Surely, if any one of them builds the house of God with righteousness, weaves the garment with diligence, heals the soul with grace, he does a good work. But if some careless and slack person should occupy the place of a builder, a weaver, a spiritual physician—as a high priest, as a presbyter, as a minister of the holy altar—is it not more fitting that each should not undertake that office which he cannot fulfill, than that, having undertaken it, he should neither discharge the assumed duty vigorously himself nor wrest the place from another who could diligently guard it? And what of this, that consideration is also shown to the very man who, being the more slack, is rejected, lest he incur greater offense? But let us consider what it means to be rejected. For it is written:
Like the wounded who sleep, cast out among the tombs, whom You remember no more, and indeed these have been thrust away from Your hand. Let us therefore mark whom He rejects—the wounded and those cast out among the tombs, whom He remembers no more. These are they who are rejected from the commandments of God; for to the sinner God said: Why do you declare My ordinances of righteousness? And because they are rejected from the commandments, they are thrust from the hand of God; and He has well provided that no one should seem to be snatched from the hand of God, for no one can snatch anyone from the hand of God. He, then, who is deprived of the office or grace of the ministry he has received, is not snatched away but cast off, as the Lord Jesus said to Jerusalem: How often have I willed to gather your children, and you would not!
Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate. He took from them the sanctification, the altar of incense and the shrine of prayer, the mercy-seat, the altar of sacrifices, the ministries of priests and Levites; and yet, when all these had been taken away which they possessed according to the commandments of the Law, the Apostle says: Has God rejected His inheritance? No, he says, He has not rejected it, but: He has shut up all things under unbelief, that He may have mercy on all. There are therefore those who are rejected from the commandments for a time, on account of mercy, just as consideration is shown even to those who are vomited up. For just as that which is to be vomited, while remaining in the body, turns the more sour, so he who ought to be expelled, if he is retained and does not correct himself, ulcerates the whole body.
And deservedly the faithful and true Witness says to the angel of Laodicea: I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! But because you are lukewarm, I will begin to spew you out of My mouth. He plainly condemns negligence with a heavier judgment than ignorance; for he is cold who knows not the faith, and he is hot who is kindled with the fervor of the Holy Spirit. He, therefore, who has not the warmth of faith, it would have been more bearable for him not to have received the faith than to have neglected it. For the lukewarm is worse than the cold, like the Jew, who seems to himself to have a faith which he does not have. How much more bearable is the cause of the heathen, who can say:
'I did not know the Law, I did not hear the prophets, therefore I did not believe'—than the one who read all those things by which he should believe that Jesus would come, and yet did not believe! Neither indeed is excused, neither he who read nor he who would not read; but he sins more who denied what he had read than he who did not do the works which he did not know were to be done. But how great is faith and the grace of righteousness, so that he is in the likeness of God who holds the faith and practices the works of righteousness; and how great is the loss of him whom the Lord Jesus has vomited from His mouth and cast from His own bowels! Yet how merciful is He, who both holds the just in His mouth and does not vomit out the unjust before He gives warning that they are to be vomited, so that even by such admonition they may be converted and accomplish something worthy whereby they are not vomited out!
Now let us consider the third verse. In my heart, he says, have I hidden Your sayings, that I may not sin against You. For this reason, then, it is good to hide the mystery of the king; for he sins against God who supposes that the secret mysteries committed to him are to be divulged to the unworthy. It is dangerous, therefore, not only to speak falsehoods, but even truths, if one insinuates them to those to whom one ought not. And this fault is fourfold, springing either from flattery, or from avarice, or from boastfulness, or from incautious talkativeness; for, while someone wishes to flatter, he pours out the mystery to him to whom he speaks; some also, from zeal for gain, pursue the reward of betrayal, so as to sell by speaking what ought to be covered with silence;
others, that they may seem to know more and may parade their own knowledge, lay open what they ought to conceal; very many, while they speak without forethought, send forth a word which they cannot recall. Therefore the man who is grave is praised, and not idly does Scripture say: 'A man who hides his words speaks not at random'—as did the Apostle Paul, who knew what to say to each and when he ought to say each thing. Whence also he says to the Corinthians: I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able, nay, neither are you yet able. Therefore he sees these only in passing, but abides among the Ephesians, because a great door was opened to him to make known to the nations the mystery of Christ. Therefore also Solomon teaches that there is a time for speaking.
But above all others the Lord Jesus declares it in His Gospel, saying that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. Surely not with gold, not with silver, not with money can the kingdom of heaven be purchased, but with the sayings of the Lord, the chaste sayings, silver tried in the fire, by which that very kingdom is acquired. This treasure, then, of wisdom and knowledge, hidden in the field in which the words of the heavenly Scriptures are planted, when a man has found it, he hides it; he keeps it in his heart and does not divulge it, knowing that, if he should divulge the treasure of God to the Babylonians, he would incur great offense, so that it would be said to him in the prophetic word: Of your seed they shall take, and make eunuchs in the house of the king.
By which it is signified that he who has betrayed the divine mysteries can have no posterity of his soul nor seed-plot of merits. Beware therefore lest you betray your riches to the faithless, and, even if they feign friendship, do not open to them the inner parts of your house; do not unlock the royal treasures which the Babylonians ought not to know, lest they come and take captive your descendants and cut off the seed-plot of virtue. This is what the Lord says also in the Gospel: Do not cast your pearls before swine. Therefore he does well who hides the sayings of the Lord in his heart, as the prophet David hid them, as Mary did, who kept all the words of the Lord Jesus in her heart.
For indeed if it is good for a man to hide his own words, how much more ought we to cover, ought we to hide the word of God in the bosom of our heart! In the fourth verse he says: Blessed are You, O Lord; teach me Your ordinances of righteousness. For not whosoever says, Lord, Lord, shall himself enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of God. Therefore this man, who has corrected his way from his youth, has kept the words of God, has sought the Lord his God with his whole heart, and has not been rejected from the commandments of God, and has been held worthy to have the secrets of wisdom committed to him, and has hidden them in his heart that he might not sin against God—as one who has the sayings of God he gives thanks, saying:
Blessed are You, O Lord; and he desires to have Him as his very teacher, longing to know the secrets of the Law, and how it is to be interpreted: If you buy a Hebrew servant and he serves you six years, and so on—to which was prefaced: These are the ordinances of righteousness which you shall set before the sons of Israel. These things he seeks to learn from the Lord, things which men could not teach unless God had taught beforehand. After the apostles had learned these things from Christ, the Church says: The king has brought me into his chamber—that is, into that secret place of his, in which are the treasures of his knowledge and understanding. And therefore it is said to you: When you pray, enter into your chamber, which signifies the secret place of the mind and the soul.
Into this chamber of righteous things the bride asked to be led, when she had run after the fragrance of the ointment, which ever flows and never fails. Therefore, as one well taught in righteousness, the prophet says in the fifth verse: With my lips have I declared all the judgments of Your mouth. And how does he elsewhere say: Your judgments are like a great deep? How does the Apostle say: O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? If the judgments are unsearchable, how then, says the prophet, have I declared all the judgments of Your mouth? But perhaps the judgments of God are not the same as the judgments of His mouth. If they are different, it is well said:
Who shall be like Your thoughts? And therefore His judgments are unsearchable, because we know in part and we prophesy in part. But if none but Christ says this, who can say: I and the Father are one? Yet let us make a distinction, and let us not fear lest the venerable Scripture should assail itself with seeming contradictions. For let us consider that he did not say: 'The judgments of His mouth are like a great deep', but he said Your judgments; nor did the Apostle put 'the unsearchable judgments of His mouth', but the unsearchable judgments of Him. For we can reckon those judgments of God which He has not disclosed to us as hidden, but the judgments of His mouth as those which He has announced and has spoken through the mouth of the prophets. For the prophet is understood to be the mouth of God, to whom it is said:
Cry out; and he said: What shall I cry? And it was inspired that he should say: All flesh is grass. This indeed, having spoken, he discharged the office of the mouth of God, because he spoke the judgment of God. Therefore the prophetic oracles are now not a deep, but even they themselves are like a deep, because no one was able in heaven or on earth to open the book except Christ. Let us now come to the sixth verse. In the way, he says, of Your testimonies have I been delighted, as in all riches. Some delight in gold, some in silver, some in garments, some in possessions—vineyards, olive-groves, cornfields—some in works of painting, of marbles; in short, in various things individuals have their delights:
the spiritual man delights in the way of the heavenly testimonies as though possessing every patrimony, rich in all things, as the Apostle says: I give thanks to my God always for you, for the grace of God which is given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you are made rich in Him, in all utterance and in all knowledge. So far did the Corinthians advance by the teaching of the Apostle that those who before could only, like little ones, drink milk, afterward abounded in all the riches of knowledge and of utterance. Therefore David was delighted in all the riches of knowledge, of science, of wisdom, in every act of good works.
And if anyone now, intent on divine things, should drink in that threefold discipline of wisdom—the contemplative, the practical, and the rational—he will be more beautiful for the good zeal of attaining knowledge, holding the grace of carrying out rational and moral doctrine. He who has come to know the prophetic enigmas by the revelation of the Spirit of God, who has comprehended the height of the Gospel in works and counsels, who has marked the moral teaching of the apostolic discourse—he, as one rich in all things, will receive abundant pleasure.
And because bodily pleasure is sweet, therefore it is not compared with spiritual things as though of equal quality of grace, but is summoned as it were to bear witness to sweetness, since indeed the Apostle also teaches that the invisible and eternal things of God have been understood by us through those things which were made. In the Song of Songs too we have it written: I have likened you, my neighbor, to my mares among the chariots of Pharaoh. In which, while the likeness of the Church seems to be compared to the running of swift horses, her grace is reckoned rich. Do not therefore take it as one mare of the rich king, but absolutely for cavalry, as we often say: 'What is his sheep like?' for 'flock of sheep'.
Pharaoh therefore, as a most powerful and most wealthy king, had powerful horses, whence also Scripture says 'the chariots of Pharaoh' as a most powerful kind for the use of wars and the aid of fighting; in short, with these chariots Pharaoh easily overtook the fleeing Hebrews. Therefore, just as horses yoked together draw the chariot in concord and patiently receive the yoke and bear it, and grow gentle with fitting grace and with the acceptance of that yoke, so also the congregation of the nations, untamed in Gentile customs, formerly vaunted itself; but when it received the yoke of Him who says:
Take My yoke upon you, for it is easy, and My burden, for it is sweet—and the bride of Christ began, through the concord and meekness of the peoples, to be exalted and to be carried about throughout the whole world, like a chariot snatched up by swift horses, she ascended above the world to the Bridegroom. Finally, in the later parts of the Song of Songs it says: I have set you as the chariots of Aminadab. The Church has many chariots within herself, all of which the Lord rules with spiritual reins; and one soul has many thoughts, which the rein of the Lord restrains and recalls, lest this chariot of ours be carried over any precipice. And Aminadab, by interpretation, signifies 'father of the well-pleasing', whose son is read in Numbers to be Naason, prince of the people:
who he is, understand by the interpretation 'serpentine', and you recognize this, if you recall, that as a serpent he hung upon the wood who redeemed you. Therefore the soul is the chariot of God, that His anger and lust and fear and all worldly desires may be reined in. The Church too is the chariot of God, which must be governed by the rudders of Christ, lest the commotions and dissensions of diverse peoples disturb her. By that Naason too Christ is well understood, because the rod of Aaron, turned into a serpent, devoured those Egyptian serpents. Let us therefore have these riches, let us delight in these, that rational horses may run for us and we may abide in their precepts. And therefore he says: In Your commandments will I exercise myself, and I will consider Your ways.
For he who is exercised in the words of the apostles knows the commandments of the Lord Jesus and considers His ways, whose end is Christ, who says: I am the way. And I will meditate in Your ordinances of righteousness; I will not forget Your words. This passage admonishes us that we ought to be mindful of the Scriptures, and to meditate on His ordinances of righteousness not only in speech but also in the imitation of deeds. For it is not those who dispute about the Law and do not do the things of the Law, but those who are doers of the Law, that are justified. III. THE LETTER GIMEL. The third letter according to the Hebrews is Gimel, which in Latin is called 'recompense'. Accordingly this is shown at once in the very first verse. Recompense, he says, Your servant. As David himself said above:
Do not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities—and here he asks for recompense? That seems to be the voice of a sinner, this of one well aware in his conscience, who demands the rewards of a good work. Whence we can also understand this, that this psalm is framed in the person of Him who, born of a virgin for the redemption of the whole world, presumes to sit at the right hand of the Father, as He Himself says: From now on you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power. Yet it is not foreign nor arrogant if David should ask a recompense from the Lord his God for his outstanding labors: it is the prerogative of faith and righteousness to claim a reward from the Lord's favor.
Finally, Peter is reproved, because, walking upon the waves, he doubted with human affection rather than presumed with apostolic authority. In the Gospel too we are taught to have faith and not to hesitate concerning those things which are to be done above the power of man. Deservedly therefore David, in the earlier psalms, as one still imperfect, shrinks from and declines being requited according to his sins. But in this psalm, which is later, as one founded by the advance of virtue, he prays that recompense be made to him according to the contests of faith and works—since even Paul, who had earlier said: I am not worthy to be called an apostle, afterward says:
There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall render to me in that day; and not to me only, but also to those who love His coming. And the Apostle promises it to himself, but here he prays still more modestly—which surely is not the mark of insolent arrogance but of an innocent conscience, to ask a reward from Him whom you have served, since to despair is the occasion of sloth, but to hope is the incentive of labor. Ask therefore with confidence, if your merits support you, that by such asking you may labor the more zealously, whereby you may be the more worthy of that petition. What athlete, if he despairs of the crown, would descend into the stadium? Or if, as victor, he should demand it, would he give offense? Proof makes hope, hope confidence. Such, then, is the prayer of the just man:
The Lord delights in such a prayer, that for the purity of your conscience you may use boldness. Nevertheless, that the petition may seem less arrogant, he well added: to Your servant, in which there is both the grace of humility and the reward of servitude. For he who is called a servant in the Lord is the Lord's freedman; why should he not presume upon the favor of the Lord, having been bought with so precious a blood? It is a great thing for you to be called 'my child', as it is said to a servant. If, therefore, anyone is a servant and serves the Lord well, and does nothing as a servant of sin, but says: I am an unprofitable servant, what I ought to do I have done, he says well: Recompense Your servant. Glorious is the servitude in which Christ also served for us.
Blessed is the servitude in which you also serve, but only so, if the adversary can claim nothing of your service for himself. Christ therefore loves the liberty of a good little servant; finally in the Song of Songs He says: How beautiful are your cheeks become, like a turtle-dove's, your neck like necklaces! The countenance is freer where there is the conscience of chastity, and it is sweet to bear the yoke of Christ, if you think the adornments of your neck to be ornaments, not burdens. Lift up therefore your eyes always to the Lord your God, and seek God, that you may find Him. Raise your neck; you wear necklaces, not chains. Even dumb animals rejoice in necklaces and seem to be adorned rather than bound.
Let the cheeks like a turtle-dove's display the marks of modesty, let the necklaces of the neck lift up the confidence of liberty: for the yoke of Christ is easy, and therefore the neck is not pressed down by it, but lifted up. We will make you, he says, likenesses of gold inlaid with silver, while the king is in his repose. For from those who are of the Law and the prophets, they had before believed only moderately in the glory of the Lord Jesus, but His inheritance, diffused among the peoples, the more frequently it is tried, the more fully has it been proved: for the frequent persecutions of the Church have produced for us the titles of martyrdom of the just by their victories.
And so, just as good gold, so the Church, when it is burned, suffers no loss, but rather its brightness is increased, until Christ comes into His kingdom and reclines His head upon the faith of the Church. He who, when He had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, had nowhere to lay His head; but now faith is already fragrant, and therefore the Church says: My spikenard gave forth its fragrance; and she says it with presumption, awaiting recompense. The ointment of grace is fragrant, from which a virgin gave birth and the Lord Jesus assumed the sacrament of the incarnation. A cluster of myrrh, she says, is my kinsman to me, a cluster of Cyprus my brother to me. He rests between my breasts.
For the Lord Jesus, taking on a body, bound Himself with the bonds of charity, and not only bound Himself to our members and to natural sufferings, but even to the cross; and therefore, like a cluster, He rests in the faith of the Church and in moral grace. A cluster of Cyprus is my kinsman, in the vineyards of Engaddi. If we seek the place, it belongs to a certain region (since in Judea there is also a place so called), in which the balsam-tree is produced; if the interpretation, Engaddi signifies in Latin 'temptation'. In those vineyards, then, there is a tree which, if anyone pricks it, sends forth ointment; this is the fruit of the tree. If the tree is not cut, it is not so fragrant nor does it give off scent, but when it has been pricked by the craftsman's hand, then it distills a tear;
just so Christ also, crucified upon that tree of temptation, wept over the people, that He might wash away our sins, and from the bowels of His mercy He poured out ointment, saying: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Then, therefore, He was pricked on the wood by the lance, and there went out from Him blood and water, sweeter than any ointment, a victim acceptable to God, pouring forth throughout the whole world the fragrance of sanctification; and like balsam from a tree, so virtue went out from His body. Whence He says: I perceive that virtue has gone out from Me. Thence the expression 'opobalsamum' is named, because by the pricking of the wood the balsam bursts forth through the cavity of the puncture. Jesus, therefore, being pricked, poured forth the fragrance of the remission of sins and of redemption.
For He was also bound fast, though He was the Word, having become man. And He became poor, though He was rich, that by His poverty we might be enriched; He was mighty, and yet offered Himself to be despised, so that Herod scorned Him and mocked Him; He moved the earth, and clung to the wood; He covered the heaven with darkness, He crucified the world, and was crucified; He bowed His head, and the Word went forth; He was emptied, and yet filled all things. God descended, man ascended; the Word was made flesh, that flesh might claim for itself the throne of the Word at the right hand of God; it was a wound, and ointment flowed; the beetle was heard, and God was recognized. Christ answers her: Behold, you are fair, My neighbor; behold, you are fair.
Since the Church had come to know the mystery and was preaching the Lord Jesus crucified for the redemption of the whole world, she deserves to hear: 'Behold, you are fair. You who call Me good are yourself also good, and because you have seen the comeliness of My glory, you also are beautiful and comely'. But what is it for Christ to say 'you are fair' or 'you are comely' except that Gospel saying: Be of good courage, daughter, your sins are forgiven you? Therefore, to her to whom Christ has forgiven sins, He rightly says: Recompense Your servant; I shall live and keep Your words. She has nothing to despair of in the recompense, because the Lord Jesus came to save the world, not to destroy it, and therefore He is unmindful of injury, mindful of grace, as He Himself testifies, saying in the prophetic book:
I am, I am He who blots out your iniquities, and I will remember them no more. But you, be mindful, and let us be judged; declare your iniquities, that you may be justified. Whosoever, therefore, declares his iniquities to God is justified, and whosoever is justified fears not recompense but demands it; he who fears not recompense shall live. But why did he say 'I shall live' and not 'I live'? Because this life is not in the place of a reward, which is in the place of death. The prophet grieves that he has been brought down into the dust of death; the Apostle longs to be delivered from this body of death: and do we think that the prophet flatters himself concerning this life? All things here are full of death; death enters through the window, it enters through your mouth, unless the Lord sets a guard upon your mouth;
finally, from much speaking sin is born. Read the commandments of the Law and you will find it written that a living person, if he touches a dead one, is defiled. How many dead do we touch, among how many dead do we dwell! Therefore the Author of life says to you: Leave the dead to bury their own dead; therefore it is said to you elsewhere: Arise, you who sleep, and rise up from the dead. How would it be said to you, 'Arise from the dead', unless you lived among the dead? Let us suppose you to be clean from dead works, from the pollution of sin: how are you clean, who are in the body of death, who live among the sepulchres of the dead? It was needful for Peter to speak to the dead, that they might come forth from their sepulchres. We need cleansing, therefore, because we have touched the dead. The Law commands us to be cleansed:
who is so great as to be above the Law? Even the holy Nazarite of God, if he touches a dead body, the Law pronounces unclean. And therefore he shaves his head and lays aside his hair as not holy, and again prays that he may be heard, who before, on account of the touching of the dead, could not pray. He counted the days irrational, because he had drawn near to what is irrational: he therefore lays aside the dead and superfluous things of his head, that he may be reconciled to Christ. If therefore the Nazarite is purified, we too ought to be purified. We have all touched a dead body. For who shall boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who shall dare to say that he is clean from sins? Perhaps there may be someone who has not offended in speech, though rare is such a one, of whom God may say, as of holy Job:
he did not sin with his lips; yet he could not always have the thoughts of his heart clean; the devil casts himself into the heart of man. Suppose that someone has hedged about his heart with ever-ready and watchful guard: yet he dwells in the midst of sinners, he too has need of being purified. Whence Isaiah, when he had said: O wretched me, because I have unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips, immediately one of the Seraphim came down and touched his lips with a coal, that he might cleanse his unclean lips. There is not one baptism. There is one which the Church here imparts through water and the Holy Spirit, with which catechumens must be baptized. There is also another baptism, of which the Lord Jesus says:
I have a baptism to be baptized with which you know not. And indeed He had already been baptized in the Jordan, as the foregoing things declare; but let this be the baptism of the passion, by which each one is cleansed even by his own blood. There is also a baptism in the vestibule of paradise, which before was not. But after the sinner was shut out, there began to be the fiery sword which God placed, which before was not, when there was no sin. Guilt began, and baptism began, by which those might be purified who desired to return into paradise, so that, returning, they might say: We have passed through fire and water; here through water, there through fire—through water, that sins might be washed away, through fire, that they might be burned up. But, what is more grievous, both here and there we endure fire.
Who is it that baptizes in this fire? Not a presbyter, not a bishop, not John, who says: I baptize you unto repentance; not an angel, not an archangel, not dominions, not powers, but He of whom John says: He who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry: He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire; He has His winnowing-fan in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing-floor, and will gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.