I. ON THE PLEADING OF JOB AND ON THE INFIRMITY OF MAN. The divine Scripture shows in frequent passages that many disturbances must be undergone by us in this life, and that many consolations are at hand, by which a mind capacious of vigor and conscious of the right ought to swallow up the things that belong to present hardships, and to look toward those things which have everlasting joy. For the consolations outweigh the disturbances, since they both bring a calming of present things and a hope of things to come. Whence also the apostle Paul says: 'The sufferings of this present time are unworthy to be compared with the glory that is to come' — unworthy indeed for the consolation of comparison, not for the fruit of redemption.
For what life of any man on earth is so illustrious that it could be made equal to that heavenly glory? What is more sublime than Paul, who underwent so much peril, who drank up so much grief and infirmity? In those sufferings which he underwent for Christ's name, he died daily, as he himself says, and reckoned that he endured nothing unworthy in this time, for the hope and expectation of so great a glory. Elijah endured hunger, ambushes, the terrors of death, the bitter hardships of labors; and yet he alone, brought down from heaven to earth by fiery chariots and fiery horses, and carried back from earth to heaven, hid all the merit of this warfare and, beyond all things human, exalted the grace of his holy ascent. For of Peter what shall I say?
He, judging his own cross unworthy of the future recompense, begged to be hung with his footing inverted, that he might add something to his passion — he who did not fear to heap up tortures upon himself. Whence not without reason holy David testified that he hastened toward that glory, both in his work in general and most especially in the forty-first psalm, saying: 'When shall I come and appear before the face of God?' In which psalm he plainly expressed both the disturbances of human frailty and the consolations from the Lord.
In which he also intercedes with God on our behalf, that God should not, forgetful of his own work, forgetful of the bounty and grace bestowed upon man, whom he had undertaken to protect and adorn, abandon him and cast aside the weak and shipwrecked man, broken by diverse infirmities, to be ground down. The same thing holy Job had done before him, but this one more morally, the other more vehemently. It is therefore in my heart to consider the pleadings of both, since in these the form of human life is expressed, the cause is pleaded, the prerogative is shaped. In their own order, then, they are to be examined by us.
And so, when Job had lost his children and all that was his, except his wife, who alone had been kept for him as a temptation, and was moreover drenched with a grievous ulcer, when he saw that his friends had come not to console, but to aggravate and heap up his grief, he perceived that the power of tempting him had been given against him by the Lord to the adversary. And although he felt that the arrows of the Lord were in his body, by which he said he was pierced, nevertheless, like a good athlete who would not yield to pain nor refuse the hardships of the contest, he added: 'Though the Lord begin to wound, yet in the end let him not destroy me. For what is my strength, that I endure, or what is my time, that my soul should bear it? Is the strength of stones my strength, or is my flesh of bronze?'
'Or did I not trust in him? But help has withdrawn from me, and his visitation has despised me. Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation, and his life like that of a daily hireling, or like a servant fearing his master, who would shelter himself under a shadow, or like a hireling awaiting his wages? So I too have awaited empty months, and nights of sorrows have been given to me. If I lie down, I say, When will it be day? If I rise, again, When will it be evening? I am full of pains from evening until morning. My body ferments in the rottenness of worms; I melt the clods of earth, scraping the pus of my ulcers. My life is lighter than a tale; it perishes in empty hope. I will say, My bed shall comfort me.'
'Thou frightenest me in dreams and dost terrify me with visions.' How wretched is the condition of man, which labors as a hireling for others, is needy for itself, and cannot sustain itself except by another's mercy! Daily under dread, under fear, bearing a grievous servitude, and, lest he be caught by his master, wandering and fugitive, he thinks he can hide himself under a certain shadow of this world. Consider that man of whom Sirach says in Ecclesiasticus: 'Every man who transgresses upon his own bed, despising and saying in his soul: Who sees me? Darkness surrounds me, and walls. Whom do I fear?' Does not this man seem to you to be truly a hireling, who...
...had squandered, like that young man in the Gospel, who is read to have squandered the portion of his father's substance that he received, and, needy and destitute, in order to relieve his hunger, began to feed another's flocks, that by hire he might gain his sustenance. Yet that one was at some point converted, because he returned to his father and did not suppress his sins but disclosed them; but this man, who reckons that he is not seen by him who sees all things, and thinks his deeds can be hidden in darkness, holds out a shadow before himself, but in vain believes that he lies hidden, since the eye of the Lord, brighter than the sun, detects all hidden things, illumines dark things, penetrates the conscience of the inmost heart, and descends into the deep and profound places. Vain therefore is he who thinks he is...
...safe in darkness is vain, since he cannot avoid the light which shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it. Like a fugitive, then, and a wicked hireling, he is caught, and before he can hide himself he is recognized, because to the Lord all things are known before he seeks them — not only the things that have been done, but also those that are to come. He therefore perishes in empty hope who thinks to conceal his own crime: that is a tale, not the truth. Indeed, the tale of sinners is hateful, having no fruit, but only a groan. 'For the narration of a fool is a burden on the road.' For what else is sin but a burden, which loads the wayfarer of this world, pressed down by the heavy bundle of his offense? And if he were unwilling to lie under the load, he ought to have heeded him who says:
'Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.' But what is more wretched, when the very bed, given for common rest, inflicts a grievous wound? For then we are wont to recall the things we have done, and the inner conscience is pricked by the goads of its own deeds. Whence also the Scripture says to these: 'The things which you say in your hearts, be pricked with remorse upon your beds.' A remedy indeed for debt, yet it has wounded the conscience. But suppose that at some time sleep steals over the weary: we are frightened by sleepless dreams, we are tossed by visions, so that now this is no longer rest, but a punishment. For thus the riches of the world depart like the dream of one waking.
Some man arose from the sleep of this body, and possessed nothing, and lost that very thing which he believed himself to have. Set before me now that rich man who gathered daily gains and various profits and was tossed about by his own desires, suddenly coming to his senses and considering within himself that, when he dies, he will not take everything with him, nor will the glory of his house descend together with him, and that the things he possesses have something of pleasure in this life, but not also in the time to come — opening his eyes to heavenly things.
Does he not seem to you like one who drank in dreams and had drunk, and like one who feasted in dreams and had feasted, but, having opened his eyes, recognized that his soul had hoped in vain and that he still hungers and still thirsts, because avarice has no measure nor is it filled by seizing, but is the more incited the more needy, the more things it has sought? This man too, then, has arisen, and the dream is empty. But let us again hear that same man speaking. His friends, who had come to console him, pressed upon him and, like enemies, harassed him with bitter words. For there is one kind of solace for those set in hardship and bitterness: to be free of fault, so that the adversities they suffer may not seem to be endured as the price of a transgression.
This too they were eager to take away from the holy man, so that he might seem the author of his own hardship, as one who had incurred the Lord's offense by grievous sins and was enduring those things for his own impieties; they described the punishments of the impious, who sow vices and reap sorrows for themselves, who perish by God's command and die by the breath of his wrath, who breathes upon the houses of clay and their inhabitants, and they dry up; who frustrates the thoughts of the crafty and stops the mouth of the unjust. These things they asserted as true indeed concerning the power of the Lord, but not as fitting to the merits of so great a man. To these, then, he answered: 'In truth I know that it is so. For how shall a mortal man be just before the Lord?'
'For if he should wish to contend in judgment with him, he will not hear him, so that he may not answer back to one word of his with a thousand speeches. For he is wise in understanding, and strong, and great. Who is so hard that he could stand in his sight? Who makes the mountains grow old, and they know it not, and overturns them in his anger; who moves the circle of the earth from its foundations, and its pillars are shaken; who says to the sun, and it does not rise, and seals up the stars; who alone stretches out heaven and walks as upon a pavement above the sea; who makes the Pleiades and the evening star and the north, and the service of the south; who does great things and unsearchable, glorious and immense, of which there is no number.'
'If he passes by me, I shall not see, and if he goes past me, neither thus shall I know it.' With how much more vehement a trumpet did this man sound forth concerning the power of the Lord! But in that power there is the help of the just, not their ruin. In short, power seems to be expressed, but rather the mysteries of our redemption are declared. For who are the mountains which he made to grow old, but Moses, Aaron, Joshua son of Nun, Gideon, the prophets, all the books of the Old Testament? The Lord Jesus came: he brought a New Testament, and that which was old was done away. The Christian has been made new, the Jew has grown old; grace has been renewed, the letter has grown old. He overturned the mountains and converted them. For he overturned and undermined the understanding according to the letter, and established the spiritual understanding.
The carnal understanding of the law, then, vanished away; it became spiritual. Whence the apostle says: 'But we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.' Yet he too who was carnal was made spiritual, as he himself asserted, saying: 'For I think that I too have the Spirit of God.' These mountains, then, Jesus made old, and the Jews do not know it. For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty, they would never still be following Jewish ravings. They themselves, then, are the ones who do not know. Whence also in the Gospel the Lord Jesus says: 'Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.' But they are not excused because they do not know, since they are unwilling to know what they ought to have recognized. Certainly we do not begrudge them, if they would follow the Lord's sentence:
for a sentence is wont to absolve past things, not future ones. But neither is that man free from crime who crucified the author of his own salvation and afterward did not ask for pardon. Granted that he had previously been ignorant of whom he was persecuting: yet, placed upon the cross, he ought to have recognized that he was the Lord of all the elements, beneath whom all the elements trembled, the heaven was darkened, the sun fled back, the earth was rent asunder, the tombs of the dead were laid open, the dead received the fellowship of the living. Whence also the centurion said: 'Truly this was the Son of God.' The centurion recognizes a stranger, the Levite does not recognize his own; the Gentile venerates, the Hebrew abjures. Not without reason, then, were the pillars of the earth moved, when the chief priests did not believe:
but the old pillars were moved, that the new ones might be confirmed, just as he himself deigned to say: 'I have confirmed its pillars.' Hear which pillars he confirmed: Peter and James and John. 'They who seemed to be pillars gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship.' How, then, do they excuse themselves on the ground that they did not know, when some of them saw, others recognized, that the sun, without completing the course of the day, had withdrawn itself, and again, before the span of night was finished, having gone forth, had made night in the day and day in the night? Surely they ought to have understood that the sun, when bidden, withdrew itself, and when bidden, went forth. For the Lord had foretold that for three days he would be in the heart of the earth and for three nights: the sun learned this, it kept the command. It doubted, then, saying:
'What shall I do? I rise, and it is day; I set, and it is night. If I keep my course, I shall delay the salvation of the world. Let us hasten to our own redemption too: I myself also ought to hasten to the new life; for it shall come by the benefit of the cross, by which all things are renewed, both a new sun and a new heaven. I hasten, therefore, that I may be able to behold that Sun of righteousness illuminating the souls of all. But what shall I do? He himself wills the resurrection to take place after three days. I have found what to do, so that I may both make no delays and keep the number of the days. I shall not make a whole day and a whole night.
I shall shorten the hours, so that the Lord Jesus may indeed be among the dead for three days and three nights, yet may rise from the dead sooner than the intervals of three days and nights would allow. I shall therefore shorten the hours when he ascends the cross. From the sixth hour let night straightway come, that I may not see the Lord's passion, but may flee the spectacle of a parricidal persecution. I shall set, and there shall be a night of three hours; I shall go forth and renew the day, that it may be of three hours: the first day is run through, the second night shall follow in its own span, the day shall likewise follow; the third night shall begin, the Lord shall rise in the night, and there shall be day in the light of him who rises, that this may be fulfilled: And the night shall be illumined as the day. This is that great day,
which Abraham saw and was glad, of which David also said: 'This is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it' — in which I shall be present not by the service of labor, but by the fruit of exultation. The Lord himself, then, shall lead the day, and before the consummation of the world the light of the world shall be seen, which illumines every man coming into this world. He himself is the Lord who marks and numbers the multitude of the stars; he himself is the one who alone stretches out the heaven, who walked as upon a pavement over the sea, when Peter saw him walking and said: 'Lord, bid me come to thee over the waters.' And the Lord bade him, but he wavered, and unless the Lord had stretched out his right hand to him, he would have been submerged in the waves and perished. The flesh wavered, the right hand saved.
And he said to him: 'O you of little faith, why did you doubt?' Faith, then, walked in the apostle, not the flesh. In short, faith wavered, and the flesh had begun to feel shipwreck. This was not improperly said, since the flesh is the ship of the soul, as it is written: 'They that go down to the sea in ships,' and elsewhere: 'There are pains as of one giving birth; with a vehement spirit thou shalt break the ships of Tarshish.' For our souls, when they give birth to the word, bring forth pains; but she who has given birth no longer remembers her sorrow for joy, because a man is born who has redeemed the world.
The ships of Tarshish, then — that is, the intelligible ones, which brought gold and silver to Solomon, that is, our bodies, which have a treasure in earthen vessels, as the apostle said — or because even here in childbearing they are broken with peril, according to what is said: 'Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing!' — for when the soul is shaken, the flesh tosses about — or they shall be tossed by a vehement spirit poured in, when, the time being fulfilled, there must be a resurrection, according to what is written: 'Come, O Spirit, and breathe upon these dead, and they shall live.' Whence Job himself also says in later passages: 'For I know that he who is to release me upon the earth is eternal and powerful, to raise up again my skin, which has borne these things.' But they are broken, because they are raised up unto judgment.
But there is a good contrition; for 'a heart contrite and humbled God does not despise,' and elsewhere: 'Heal its contritions.' But also to Jehoshaphat it was said: 'They have been crushed who go to Tarshish,' because he had mingled himself with the sacrilegious one. Each, then, is signified by contrition, since each occurs on the day of judgment, when all who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth — those who have done good, unto the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment. This too the prophet David signifies, saying: 'There are pains as of one giving birth. As we have heard, so also we have seen, in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God.' For he comprehends both the future pain and the gladness — the pain from judgment, the gladness from absolution.
But let us return to the sequence of the pleading set before us. 'He has wrought many contritions for me,' he says; 'he does not let me breathe, he has filled me with bitterness; and because he is mighty in power, no one can resist his judgment. If I am just in heart, my tongue errs. He destroys the great and the mighty with his anger. The wicked die a grievous death, but the just are mocked; for they are given into the hands of the impious.' Look at each point. To the mighty their own anger is grievous, to the wicked their own wickedness, to the just the weakness of their condition. Thus nothing is free from peril. The strength and greatness of a man is deceived by its own power, wickedness is afflicted, virtue is laughed at. The one, because he is more able, falls; the other, because he is able to do nothing, is afflicted.
It is a fault of our condition, because our life is lighter than a runner; 'it has passed by, and has seen nothing. Like the track of a ship, or of a flying eagle seeking its food, so too the life of man passes by.' What we speak, we forget, nor is any mark of our passing detected, except what is full of mourning and groaning. 'I am shaken,' he says, 'in all my members. Would that there were a mediator for us, both reproving and judging between the two of us. I will say to the Lord: Why dost thou judge me thus? Is it good for thee that I should be unjust, since thou hast rejected the works of thy hands and hast attended to the counsel of the impious? Dost thou see as a mortal sees?'
'Or is thy life like that of a man, or thy years like the years of a mortal, that thou hast searched out my iniquities and investigated my sins? For thou knowest that I have not acted impiously; but is there one who could deliver out of thy hands?' Great is the faith, great the authority of conscience, to summon God as witness of one's own mind. What belongs to his condition he does not deny; what belongs to impiety he repels; what belongs to infirmity he confesses. To have sinned belongs to the condition, since no one is free from a fall; but to act impiously belongs not to the condition, but is the venom of a treacherous and most wicked mind. The just man does not acknowledge this, but the absolution of man lies in God's mercy, not in man's power. 'Thy hands,' he says, 'have molded me; afterward thou hast turned and stricken me.'
'Remember that thou hast made me clay, and into earth thou wilt resolve me. Hast thou not milked me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? With skin and flesh thou hast clothed me, with bones and sinews thou hast knit me together; and life and mercy thou hast placed in me, and thy visitation has protected my spirit.' How great is the lamentation of the holy man for the common infirmity, how great the authority of his appeal, that God made man with his own hands! The fault is excused under the pretext of infirmity; the grace is commended by the privilege of the eternal working and by the favor of the heavenly protection. Of which matter David too spoke most beautifully, saying: 'What is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, except that thou dost visit him?'
'Having these things in thee,' he says, 'I know that thou canst do all things, and nothing is impossible to thee. For if I sin, thou wilt keep me, but from iniquity thou hast not made me spotless. If I am impious, woe to me! If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion. I am hunted like a lion unto slaughter.' Observe three things: 'If I sin,' he says, 'thou wilt keep me'; and therefore, O man, confess your sin, that you may obtain pardon. Declare your iniquities, that you may be justified. Why are you ashamed to confess the very things in which you were born? It is the part of one who denies, not of one who confesses, to deny the crime that you were born in it. What you have received, would that you might keep. Why do you think you have what you have not received?
Therefore let the sinner confess, let the impious groan, let the just man not lift himself up nor exalt himself, lest through arrogance he lose the fruit of his righteousness. And beautifully he says: 'If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion.' For the just man attends rather to his own frailty than... The wise man acknowledges, the foolish does not acknowledge. In short, by his falls the wise man is pricked, the foolish is delighted; the just man is his own accuser, the unjust his own advocate; the just man wishes to forestall the accuser by the confession of his sin, the unjust desires to conceal his sin. The one runs to meet it at the beginning of his speech, to betray his error; the other, by the verbosity of his speech, wraps the slumber of accusation in folds, lest he betray his error. Adding again, he says:
'Why hast thou ascribed evils against me and laid upon me the sins of my youth?' Beautifully he has seized upon that age for his complaint, which is wont to be more slippery toward vice. For boyhood has innocence, old age has prudence, that very youth bordering on adolescence has regard for good repute and shame at sinning; but adolescence alone is feeble in strength, weak in counsel, hot with vice, disdainful of those who admonish, enticed by delights. In so great and so rugged and stormy a whirlwind of this world, then, why are such frequent shipwrecks ascribed to that improvident age? Whence David admirably begged of the Lord pardon for that whole time, saying:
'Remember not the transgression of my youth and of my ignorance,' because then most of all the heat of the body seethes and is set ablaze by the burning of the steaming blood. But let us again hear that same man. 'A mortal,' he says, 'the son of a woman, is of brief life and full of wrath, who like a flower has flowered and fallen, and departs like a shadow and does not endure. Is not even of this an accounting demanded, and hast thou made this one to enter into judgment under thy sight? But who is clean from filth? No one, even if his life upon earth be of a single day.'
Truly a wretched condition, that he should be compelled to render account of his own sin, which he cannot avoid, to enter into judgment, to come beneath the sight of the almighty Lord, and is constrained to set forth the causes of his deeds which he has run through in so many ages of his life — since no one whatsoever can be free from sin, so that from the very cradle the fault of infancy creeps upon us before there is any awareness of error. And how wretched is this, that his life should be brief, his enticement sweet, his hardship manifold, his wrath daily. And so in scant delight there is perpetual bitterness. 'There is hope,' he says, 'for a tree; for if it has been cut down, it will grow green again, and if its branch has died upon the rock, by the scent of water it will flower and will yield a harvest like a young plant.'
But the man, once dead, has departed; and when he falls, mortal man is no more. The sea, however, ebbs and flows with time. We have considered the sequence of the prophetic discourse drawn from the two lower elements, earth and sea, which are subject to every injury and to frequent tempests. How forceful an argument he has framed for our misery! Earthly shrubs, he says, and the woodland growth of trees, even when they have died, rise again for the uses of life. The sea too is wont to surge with the alternations of the seasons. But our flesh is forever seething and is itself a tempest to itself, and is never granted respite from the stirrings of storms and from pitiable shipwrecks. 'But when he has slept, he shall not rise again until the heaven be unstitched' — which seems to declare: until the heaven be made new.
For there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, as it is written. For what is stitched on is old, and what is old shall be changed. Hear then him who says: In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest; and they shall all grow old like a garment, and like a vesture thou shalt change them and they shall be changed. We may also weave in this: that what is old is stitched on, while what is new is forced. For from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven is forced, and the violent take it by force.
The synagogue therefore stitched it on in a few, but the Church forces it in thousands — either because the heaven now seems to be stitched together with clouds and gloom and the darkness of night and the saffron blush of the rising day, often interwoven with a varied and parti-coloured appearance (but then there shall be night no more, and they shall not need the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, for the Lord shall give light upon them, as John said) — or because woe is upon those who stitch cushions to overturn the souls of the people.
To the prophet lamenting the misery of our frailty — which neither has rest in this life and would suddenly lose all things at the onset of death — the Holy Spirit infused that men would not rise again so long as he should come who would not stitch old things to new, nor put a new garment upon an old garment, but would make all things new, as he himself said: Behold, I make new things. For he himself is the resurrection, the firstborn from the dead, in whom indeed we all received the prerogative of the resurrection to come; yet he alone has thus far risen in perpetual resurrection.
Having therefore heard what God had spoken in him, and having known through the Holy Spirit that the Son of God would not only come to the earth but would also descend to the lower regions to raise up the dead — which indeed was then done as a testimony to those present and an example to those to come — he turned to the Lord and said: Would that thou wouldst keep me in the netherworld, and hide me until thy wrath cease, and appoint me a time in which thou wouldst make remembrance of me. For if a man die, he shall live, completing the days of his life. I will endure until I am made anew. Then thou shalt call me, and I will obey thee; but despise not the works of thy hands. Thou hast numbered my devices, and nothing of my sins shall escape thee.
Thou hast sealed up my iniquities in a bag, and hast noted if I have passed over anything unknowingly. How sweet a passage, which confirms us concerning the resurrection, and how fitting it seems to accord with the word of the Lord which is read in the Gospel, where he says: Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us, and to the hills, Cover us. For at the consummation of the world there shall be the wrath of the Lord. Rightly therefore does the holy man prefer to rise again unto judgment rather than unto the time of the divine wrath, which is terrible even to the innocent. At the same time this too is understood to be prophesied when he says:
Thou shalt appoint me a time in which thou shalt make remembrance of me — namely, that he was to be raised up in the Passion of the Lord, as is shown at the end of that book. Yet he does not cease to lament; and the more he understands that the resurrection is set before him, the more he longs to flee this life, seeing himself handed over into the hands of his adversaries, cast into the power of the wicked, against whom even his friends have been turned into enemies, who, when they ought to have consoled him, heap ruin upon ruin. Yet, mindful of his pure conscience and of clean prayer, he says: O earth, cover not thou the blood of my flesh — that his prayer, like incense, might be directed to the Lord and not linger upon the earth. For the prayer of the holy man penetrates the clouds.
The earth, opening its mouth, hides the prayer of the sinner in the blood of the flesh, as was said by God to Cain the kinsman-slayer: Cursed, he says, art thou from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive the blood of thy brother from thy hand; for thou shalt till the earth. And so the holy man tearfully laments the times of this life. I perish, he says, and am borne about in spirit; I beg for burial and do not obtain it. I entreat in my toil. And what shall I do? My days have passed away in horror; the joints of my heart are torn asunder. Yet nowhere does he disparage the judgment of God; for he knows that the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God is profound, and his judgments unsearchable and his ways past finding out.
The sons of those who glorify, he says, have not trodden upon them, nor has the lion passed through them. For who has been able to comprehend his ways? Who has penetrated into the things hidden away? Whence, he says, is wisdom found, or what is the place of understanding? Mortal man knows not its way, nor is it found among men. The abyss said: It is not in me; and the sea said: It is not with me. It is not lawful for thee, O man, to know the heights of wisdom; therefore it is written for thee: Be not high-minded, but fear. Why dost thou curiously desire to search out what it is not expedient for thee to know, nor granted thee to understand?
Paul heard certain secrets of wisdom which he was forbidden to communicate to others, and therefore he was caught up into paradise, caught up even to the third heaven, that he might hear those things which, placed upon the earth, he could not hear. If a man heard things which it was not lawful for him to utter, how does he inquire after what he did not hear? It is not lawful for thee here on earth to know the counsels of this emperor — and dost thou wish to know things divine? It is not permitted thee to investigate too curiously what is done on earth — and dost thou too curiously seek out what is done above the heaven? Why dost thou dispute whence wisdom was born? Man knows not its way, nor has perfect wisdom been found among men: not in Moses, not in Aaron, not in Joshua the son of Nun, not in David himself who says:
The uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me — for he himself said in the latter parts: I have become as a beast of burden before thee. To know is above thee, O man; as for the height of wisdom, it is enough for thee that thou believe. For unless ye believe, he says, ye shall not understand. Thou canst not know the abyss, thou canst not comprehend the abyss; how shalt thou comprehend the height of wisdom? The abyss said: It is not in me — and canst thou say that wisdom is in thee? The abyss therefore said: It is not in me, because the Lord himself said: Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell. And the Apostle said: Who has descended into the abyss? This is to bring Christ up from the dead. If therefore the abyss is asked, Where is wisdom? it answers:
It is not in me, because he has risen again. If the sea is asked, Where is wisdom? it says: It is not with me, because he trod upon me, and my waves could not trouble it. And thou therefore, placed in the strait of this present age, do not seek that perfect wisdom of God in this world, because the world did not know it. But if thou wilt find it, tread upon the waves of this world, as Peter trod, and walk upon the waters of this age. Wisdom will stretch out to thee her right hand, as she stretched it out also to Peter, for there has been no one whom the wave of this present age has not troubled. It troubled Abraham too, it troubled Moses too, it troubled Peter too. Moses passed through the sea and led an army on foot through the sea, but first he himself was troubled.
Peter trod upon the waters, but he had been submerged in body, because he faltered in his footstep through weaker faith. Therefore do not seek wisdom in the sea, because the Lord Jesus did not say that he would be with the sea, but with his apostles, that they might in some part know him, to whom he says: Behold, I am with you even unto the consummation of the world. Blessed are they with whom he is — would that he were with us too; but with us is the sea. Peter is with Christ, because he too trod upon the sea; but our heart is set on gold and silver. Wisdom, however, is above gold, not in gold. Therefore he who desired to have wisdom said: Silver and gold I have not, but what I have I give thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.
Because he had no gold, he had in the name of Christ the grace of pious working. Therefore it is said to thee also: Draw wisdom into thine inward parts. It lay hidden, he says, from every man, and was concealed from the birds of heaven. Neither did men know where it was, nor the angels — for they are the birds of heaven, of whom it is said: And I saw an angel flying through heaven. No one could know wisdom, because no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall will to reveal him. He therefore revealed to John with whom wisdom was; and so John said not what was his own, but what wisdom infused into him: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Wisdom knows not destruction, knows not malice.
For destruction could not hold her, who said: Where is thy victory, O death? Where is thy sting, O death? Malice knows her not, because she said: The wicked shall seek me and shall not find me. They can say: We have heard the report of her glory. God alone is he who knows her. Because God, he says, has well established her way; he himself knows her place. Hear his disciple telling what is the receptacle of wisdom: The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he himself has declared him. For the Son knew the Father, because he himself says: As the Father knows me, so I know the Father. The measure of knowledge is equal where the unity of power is.
The Father therefore, who knows all things, the weight of the winds, the measure of the waters, he himself saw wisdom and declared her through his prophets; for the Father declared wisdom and searched her out, just as the Son also declared the Father, whom nothing escapes, and said: O man, why dost thou wish to know the depths of wisdom, which are above you? To fear God is wisdom, and to abstain from evils is understanding. II (III). ON THE PLEADING OF HOLY JOB. Our earlier discourse was concerning the pleading of the saints — namely, that the frail and feeble condition of man, which nowhere has firmness of itself except in heavenly protection:
Today we must take up this theme: that the common run of men, and even many of the prudent, are greatly disturbed when they see the unjust abound in prosperous things, while the just are frequently afflicted in this present age. And truly this is a slippery place, in which even the saints could scarcely keep the footing of true opinion. Indeed even David himself was troubled, who had said in the preceding parts: The hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me. Yet afterward he steadied himself and searched out the way of perfect reasoning. Holy Job too, with those three old friends who had come to console him, wrestled in discourse over that opinion. Let us therefore bring forward into the open the disputations of both.
For they are worthy to bring us instruction for living, inasmuch as, placed in adversities, they merited to please God the more. Let us therefore hear both in their order. Eliphaz king of the Temanites, and Bildad the tyrant of the Shuhites, and Zophar king of the Minaeans had vehemently rebuked holy Job, on the ground that he was bearing so great a punishment because of his sins. For with feeble understanding they did not perceive that the Lord had given him over to be tempted, so that the athlete of Christ, schooled by temptations, might attain to the crown with the greater glory.
And so, not seeing so great a mystery of wisdom, in the fear of their narrow heart, lest they should seem to charge God with injustice — God who would allow the innocent to be afflicted with punishments — they turned the deserts of his sufferings back upon holy Job, saying that the whole life of the impious is spent in anxiety, and that riches unjustly amassed are vomited up; that whatever grievous things a man suffers on earth he suffers because of his sins; that even if a man be in prosperous circumstances, his good fortune cannot be perpetuated for him, but vanishes quickly like a dream, so that his place is not found; and that the joy of the impious is but the heavier ruin, and that therefore holy Job too had been changed from prosperity to adversity and, at the price of his transgressions, had fallen from the heights to the depths:
that he who asserts himself innocent stumbles, since the portion of the impious is such that the indignation coming upon him from the Lord rains down sorrows upon him and engulfs his house in destruction. Holy Job heard these things, and like a brave athlete, sitting upon the dunghill, amid so many welts and the savage pains of his wounds, his whole body steeped in dreadful sores, he spoke mysteries; and he was not occupied with seeking remedies for his own sickness, but had leisure for sacred discourses. The discourses of the sick man were therefore stronger than those of the men who were not sick. For they spoke injustices, but not according to knowledge: they proclaimed the divine judgments, the punishments of the guilty, the rewards of the saints, but they knew not how to distinguish the guilty from the just.
In short, the very man whom the Lord God pronounced just, they were condemning of injustice and arraigning of iniquity. They were ignorant therefore of what befitted each. But the holy man Job discerned in spirit how one ought to speak to each; he was therefore stronger than those who seemed sound and unimpaired. And why do I say he was found stronger than the rest? He was found stronger than his own self: for Job was stronger when sick than he had been when sound, according to that which is written, that strength is made perfect in weaknesses. Therefore Job too, when he was made weak, was then the mightier.
For he was not sick in soul, though he suffered in body, because his soul was not in the flesh, to whose passions it did not cling, but in the spirit, by whose strength he had clothed himself. Therefore he uttered not the groans of the flesh and the infirmities of the body, but the voices of the spirit, with which he might press hard, not with which he might yield. And at first indeed more gently, that he might strike them with shame, because they were pressing upon the just man unjustly, saying that he was bearing punishments less than his sins, and they themselves, sinners, were not ashamed to accuse the innocent with falsehoods. 'Be it so,' he says, 'that I have erred, and that there dwells within me that wanderer who pours errors into the minds of men, so that I speak words I ought not, as you say, and my words go astray and my speech is not uttered in season:
why do you leap upon me and revile me, not considering that this temptation came to me from the Lord, who judged that I should be hedged about as with some rampart of troubles? I am exercised by adversities, hemmed in on every side by labours and perils — and you insult me still, wishing to crush him whom you ought to help. Behold, I laugh amid reproaches, and I will not speak nor answer your revilings. For it is not you who judge, but it is the Lord who judges me; and yet the time of that judgment has not yet come. What need is there to cry out before the judgment?
It is good to be silent while he who judges is awaited; it is good not to return reviling for reviling, lest we too be numbered among the slanderers.' Let us therefore imitate this man, who by his silence refuted his revilers. For he showed the virtue of his soul, which insults could not move, and he made manifest the innocence of his conscience, who would not acknowledge the charges brought against him, but laughed at them as though foreign to himself. But we, as though something were charged against us, while we wish to clear ourselves, grow bitter; while we long to avenge ourselves, we confess. Whereas the Scripture says that thou shouldst turn away the word of disgrace and put off thy garment, for the injurious one passes by. Let us therefore be silent, that he may pass by, lest, provoked, he burn up our garment; for it is written:
Kindle not the coals of the sinner, lest perchance thou be burned up in the fire of his flame. Therefore the holy man is silent, even if the servant is insolent; even if the poor man reviles, the just man is silent; even if the sinner hurls reproaches, the just man laughs; even if the weak man curses, the just man blesses. David was silent when Shimei the son of Gera was cursing; Job laughed; Paul blessed, as he himself says: We are reviled, and we bless. By divine instruction indeed the advance of human virtue grew, because he had now come who would make the stronger out of the weak, and they had heard him say: Bless them that curse you, and pray for them that falsely accuse you. What he said in word, he also proved by example. Indeed, placed upon the cross, he said of his persecutors who reviled him:
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do — that he might pray for those who falsely accused him, whom he himself could have forgiven. Job therefore laughed, because Christ had not yet come, for whom alone was reserved the prerogative of mighty virtues, since he himself is the beginning of virtues, as he said: The Lord created me the beginning of his ways. And laughing, he kept silence. He teaches by what reasoning one must be silent: I will cry out — and not yet is it judgment. 'He himself,' he says, 'willed that I should suffer these things. As though shut in by ramparts of temptations, I cannot flee until it please God to destroy the heights of my temptations. For now, if I cry out, it is not yet judgment. I am still in the contest, still I wrestle, still the struggle remains for me; for the crown has not yet come forth;
and no one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully.' A third contest was owed to him. He had lost all his possessions, that is, his patrimony together with his children; his flesh was suffering wounds: it remained that he should overcome the temptations of words. No mean contest. By speech Adam was deceived; by a word Samson was overcome; for nothing so penetrates the soul as a feigned discourse, and again nothing so bites as a harsher word. Many who had conquered when torments were applied did not bear the hardness of words. Job laboured, but he endured and bore the burdens of words alongside those of his wounds. His master of the games saw him, and from the cloud and the whirlwind gave his hand to the labourer, and pronounced that his opponents had fallen with a heavy fall, declared him victor, and bestowed the crown.
And what is more beautiful than to laugh when we are cursed? For we ought to rejoice if things foreign to us are spoken. First, because the enemy, wishing to say something against us whereby he might fasten a charge, found not what is true, but composed falsehoods in place of truths. Then, because the Lord himself said in the Gospel concerning such accusation, which is falsely laid upon the innocent for righteousness' sake: Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven. He therefore ought to be silent who recognizes the charge, lest he exasperate the wound and the scar be torn open; and he ought to be silent who does not recognize it, for he hears another's crime, not his own. But if he answers it back, he makes it his own; if he is silent, he turns it back and wounds the reviler.
He too ought to be silent who presumes upon the aforesaid reward; for he suffers no prejudgment, for whom there is no judgment. And if there be a prejudgment in this age, it will not be at the judgment of God. Finally, that thou mayst know that contumely does no prejudice to a good conscience, hear holy Job saying — surely a richer witness than if he had gained possession of the empire of the Roman world: Now will I be silent and forsaken: if now there is prejudgment against me, then I shall not be hidden from thy face. These things therefore he answered more sparingly at the outset, that he might admonish them of the judgment of God, and, having recalled them from their insolence and fury, might, like a good physician, bring them back to their senses.
But after he perceived that they persevered in their contumelies, he repeated more and stronger things, and struck them as with a mightier fist — these men who were stoning the innocent with the stones of their words. Hear, he says, hear my words, let me not have to seek consolation from you; bear with me, for I shall speak stronger things, the weight of my words shall be heavy. I too will speak according to your opinion, namely that many abound in this age with the successes of prosperous affairs, while others are weighed down and set in distress: and this seems to be meted out according to the desert of sins. But although I say this, do not laugh, as though I had acquiesced with you. Even if I am a sinner, I am not answerable to a man, because he too is under sin who judges and claims power over me.
Or if I am judged as a man, this is common to all. I ought not to be rebuked: it is the weakness of our condition, not a special wickedness. But tell me: if I suffer this because of my sin, as you object, why do the impious live — and not only live, but are also filled with riches and multiply their fruits, and moreover gain children, and their houses abound? These things to outward appearance seem good, but by a deeper mystery thou shalt find that what are thought good are not good, and what are thought evil are esteemed better than they. They have grown old, he says, in riches.
He said pepalaiōntai ('they have grown old'), so that not so much a long-lasting possession of riches as an inveterate trouble of abundance might seem to be signified — even as Ecclesiastes saw riches kept to the hurt of him who possesses them, which perish amid the greatest distraction and anxiety. For the things that are here left behind perish, and cannot profit the dead. The dead man therefore had anxiety from them, and could find no rest, who left behind what made him ashamed and took with him nothing he might keep — far different from him of whom it is written: Blessed is the man who has fulfilled his desire from these; he shall not be confounded when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
He whose inheritance is the Lord, and whose reward is from the childbearing of the Virgin Mary, this man is proclaimed in the praises of wisdom at his departure, since he had nothing whereof to be ashamed, who coveted none of the things that are of the world, but, having laid aside the spoils of the old man, wounded the adversary with the dart of continence, so that the enemy could not gainsay him at the end of this life, being lamed by the wound and confounded by admiration of his virtues. Thou hast therefore that he is not praiseworthy who has grown old in the greed for money and has not been renewed in the receiving of grace. Let us see another point: Their seed, he says, is according to the soul — that is, they are not reckoned among the just.
For the just sow in spirit and of the spirit shall reap life eternal, but those who sow according to the soul cannot reap spiritual things, because the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot know the things that are of the Spirit, and therefore he is not filled with spiritual things, but is judged. Their children are in the eyes — that is, what they do, they do that they may be seen by men. Not that they take counsel for what is good, so as to choose that which would be approved in the future judgment. Scripture therefore frequently declares children in place of works, inasmuch as our posterity is richer in good deeds than in children.
Whence Hezekiah too, freed from a grievous sickness, says: From this day I will beget children who shall declare thy righteousness, O Lord of my salvation, and I will not cease blessing thee with the psaltery all the days of my life; for good is the posterity of devotion and faith, which knew not how to succumb to captivity — which Hezekiah's children bore. And he added, saying that they have no fear, there is no scourge from the Lord. But the just man says: For I have been scourged all the day long, and he chooses to be scourged, that he may be received by the Lord, and he wishes to fear God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Nor does he count it blessedness if his heifer does not cast its young, as fools count it.
For by the ox what is signified but the labour of rural cultivation, which always returns in a circle and never ceases, but when it seems to be completed, is called back to its beginning? These are they who cultivate Sodom and Gomorrah. Therefore those who cultivate Egypt and turn over the clods of the earth with the plough, as it were, of a solid mind, bring forth labour for themselves and reap sorrows. Therefore their heifer does not cast its young, but bears, that their labour may be increased; and they bring forth all that they have conceived without the fear of God. But the just glory far otherwise; for they glory not in the abundance of riches nor in the offspring of cattle, but in the Lord, saying: From thy fear we have conceived in the womb and have brought forth the spirit of salvation.
Of the just therefore it is said that they have begotten the spirit of salvation, which they received from the fear of God, not from the malice of this age, of which we read: Behold, it has travailed with injustice, and conceived toil, and brought forth iniquity. Better therefore is the miscarriage than the birth of worldly men. Finally, of the man who comes into this world and endures the vanity of this world and its darkness through a long span of years, Ecclesiastes pronounced that the miscarriage is better than he. For to this one there is rest rather than to that other, because it did not experience the changeableness of the age, in which, even if one should live a thousand years, he could not see what is good. To have fled these things, therefore, is more a matter of grace than to have undergone them.
But perhaps this may disturb thee, that he added that they remain like eternal sheep, while their children play, taking up the psaltery and the harp, and are delighted with the voice of the psalm. They have consummated their life in good things, but in the rest of hell they have slept. Distinguish these things, and, since thou art spiritual, judge. The impious are as it were eternal, not eternal, because they cannot receive eternity from him who is not eternal. He cannot therefore give what he has not, nor can he illuminate who does not possess light; but he transfigures himself into an angel of light, that he may deceive the unbelieving. He transfigures himself, however, by the pretence of a false light, not by the splendour of perpetual brightness. Whence the Saviour also says: I beheld Satan falling like lightning from heaven.
It is not lightning, but as it were lightning. Consider some heretic intent upon abstinence of the body and upon the knowledge of heavenly mysteries: he is reckoned as it were eternal, yet has not the wage of eternal life, because he has a false imitation who has not the truth of faith. The little ones of such a man play like that woman who, when she has played the wanton, wishes to marry. She played the wanton with psaltery and harp — that is, in the sound of the voice, not in the depth of the sacraments, so that she might echo with the lips, not bring it together in the heart. Such men therefore have consummated their life in the good things of this age — this very life, indeed, which they were living, not that whose reward they hoped for — and therefore in the rest of hell they slept, not in the heavenly rest.
But let us rather pray to undergo labour here, that in the kingdom of heaven we may merit to obtain the consolation of eternal rest. For the affluence of prosperous things is a great enticement to wrongdoing: it lifts up into pride, it infuses forgetfulness of the Author. Consider that rich man in the Gospel, reclining upon scarlet and purple, from whose table that just poor man Lazarus gathered the crumbs: does it not seem to thee that the rich man says to God, Depart from me; I will not know thy ways? And truly such men do not wish to know the ways of the Lord; for if they wished, they would know them, but because they are full of labour, they are shunned and turned away from by the lost. And so, as though drunken, he does not recognize the Author of salvation.
Then, turning to his drinking-companions, he says, 'Let us eat and drink. What does it profit us if we serve Him? Or what advantage is there if we observe Him?' These things, then, the man says who is drunk with the abundance of worldly goods, because the deserts due to wickedness are not requited immediately in this world. For he lay sprawled at ease, since all things lay ready at hand for his pleasure; and, conscious of his own impiety—whose punishment was held in abeyance—he supposed that God did not see the crimes of the wicked. To this opinion of his, then, holy Job replied: Do not be carefree and dissolute, supposing that in this very age the scourges of the Lord do not come upon you. Even the lamp of the wicked is extinguished. It shines for a time; it has no eternal light.
And although the world favors these men—because they do the will of him who holds dominion in this world—yet there is wont to come a reversal of fortunes and sorrows from the heavenly wrath and indignation, so that they are winnowed like chaff before the wind. The unjust are winnowed like chaff, the just like wheat. Hear, then, the Lord saying to Peter: 'Behold, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.' Those fail who are winnowed like chaff; he does not fail who is after the likeness of that grain which fell and rose again, multiplied by the increase of many fruits. Therefore the prophet says: 'Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest!'
To stubble, then, which is quickly burned up, impiety is compared, and to dust. Therefore, after he had said, 'They shall be like chaff before the wind,' he immediately added a verse, saying, 'Or like the dust which the wind carries away.' And so that you may know that the impious man quickly crumbles and vanishes like dust, you have it said in the first Psalm: 'Not so the impious, not so'—that is, not like the just, but as the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth. And he makes a distinction between the just and the impious. This man, he says, dies in the strength of his own simplicity, wholly in abundance and ease, and his inward parts are full of fat, their marrow overflows. But that one finishes the course of this life in bitterness of soul and, having feasted on nothing good, receives his end.
What worthy reward can be rendered to him according to his deserts? He is brought into the tombs and keeps watch over his own grave-mound. Nor is this a slight punishment—to have no rest in death, to be carried not to the land of the living but to the burial-mounds of the dead. For he who lives is not sought among the dead, but plucks eternal life in Abraham's bosom. And therefore those two men in shining raiment said to the women: 'Why do you seek the living among the dead?'
Then he enumerates the crimes of the impious: that they have removed boundary-stones, and together with the shepherd have plundered the flock; that they have led off the orphan's beast of burden, taken the widow's ox in pledge, reaped a field not their own; that the weak have labored in their vineyards without wage and food; that they have stripped many and made them sleep naked, taking away the covering of their souls. They were drenched with the drippings of the mountains and, because they lacked covering, sheltered themselves against the rock. Orphans were snatched from their mothers' breasts; the fallen, who ought rather to have been lifted up, were crushed. The hungry were defrauded of food; the soul of the little infants groaned grievously. Could He, whom nothing escapes, have been ignorant of these things?
Hell is naked before Him, and there is no covering for the most wicked, because they cannot lie hidden. He stretches out the north wind over nothingness, He suspends the earth upon nothing, binding the water in His clouds, and the cloud is not torn beneath His feet. The pillars of heaven have leapt apart and trembled at His rebuke. By His power He has subdued the sea, and by His discipline He has laid low the sea-monster. The bars of heaven dread Him; by His command He has slain the rebellious dragon. Who understands the power of His thunder? Amid such great outrages, then, what hope is there for the impious man? Will he be saved if he trusts in the Lord? 'I will tell you,' he says, 'what is in the hand of the Lord, and cease to add empty things to empty things.'
And he describes how wretched is the portion of the impious: that even though they have many sons, they are without posterity, for they lack the succession of good merits—for that is the true posterity which is not on earth but in heaven. To men of this kind, therefore, want is their inheritance and death their succession. Though they have heaped up riches, they will go begging, because when they are dead they will be in need who cannot find rest. No one will pity their widows; but they will remain forsaken and bereft of the solace of every companionship. Even though money be gathered like earth and gold be heaped up like mire, their substance will be empty as a spider's web, and the whole patrimony of their name will be consumed as by moths.
The rich man, while he sleeps, shall add nothing; he opens his eyes, and already he is no more. He continues in his sorrows. All things, then, which are in this world are nothing. Gold is in the mines, silver is in the mines: it is dug out of metal and returns to metal. For what else is the mind of the miser but metal? It holds, as if buried, whatever it receives and hides it in the veins of the earth and in lairs, because it knows not how to use it. From the mines gold is daily brought forth: but who has been able to draw anything from the miser? Since, then, the vain hunger for gold profits nothing—because whatever he gathers slips away—those are surely to be pitied who have forsaken the just way and forgotten it, to which precious stones are in no way to be compared.
Hard to search out, impassable to the proud, shut off from the boastful, level to the more humble, open to the wise. And therefore we ought to seek wisdom, that we may walk in the just way, by which that adversary—like a lion seizing and roaring, who runs through this world—could not pass. But he who wishes to search out wisdom, let him not seek it in the abyss like the philosophers, who imagine that they can know its depths of their own accord by their own genius; nor let him require it in the sea—for where there is tempest, where there is the squall of the wind, there wisdom cannot be—but let him seek it there where there is tranquillity of mind and peace, which is above all understanding. ON THE INTERCESSION OF DAVID.
The intercession of holy Job has been run through: now let us undertake that intercession which we find in the Psalms. David himself indeed in many places was not silent about the vanity of the age, and frequently asserted that the things reckoned good in this world are empty, and especially in the thirty-eighth Psalm, in which he says: 'Yet all is vanity, every living man. Though man walks in the image of God, yet he is vainly disquieted; he heaps up treasure and knows not for whom he gathers it.' And elsewhere: 'How long, sinners, O Lord, how long shall sinners glory?'—because here they have a shadowy glory, but when they have departed from this world they cannot find the fruit of consolation.
Yet the same David inserted Psalm 72, in which under the name of Asaph he himself testifies that it was at first his stumbling, so that he was stung by no slight grief. For when he saw sinners in this world abounding in riches and overflowing with prosperous things, while he himself, who had made his heart just, was in afflictions and hardships, and had taken no slight offense at the outset—but afterward, corrected by the Lord's scourges and enlightened by the grace of divine knowledge, had learned the order of the true tradition. Yet nowhere do I find that holy Asaph was vexed by any adversities, whereas indeed holy David endured many grievous things full of perils;
for he speaks of his own labors; wherefore also the psalm is superscribed not as 'of holy Asaph' but as 'for holy Asaph,' as the title teaches. This is made more plainly clear from the Greek Psalter, so that David is seen to have given this psalm, which he himself had written, to this Asaph also—as to others—to be sung. But because it is written in the title itself that the psalms of David have come to an end—yet how did they come to an end, when, after these ten psalms have been run through, the inscription of the titles afterward includes psalms of David right up to the very last end?—therefore, setting aside this definition, let us consider what is the sequence of the psalm and draw our beginning from the first verse of the prophetic intercession. 'How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' The advance of amendment shines forth at the beginning.
For no one can truly confess God to be good except him who acknowledges His goodness not from the successes of his own advantages, but from the depth of the heavenly mysteries and the height of the divine dispensation—a goodness to be weighed not by the appearance of present things, but by the usefulness of things to come. To the just man, therefore, God is always good, both when he is tortured with bodily sufferings and when he is afflicted with the bitterness of punishments; he always says: 'If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not endure the evil ones?' Such a man rejoices to be crushed here, that in the future he may be able to find consolation, knowing that he who has received good things in this life has his reward. He will not be able to hope for future rewards who has not striven, who has not been exercised in the contest of diverse battles.
But he who, whether justly or unjustly, is afflicted in this world rejoices either because he here pays the price of his own offenses, or because he knows that there is with the Lord a more abundant grace if he suffers bitter things unjustly for His name or for some good work—according to that which is written: 'For it is no glory if, sinning, you are punished and endure it; but if, doing well and suffering, you bear it, this is grace with God. For to this you were called, because Christ also died for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow His steps—He who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not.'
Therefore the just man, even if he be on the rack, is always just, because he justifies God and says that he suffers less than his own sins; he is always wise, for true and perfect wisdom is not taken away by the torments of the rack; he does not lose what he is, because by the zeal and purpose of charity he shuts fear outside. He knows, as a wise man, to say that the things we suffer in this body are unworthy of the recompense of future glory, and that all the sufferings of this present time cannot be made equal to the reward that is to come. Good, therefore, is God always to this man, who knows at what time He reaps. And so, like a good farmer, here He plows His field with a certain plowshare of stricter abstinence; here He uproots with a certain pruning-hook of the virtues that lops away vices;
here He manures by humbling himself down to the earth, knowing that God raises up the needy from the earth and lifts the poor from the dunghill. Indeed the apostle Paul, unless he had been reckoned dung, could never have gained Christ for himself: here he guards his fruits, that there he may store them up secure. And so God is always good to him, because he always hopes for what is good from God. Receive another point. 'How good,' he says, 'is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' Is God then not good to all? He indeed is good to all, because He is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful. And therefore the Lord Jesus came to save that which was lost; for He came to take away the sin of the world, to heal our wounds.
But because not all seek the remedy—rather, very many flee, lest the force of the ulcer be pricked by the medicines—therefore He heals the willing, He does not constrain the unwilling. Those, then, receive health who seek the remedy; but those who refuse the physician and do not seek the goodness of the physician, which they do not experience, cannot perceive it. He, however, who is treated is also healed, and therefore the physician is good to those whom He has healed. To these, then, God is good to whom He has forgiven sins; but he who has an incurable sin in the ulcer of his mind, how can he reckon the physician good, whom he flees? Beautifully, therefore, the apostle, as we have premised, explained that God is good both to all, who wills all men to be saved.
And especially to the faithful is the prerogative of the divine goodness reserved, to whom both the will of God and grace bring help. But the psalmist also, in saying 'How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' referred to the judgment of those very men who know not to think otherwise of God than that He is good to all things and in all things. Then in what follows he himself sets forth what he meant, saying: 'But my feet were almost moved, my steps had nearly poured forth, because I was envious in regard to sinners, seeing the peace of sinners.' He certainly does not speak of the feet and steps of the body, but of the direction of the mind and its going, of which he says elsewhere: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of sinners move me.'
Therefore it must always be prayed that the Lord may direct the steps of our souls, lest they slip and, poured forth on some slippery patch of error, be unable to hold their own stability. The cause of the falling, however, is this: that he was envious of the peace of sinners. But we ought to be zealous for the things that are good, not those that are full of disgrace—just as the apostle Paul also expressed it, saying: 'Be zealous always for the good in what is good,' and let it not move you that he placed peace in evil. For indeed in the Gospel too you find there is a peace which Christ rejected, as He Himself says: 'My peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you: not as the world gives, do I give to you.' For there is a peace which has no stumbling-block, and there is one which has.
That which is of love has no stumbling-block; that which is of pretense has one. Therefore the prophet also says: 'Peace, peace; and where is peace?' Let us flee, then, the peace of sinners; for they conspire against the innocent, they band together to oppress the just man, to destroy the widow or to assault her chastity. And therefore there is no 'reclining' for their death, no 'declining' (as very many Latin manuscripts are written), but 'reclining.' For when we labor and bend ourselves to some work and are inclined, we are wont to recline ourselves; but sinners—of grievous offenses, that is, and especially the impious—cannot recline themselves, of whom it is said: 'And bow down their back always.' For they do not raise themselves to heavenly things who have not cleaved to Christ.
And therefore neither do they rise with Him, whose death is most evil, as it is written: 'The death of sinners is most evil.' But he who dies together with Christ and is buried with Him is not only reclined but also raised again. Concerning whom that saying beautifully fits: 'You have turned all his bed in his infirmity'—especially if he be a martyr, whose infirmity is loosed by his passion, and his death by resurrection.
We have seen that rich man who, clothed in purple and fine linen, reclined in this world and feasted sumptuously every day, from whose table poor Lazarus gathered what fell—how, placed in torments in hell, he could not recline himself, but scarcely lifted up to Abraham not his whole self but only his eyes, begging that he might send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. Therefore for him there was no reclining in death, nor any firm support in his stroke. For scourges profit nothing after death. And therefore David, while he was in the life of this body, prepared himself for the scourges, that the Lord might receive him chastened.
Consider again for me holy Job, who was steeped in ulcers and shaken in all his limbs and full of pains throughout his whole body, dissolving the clods of earth with the gore and moisture of his wounds—how, when, placed in this body, he could not recline himself, he found the rest of death. And therefore, conscious of himself, he said: 'Death is rest for a man.' He, then, was not moved in his stroke, nor did he waver by the slipperiness of his speech—he who in all those things sinned not with his lips, as Scripture testifies, but rather found the firm support of his stroke, through which he was strengthened in Christ.
Therefore both Job and David, because they were scourged here, had a firm support in their stroke, because the Father scourges the son whom He receives; but those who are not scourged here are not there received as sons. And therefore they are not in the labors of men, and with men they shall not be scourged, that forever with the devil they may be scourged. Therefore, he says, their pride has taken hold of them; they are covered with their own iniquity and impiety. An evil garment is iniquity, which if anyone wishes to keep upon us, we ought to remit it, lest it begin to come into judgment with us.
And if anyone tries to take away our spiritual tunic which we have received, send back the cloak of iniquity, take up the covering of faith and patience, with which David covered himself in fasting, lest he lose the coverings of virtue. Fasting itself is a covering. Indeed, unless fasting sobriety had clothed holy Joseph, the shamelessness of the adulteress would have stripped him. With which fasting, had Adam wished to cover himself, he would not have been made naked. But because, against the heavenly prohibition, he tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and transgressed the commanded fast by the food of incontinence, he knew himself to be naked. But had he fasted and kept the garments of faith, he would not have beheld himself uncovered.
Let us not, then, clothe ourselves with iniquity and impiety, lest it be said of any of us: 'And he clothed himself with cursing.' Adam too clothed himself ill, who, while he seeks the coverings of leaves, received the sentence of cursing. The Jews clothed themselves with cursing, of whom it is written: 'Their iniquity has come forth as if from fatness, they have passed over into the disposition of the heart.' From 'fat' is the word 'fatty' derived, that is, rich. For just as a soul fed on good things and filled with virtues is replenished as with fat and richness, as it is written, so iniquity, which proceeds as if from fatness, is signified to be not thin and slight, but full of vices. Finally, they did not fall into error by some chance slip, but by deliberation and design passed over into sacrilege.
They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue has passed over the earth. What it is to set one's mouth in heaven, that younger of the brothers teaches us, who, returning to his father, said: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.' But they set their mouth against heaven who suppose that the warrants of their crimes are conveyed to them by some necessity of their birth. These men are wont to spare neither heaven nor earth, so as to think that the life of man is governed by a certain course of the stars. They leave nothing to providence, nothing to good morals. And would that these men too had returned, like that one of the two youths: the good Lord would not have denied a remedy.
And yet, even if they themselves are unwilling to be healed, the Lord reserves the grace of return, so that those who in Israel were cast out through the blindness of their own heart may return through the fullness of the Church, and may not pass the days of this life empty, but may have them full of good work and faith, when the Lord shall have filled them with spiritual grace. But hear how they return. 'Because,' he says, 'blindness in part has befallen Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should enter in, and so all Israel should be saved.' But because the mystery had to be fulfilled, that God should conclude all under unbelief—that is, should refute and convict them—for when two contend, if one is superior, it is said:
'He has shut up that other one.' And therefore, through His mercy, that the world might become subject to God, the people indeed returned among the heirs, but, led astray by the error of their late wickedness, did not believe that God is foreknowing of hidden things. But the Lord reserved for them the grace of future salvation, that they might at some time be redeemed, saying: 'Therefore My people shall return hither.' What is 'hither'? That is, to Me, to My equity and justice, to My worship. 'And it shall fulfill the days of its life.' This indeed you will so understand, that the people may be redeemed, namely that which believes. And though those who did not believe are not redeemed therein, yet the prerogative of redemption is conferred upon the people of God. These men, then, placed in error, said: 'How does God know?'
And is there any knowledge in the Most High?' For they suppose there is no knowledge in God, because sinners abound in worldly prosperity. And he further brings them in as speaking: 'Behold, these very sinners, and abounding in the world, have obtained riches.' You have this more plainly expressed in the Gospel, where that Simon the Pharisee, seeing that that sinful woman came into his house and poured ointment over Christ's feet, said within himself: 'This man, if He were a prophet, would surely know what and what manner of woman it is who touches Him, that she is a sinner.' But the patience of God does not prejudice the truth, and His foreknowledge and providence are by this very fact the more proved—that one placed in sin abounds with the success of worldly prosperities.
At which the stronger man, seeing it, laughs. The incautious man is led astray and is moved. Then the psalmist says that he said: 'Therefore in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent'—that is: I see those men abound, I see all comforts prosper for them, but myself crushed and harassed by very many temptations. In vain, then, have I given myself to innocence and applied myself to the pursuit of a sober manner of life. And beautifully he says: 'I have washed my hands among the innocent,' so that he might be seen not to arrogate to himself the height of innocence, but to render an assiduous pursuit. Meanwhile he testifies that such a speech did not go forth from him with impunity. For he records that he was scourged the whole day, because he had said that in vain he had justified his heart to the Lord;
but after the scourges, the correction of his wrong opinion followed forthwith. 'For straightway,' he says, 'my reproof was in the mornings'—that is, in the open and clear; for the light of truth, laying hold of him, did not suffer him to feel these things which he had said. So the light of truth, poured over my mind, was refuting and convicting me, because I had not rightly said: 'In vain have I justified my heart.' For I spoke those things as though set in darkness, and as I recalled them my heart was pricked; but with my heart pricked, my affection was enlightened, so that there came to be in my heart a flaming fire which made in me the spiritual beginning of day.
And so, with the day having risen and dawned for me, and as though placed in many mornings, I understood that I had been made outside the constitution of the generation of the sons of God—I who, when I had first believed because the Maker of the world, providing for the human race, had made all things for our benefit, whether sad things or those that please little, had afterward, disturbed by wrong opinions, lost so good a judgment. So I conferred with my heart and said to myself: 'If I shall so relate, that in vain have I justified my heart'—there came to meet me the voice of God, saying: 'Behold, to the generation of your sons, which I have appointed'—that is:
behold, in the Scriptures you find that I have appointed, O you Adam, to the generation of your sons, that riches are conveyed to the impious by chance, not by any merit. Nor are the profits of treasure rewards of virtue, so that on the contrary want is not the punishment of sin; but these things come indiscriminately, which roll along like a river in a certain flux of the age. And I supposed, and seemed to myself to recognize, that this was true, that this agreed and accorded with divine providence, and that I had been disturbed in vain in those things in which I ought not to have entangled myself. And so, because I seemed to myself to have grasped the true judgment and to have attained knowledge of the matter itself, I said to myself:
'This is labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God and understand in the last things'—that is: there remains for me only the labor of entering into the sanctuary of God, where the Cherubim are, that is, the depth of knowledge, and of not laboring amid uncertainties and opinions; for the narration of a fool is like a burden on the way. Therefore let us enter the shrine of the sacred kinds of knowledge and the inner recesses of truth, that there may be no labor in us; for wisdom leads us away from the feeling of labor. Indeed there is no labor in Jacob; but the cause of labor is ignorance, since he who knows not that rewards are laid up for the just is not refreshed from his labors, but rather is bowed down and broken by the labor of his own imprudence.
Let us, then, enter the sanctuary of God, where the Cherubim are, in which is the remembrance of sacred knowledge and of that true and eternal light. In that candlestick the image shines forth, by which we may be able to understand in the last things. For the holy man knows in the end and attains perfect wisdom by the advance of age, saying: '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.' What is the end, except that one, when the kingdom is delivered to God the Father, when the hidden things of wisdom are revealed? This end of our contest the prophet sought, desiring to know what was lacking to his perfection; for the end of our discipline and studies is perfection.
This, then, is the first principle of true knowledge: that the things which are in the world happen by chance. The second is this: that, on account of their evasions, You have set for them the flowing successes of worldly advantages and an abundance of riches, lest they should plead that, on account of want and the bitterness of some grief and mourning, they were less devout, and were driven by the necessity of poverty into the fault of robbery and the zeal of plunder. For they were not enriched with riches or exalted with honors for the tranquillity of life and the enjoyment of gladness, but so that complaint might be excluded and hardship heaped up. And so such men are cast down while they are exalted.
For it is not grace, but ruin, where neither the gift of lasting enjoyment is reserved and the excuse for offending is taken away. For what is the weight of a graver complaint than that divine one which you have in the book of the prophet Micah: 'My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I grieved you, or wherein have I been troublesome to you? Answer me. Did I not lead you out of the land of Egypt and free you from the house of bondage?' Behold how the impious are cast down while they are lifted up: their complaint is excluded, their punishment heaped up. For, invited by heavenly benefits, they ought not to have forsaken the Giver of life's security and prosperity, whom they rather ought to have obeyed. But as the justice of God is great, so also is His vengeance severe.
For when has the impious man been wont to endure, of whom you also have it written elsewhere: 'I saw the impious highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not: and I sought him, and his place was not found'? Incredible is the swiftness of his extinction. You see the impious man suddenly powerful in this world: while you pass by, he already is no more. How great is the shadow on the earth, yet how short-lived! Shift your step, and the shadow has passed away. Or if anything here disturbs you, lift the step of your mind to the things that are to come, and you will find the impious man not there to be, whom here you believed to be; for he is not who is nothing. Indeed the Lord has known those who are His;
but those who are not, He does not acknowledge, because they themselves have not acknowledged Him who is. Concerning these, then, here too he says: 'They have failed and perished on account of their iniquity, like the dream of one rising up'—that is: thus do the impious fail and vanish, like the dream of one rising up from sleep at first, because they are in darkness and have walked in darkness, and no trace of any good work of theirs remains, but they are like those who see a dream. And he who dreams, dreams in the night, and night is in darkness. They are sons of darkness, deprived of the Sun of justice and the splendor of virtue, always sleeping and not keeping watch, of whom it is well said: 'They have slept their sleep, and have found nothing.'
For when their souls have been separated from the body, like men loosed from the body's sleep they will find nothing, they will hold nothing, and what they thought they held they will lose; since the fool and the senseless man, when he has overflowed with riches, will leave his wealth to strangers, nor will the glory of his house go down together with him to the lower regions. What follows also shows how his image is not found but perishes, since his image is not found in that city of the Lord, the Jerusalem on high. For the Lord painted us after His own image and likeness, as He Himself teaches, saying: 'Behold, O Jerusalem, I have painted thy walls.' If we act well, that heavenly image remains in us;
but if anyone acts wickedly, this image is blotted out in him, and there is in him the image of the earthly one, that one who came down from heaven. Whence also the Apostle says: 'As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly.' The images of the good therefore endure and shine forth in that city of God. But if anyone turns aside to graver sins and does not do penance, his image is abolished or cast out, just as Adam was cast out of paradise and shut out. But whoever conducts himself piously and honorably enters into the city of God and brings in his own image, that it may shine in that city of God. 'O Lord, in thy city thou wilt bring their images to nothing,' for these cannot shine in the light who have clothed themselves with works of darkness.
Let us fetch an example from the world. See how in cities the images of good rulers endure, but the images of tyrants are destroyed. Considering these things therefore and bending his mind upon them, the holy prophet was delighted, who had before been troubled. Whence he himself says: 'Because my heart was delighted and my reins were loosed; and I was brought to nothing and knew it not; and I have become as a beast of burden before thee, yet I am always with thee.' ('When I had recognized,' he says, 'that God cares for and regards human things, my reins found rest,' that is: out of the greatest weariness of my former imprudence I found rest through the knowledge of the heavenly good and of grace. There are also certain reins of the soul, which are tormented within us through the toil of ignorance:
these are loosed unto rest by the heavenly knowledge of doctrine, and as though propped on some support of heavenly precepts, they are cherished. 'Then,' he says, 'I understood that I was wearied in vain, because I did not know that which is true; and I have become as a beast of burden.' Beautifully he added 'before thee'; for in comparison with heavenly things what is man but an irrational beast of burden? For even the stars, though they be bright, fade away at the rising of the sun. And Moses says: 'I am not fit, since yesterday and the day before, from the time thou didst begin to speak with thy servant; I am of a feeble voice and slow of speech.' So therefore man, I will not say in comparison with Christ, but even with the angels, seems to be a dumb beast of burden. Yet let no one despair, for the Lord saves both men and beasts.
And therefore, because I have learned not from myself but from thee, I will cleave to thee always, that I may cease to be a beast of burden, and that thou mayest say to me: 'But thou, stand here with me.' For being encompassed by the grace of God, the man begins to be truly man who through imprudence put forward a beast-like insensibility and ignorance; for a man is proved to be such if he is capable of reason and grace. And so he rejoices to be separated from dumb animals and to be admitted into the fellowship of those men whom God visits and protects. For what is man, except that the Lord is mindful of him, or that he is visited by the Lord? Whence, as one visited by Him, he says: 'Thou hast held my right hand, and in thy will thou hast led me, and with glory thou hast taken me up.' Thus have we received it, and thus it agrees with the Greek.
For the Greek said: ekratēsas tēs cheiros, that is, 'thou hast held the hand,' tēs dexias mou, 'my right hand.' Well is he directed whose right hand God holds with His own hand. He can say: 'The Lord is at my right hand, that I be not moved.' Had Adam wished to have the Lord at his right hand, he would not have been deceived by the serpent. But because he forgot the commandment of God and fulfilled the will of the serpent, the devil held his hand and made it stretch out to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that he might pluck what was forbidden. In him judgment was prejudged for all, and the adversary began to stand at the right hand of all. Whence also against Judas there went forth that form of curse: 'And let the devil stand at his right hand.'
If that curse is grievous, this is the greatest blessing, by which the bonds of the harsh curse are loosed. Therefore the Lord Jesus set the devil at His own right hand, as we read in the book of Zechariah; for He had taken up the cause and the place of man. There then He stood, where Adam's inheritance stood. Like a good athlete He permitted him to stand at His right hand, that He might thrust him backward, saying: 'Get thee behind me, Satan.' And so the adversary, cast down from his place, withdrew; but to thee, that the devil might not stand at thy right hand, He said: 'Come, follow me.' David therefore, foreseeing the coming of the Lord, who came down from heaven to free us from the power of the adversary, said: 'The Lord is at my right hand, that I be not moved.' But he at whose right hand the devil stood was moved.
Rightly therefore here too he says: 'Thou hast held my right hand,' that is: so that I can no longer sin, so that I, who before wavered with slippery footstep, may be able to stand firm in a faithful station. How well the Apostle said this, when the Lord saw him troubled and, stretching out His right hand, did not suffer him to totter, but steadied him with fearless gait. And so Peter, having been delivered, what else did he speak but these prophetic verses: 'Thou hast held my right hand, and in thy will thou hast led me, and with glory thou hast taken me up'? And what is the right hand but the active virtue of the soul? If this be directed by the will of the Lord, it desires nothing else, requires nothing, demands no wealth of this world, no helps. Therefore the holy one says:
'For what have I in heaven? And besides thee what have I desired upon earth?' That is: thou art my portion, thou aboundest unto me for all things; I have sought nothing else but to have thee as my portion. I have subjected myself to no heavenly creature, as the heathen do; I have coveted no riches of this world nor the allurements of pleasures. I lack nothing, who have been taken up by thee, nor does there remain in the heavens anything further that I might seek. Having nothing, I have all things, because I have Christ, whom the most high Father spared not, but delivered Him up for us all; how then has He not with Him given us all things? As the Apostle said; for all things are in Christ, through whom are all things and in whom all things consist.
Having all things therefore in Him, I seek no other reward, because He Himself is the reward of all. And so to the perfect one He said: 'Take up thy cross and follow me.' He who follows Him is not led to perfection by a prize, but by perfection is consummated unto the prize. For the imitators of Christ are not such for the hope of good, but for the love of virtue; for Christ is good by nature, not because of desire for a prize. Therefore He suffered, because it delighted Him to do good, not because He sought from His passion an increase of glory. Therefore he who desires to imitate Him works not what profits himself, but what profits others. Whence not undeservedly does he fail himself, yet grows strong for others by the increase of virtue. And fittingly he says:
'My heart and my flesh have failed, O God of my heart.' For things eternal cannot succeed unless earthly things have failed. The flesh therefore fails when the things that are carnal are mortified; and those also fail who carry about the mortification of Jesus Christ in their flesh; for the death of Christ works in them, that every allurement of errors may die. Whence it is gathered that the heart of man also fails when evil thoughts are mortified, which proceed from the heart, so that oblivion may hide all earthly things, and God may become the God of the heart of those who, blessed with a clean heart, are counted worthy to see God, that they may draw near to thee and not separate themselves. For God, drawing near, is not one who repels those who draw near; for He wills to be unto all the cause of salvation, not of death.
In short, He repels no one save him who thinks he should set himself apart from His sight. 'For behold,' he says, 'they that remove themselves far from thee shall perish.' For each man by his own works either joins himself to thy goodness or separates himself; for he flees God who works those things by the knowledge of which he fears to be caught, like that man who, covered by walls and encompassed by darkness, thinks himself unseen by the Lord God, yet is seen, as it is said: 'Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from thee.'
For just as a woman who commits fornication does not cleave to her husband, nor is one flesh with her husband, nor one spirit, but divides and separates herself by fornicating, so whatever soul does not cleave to God, but serving the vain cults of idols commits fornication, divides itself by the perversity of sacrilege and is made far from the Lord, when it ought to be near; and he perishes who is separated from the Lord. Whence the holy one, who dreads the judgment of God, ever wishes to cleave to Christ and to place his hope in Him, that he may praise the Lord, to whom be honor, glory, and perpetuity from the ages, both now and always and unto all ages of ages. Amen. IV. (II.) ON THE PRAYER OF DAVID. Many indeed have bewailed the weakness of human frailty,
but more excellently than the rest the holy Job and the holy David. The former, loftier, vehement, keen, and as it were exasperated by grievous pains, on a higher buskin; the latter, gentle and placid and meek, of milder affection, so that he might truly imitate the affection of the deer which he set before himself for imitation. Nor let it move thee if I seem to praise so great a prophet by the likeness of a wild beast, since thou hast read what was said to the apostles: 'Be ye wise as serpents, simple as doves.' Yet, although likenesses of this kind are built up with pious examples, and the nature of deer is innocent and meek, I judge that the deer set forth in this place for the imitation of the prophet is that one of which Solomon, the upholder of his father's mind, said in Proverbs:
'Let the deer of friendship and the fawn of graces converse with thee.' For the true Son of God expressed in Himself the nature which He Himself bestowed on living creatures, who came into this world like a deer and joined Himself with marvelous simplicity to those by whom snares were being prepared for Him. For it is said that the simplicity of deer of this kind is such that, when they see themselves being driven, they attach themselves to those horsemen who, set to the work of deceit, by the appearance of flight and the pretense of fellowship, lead them on, beguiled, even up to the nets. So therefore the Lord, as though ignorant of the danger and unforeseeing, mingled with the Jews who were contriving a snare for Him, and took to Himself the fellowship of Judas the betrayer, by whose deadly pretense He came even to the snares of the cross and the nets of the passion.
Whence, turning to him, He said: 'Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?' And in this manner indeed He came willingly to the nets of the synagogue and clothed Himself in them, but was not entangled nor bound, He who looses all. In short, He stood out above the nets. And because His own received Him not, He called the Church and conferred His grace upon her, as that holy and sacred Church herself testifies in the Song of Songs, saying: 'I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and strengths of the field, that ye stir up and reawaken charity until it shall please.'
She seeks therefore, in the fragrance of the field which holy Jacob smelled, that is, by that faith, by that devotion, that her bridegroom be stirred up by the daughters of Jerusalem, that He may hasten to the bride, and that His charity be stirred up within itself, or even that He Himself be stirred up, because charity is the bridegroom. For God is charity, as John said. But He, not suffering Himself to be stirred up by others, since He was hastening of His own accord, going forth from His chamber, exulted as a giant to run His course. The bride saw Him and heard the voice of Him coming, and suddenly turning she said: 'Behold, here He comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills'; for He leaps over the greater and bounds over the lesser, lest He suffer hindrances to His pious haste.
'My kinsman,' she says, 'is like a roe or a young hart of the stags upon the mountains of Bethel.' A good deer, whose mountain is the house of God, to which He was running with such swiftness that He outran the vows and desires of the bride. In short, Him whom she had seen coming from afar, she suddenly recognized to be present with her, whence she says: 'Behold, He is here behind our wall, looking through the windows, showing Himself through the lattices. My kinsman answered and said to me: Arise, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove, for behold the winter is past, the rain is gone and departed; the flowers have appeared in the land.' The winter is the synagogue, the rain is the people of the Jews, who could not see the sun; the flowers are the apostles. And she added:
'The harvest of the reaping has come, the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.' That harvest is the faith of the Church, the voice of the turtledove is chastity. And not only by these alone... but Christ also took on the likeness of the deer, because, coming to the earth, He trod down that serpent the devil without any harm to Himself, to whom He offered His heel, yet felt not its venom. Whence it was said to Him: 'Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk.' Let us therefore also be deer, that we may be able to walk upon serpents. We shall be deer, if we follow the voice of Christ, which prepares deer and makes them not to fear the bites of serpents, and if perchance they have been wounded, takes away their pain by loosing the offense. Of these deer the Lord says to Job: 'Hast thou kept the bringing forth of the deer?'
'Hast thou numbered their full months of bringing forth? And hast thou loosed their offspring, or nourished their young, that they may not fear?' Hear how the young of such deer do not fear. Let Isaiah teach thee, saying: 'And the little child shall put his hand into the den of asps, and they shall not hurt him.' And that thou mayest recognize that it seems to signify the children of the Church, he added: 'And wilt thou send forth their offspring? Their children shall break forth and be multiplied in their generation; they shall go out and not return back.' For no man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. Rightly therefore the Lord became a deer, that the voice of the Lord might prepare for Himself such deer, of whom He says:
'In my name they shall cast out demons, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.' For they took up serpents when by the breath of their holy mouth the apostles drew forth the wickednesses of the spiritual from the lurking-places of bodies, nor did they feel the deadly venom. In short, when a viper, leaping out of the brushwood, had bitten Paul, the barbarians, seeing the viper hanging from his hand, thought he would suddenly die. But he stood undaunted, neither was he moved by the wound nor suffused with the venom. Whence, seeing him, they reckoned that he was not begotten under the condition of a man, but brought forth by the grace of God to be above men.
See the deer drawing forth vipers from their lurking-places by the divine Spirit, which was in his nostrils, as Job said. 'Paul,' it says, 'turning in the spirit and looking back with grief upon the python, said: I charge thee in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to go out from her at once. And it went out that same hour.' See the deer when he comes to baptism and, washed by the watering of the sacred font, casts off all the venoms of persecution. See the deer, the Lord Jesus, when He came to John the Baptist, and when John said to Him: 'I ought to be baptized by thee, and dost thou come to me?' He answered: 'Suffer it now.' And with this word, thirsting for the salvation of the public, He went down into the waters with all eagerness. But now enough has the deer sported with us at the beginning of the treatise, as at the start of the year after the custom of the common folk.
Let us proceed to the rest. David, as I have said, prays, saying to the Lord: 'As the deer longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for thee, O God. My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' The holy one burns and cannot contain himself—for the magnificence of the spirit is greater than the magnitude of any body—and, secure in his mind, he longs to fly away from earthly things to heavenly ones, as he himself says elsewhere: 'Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly away and be at rest.' For here are snares, by which, even if the just man is not entangled, yet he is hindered; here are griefs and anxieties, there is gladness, where there is grace:
here, finally, are the bonds of the body, which Paul yearned to loose, that, stripped of all hindrances, he might stand free before the Lord. This therefore was what David's soul thirsted for, that he might now see God not through faith but face to face, and not only be a pilgrim away from the body but be loosed from the body; for to be dissolved and to be with Christ is far better, since for the just man to die is gain. And it is indeed a great gain to be without sin, not to be moved by the allurements of offenses. For who is clean from filth, when not even one day of man's life on earth is without the contagion of offenses? By living, therefore, we contract the damages of innocence; by death we attain the end of error.
Gain therefore is acquired by death, but by the use of life, as for wretched debtors, the interest of the usurious account is increased unto guilt. And well does that soul thirst which hastens to the fountain, not of this water, but of eternal life, of which he said above: 'For with thee is the fountain of life, and in thy light we shall see light.' Rightly therefore did David hasten to arrive and appear before the face of God, whose countenance is light, for all whom the Lord beholds He enlightens. 'My tears,' he says, 'have been bread to me day and night, while it is said to me daily: Where is thy God?' There rightly are tears bread, where righteousness is hungered for. For blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
There are therefore tears which are bread and which strengthen the heart of man. To this discussion that saying of Ecclesiastes also agrees: 'Cast thy bread before the face of the water,' because there is the heavenly bread, where the water of grace is, since they rightly receive the substance of the Word and the nourishment of the mystic reason, from whose belly flow rivers of living water. Likewise also there is this living bread, where there is the water of tears and the weeping of penitence. For so it is written: 'They went out in weeping, and in consolation I will bring them back.' Blessed therefore are they whose tears are bread, who have merited to laugh, because 'blessed are ye that weep.' 'Being mindful of these,' he says, 'I poured out my soul over myself.'
The holy one gathers himself from those things which are outside, and pours out his soul above himself, that the soul, poured out above the body, may hide the weakness of the flesh, may cover the appetite of the body, and that the virtue of the soul and mind may everywhere stand forth. Whence also in later verses he says: 'I will pour out my prayer in His sight.' Where prayer is poured out, there sins are covered. But of what does he say he is mindful? Surely of those things which he desired, that he might come and appear in the sight of God, that he might see that eternal hall of His, in which he walked about in mind and delighted in the entrance he had anticipated. 'For I will go in,' he says, 'into the place of the wondrous tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and confession, with the sound of one feasting.'
Not undeservedly did he weep, since he was dwelling on earth, to whom heavenly tabernacles were owed and whom the entrance of a mighty hall awaited. In short, that one hall alone he preferred to all the riches of his kingdom, as he himself testified elsewhere, saying: 'One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and that I may behold the delight of the Lord.' The delight of the Lord is in the Church. The Church is the image of heavenly things; for after the shadow passed, the image succeeded. The shadow is the synagogue: in the shadow is the law, in the Gospel is the truth. Therefore in the light of the Gospel the image of truth shines forth. The prophet wept therefore because the goods full of grace and filled with gladness were deferred. In short, in later verses too he says:
'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!' And therefore he prayed to the Lord, because he was hastening to better things. Yet in the very afflictions of the world there was a great consolation of present things, the hope of things to come. For who would not raise up his soul, who could hope that those blessed fellowships were reserved for him in the heavenly tabernacle? But because to a weak condition things to come are for the most part a weariness, and present things a vexation, therefore the holy prophet too, with the waves of the body rising up, was troubled in soul. For I would not have thee wonder if the prophet says his soul is agitated, since the Lord Jesus Himself said: 'Now is my soul troubled.'
For He who took up our infirmities also took up our affection, in which He was also sorrowful even unto death—not because of death; for a voluntary death could not have had sorrow, in which was to be the gladness of all, the refreshment of all. Of which He also said elsewhere: 'And I rose up and saw, and sweet sleep came to me.' A good sleep, which made the hungry not to hunger, the thirsty not to thirst, for whom He prepared the sweetness of the sacraments. How then was His soul troubled with fear, who made the souls of others not to fear? Sorrowful therefore even unto death, until grace should be consummated. Which is proved by His own testimony, when He says of His death: 'I have a baptism to be baptized with.' And how am I straitened, until it be accomplished?
David therefore, troubled by the slippery windings of this world, says: 'Why art thou sorrowful, O my soul, why dost thou disquiet me? Hope in God, for I will confess to Him: the salvation of my countenance, and my God.' Therefore, when we are anxious and troubled, let the hope of things to come confirm us by their expectation. Mark each word. 'Hope, for I will confess,' he says—not 'I confess,' but 'I will confess'—that is: then I shall confess better, when, with face revealed, having beheld the glory of God, I shall be transformed into the same image. Suddenly, when he consoled himself, returning into himself he said: 'My soul is troubled within myself,' that is: I who ought to confirm others am myself disquieted, and because I have no firmament from myself, let us take it from the Author.
'Therefore,' he says, 'I will remember thee, O Lord, from the land of Jordan and Hermon.' He remembers from the land of Jordan, in which grace accumulates the memory of devotion. Into the Jordan that Naaman the Syrian went down and was made clean from leprosy. In the Jordan Christ was baptized, when He instituted the form of the saving washing. The name Jordan signifies a descent, which the Lord Jesus descended, who cleansed those near the river Jordan from the contagion of offenses. This river goes out from Egypt and divides the land of promise. Therefore he who is troubled, if he takes good counsel, goes out from Egypt and follows the way of light; for they have interpreted Hermon as 'the way of the lamp.' Go out therefore first from Egypt, if thou wilt see the light of Christ.
The Canaanite woman went out from the borders of the nations and found Christ, to whom she said: 'Have mercy on me, Son of David!' Moses went out from Egypt and became a prophet and was sent back to the people, that he might free their souls from the land of their affliction. But the lamp of Christ is in the body. This lamp shows thee the way. Whence also the holy one says: 'Thy word is a lamp to my feet'—a lamp, because it has enlightened the souls of all and has shown the way in the darkness. The Gospel is the way of the lamp; it shines in the shadow, that is, in the world. Whence also elsewhere thou hast: 'They shall be made white as snow in Salmon,' that is, in the overshadowing. Christ also is the Jordan, who divides the land. Hear how He divides:
'And a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed,' inasmuch as He is the divider of our souls, who descends into the inmost secrets of the heart and detects the thoughts of minds. This sword is the living Word of God. In short, to the Hebrews thou readest thus: 'For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any most keen sword, penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit, of the joints also and marrow.' This is the fountain of Siloah, which is interpreted 'sent,' since Christ said that He was sent by the Father.
There is also that division which is gathered from the fact that two and a half tribes of the Jews dwelt on either bank of the Jordan, since the Son of Man, who in the later times descended from heaven, that true Jordan, that true divider of earthly and heavenly things, gave a divided possession to the fathers: one that should be possessed on earth, the other that should be reserved for the merits of the life to come. Both of these belong to Christ alone—either to divide heavenly things or to detect hidden things; for he divides inward things who detects hidden things, which is surely the mark of divinity. In short, thou hast it thus written, that God said: 'I will rejoice and divide Shechem.' This is that magnificent portion which Jacob assigned to his son Joseph as more excellent than all.
Whence he says: 'But I give to thee Shechem, magnificent above thy brethren, which I took from the hands of the Amorites with my sword and my bow.' Because the division is owed to the Lord alone, which is comprehended by the Word, that is, by that spiritual sword of the true Solomon. What is 'alone'? The Father without Christ, or Christ without the Father? By no means. When I say the Father alone, I do not separate the Son, because the Son is in the bosom and secret of the Father. When I say the Son alone, I also join the Father, just as the Son also joined Him, saying: 'Behold, the hour comes that ye shall leave me alone; yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.' Thus therefore the Father too is called blessed and alone mighty, in such a way that the Son is not severed from Him, who is always in the Father. In short, John excellently:
'In the beginning was the Word,' but it was not without the Father. And God was the Father, but He was not without the Word, because 'the Word was with God.' This Shechem is the Church; for Solomon chose her, whose hidden affection he distinguished. This Shechem is Mary, through whose soul the sword of God passes and divides. This Shechem is 'ascending,' as the interpretation has it. What it is that ascends, hear him say of the Church: 'Who is this that ascends, made white, leaning upon her brother?' This is the active one, which in Greek is called enargēs, because she shines forth in faith and works. To whose children it is said: 'Let your works shine before my Father, who is in heaven.' David therefore is mindful of God from the land of Jordan and Hermon, from a little mountain.
What is this little mountain? Let us consider whether perhaps the divinity of Christ is the great mountain. In short, 'I fill heaven and earth,' says the Lord. If therefore the divinity of Christ is the great mountain, surely His incarnation is the small mountain. Christ therefore is both—both the great mountain and the lesser: truly great, because great is the Lord and great is His power; lesser, because it is written: 'Thou hast made Him a little less than the angels.' Whence Isaiah says: 'We saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness.' Yet the same was both made lesser from the great and made great from the lesser: from the great, lesser, because, though He was in the form of God, He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant; and from the lesser, great, because Daniel says:
'And the stone which struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.' This stone, if thou askest who it is, recognize: 'The stone which the builders rejected, this is become the head of the corner.' Yet the same, even when He seemed small, was great. To this matter Isaiah gives assent, saying: 'A child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose beginning is upon His shoulders, and He is called the Angel of great counsel.' All things are for thy sake: Christ is a stone for thy sake, that thou mayest be built up; a mountain for thy sake, that thou mayest ascend. Ascend therefore above the mountain, thou who seekest heavenly things. Therefore He bowed the heavens, that thou mightest be nearer; therefore He rose up to the summit of the mountain, that He might lift thee up.
Not undeservedly therefore did the deep call upon the deep, that this mountain might become small, of which the prophet says: 'Deep calleth unto deep at the voice of thy waterfalls.' The Old Testament did not prevail for the redemption of this world; it called upon and as it were summoned to its aid the New Testament. The law cried out, announcing the Gospel. For it was half-full, and therefore it was necessary that He should come who would fulfill the law. For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believes, He who came to fulfill the law, not to dissolve it. How the law is a deep, hear him say: 'Thy judgments are like a great deep.' From this understand at once that both testaments belong to one wisdom, which came as it were to fulfill its own.
By 'the floodgates' we understand the depths of the words and the power of the heavenly utterance, which have flowed down upon us like rain from heaven. Christ, therefore, and the divine Scripture are the remedy for all our weariness, and in temptations our one refuge. So when David perceived that the surges of the world's billows were coming over him — surges which we must of necessity undergo in great number upon this sea of life — mindful of the Lord's mercies, which He has promised through countless oracles, he turns to prayer and entreats God, knowing that His mercy is appointed in the light, that is, in the law (for 'a light are Thy commandments'), while in temptations it is made manifest as in the darkness of night.
Hence, like a traveller who longs to return to his homeland and to reach the goal toward which he presses, yet is wearied by the rough road of this life, he summons a guide and begs for relief. 'With me,' he says, 'is prayer to the God of my life; I will say to God: Thou art my upholder.' Rightly does he seek aids already well known to him, and he appeals to the Author of the promise and the Giver of the accustomed gift, so that in coming to his aid, even if a man's merit gives offence, the divine precedent may give none. Someone asks: 'When did God take him up?' That we may establish this, come with me to the beginning of sacred Scripture; see how the Lord fashioned man with His own hands out of clay — whence this very one says in what follows: 'Thy hands have made me and formed me.'
As a kind of potter, God wrought the fabric of human flesh. And to Jeremiah it is said: 'Go down into the potter's house, and there thou shalt hear My words.' It often happens to a potter that, while the vessel is being shaped, it falls from his hands, and he again gathers up the clay to refashion the vessel. So too Jeremiah says: 'I went down and saw how the vessel fell which he himself was making in his hands.' And again he says: 'He made another vessel, as it pleased him.' Rightly therefore is He called our upholder, because with His own hands He took us up and Himself formed us. Those are vessels of a human potter, some unto honour, some unto dishonour. We are all vessels of clay: even if one be a king, he is a vessel of clay; even if an apostle, he is a vessel. Whence Paul also:
'We have,' he says, 'this treasure in earthen vessels.' And the prophet says concerning a king: 'Jechonias is despised like a vessel whose use is not needed.' And he added: 'O earth, hear the word of the Lord; write this man as disowned.' For as by a father's right our God is wont to disown degenerate sons; therefore the earth too enrolls those who are sons of the earth. Hence, when the Jews accused the adulteress, the Lord Jesus was writing with His finger on the earth. But the righteous are not written on the earth, as we read; to them it is said: 'Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.' The Lord therefore took us up when He fashioned us; He takes us up also when He bids us be born. Whence the just man says: 'Thou hast taken me up from my mother's womb.' From what mother?
'Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.' Those whom He forms He also takes up; and at their coming forth He likewise takes them up: 'and before thou camest forth from thy mother's womb, I sanctified thee.' He is an upholder who has taken up with His hands, as the Maker of the human race is called upholder; and He is one who has taken up by visitation, that He may protect. Whence elsewhere the prophet himself says: 'He who dwells in the help of the Most High shall say to the Lord: Thou art my upholder and my refuge.' The first taking-up is of the work of creation, the second of defence. In short, hear Moses saying: 'Stretching out His wings He took them and bore them up upon His shoulders.'
'As an eagle He took them up' — the eagle that is wont to test its young, that it may keep and nourish those in which it perceives the genuine nature of true offspring and the grace of an uncorrupted stock attested, but reject those in which, while they are yet of tender age, it has detected the weakness of a degenerate origin. 'Why hast Thou forgotten me, and why hast Thou repelled me?' God does not forget — for it is impossible that He should forget Him to whom all things that are, that have been done, and that are to be, are present — but our sins infuse into Him the cause of forgetting, so that He blots out those whom He has known to be unworthy of His visitation; for 'the Lord knoweth them that are His.' Yet when some work iniquity, to these He says: 'I know you not.' Who then is there who can say to God: 'Why hast Thou forgotten me?'
Yet this is common both to the saints and to us who are weak. A saint says it as one conscious of his own merit, and yet the holier he is, the humbler. But if even a saint scarcely dares say it, what shall I, a sinner, say, unless I refer it to this: 'Why hast Thou forgotten Thy work, why hast Thou forgotten Thy visitation, and finally why hast Thou forgotten my weakness?' For what is man, except that Thou visitest him? Forget not, then, the weak one. Remember, O Lord, that Thou hast made me weak; remember that Thou hast fashioned me dust. How shall I be able to stand, unless Thou ever bendest Thy care to make firm this clay, that from Thy countenance my firmness may come forth? When Thou turnest away Thy face, all things shall be troubled; if Thou gazest, woe is me! Thou hast nothing to look upon in me except the stains of my offences;
yet it is good neither to be forsaken nor to be seen, since while we are seen we give offence. We may nevertheless reckon that He does not repel those whom He sees, since He cleanses those whom He gazes upon. 'A fire burns before Him' that may consume the guilt. It is good for us, then, that we be not repelled. Therefore David complains, because he believed himself repelled, who had before been taken up. So in what follows he said: 'In Thee was I confirmed from the womb.' But above too we have it written: 'Upon Thee was I cast from the womb; from my mother's belly Thou art my God.' It is good even to be cast forth, but upon God. Indeed, in the person of Christ this is said in the twenty-first Psalm, who was truly cast forth upon the Father from the womb of the Virgin; for no earthly things received Him as He died.
Whence, set upon the cross, as He breathed out His spirit, He said to the Father: 'Into Thy hands I commend My spirit.' Let no one then add 'Lord,' as the psalm-singers do — a word which I have found neither in my Latin codex, nor in the Greek, nor in the Gospel, which is more evident. For above He had said: 'Father, forgive them this sin'; and so it is as to a Father that He commends His spirit into His hands, in whose bosom the Son ever is. Yet even if they add the word 'Lord,' let them consider that He speaks this as a man set in death. Therefore He was cast forth from the womb upon the Father, from His mother's belly — that is, He defined that the womb which cast Him forth is His mother's belly. But the Father says: 'From the womb before the morning star I begot Thee.'
The Father did not at all cast forth the Son, from whom the Son never departed, as He Himself says: 'I was delivered up, and I went not forth.' He did not cast forth Him to whom He is joined by the unity of one and the same substance. It can therefore also be read thus: 'Upon Thee was I cast from the womb, from my mother's belly,' so that there follows: 'Thou art my God, depart not from me.' It can also be read thus: 'From my mother's belly Thou art my God,' since even when set in the womb I never withdrew from Thee; I was with Thee, who like Jonah, set in the belly of the whale, was entreating Thee on behalf of the people. And truly from His mother's belly He was with God, according to what is written: 'For before the child should know good or evil, He chose what is good,' and:
'Before he should call father or mother, he plundered the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria,' that, the Gentiles being called, He might acquire a kingdom for the Father by the worship of devout reverence. Let us look at the rest. 'Why,' he says, 'hast Thou repelled me, and why do I go in sadness, while the enemy afflicts me, breaking my bones? They that trouble me have reproached me, while it is daily said to me: Where is thy God? Why art thou sad, O my soul?' and the rest. The first appeal contained a complaint, that the good things were deferred whose fruit was now longed for.
The second appeal was that the coming of Christ, awaited by the prudent, was being deferred — that coming which the law had announced and which the prophets had promised; and the more impatiently did the hearts of the righteous burn, since they had come to know that He was to come for the redemption of all... and indeed of the whole universe, to whom by the gospel path He might open the way of virtue and point out the paths of good works, as He Himself said in Proverbs: 'The Lord created me the beginning of His ways.' Therefore it was said to him: 'Where is thy God?' because Christ had not yet come, but was hoped for. The devil therefore raged, that he might crush those whom he knew would believe at the Lord's coming, and afflicted them with various forms of destruction.
David therefore appeals, that with prophetic complaint he may rouse the One who tarries, urge Him to hasten, and admonish Him to come to aid. We have a likeness of this appeal also in what follows, where the same prophet says: 'Why hast Thou repelled us, O God, unto the end?' And there he openly and tearfully lamented that He had forgotten His congregation and cast off the rod of His inheritance, and that His enemies had risen up against the people of God, of whom he says: 'And they that hate Thee have gloried in the midst of Thy feast.' Perhaps this little verse might seem to point to the Assyrians, who triumphed over the Jewish people, did there not follow: 'They have set up their signs as signs, and I knew it not.'
Standards are always present in war, which are wont to go before those about to do battle and to lead the line of soldiers. Each company or legion follows its own standards. And if they be scattered in the tumult of battles, however far away they may be placed, they return to the place where they have seen their own standards to be. Each leader sets up these standards and prescribes them to be followed. But there are also other standards, which a victorious enemy imposes and decrees to be observed as if by captives; but the soldier who is faithful follows his own standards and does not recognize those that are alien. Let us consider more intently and more carefully what the alien standards are. Christ has set His own sign on the foreheads of individuals; there too Antichrist sets his signs, that he may recognize his own.
But the true confessor, who is a Jew inwardly, says: 'They have set up their signs as signs, and I knew it not.' The devil and his ministers set them up, but I knew them not, because I did not consent to his arts, I did not yield to his commands. Nebuchadnezzar the Assyrian set up signs for the Hebrew youths and changed their names, and commanded that they should worship his image and depart from the solemnities of their fathers, and, setting aside the law of God, should follow Chaldean rites. The king ordained this, but Daniel resolved in his heart to shun the defilements of the royal table. Rightly therefore does it fit him to say that he did not recognize the alien signs. It had been commanded that the Hebrew youths should worship the king's image; they answered him: 'We do not worship thy image.'
Aptly therefore each of them said: 'They have set up their signs as signs, and I knew it not' — that is, I have not experienced it, I received it by no consent, I transferred it into myself by no fellowship. Whence also of the Son of God we read that 'He knew no sin.' And elsewhere thou hast: 'For he that keepeth the commandment shall know no evil word,' since it is plainly clear that it is not knowledge of wickedness, but criminal fellowship therewith, that is meant. David himself too says in what follows: 'But the malignant that turn aside from me I knew not.' And he declares where the adversaries would set these signs: 'As in a wood of trees,' he says above, 'they cut down its gates at the very top with axes; with axe and hatchet they cast it down.'
What does this mean, save that it shows that our faith ought not to be as it were by the wayside, lest the birds of heaven come and snatch it away — as that word which thou readest in the Gospel, that it ought not to be sown along the ways and paths? Therefore the adversaries, wishing to root out the faith of this holy one, who do not see their signs in his heart, attempted to plant them as it were by the wayside, that is, in an open thoroughfare; but the heart is at the top, since 'the eyes of the wise man are in his head.' And they set up signs as it were in a wood of trees, which are quickly burned up by fire or cut down by axes; for fire goes forth from the wood and consumes even the cedars of Lebanon. And this they thought ought to be done, that they might defile the tabernacle of the divine name which is in us.
For as we are the temple of God, so are we also the tabernacle of God, in which the Lord's feasts are celebrated. Therefore thou, O man, guard thy highest part, that thou mayest shatter the heads of the enemies who walk about over the crown of the hair — for in superfluous things they walk about, not in holy ones: over the crown of the hair, not over the crown of devotion and faith — and if the spirit of one having power should rise up against thee, as thou hast in Ecclesiastes, leave not thy place. For Christ has set thee higher, He who made thee after the image of God.
Hold therefore the higher place of faith and piety, which thou hast received from Christ, that, being made superior, thou mayest easily repel the wicked spirit that ascends from below — that is, from earthly and worldly things — and not receive its signs in thy breast. Let it not occupy the vestibules of thy soul nor the entrances of thy mind, nor, as in a wood of trees, lay waste with its fires what is frail and perishable, nor cut down the gates of thy heart with its axes. Let there be in us, then, not a wood but a vineyard; let the gate of our mouth and of our heart be more diligently shut, lest the enemy enter in. Quickly does he split the gate, if he find it open; but Christ knocks, He does not cast it down, He who has strengthened, O Jerusalem, the bars of thy gates.
Christ knocks with His hand, that thou mayest open; the adversary cuts in with axes, and therefore it is written that neither axe nor hammer should enter into the house of God. Pride and deceit ought to be without, not within; for outside are battles, within is peace, which is above all understanding. Let not thy soul be cleft by iron, but as the soul of Joseph, so let thy soul pass through iron, lest thy ruling part, like a kind of tabernacle of the word, be torn down at the very beginning of faith and at the entrance of spiritual teaching. For founded by use and practice, it remains unmoved and gives no place to him who strives to ascend to the heights, as it were transfiguring himself into an angel of light. And if he sees not his own signs in us, he will be unable to have authority to resist.
Therefore, that the enemy may not afflict us, nor break our bones, let us not fail to persevere in Christ, so that He may say of us: 'They have been three days now persevering with Me, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.' Blessed is he to whom He Himself has given firmness of heart, that he cannot fail, though set upon the path of this life. He fails not who hopes in the Lord and confesses to Him with inmost affection, since even that horseman whose horse's heel a serpent bit, though he fell backward, was yet not deceived, because he looked for salvation from the Lord. There is also a third appeal: that, set in the midst of men practising wickednesses, he desires his own cause to be separated from contact with them.
Many think this should be referred to the Lord Jesus, for the reason that it belongs to Him alone not to fear judgment, who overcomes when He is judged. For He has judgment from an unjust man, into which Christ willingly enters, as thou hast written: 'My people, what have I done to thee, or wherein have I grieved thee?' Moreover, since the Father has given all judgment to Him — not as to one weak, surely, but as to the Son — how can He Himself undergo judgment? If they suppose that the Father's judgment must be undergone by the Son, the Father certainly judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father. The Father honours the Son, and dost thou pass judgment on Him?
We have set this down so that it might not be supposed that we, as if out of fear of the question, are substituting the person of the prophet in the place of the Lord, since holy David, foreseeing in the Spirit that the Jews would rise up against the Lord's passion, does not dread the judgment of his own faith, and demands that his own cause too be distinguished from the race of his persecutors, lest by the evils of his own race and posterity he be entangled, as an heir, in the lineage of the whole Jewish race. Not without reason, therefore, is he troubled who sees that he has a struggle against flesh and blood, and that within his very self he suffers a grievous shipwreck, a tempest in his own body, which he cannot endure unless heavenly aid come to his support; for no enemy is more grievous to a man than the members of his own household.
But what is so much a man's own household as he himself and the weakness of his own flesh? And therefore the prophet hastens and prays with all his affection that Christ may come, the strength of all, who may take upon Himself all our infirmities and make both one, and by removing the partition wall may dissolve the enmities of mind and flesh that war against each other — that wall which divided the inner affection from coming together into concord.
Therefore, because within his very self there was a battle against himself, and there was conflict from those near to him, who, unmindful of law and equity, were preparing snares of deceit and ambushes, and the hoped-for remedy was deferred, he reckoned himself repelled, as though He who had promised that He would be a remedy refused to come; and, as if recalled from the hope of the dawning day into the depths of darkness, he prayed that a light which would repel the squalor of this age might shine forth, that the eternal truth might be present, which would abolish the deceitful image of this world. God was present to his prayers — He who is wont both to stand by unexpectedly and to manifest Himself to those who do not ask, as He Himself says:
'I was made manifest to those who sought Me not,' and, consenting to the prayers of the devout, He anticipated the sequence of their vows with swift effect, and suddenly led the holy prophet into the church and into His tabernacles in the spirit, and set before his eyes the sacred altar, on which would be the redemption of the whole world and the remission of the sins of all throughout the whole earth. Therefore, seeing in the spirit that sweetness of the heavenly sacraments, that table which repels the snares of those who wear us down — as he himself said above: 'Thou hast prepared a table before me against those who wear me down' — he says: 'And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who maketh glad my youth.' Beautifully did he say, as if as Adam: 'And I will go in.'
For we had been cast out of the Lord's paradise, from which Adam, conscious of his own sin, turned aside from the face of the Lord. Fittingly too he added: 'And I will go in to the altar of God,' as though returning into the sight of God. For He had been turned away from our gifts, when He did not approve the gifts of that fratricide Cain. Cain lay hidden, estranged from the sight of the Lord: the raging, savage force of his mind, because the Lord had regarded his brother's gifts, under the burden of his offence left his own as heirs. He had slain Abel not for himself alone — whose blood too cried out to the Lord — but he had slain him for us all. Almost no one's sacrifice was now approved, because there was none that did goodness, there was not so much as one, when neither faith toward God nor piety toward a brother's kinship was preserved.
The Lord Jesus came, that He might raise up Adam; Abel too was raised up, whose gifts pleased God. The Lord Jesus offered His very self — that is, the firstfruits of His own body — in the sprinkling of His blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel spoke upon the earth. God regarded His gifts, from which He Himself left the grace of divine reconciliation to good heirs. Rightly therefore holy David says, as if from the person of reconciled man: 'And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who maketh glad my youth.' Let us confirm this passage, if we can, also by the example of another prophet, how the Lord both at first turned away from man's sacrifices and afterward was reconciled to him. We have it written in the book of Isaiah, God saying:
'To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? saith the Lord. I am full' — that is, I abound in My own, I seek not yours — 'the holocausts of rams and the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and of he-goats I will not; neither come ye thus into My sight.' And surely Abel had offered sacrifice from the offspring of his flocks, in which he had pleased God. But He sought not the type, who awaited the truth of the sacrifice; for the saving passion of the Lord was awaited. 'For who,' He says, 'hath required these things at your hands? Ye shall no more tread My court.' And further down: 'When ye stretch forth your hands to Me, I will turn away My face from you. But wash yourselves, be clean, take away malice from your souls.'
'Judge for the fatherless and do justice to the widow, and come, let us reason together, saith the Lord.' It is clear, then, that the Lord was both at first turned away from man's sacrifices and afterward reconciled, so that He deigned to look upon our sacrifices. Therefore he who enters in to the Lord's mercy enters secure. So to the good servant it is said: 'Enter into the joy of thy lord'; but of the wicked servant it is said: 'Cast him into the outer darkness.' Therefore Adam too, cast out of the heavenly fatherland and from that seat of paradise, was banished to the island of sin. Rightly therefore Scripture says: 'Be renewed, ye islands,' because we are surrounded by the billows of sins like islands in the strait of this world.
These islands, then, have been renewed through the Lord's coming by the remission of sins; that is, men set in the laver, in the midst between the waters like islands, were beaten by the masses of the waves like islands by the sounding billows of sins dashing against them, like islands on which before there were frequent shipwrecks for simple folk upon the reefs, as it were, of frauds, because there was guile in the heart and flattery in the mouth.
But indeed, after the Lord Jesus, in whom is no guile, coming into this world, by the unfolding of heavenly teaching had calmed the depths of human minds and poured back tranquillity into the affections of each, removing the hedge of discord, then, as it were, certain harbours began to offer their aid to those drawing near, so that each one might anchor the vessel of his own quietude in the affection of a neighbour or a brother, and might cling to the shore in a kind of retreat of a devout mind. Not without reason therefore does David, as though renewed, cry out: 'And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who maketh glad my youth.'
So that he who above had said that he had grown old among his enemies, as we read in the sixth Psalm, here says that his youth has been renewed for him out of the aged decay of human falling. For we are renewed through the regeneration of the laver, we are renewed through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we shall be renewed also through the resurrection, as he says in what follows: 'Thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle's.' Hear how we are renewed: 'Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed; Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.' And in Isaiah He says: 'If your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.' Rightly is he renewed who is changed from the darkness of sins into the light of virtues and grace, so that he who before was foul with hideous filth may shine forth whiter than snow with a too-dazzling brightness.
'I will confess to Thee on the harp, O my God.' Our soul has its own harp; for Paul would not say: 'I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the mind; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the mind,' unless he had a harp, which would resound at the plectrum of the Holy Spirit. Our flesh is a harp, when it dies to sin that it may live to God; it is a harp when it receives the sevenfold Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. For the tortoise, while it lives, is plunged in the mire; but when it has died, its shell is fitted for the use of singing and for the grace of devout discipline, that it may answer back the distinctions of seven notes with measured strains. Likewise our flesh, if it lives by bodily allurements, lives in a kind of mire and in a whirlpool of pleasures:
but if it dies to luxury and incontinence, then it resumes true life, then it begins to bring forth the sweet melody of good works. Sweet is the sound of chastity, sweet the sound of those who fear God. So 'their sound went out into all the earth.' Sweet is the sound of faith, which is proclaimed, as it is written, 'in the whole world.' Let this sound go forth from us to God, as it went forth also from the Thessalonians, that even without singing we may sing, and by the harmony of good works may proclaim the Lord, to whom be honour, glory, and perpetuity from the ages, both now and always and unto all ages of ages. Amen.