You hear how, if you have been bound, by what hands, by what works you may loose yourself, and how you may be able not to fear the guards. Rise, therefore, to pray. It is the hour at which the tempter is accustomed to do harm and wickedness is accustomed to rush in; it is the hour at which the heavenly remedy is wont to come against grievous temptations. You must keep watch, lest you be conquered by any deceit; you must take care that, at the time when you can conquer, you in no way lose the time for conquering. And since we have said that prayer must be undertaken at midnight, it seems that something must be said no less about such an hour of the day; for night is the opposite of day—for what has light in common with darkness?—and therefore the same thing is set against itself, both by night and by day.
For just as at midnight the tempter slew the firstborn of the Egyptians, and it is recognized from this that the adversary works especially at that hour, so on the contrary the power of the divine light works at the noonday. Whence Abraham too kept sober watches about noon and awaited some good outcomes, lifting up his eyes and surveying the neighboring places, because at that time he sought for himself the coming grace. At that time, then, the divine guest came to him with two holy angels; at that time he received Christ as a guest; at that time those mysteries were celebrated which you read and understand. For when ought the divine presence more to enlighten the faithful man than when the fuller light of day shone forth?
And deservedly holy Joseph too, when he had received his brothers and summoned his younger full brother, whom he loved most, made a banquet at noon. For there was a noonday in holy Joseph's breast, when he served joyful feasts of resplendent grace to his brothers and distributed the foods of most pleasant discourse, so that, while they feared the punishment of the brother whom they had assailed and sold into slavery, he might tell them that it had been provided by divine judgment that he should be led down into Egypt who would not deny nourishment to those enduring famine. We have, then, a noonday within us. There is a noonday for him on whom the Sun of righteousness shines, and by whose good work, or by harmless thoughts and a pure and sincere mind, Christ is fed.
Learn, therefore, how you yourself may make a noonday for yourself: Reveal, he says, your way to the Lord and hope in Him, and He Himself will act; and He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. For where there is true faith, there is the grace of the true light; where there is a more extended guarding of innocence and a progress in the virtues through long meditation, where there is the splendor of a good conscience long enduring, there is the intelligible noonday. There you too will set before Christ the feasts of your mind, and in His riches you yourself also will be fed, so that no premature setting of the true light may follow, nor any shadowy evening swiftly press upon your endeavors and, intervening, hinder your good works.
But if the night of temptations comes upon you, not undeservedly must you rise at midnight and pray long and prolong the times with psalms, until the day comes and Christ shines forth upon you. See, therefore, that midnight does not befall you even by day, when the dark and squalid prince of the world pours out upon you the fullness of temptation. Rise, then, and rouse your mind. He who keeps you does not slumber, if He does not find you sleeping; but He will rise, if He too is roused by the vigils of your soul, and He will command the wind, and there will be a calm in your breast which was tossing with the whirlwind of various storms. We must rise, then. The Bridegroom is wont to come at midnight;
take care that He does not find you sleeping, take care that, being drowsy, you cannot light your torch. We must rise, I say, and confess to the Lord, that you may give thanks, and His eternal judgments must also be confessed—whatever good befalls us, that we may ascribe it to His righteousness; and whether we are rich or are soundly well, let us refer it to the righteousness of the Lord, because He is righteous, so that He may guard and preserve His own work, that those whom He has cast naked into this infirmity of the body, by a certain unendowed lot of nature, He may deign to clothe—poor as they are—with the vigor of the spirit and the gift of His mercy. This surely must be done with all virtue, it is plain, so that neither by day nor by night nor at any time ought we to be idle from the giving of thanks. There follows the seventh verse:
I am a partaker with all who fear You and who keep Your commandments. Christ too has partakers and companions of Himself. Indeed David proves it, saying: God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows. He has partakers of the flesh, because He took up flesh. He has partakers of prophecy, because, he says, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brethren like me; Him you shall hear in all things, whatsoever He shall speak to you. And it shall come to pass, that every soul who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from the people. He is the true prophet, who without another's gift knows the things to come, who spoke in the prophets the things that were to come.
Is He not a prophet who makes others prophesy? He it is who is heard as the law, because the law too is His. Indeed, if they hear not Moses, he says, and the prophets, neither will they believe if anyone go to them from the dead. And therefore the people of the Jews, because they did not hear this prophet, were cut off from the people, so that they ceased to be the people of God who before were called the people of God. He has partakers of baptism, because He was baptized for us; He has partakers of righteousness, because He Himself is righteousness and from His own has given us to have fellowship of Him; He has partakers of truth, because He Himself is truth and willed us to hold the truth.
He has partakers of resurrection, because He Himself is the resurrection; He has partakers of an unspotted life, because He Himself is unspotted, and whoever shall walk in newness of life, whoever shall hold to the path of righteousness, is a partaker of Christ. He has also partakers of His tribulation, and therefore he who desired to be His partaker says: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I fill up those things that are lacking of the tribulations of Christ in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church. Of His burial too we are partakers; for whoever has been buried together with Him through baptism into death is His partaker. And therefore the apostle himself, setting forth what grace the Lord Jesus has given us, says: For we have been made partakers of Christ.
But he too is a partaker of Christ who comforts the mourner with sorrowing affection, who does not cheat of his proper service one set in prison, who sits beside the bed of the sick—not that he may aim at the catch of an inheritance to be seized, but that he may with anxious ministry soothe the force of the disease, that he may diligently relieve the weary with conversation, who clothes the naked, refreshes the hungry. For in these Christ is frequently present, as He Himself says: I was in prison and you came not to Me, I was naked and you covered Me not; for what you did not to one of these, neither did you to Me. If I hate falsehood, I am a partaker of Christ, because Christ is truth; if I flee iniquity, I am a partaker of Christ, because Christ is righteousness. Blessed is he who can say this.
For just as we say that a member is a partaker of the whole body, so he who is joined to all who fear God, who does not say to another: 'You are not of my body'—that is, let not the rich say to the poor, nor the noble to the ignoble, nor the healthy to the sick, nor the strong to the weak, nor the learned to the unskilled: 'You are not necessary to me'—he is a partaker of the body of Christ, which is the Church. But he who knows that those who seem in the Church to be weak, poor, imprudent, even sinners, have need of more abundant esteem and are to be supported by greater aid—whoever has known this, he himself can say:
I am a partaker with all who fear You—he who has compassion on such men rather than disdains them, who has compassion on the weak, so that he may know that we are all one body and members joined to members, so that one cannot exist without the other, and when one suffers pain, he may have compassion on the other. This man, then, can rightly claim the authority of this saying. But see how modestly the prophet has spoken: I am a partaker of those who fear You. He did not say 'of those who imitate' but 'of those who fear'; for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He placed himself among the untrained by humility, though by devotion he surpassed the veterans. Yet even to fear belongs to virtue, because it is written: Fear the Lord, you His saints.
But lest that fear should seem to some not holy—because there are those who tremble with a cowardly dread and quake with a dull terror—he added: and of those who keep Your commandments, that he might show himself a partaker of holy fear. Or thus: one may indeed fear, devout in heart but sluggish in work, so that he is religious in affection, idle in action; yet one who keeps the commandments of the Lord cannot be sluggish. He, therefore, who fears, keeps; therefore it belongs to one who fears, to keep. The holy man, accordingly, says this; but I cannot claim this for myself. For how many are there who fear God, and I do not have compassion on them! They seek help, and I am unwilling to give; they need mercy, I do not aid them with my means!
But whoever does these things can say that he is a partaker of those who fear Christ. The earth is full of Your mercy, O Lord; teach me Your justifications. How is the earth full of the Lord's mercy except through the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the prophet, foreseeing it as to come, celebrates as though already sent ahead? For it is the custom of the prophets, foreseeing the things that are to come, to record as though already accomplished the things that belong to a later age. The earth is full, then, of the Lord's mercy, because to all has been given the remission of sins, the sun is bidden to rise upon all. And this sun indeed rises daily upon all, but that mystical Sun of righteousness has risen for all:
He came for all, suffered for all, and rose for all; and He suffered for this reason, that He might take away the sin of the world. But if anyone does not believe in Christ, he defrauds himself of the general benefit—just as, if someone with windows closed shuts out the rays of the sun, the sun has not therefore failed to rise for all, because that person has defrauded himself of its warmth; but what belongs to the sun, it keeps its prerogative, while what belongs to the imprudent man, he shuts out from himself the common grace of light. The rain is upon all, and this too is to be ascribed to the divine mercy, because He rains upon the just and the unjust. Or surely it is to be interpreted thus, that the earth is full of the divine mercy because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. He has founded it upon the seas and prepared it upon the rivers.
For indeed through the Church the mercy of the Lord has been spread abroad among all nations; among all nations faith has been spread abroad. Perhaps you may say: 'For what reason was it not said: heaven is full of the Lord's mercy, since there are also spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places?' But those do not pertain to the common right of God's pardon and to the remission of sins—those for whom the eternal fire is reserved; and those things which are of the heavenly powers or ministries, although they are upheld by the Lord's aid, yet do not need so much of His mercy as do those things which are lower and earthly; for those are not clothed in the covering of flesh, in which is the enticement of frequent error.
And therefore in the foregoing the same prophet says that God gave the heaven of heaven to the Lord, but the earth to the sons of men. Whence the heaven is purer and more refined from every stain of sin, and far removed from that of which it is written: like the birds of heaven. For this heaven is called a kind of airy place midway between heaven and earth, in which there are also spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places. For in that heaven which is not so called by metaphor but truly heaven, even if we should grant that the devil was not absent from the council in the sight of God's angels, yet I think that no temptations of wickedness operate there.
Indeed it is written that the angels loved the daughters of men, inasmuch as the prince of this world and his ministers are captivated and held fast by earthly enticements, in whom the spiritual wickedness is steeped with certain venoms of this flesh and infected with human crimes. And therefore the Lord in His Gospel says: Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. There is not the same iniquity yonder: to drive the neighbor from the possession bordering on one's own estate, to defraud a widow of the profits of an inheritance, to thrust down minors from their right of partnership, and, in short, within wood and within whatever metal of silver and gold or bronze, to enclose, as it were, a certain image of the heavenly power. Although these things are full of the greatest sacrilege, in the heavens they are unknown, on the earth they are frequent;
for by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, not: the earth was established. And therefore he wishes the justifications of God to be taught by the Lord Himself, because it is difficult on earth to find a master of this kind, who may teach the things which he himself has not seen. To that teacher, therefore, the prophet strives with his inmost affection—He who alone is the true master. For how can a man teach as true what he does not know, when he himself is a liar? And deservedly the Lord says that no one on earth should call anyone a master to himself, because one is the master of all. And how could David seek another teacher, when he himself said of God: Who teaches man knowledge?
Now God teaches and enlightens the minds of individuals and pours in the brightness of knowledge, if you open the doors of your heart and receive the brightness of heavenly grace. When you doubt, inquire diligently; for he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it is opened. There is much obscurity in the prophetic Scriptures.
But if with a certain hand of your mind you knock at the door of the Scriptures and diligently examine the things that are hidden, little by little you will begin to gather the meaning of what is said, and it will be opened to you not by another, but by the Word of God, of whom you have read in the Apocalypse, that the Lamb opened the sealed book, which no one before could open—because the Lord Jesus alone, in His Gospel, revealed the enigmas of the prophets and the mysteries of the law, He alone brought down the key of knowledge and gave it to open to us. The Jews say that they have the key of knowledge, but they do not have it; for if they had it, they themselves would enter, they themselves would recognize the inner recesses of the Scriptures.
But now woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who have taken away the key of knowledge, and you yourselves did not enter, and those who were entering you hindered! For how can you have the key of knowledge, you who deny the author of knowledge? And therefore, turning to Him, David says: Teach me, he says, Your justifications, because You are the true righteousness; teach what has been said wisely, because You are wisdom; open my heart, You who opened the book; open that door which is in heaven, because You Yourself are the gate. Through You, if anyone enters, he will possess that eternal kingdom; through You, if anyone enters, he will not be deceived, because whoever has entered the dwelling-place of truth cannot be deceived. IX. THE LETTER TETH.
The letter 'Teth' begins, whose interpretation is 'exclusion.' What is 'exclusion'? Is it that, just as someone is shut out from a house and cast forth from lodging, so he who is excluded from God's kingdom is defrauded of his goods—as those virgins were excluded who did not bring oil with them, and, while the bridegroom came, their torches were extinguished, and, being occupied with buying oil and kindling their torches, they made delay, and, the bridegroom having now entered, desiring to come in, they are read to have been excluded? I do not think so. For how could the good and holy prophet, cast down and excluded from God's kingdom, say: You have dealt joyfully with Your servant? Neither does the prophet's merit seem to admit such a meaning, nor does the sequence of what follows. You hear him saying:
You have dealt kindly, O Lord, and in Your joyfulness teach me Your justifications; you hear him saying: The law of Your mouth is good to me, above thousands of gold and silver: and can you say that he is excluded from the kingdom, who is not excluded from the law? What, then, shall we understand? The interpretation sticks fast: it seems to pour obscurity over the sense of its own word. The merits of the prophet call out, his grace calls out, the sequence of what is subordinate calls out, that we ought to draw out something of a higher meaning. And it occurs in good time that sometimes we exclude in a good sense. For it is written: Perfect charity excludes fear without.
And in general, indeed, love casts out fear. Thus the soldier who loves his commander does not dread the wars he undertakes for his commander's sake; thus the servant who loves his master, though he be sent through pathless and broken places, nonetheless despises all dangers out of love for his master, and if anyone should attack his master, he does not tremble to offer himself. So too one who longs to see his sons set beyond the sea does not fear shipwreck: out of love for his children he ventures upon the waves of the sea, undergoes the uncertainties of the voyage, and his longing for his sons lightens the fear of peril. How beautifully too is this said of the martyrs, who truly do battle for Christ, who, fearing neither persecutions nor the iron hooks, the swords, the flames, offered themselves to hostile kings!
For they cast out by love of martyrdom whatever fear of punishments they might have had. And we can confirm that this is the sense of this interpretation also from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. For there too it is written under this same letter: 'The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him; it is good to wait and to hope for the salvation of God. It is good for a man that he should bear a heavy yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and keep silence, because he has taken upon himself the heavy yoke.' What else do these words establish, except that they show forth this interpretation of a good 'casting out'? For who waits for the Lord except by zeal of love? Who is it that hopes, except one who desires and loves what he hopes for? For what we hope for, we await through patience.
Therefore he who hopes endures, and he who endures certainly casts out the disposition of impatience. Who is it that bears the heavy yoke from his youth, except one who renounces delights and flees luxury? Who is it that sits alone, except one who, having cast off worldly pleasures, shuts out all the tumults of troubles? Such a one, then, will be able to fear nothing, for by the grace of love he has swallowed up the force of fear. There is also another who is 'cast out' for a good end, like that man who by apostolic authority was removed from the midst of the people because he had done an evil deed, delivered over to the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved. From this we understand that he is cast out for good who is bidden to do penance, that he may be humbled and pricked at heart;
for these are wont to be the supports of reconciliation. Finally, the things written in Jeremiah under this letter seem to signify the same. For thus we read concerning that earthly Jerusalem: 'In her uncleanness before her feet, she was not mindful of her latter end, and she fell grievously: there is none to comfort her. See, O Lord, her humiliation, for the enemy is exalted.' And because Jerusalem was humbled, deservedly it is afterward said to her: 'Thy iniquity is at an end, O daughter of Zion.' And to everyone who has done penance and has bewailed his sins with his own tears, it is rightly said: 'Thy iniquity is at an end.' Elsewhere also under this letter Jeremiah says: 'Better were those slain by the sword than those slain by famine; they have gone away, pierced through, from the produce of the fields.'
We are pricked at heart, therefore, when we do penance for our offenses; we are pricked at heart also by the recollection of words. Whence David the prophet says: 'What you say in your hearts, be pricked also upon your beds.' But he who is pricked at heart certainly casts out the delight of error, and he who does penance casts out shame, sets aside the bashfulness of confessing his disgrace, that he may find the hope of regaining salvation. And deservedly David himself, when he acknowledged his error, said: 'I have sinned against the Lord.' So great a king, so great a prophet did not blush to confess his own sin, and therefore it was said to him: 'And the Lord has taken away thy sin.' His sin being taken away, then, he says: 'Thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word.'
Many things in this world seem pleasant that are not, many seem sweet, very many seem good. Luxury seems pleasant, but it becomes bitter when the inheritance is exhausted; lust is sweet while it burns, but the same is horrible and accursed when it is exposed; banquets are pleasant while they are taken, but foul when they are digested. Many things in this world are esteemed good while we live, because they are of use to us, such as money, honor, gold, silver, possessions; but these same things can be of no profit to the dead. Here all things are left behind; nay rather, a man dies with the greater grief, when he groans to be robbed of these riches. There is therefore no true joy except that which is according to the word of God, that one should rejoice to find himself fortified by the supports of good merits and virtues.
By this joy of God, or rather by his goodness, David rejoices, because from his youth he bore and endured the heavy yoke and waited for the Lord's grace upon himself; he did not seize it beforehand. For though he often had it in his power to slay King Saul, he chose rather to wait for the time of God's bestowing the kingdom upon him than to forestall it by killing the king. God is always good, and therefore Paul also says: 'Behold then the goodness and the severity of God; for his goodness is toward all, his severity toward few.' Finally the same apostle adds: 'toward those indeed who fell, severity, but toward thee, goodness'; for if they had not fallen, they too would surely have enjoyed the goodness of God. For to thee also he is good for this reason, that thou abidest; but if thou abide not in goodness, thou too shalt be cut off.
God will not therefore cease to be good because you have fallen and have need of severity, since even the severity of God runs back into goodness, that each one, being chastised, may withdraw his foot from sins and return to the path of virtues and to a good manner of life. Finally the apostle teaches concerning those who fell, that 'if they abide not in unbelief, they shall be grafted in';
for God is able to graft them in again, so that, just as pruned shoots, so also men, grafted as it were upon certain stocks of virtue, may be able to bear the good fruits of merits. You must necessarily accuse the physician of cruelty because he has judged that the festering fibers of wounds must be cut away with the knife, because he has cauterized harmful and spreading sores with fire, lest the poison should creep further; or because the master has flogged his negligent pupil, that by fear of the lash he might instill diligence. For to chastise belongs to one who loves, not to one who detests, and therefore it is a mark of goodness, not of cruelty. Rightly, then, the Lord is everywhere good, both when he remits offenses and when he chastises sins; for the Lord chastises him whom he loves. David also was chastised;
finally he says: 'And I was scourged all the day long.' But the wise man, who understood that that chastisement had profited him from the Lord, says: 'Thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word'; that is: even though that chastisement seemed bitter to me for a time, bitter to me according to the flesh, bitter to me according to the sorrow of the body, nevertheless according to thy word that chastisement brought the fruit of goodness. I understand that that chastisement profited me, that by that chastisement I was called back from vices, that by that chastisement nothing was for long permitted in me to disgraceful deeds, that through that chastisement of the Lord nothing was permitted in me to the adversary, nothing to death. Finally: 'The Lord chastening hath chastened me, but he hath not delivered me over to death,' the prophet himself recorded;
for he is chastised who is received, but those who are not received are not scourged; they are not in the labors of men, and they shall not be scourged with men. And so above he says: 'How good is God to Israel, to those who are upright in heart!' Therefore he is good to all, because he wishes all to be upright in heart. But whoever has turned his heart aside, he himself turns away from himself the grace of the divine goodness. There follows: 'Teach me kindness and discipline and knowledge, for I have believed in thy commandments.' According to the apostle we understand chrēston ('the good one'), since he said: 'Behold then the goodness of the Lord'; according to the Gospel we take chrēston ('sweet'), for he said: 'Take my yoke, for it is light, and my burden, for it is sweet'; for he said: 'to phortion mou chrēston' (my burden is kindly).
Whence he rightly asks to be taught the goodness of God by God himself, lest perchance someone, taking it superficially that God is good, should persist in his errors, supposing that through the mercy of God impunity could be granted to his sins; since, even though the Lord be indulgent, nevertheless it is a foul manner of life to cling forever to crimes. Therefore that goodness is not common, but such as ever looks for the advance of discipline. And so he who understands that the goodness of God is profound desires to be taught discipline as well. For very many turn away from the pursuit of discipline, while they reckon it harsh and gloomy; but one of keener understanding perceives that discipline, though for a time it be gloomy, becomes pleasant in later times.
But there is a discipline or correction that is more severe, and there is also one more moderate. The more moderate is that of which the Lord says: 'I will correct them in the hearing of their tribulation.' There is the more severe, which is the correction in anger and fury. Whence, shunning that correction, David says: 'O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, neither chasten me in thy fury,' and Jeremiah: 'Correct us, O Lord, in judgment and not in fury.' Every discipline, therefore, though for a time it have bitterness, though it have disturbance, nevertheless is wont afterward to bring forth peaceable fruits. But he who asks to be taught goodness and discipline ought also to ask to be taught knowledge. For unless one have knowledge, discipline is grievous, correction is grievous.