pot, that he may burn and waste away. And therefore it is said also to the prophet Ezekiel: 'Take to yourself a frying pan, and you shall take the iniquities of the house of Israel, and you shall consume them; and they shall waste away,' he says, 'in their iniquities,' and elsewhere in the same book the Lord says:
'But I will make great the firebrand and multiply the wood and kindle the fire, that the flesh may be melted and the broth diminished.' By these testimonies it is signified that the souls of the faithless waste away when fire is applied, so that they may lay aside a certain fleshly moisture of their grossness. The souls of sinners too are therefore cast into the frying pan, that a certain flesh of sin may flow away — that flesh which had overlaid the vigor of soul and mind and, as it were with a kind of broth, had so steeped the soul in certain allurements of lusts. Certain frying pans, then, await us. Therefore let us here crush our heart, that it may become refined and lay aside all hardness and a certain fatness of fleshly grease.
This those will suffer who have rioted in this life and have believed, after the manner of the Jews, that mockeries of disgrace rather than any works of virtue were to be practiced by them. For 'Jacob grew fat and waxed gross and rose up to play,' and that play led him from the truth of faith into the error of faithlessness. Rightly therefore did Paul chastise his body, lest he should nourish the flesh of sin; for by rioting we make our members members of sin, but by sobriety members of righteousness. It is not nature, then, but guilt that transgresses. And again, let us not pursue empty and vain things, lest we be judged to weave the spider's web, inasmuch as sins can have no substance of permanence.