'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.