how should the prophet spurn the love of one conformable to himself? There must, then, be some just cause by which those whom he signifies may rightly seem enemies. What this is we can investigate, if we remember that elsewhere he himself said: 'And I pined away over thy enemies; with just hatred I hated them.' These, then, by gospel authority he calls his enemies who are enemies of God. For if he who does not leave his parents for the name of God is not worthy of God, how much more shall he who loves his enemies not be able to be accepted by God? What enemies, then, has he? If the Gentiles, how did he foresee by the prophetic spirit that they would believe? For indeed he exhorted them above that they too should bless the Lord.
And what great praise is it to understand concerning those who, by venerating metals and stones, have drawn to themselves a like rigidity of stupor? Whom, then, has he as enemies, save the heretics? For they themselves are the assailants of the faith, the enemies of truth. Whom, save the Jews? For they are the graver enemies who from friends have been made enemies. He understands concerning those who understand that the law is spiritual. What, then, does the law profit, if you are ignorant of the end of the law, if you know not the mystery, if you have not learned the sacraments? Among the Jews a lamb of the flock is slain for the paschal celebration; among us, for the redemption of the world, the Only-begotten of God, the offspring of the Virgin, is immolated. What does it profit the Jews that they smear their houses and doorposts with the blood of a lamb?
Nothing assuredly, since wood or stones cannot profit them. To us every mystery profits, who believe it to be abhorrent to spiritual grace that we should stain our dwellings with the blood of a beast and dye our faces with gore. But we consecrate our bodies with the sacrament of the Lord's cross, and sanctify the utterances of our mouth with the confession of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; for with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. What does it profit that the Hebrews pierce the ear of a servant with an awl and circumcise the foreskins of their body? They do not understand inwardly what the divine law distinguishes. These are signs, not the truth.
But he understands who purifies his heart with spiritual circumcision, so as to cleanse away every defilement of bodily stain. He understands who transcends the awl and the ear with the vigour of the mind, and lifts up to the reward of perpetual liberty that soul which the sword pierced through to reveal the hidden things of the heart, or who, carefully serving the words to be examined, sanctifies with a spiritual mystery whomsoever he has received with the ear of his virtue. The Jew has been accustomed to make unleavened bread for himself in certain years, and knows not that he is the leaven of malice. But he who understands what it is to purge out the old leaven, lest it corrupt the whole lump, purges out the old man with his deeds, that there may be a new lump of truth.
These things were spoken to the Jew, and a Christian heard them; for while that awl bores through his ear, he could not hear, since he bears a wounded ear; he reddened his ear with the awl, not of the Law, but of his own folly. By hearing the things that are spiritually revealed he pierced his ear with iron; for he chose to believe in the iron rather than in the Word. Therefore he is a slave, therefore he has not deserved to be free, therefore not even the grace of the fulfilled time avails him, because he has not received the fullness of time in which the Son of God was sent for salvation and came for redemption, made under the Law, born of a Virgin, conqueror of death, bestower of resurrection. There remains, then, a wound for him to whom Christ has not risen.
O wound that cannot be mended, unless perhaps he lay aside the awl and take to himself the sword which he would not refuse for the name of Christ, or by which he may distinguish bodily things from spiritual, the shadow from the truth; let him take up the Word of God, the twice-sharpened sword, and from that divine mouth be taught to acknowledge the commandment of the Lord, the prescription of the Law, that it does not consist in the observance of a temporal feast, but pours forth saving and everlasting remedies with the sap of spiritual grace! Meditate, therefore, on the Law the whole day; it ought not to be for you a perfunctory passing-through. If you wish to buy a field, if to purchase a house, you call in a more prudent man and carefully consider what the legal title is, and, lest perhaps you be deceived in any point, you do not trust yourself. But now you yourself are the thing to be bought for yourself.
Bargain over your own price, consider what you are, what name you bear, what you are acquiring for yourself: not a field, not money, not necklaces of gems, but Christ Jesus, with whom no prices, no ornaments can be compared. Take to yourself as counsellors Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, John, and the great Counsellor himself, Jesus the Son of God, that you may acquire the Father. With these must your dealing be, with these must everything be conferred by you, everything meditated the whole day, as David meditated, and this alone was his meditation.
His mind was not drawn away by worldly enticements, he did not burn with greed to heap up an inheritance of money, no anxious surge of cares for extending his boundary and shutting out his neighbour drew back his affection bent upon the zeal of meditation; whatever the day could hold of time, all this his meditation on the Law alone claimed for itself. But even this is too little for the diligent man who wishes to attain to the grace of blessedness; for the blessed man meditates on the Law day and night. The day is too narrow for the meditation of the teaching; the day is not so great in time as the meditation is in the Law. Hence consider whether it does not rather seem to signify this: that for him who meditates on the Law it is always day and light without failing, so that no darkness of night may break it up.
Otherwise, how could he declare him more negligent in the course of the work whom he had wished to be more diligent in the very beginnings of his work? In the day, therefore, the preacher of the Law and the Gospel meditates. And perhaps those who do not receive the New Testament read in the night, and therefore neither knew nor understood. Hence the Saviour, lest we too should read in darkness, admonishes us, saying that we must walk in the day, because he who walks in the day does not stumble; for he sees the grace of the light. For he who walks in darkness runs upon the rock of offence. There follows the third verse: 'Above all that teach me have I understood, because thy testimonies are my meditation.'
The scribes of the Jews profess teaching, because they deserved to possess the Law and the Prophets before others. But they profess to teach, yet do not teach. To that people, however, which is gathered from the Gentiles, it belongs to say: 'Above all that teach me have I understood,' because they did not understand. The Jew replies: 'Whence have you obtained understanding? It is written: Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will declare to you. I am your father; ask me.' But even if I should ask, you will not answer me, said Jesus, and from that time they cannot answer, and from that time I understand beyond those who did not understand, because I have learned the testimonies which he did not know. I have learned: He who follows me, let him take up his cross; I have learned: Love your enemies.
And therefore Paul desires to be accursed for his brethren by birth, enemies by faith. It might seem unbecoming to prophetic modesty to make such a claim, in that he presumed to say that he understood above all that teach, when even Moses received the Law from the Lord and handed down ordinances to his people, when Aaron, having gone through the whole rite of all the sacrifices, taught the priestly discipline, when Joshua the son of Nun showed how circumcision could be repeated, when Samuel alike displayed the sacraments of the prophetic and royal anointing. It might seem, I say, a presumption, had he not set down beforehand those higher things by which he might not undeservedly prove that he understood above those who teach. He ought to have assumed this confidence who was being taught by the Lord;
and the commandment which was being taught was the Lord's, and he himself who taught was the Lord. Deservedly did he understand above all whom Wisdom herself taught. Hence also elsewhere: Blessed is the man whom thou shalt instruct, O Lord, and shalt teach him out of thy law. He shows, therefore, that it is something divine, and that men cannot teach, and therefore those who presume to teach do not know, but the disciple who is taught recognizes. In which, besides the gift of knowledge that he had obtained from the Holy Spirit, there is also a pleasant moral application, namely that there are teachers who say they teach what they do not understand, and there are very many disciples who attain by their own zeal and industry what they have not learned from their masters.
Indeed, before us a certain man said that there is a difference between those who teach (docentes) and teachers (doctores), supposing perhaps that teachers are chosen for this office by the judgment of others, while teachers-on-their-own (docentes) are those who have assumed this office for themselves by their own usurpation. But of necessity even the teachers must yield to him whom the doctrine of God who teaches has imbued through meditation on the heavenly testimonies. 'Above the elders have I understood, because I have sought thy precepts.' Nor indeed is this difficult, that he whom the Lord has taught should understand above the elders, since by the grace of God he advances to the doctrine and maturity of an aged person. For since the age of old age is a life without stain, surely the doctrine of an unstained life confers the age of an old man.
In short, to Jeremiah excusing himself because he was young, the answer was given: Say not, I am a youth; for he was not reckoned a youth by the divine definition who possessed hoary prudence, which shone with the grace of heavenly sanctification. Nevertheless it does not seem to me that the prophet is praising himself and preferring himself to the elders, since you may read: Let not the discourse of the elders pass you by; for they too learned from their fathers. For elsewhere also Wisdom in Sirach said: Where there are old men, do not talk much. But he knows to which elders he prefers himself, namely those grown old in sin and doting in the lethargy of impiety and the old age of perfidy. These are the elders of the people who handed over the Lord Jesus to Pilate the governor.
For the priests and scribes and elders assembled, as Mark says, and again: The priests took counsel with the elders that they might hand him over. And against the apostles in their Acts, that the elders of Israel assembled, the holy Peter and Luke the evangelist bear witness. He did not, then, disparage the age of old men, but with the voice of the younger people he prophesied that that ancient people of the Jews, aged in days, would be unteachable toward God, who could not find in old age what they had not acquired in their youth. For he who from the beginning provoked the Lord with frequent offences, whose grace, when he was young, he could not earn, did not, when old, deserve to recognize his coming, nor could he hold the gift.
But the comely judgment of hoary old age lies in understanding, and the knowledge of veteran counsel is preferred by the maturity of understanding, not by length of life. Let us therefore search out the commandments of God, that we may understand above the elders; let us flee the slippery way of sinners, that we may be able to keep the heavenly precepts; for this is what the following words declare. The younger brother Jacob understood above his elder, because, when the elder Esau demanded for himself the prerogative of blessing by the privilege of age, he left the milder feast while he sought wild game. Truly, when that one had gone off to the hunt, the younger brother received his garments and handed them over to me, the people of the nations, using his mother's counsel.
That robe of wisdom, then, which the people of the Jews had before, Rebecca clothed me with; her good robe is the Law and the Prophets. Of this robe that people was stripped, and we were clothed; that mother Jerusalem which is above in heaven clothed us. We approach, therefore, to the Father. We offer him the milder feasts, the foods of patience, the gentleness of mercy, the sweetness of understanding. I receive the blessing, I snatch from the elder brother the spiritual grace. He comes, he is angry, he finds nothing to receive; the mother runs to meet us and forms us with pious exhortation. There rests with me that robe woven with good commandments. 'From every evil way have I restrained my feet, that I may keep thy words.'
Truly worthy is he who has understood above the elders, since he is honoured with the divine Spirit, so as to teach the elders not only the truth of understanding, but also the flight from sin and caution against fault. And so, since human frailty is prone to be carried to the lowest depths by its affections and with sliding step into vice, he teaches how the slipperiness of this way, the windings of this journey, may not entangle the traveller. 'I have restrained,' he says, 'my feet from the evil way,' that is, from the vanity of this world, because the world is set in wickedness. Whatever is doubtful and of uncertain outcome, this is evil; as a doubtful light is called malign, so whatever mingles the darkness of malice with the truth is evil.
Recall, then, from the slipperiness of this world the feet of your soul and the going of your mind. Restrain, I say, resist your desires, oppose the impulses which seem to rush in like beasts and cattle, to devour the tender fruits and the new tillage of this our countryside. 'I have restrained,' he says, 'my feet.' He did not, surely, restrain the feet of the body, which for the most part obey the judgment of a pious mind. For they are not to be restrained when they go forth to the temple of God, when they hasten to bring help to the widow, to forestall the impious, to trip up some deceitful man. There is, therefore, another foot which is rightly restrained. What that is, let the prophet himself teach us: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me,' he says.
There is also a foot of iniquity, which quickly slips and cannot stand, just as the foot of the faithless is, of whom it is written: There fell the workers of iniquity; they were cast out and could not stand. Restrain, therefore, your feet, that you may not fall; for there are feet not only of crimes but also of weakness, and one must see that you do not fall. And perhaps you seem to yourself to stand well, but Paul says to you: And you who stand, see that you do not fall. Attend diligently to your way, that you may hear: But stand here with me. For standing with God you cannot fear a fall; standing with God you will be able to say: He drew my feet from slipping. But the Lord so draws your feet from every slipping, if he has known that you restrain your feet from slipping.
Therefore David deserved this, that God should draw his feet from slipping, because he himself restrained his feet, lest they should slip by a headlong and incautious footstep of sinners, whence also he was able to keep the divine words. For no one will be able to keep them, unless he has first been able to stand. But when he has kept them, the word of God itself begins to provide him with protection. Well does he say that his feet were restrained from the evil way, who knows that Christ is the Way. 'From thy judgments I have not declined, because thou hast set me a law.'
He explained what it was to restrain the foot from the evil way: namely, not to decline from the divine judgments, and to hold the firm and immovable footstep of persevering innocence, not to bend the step nor turn aside from the course of discipline, but to press on along the paths not only of the old law on Sinai, but also of the new law according to the brightness of the Gospel. There is also a law of the Gospel, of which this prophet says above: Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them, that the nations may know that they are men. We understand, surely, the coming of the Lord to be prophesied, the calling of the Gentiles, who before seemed fixed in a certain mire of this body, clinging to the pleasure of their own corruption as to dregs and to lust, because they did not know the Lord.
And therefore, angered, he says: Let the sinners be turned into hell, that they might not see the soul of the Lord Jesus descending and ascending and be converted to the Lord, who, while they lived, were unwilling to be converted. But he speaks of those Gentiles who forget the Lord. They knew, then, and forgot. Yet with prophetic kindness he prays that the Lord may arise, that man may not prevail, that earthly thoughts and all the seething impulses of this body may grow quiet. Let the nations be judged, since the Lord is then known, when the grave affection of those who fear is turned by the terror of judgment, and let the nations learn that they are men, dissoluble in corruption and formed of hardening clay, which before, those who had not received the Law, did not know.
Hence the prophet, as if he too were troubled by the contemplation of earthly frailty, says: Why, O Lord, hast thou withdrawn afar off? Well does he fear who recognizes that he is a man; but because he fears more for us who are sinners from among the Gentiles, he prays that the Lord may not become distant from his Gentiles, so that we who were far off may begin to be nearer, and may know that we are men, made indeed to the image and likeness of God, to whom through the womb of the Virgin even Christ was made conformed. Rightly, then, it is taken both in reference to weakness and to grace: Let the nations know that they are men—the one through a certain common and carnal fellowship with the beasts, the other through the image of God and the sacrament of the Lord's flesh.
Dignity began to be what had seemed ignobility. Deservedly, then, the people of the nations did not decline from the judgments of God, who can say: Because thou hast set me a law. Not through Moses, not through the prophets, but thou thyself through thyself, O Jesus, hast set me a law, that is, the Gospel. Therefore I have not declined, because I have looked and known; thy paths, and following thee I have known the true way. And so, hearing the preaching of the Gospel, which the prophetic Spirit foretold, he says: How sweet are thy words to my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth! And rightly 'sweet,' by which are proclaimed the remission of sins, the perpetuity of life, the resurrection even of the dead, which have tempered the bitterness of perpetual and harsh death.
Through these things we have begun not to fear death, we who have begun to say: O death, where is thy victory? And well does he say 'sweet to the throat,' because the spiritual grace is poured into the inmost vitals. 'Above honey and the honeycomb,' he says, 'sweet to my mouth.' And therefore, because thy words have begun to be sweet to us, thou sayest to the Church: Thy lips, O bride, distil the honeycomb. What the honeycomb is, teach us, O Solomon; for thou hast said: Good words are honeycombs of honey. And truly good is the honeycomb which the Church eats, redolent of honey gathered as it were by the spiritual abundance of bees from many prophets. This is the honey of which he says: I have eaten my bread with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk.
The mystical discourse of the heavenly Scriptures is like bread, which strengthens the heart of man as the stronger food of the Word; but the persuasive ethical discourse is sweet and softer, because by ethical preaching the inner parts of the mind are soothed, and hearts bitter with fevers, that is, with the penitence of offences, grow sweet by the gentle word. The lips of the preacher drip honey, when the members of a fallen soul, dashed and ruined by hard mishaps, are refreshed. There is also a more fervent power of the word, like that of wine; there is also, in the appearance of milk, a clearer discourse. Eat, he says, my neighbours, and drink and be inebriated. Good is the inebriation which produces a certain ecstasy of the mind toward better and more delightful things, so that our mind, unmindful of cares, may be gladdened by the wine of gladness.
Good is the inebriation of the spiritual table; in short, how glorious is the cup that inebriates! But elsewhere too you have: Inebriate its streams, multiply its generations, because the inebriation of the earth, when it has been infused with heavenly rain, is wont to raise up the seeds and multiply the fruits. And so the word of God, which descends like rain from heaven, where it has inebriated the veins of our earth or of the soul and mind by divine preaching, has stirred up the zeal of diverse virtues and brought to maturity the fruits of faith and chaste devotion. And deservedly it is said to him: Thou hast visited the earth and inebriated it. For by the assumption of a body he visited it, to heal the weak; he inebriated it with spiritual grace, to soothe the anxious with delight. Rightly, then, it is said to the bride:
Thy lips, O bride, distil the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue. For the mouth of the just man distils wisdom, from the mouth of the just proceed the honey of sweetness and mercy, in the mouth of the just there is no guile, no deceit, no bitterness of sin. The Church hears the words of the just, the people of God hears the precepts of the wise man, it delights in the sweetness of the discourse, it is soothed by the pleasantness of the moral disputation, saying: How sweet are thy words to my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth; because the honey of bees delights for an hour, but its flavour quickly vanishes and for the most part the diseased vitals are harmed, whereas, though the honey of moral words may sting, it does not harm. Yet know to whom those words may be entrusted, for it is written:
Say nothing in the ear of a fool, lest at some time he deride your prudent words. For the fool will vomit forth and reject your discourse, who cannot perceive its sweetness. There follows the eighth verse: 'From thy commandments I have understood; therefore have I hated every way of iniquity.' Consequent upon this verse is: Desiring wisdom, keep the commandments; but no one can keep them except him who understands. In short, all the words of the Law are recited daily by certain elders of the Jews, and none of them can keep the commandment.
For I would not say that a tree keeps the fruitfulness of its nature, when it runs riot in leaves but comes to nothing in fruit, nor would I say that that land keeps its fruits which feeds the fern hateful to farmers but is not wont to produce grain, nor does the shepherd seem to keep his flock who does not know how to choose pastures that will profit, to beware of wolves, to wall his sheepfolds with dogs, and knows not how to administer drink when there is need. For merely to bring forth dumb cattle without any care is just as much as for the people of the Jews to read the Scriptures.
Where are the pastures of the spiritual sacrament, where the letter kills, where the intelligible wolves make their assault, where there is the repose of refreshment, where the hope of resurrection, who are the dogs that can bark for the custody of the flock—of these the people, more dumb than the very flock, is ignorant. And so, if it should say: 'I keep the commandments,' the answer is given: But thou hast hated discipline and hast cast my words behind thee. If thou sawest a thief, thou didst run together with him, and with adulterers didst set thy portion. Thy mouth abounded in wickedness, and thy tongue framed deceits; sitting, thou didst speak against thy brother. This is not to keep the commandments, but to transgress; to do contrary to the statutes is not to understand, but to be ignorant.
How can the words of God be sweet in your throat, in which is the bitterness of wickedness? How can honey and milk be under your tongue, when you compose deceit on your tongue, so as to conceive one thing in your breast and put forward another in your public speech, that you may deceive the unwary, when the apostle Peter says to you that you should lay aside all malice and cast off the disguise of pretence, saying: As newborn infants, desire the reasonable milk without guile? For he shows us what it is to have honey and milk under the tongue: namely, that we should know not to curse those who curse, but to return a blessing; that we should know not to hate anything except the way of iniquity, so that with reluctant affection we may beware of doing what we abhor. Therefore Paul guarded against evil in his flesh, because he hated it;
therefore John admonishes in his epistle that we should not love the world, because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. There is, then, in us the capacity both to hate something well and to love something well. For as we can love well the servants of God and can love well our enemies according to the word of the Lord, so can we hate well the enemies of God, hate iniquity, hate perfidy, hate baseness, hate the vanities of this world. Therefore the things that are of the world ought to be objects of hatred, lest, while our affections are careless and idle, the flattering little procuress, the enticement of pleasure, creep in.
Easily does the form of a harlot, a shameless woman, capture the eyes, unless just hatred presses upon them and an indignant affection turns away the impurity. For the most part the boasting of nobility and the affluence of worldly things puffs men up and lays them back in swollen disdain, unless you are ashamed that in you what is another's rather than your own is praised. Christ, though he was rich, became poor; in poverty, not in wealth, he redeemed you. He commanded those confessing the Son of God to be silent, that God might be recognized by works rather than by words; and do you call yourself noble, who were made from earth? David the king says: Remember, O Lord, that we are dust;
and do you glory in this perishable and miry race and think yourself rich, you who tomorrow may be a beggar, since your life is not in your abundance, but in the mercy of God? To whom be honour, glory, praise, perpetuity from the ages, both now and always and unto all ages of ages. Amen. XIV. THE LETTER NUN. 'Nun' is the fourteenth Hebrew letter, whose interpretation is 'the only one,' or in another interpretation 'their pasture.' Behold, the very letters of the Hebrews testify that the Lord Jesus is the only Son of the Father, the Word of God. In short, at once in the very first verse David speaks of the only Son of God: 'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, O Lord, and a light unto my paths.'
Whence we understand that this psalm was arranged by the Hebrew letters for this reason: that our man, as it were a little child formed from infancy through the elements of letters, to which the age of boyhood is accustomed, might grow up to the maturity of virtue. And the individual letters are as it were the titles of those verses which are written under the same letters, declaring their series and connection, just as here the letter signifies 'the only one,' and a portion of this psalm prophesies concerning the only-begotten Son of God and the brightness of his eternal light. Nor indeed does that other interpretation of this letter, found in another codex, clash with this. For what are our pastures—that is, the pastures of the faithful—but Christ?