And when the authority of the saints who belong to God recalled him from that thought, he undertook and set his mind to recognize so great a secret — which was not disclosed to him as he labored, until he entered into the sanctuary of God and understood concerning the last things; that is, until, having received the Holy Spirit, he learned to desire the better things and looked ahead to what punishment was to come upon the impious, even those who had flourished for a time in a certain hay-like felicity. Read this seventy-second Psalm, expounded through our ministry on the night on which the solemnity of the most blessed Cyprian was dawning, and attend to it diligently.
Accordingly, Christ the man and the same Christ God — by whose most merciful humanity and in whose servile form we ought to learn what is to be despised in this life and what to be hoped for in the other — in the very passion, in which He seemed to His enemies to be great and victorious over Him, took up the voice of our infirmity, by which our old man was together crucified, that the body of sin might be done away, and said: 'God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' And this is one of your five proposed questions. So begins the twenty-first Psalm, which was sung in prophecy so long beforehand concerning His passion and the revelation of the grace which He brought to make and to free the faithful.
Accordingly, I shall run through this same Psalm — whose prophecy the Lord, showing it to pertain to Himself, cried out its first verse while He hung upon the wood — recounting and expounding it, so that from this you may understand in what manner the grace of the New Testament was not passed over in silence even at that time when it was veiled in the Old. For it is spoken from the person of Christ, so far as it pertains to the form of the servant, in which our infirmity was borne. For Isaiah also said of Him: 'He bears our infirmities and is in sorrows for us.' From the voice, then, of this infirmity — concerning which Paul, in what he asked, was not heard, and therefore in a certain manner forsaken, yet nonetheless hears from the Lord: 'My grace is sufficient for thee;
for strength is made perfect in weakness' — from the voice, then, of this our infirmity, which our Head transfigured into Himself, it is said in this Psalm: 'God, my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me?' For in that in which he is not heard, the one praying is forsaken. This voice Jesus transfigured into Himself — namely, the voice of His body, that is, of His Church, which was to be reformed from the old man into the new man; the voice, namely, of human infirmity, from which the goods of the Old Testament had to be denied, so that it might now learn to desire and hope for the goods of the New Testament.
But among those goods of the Old Testament pertaining to the old man, what is chiefly coveted is the temporal prolongation of this life, that it may be held somewhat longer, since it cannot be held forever. Therefore all men indeed know that the day of death will come, and yet all, or almost all, try to defer it — even those who believe that after death they will live more blessedly; so great a power has the sweet fellowship of flesh and soul. For no one ever hated his own flesh, and for that reason the soul does not wish to depart, even for a time, even from its infirmity, although it is confident that it will receive that flesh again without infirmity forever.
Accordingly, serving the law of God with the mind, yet drawing after the desires of sin with the flesh — desires which the Apostle forbids us to obey — the godly man indeed by the reasoning of his mind longs to be dissolved and to be with Christ; but by the sense of the flesh he refuses and shrinks from this, and, if it might be so, wishes not to be unclothed but rather to be clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life — that is, that even his very body may be carried over from weakness to immortality without any intervening death. But these words, by which a human span of days and the length of this present life are craved, are the words of transgressions, and they are far from that salvation whose substance we do not yet possess, though we already hold its hope; of which it is written that by hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope. And therefore in this psalm too, when he had said:
'My God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me?' he at once adds: 'Far from my salvation are the words of my transgressions' — that is, these are the words of my transgressions, and they are far from that salvation of mine which is promised me not by the grace of the old but of the new testament. And yet it can also be punctuated thus: 'My God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me, far from my salvation?' as though he said: In forsaking me — that is, in not hearing me — thou hast become far from my salvation, namely the present salvation of this life; so that the other sense would be: 'the words of my transgressions' — that is, these things I have said are the words of transgressions, because they are the words of carnal desires. These things Christ speaks in the person of his body, which is the Church;
these he speaks in the person of the weakness of sinful flesh, which he transfigured into that which he took from the Virgin — the likeness of sinful flesh; these the Bridegroom speaks in the person of the Bride, because in a certain manner he has united her to himself. And in Isaiah, where he says: 'As on a bridegroom he set a mitre upon me, and as a bride he adorned me with ornament' — 'he set upon me' and 'he adorned me' are as it were the voice of one, and yet by the Bridegroom and the Bride we understand Christ and the Church. 'But they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament,' said the Apostle, 'in Christ and in the Church.' Therefore now they are not two but one flesh. If then the flesh is one, surely fittingly the voice too is one. Why here dost thou seek, O human weakness, the voice of the Word by whom all things were made?
Hear rather the voice of the flesh which was made among all things, since the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; hear rather the voice of the medicine by which thou art healed, that thou mayest see God, whom he deferred for thee to see, but presented as man to be seen, offered to be slain, bestowed to be imitated, delivered to be believed, so that by this faith the eye of the mind might be healed to see God. Why then do we disdain to hear the voice of the body from the mouth of the Head? The Church suffered in him when he suffered for the Church, just as he too suffered in the Church when the Church suffered for him. For as we have heard the voice of the Church suffering in Christ: 'My God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me?'
so also have we heard the voice of Christ suffering in the Church: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' Therefore when we are not heard as to retaining or obtaining temporal goods, when we beseech God for these, in the very fact that he does not hear us he forsakes us; yet as to those better things which he wills us to understand and prefer and desire, he does not forsake us. Whence the psalm continues and says: 'I cried unto thee by day, and thou wilt not hear' — and here too is understood 'and thou wilt not hear' — 'and by night'; but see what he adds: 'and not unto folly for me.' This then he says: Thou wilt indeed not hear me crying by day, that is, in prosperous things, that I may not lose them, and by night, that is, in adverse things,
that the prosperous things which have been lost may return; but this thou wilt not do unto folly for me, but rather that I may know what now, through the grace of the new testament, I ought to expect from thee, what to desire, what to ask. For I indeed cry that temporal goods may not be taken from me; but thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of Israel. I would not have thee forsake my concupiscence, by which I seek carnal felicity; but this lies in the filth of the old, while thou seekest the cleanness of the new; by not hearing that desire thou dost forsake it, because thou seekest the charity in which thou mayest dwell; and the charity of God is shed abroad in our hearts, but by the Holy Spirit, who is given unto us.
Therefore thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of Israel, the praise of those who see thee, because they are praised not in themselves but in thee; for what have they that they have not received, so that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord? This is the grace of the new testament. For in the old testament, when thou didst enjoin that even earthly and temporal felicity itself ought to be sought and hoped for from none but thee: 'Our fathers hoped in thee; they hoped, and thou didst deliver them; they cried unto thee and were saved; they hoped in thee and were not confounded.' For those fathers, living among their enemies, thou didst both fill with riches and deliver from their foes, and didst make them bear off glorious victories, and didst free them from divers deaths. For one thou didst substitute a ram, that he might not be smitten;
another thou didst make whole from putrefaction, and didst render him double what he had lost; another thou didst keep unharmed and untouched among hungry lions; by others walking amid the flames thou wast praised with a pleasing voice. Some such thing the Jews expected to happen in Christ, whereby they might prove whether he were truly the Son of God. In their person it is said also in the book of Wisdom: 'Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there shall be respect had unto his words. For if he be the true Son of God, he will receive him and deliver him from the hands of his adversaries. These things,' it says, 'they thought, and erred; for their own malice blinded them.'
For attending to the time of the old testament and to that even temporal felicity of the fathers — in which God showed that even such gifts of his were to be granted them — they did not see that now was the time in which it should be revealed in Christ that God properly bestows eternal goods upon the just, though he bestows temporal goods even upon the wicked. And so, when he had said: 'Our fathers hoped in thee; they hoped, and thou didst deliver them; they cried unto thee and were saved; they hoped in thee and were not confounded,' see what he added: 'But I am a worm and no man.' This indeed seems to be said simply to commend humility, that he might show himself in the eyes of his persecutors as something most abject and most despised;
but the loftiness of the secret and the depth of the mystery is not to be despised, especially in those words which are fitted to so great a Saviour in the proclamation of prophecy. Hence a most elegant sense has been given by earlier writers: that he willed himself to be foretold under this name for this reason, because a worm is born of flesh without intercourse, even as he was born of the Virgin. But in his book Job, when he was speaking of the heavenly creatures, that even they are scarcely clean in the sight of God, says: 'How much more man, who is rottenness, and the son of man, who is a worm.'
He put 'rottenness' for mortality, which now bears as it were a conceived necessity of dying, into which man was thrust down by sinning; and 'the son of man' he called a worm, born of rottenness as it were rotten — that is, mortal from mortality. And by this he has admonished us to seek another sense in these words of the psalm — the former sense being indeed preserved and not rejected — so that we may examine not only what he says, 'But I am a worm,' but also what he added, 'and no man,' according to that which I have recalled from the book of Job, as though he said: 'But I am the son of man and no man' — not that Christ is not man, of whom the Apostle says:
'There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus' — for every son of man is a man — but this sense looks to a certain one who was so a man that he was not a son of man, that is, Adam. Perhaps then it is thus said: 'But I am a worm and no man,' that is, 'But I am the son of man and no man,' as though it were said: 'But I am Christ, in whom all are made alive, not Adam, in whom all die.' And by this, learn, O men, through the grace of the new testament now to crave everlasting life. Why do you as some great thing so wish to be delivered by the Lord from death, as our fathers were delivered, when God was commending that there was no other bestower even of earthly felicity besides himself?
That felicity pertains to the old man, whose oldness began from Adam. 'But I am a worm and no man' — Christ, not Adam. From the old you were old; from the new be new; from Adam men, from Christ sons of men. For not without cause does the Lord most familiarly in the Gospel call himself the Son of man rather than man, nor without cause in another psalm: 'Men,' it says, 'and beasts thou wilt save, O Lord, according as thy mercy is multiplied, O God.' For from thee comes even that salvation common to men and beasts. But new men have another salvation, proper to themselves and separated from the fellowship of beasts, which pertains to the new testament — they have it indeed; for concerning it there in the same place it follows and says:
'But the sons of men shall hope under the covering of thy wings; they shall be inebriated with the abundance of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure; for with thee is the fountain of life, and in thy light we shall see light.' Surely here too, when above he had said 'men,' afterwards he said 'but the sons of men,' as it were distinguishing the sons of men from men. For in that felicity of the salvation which is common to men and beasts, he chose to call them by that name whereby they might be shown to pertain to that first man, in whom oldness began, and death — who was so a man that he was not a son of man;
but on these latter ones, who hope for another felicity, and the ineffable pleasure of the fountain of life, and the light of everlasting light, he imposed this name by which their Lord willed to be more familiarly called — in whom such grace was revealed — and he called them sons of men rather than men. Yet do not suppose that a rule of speech is fixed, to be observed by a perpetual law, so that wherever you read 'men' or 'sons of men' you should always understand it according to this distinction; but as the context of the passage may hold, from which the sense, if it lies open, is drawn, and if it lies hidden, is dug out; as in this place of this psalm, whom might the strain of the distinction not disturb, when he who had said, 'Our fathers hoped in thee and thou didst deliver them;
they cried unto thee and were saved; they hoped in thee and were not confounded,' subjoins: 'But I?' For he does not say thus: 'And I,' but 'But I.' What then is this one who thus distinguishes himself? 'But I,' he says, 'am a worm and no man' — as though, to those whom thou didst hear and deliver, thou wert commending that felicity which, pertaining to the old testament, was to be granted to the old man who began from Adam; but I am a worm, that is, the son of man, not a man like that man who was not a son of man. And by this the 'I' and what follows: 'The reproach of men and the outcast of the people; all who beheld me mocked me and spoke with their lips, they wagged the head:
He hoped in God, let him deliver him, let him save him, since he desireth him.' This they said with their lips, not in their heart, insulting because it would not come to pass, not believing that it was to be. Yet it did come to pass, but as it behoved to be done in the Son of man, in whom the hope of eternal life was to be revealed, pertaining to the new testament — not as they expected. And because they did not see it come to pass, they insulted him as though vanquished, they who pertained to the old testament and to the man in whom all die, not to the Son of man in whom all shall be made alive. For man brought death upon himself and upon the son of man; but the Son of man, dying and rising again, brought life to man — 'the reproach of men and the outcast of the people' even unto death.
For this he willed to suffer in the sight of his enemies, that they might think him as it were forsaken, so that the grace of the new testament might be commended, whereby we should learn to seek another felicity, which is now in faith but afterwards shall be in sight. For as long as we are in the body, says the Apostle, we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight, and therefore now in hope, then in reality. In fine, his resurrection, which — unlike ours — ought not to be deferred to a long term, that in the example of his flesh we might learn what we ought to hope for in our own, he willed to show not to strangers but to his own; strangers I say not by nature but by vice, which is always against nature.
He died therefore in the sight of men, but rose again in the sight of the sons of men, because death pertained to man, resurrection to the Son of man; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Therefore, that by the example of his flesh he might exhort his faithful ones to despise temporal felicity for the sake of eternal, he bore even unto death his persecutors and rageers, and those who proudly mocked him as if vanquished and crushed. But in that he raised up his own flesh and restored it to the sight and touch of his disciples, and ascended into heaven before their eyes, he built them up and showed with most evident truth what they ought to expect and to preach.
But those from whom he had endured so great evils even unto death he left, as they gloried over him as it were vanquished and extinguished, in this opinion: that whosoever of them should wish to be saved with eternal salvation must believe this concerning the resurrection of him who had died — which those who saw it preached with signs bearing witness, and for that preaching did not hesitate to seek to suffer the like. Wherefore James also, one of his apostles, in his first epistle, when he was exhorting the faithful who after the passion and resurrection of Christ were still held in this life, distinguishing the dispensation of the old testament and the new:
'Ye have heard,' he says, 'of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord,' lest they should for this reason patiently endure temporal evils — that this might be restored to them which we read Job received. For he too was made whole from that wound and putrefaction, and all that he had lost was restored to him doubled; wherein the faith of the resurrection was also commended. For the sons, restored not double but the same number, signified that even those whom he had lost would rise again; so those too, joined to those former ones, would not be found alien from the restoration of the double. Therefore, that we might not hope for such a recompense when we suffered temporal evils, he did not say: 'Ye have heard of the patience and the end of Job,' but he said:
'Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord,' as though he said: Endure temporal evils as Job did, but for this endurance hope not for temporal goods, which returned to him increased, but rather for eternal goods, which in the Lord went before. Job therefore was of those fathers who cried out and were saved. For when he says, 'But I,' he sufficiently intimates by what salvation he would have it understood that they were saved — a salvation in which he himself indeed was forsaken; not that they were alien from eternal salvation, but that which was to be revealed in Christ was then in hiding. For in the old testament there is a veil, which shall then be taken away when anyone shall pass thence to Christ.
When he was crucified, the veil of the temple also was rent, that it might be signified what the Apostle said concerning the veil of the old testament: 'Because in Christ it is done away.'
For even in those fathers there were — though most rare — examples of patience even unto death, from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, whose blood the Lord Jesus says shall be required even from those who should persist in the iniquity of their fathers, by whom those were slain; and in the new testament there has neither failed nor is failing a multitude of good faithful ones who even excel in this temporal felicity and in it experience the goodness and mercy of God the giver, yet holding what the Apostle, the dispenser of the new testament, enjoins upon the rich of this world: not to be highminded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who giveth us all things abundantly to enjoy; that they may do good,
be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the true life — such as was manifested in Christ not only in spirit but even in flesh, when he rose from the dead — not such as the Jews slew in him, when God did not deliver him from their hands and he seemed to have forsaken him as he cried out: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' — so that in this manner he might transfigure into himself his martyrs, who, even though they would not die, — which he signified also to Peter when he said, 'Another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not,' foretelling by what death he should glorify God — and for this reason might seem to be forsaken by their God for a time, when he would not grant them what they wished.
They should send forth that voice of the heart and apply that affection of piety which, when his passion was imminent, the Lord expressed with his own mouth, again and again transfiguring them into himself: 'Yet not what I will, but what thou wilt, Father.' For in whom should it first appear, if not in our very Head, for the sake of which life we are Christians? Therefore he does not say: 'My God, thou hast forsaken me,' but he reminded us that a cause must be sought, when he added: 'why hast thou forsaken me?' — that is, wherefore, for what, for what cause? For assuredly there was some cause, and that not a small one, that he should free Noah from the flood, Lot from the heavenly conflagration,
Isaac from the imminent sword, Joseph from the woman's slander and the custody of prison, Moses from the Egyptians, Rahab from the destruction of the city, Susanna from false witnesses, Daniel from the lions, the three men from the fires, and the other fathers who cried out and were saved — and yet would not free Christ from the hands of the Jews, but would leave him in the power of the raging ones even unto the issue of death. Why this? For what cause this, save for the sake of that which a little after in the same psalm he says: 'not unto folly for me' — that is, for my body, my Church, my little ones? For in the Gospel also: 'When ye did it unto one of the least of these mine,' he says, 'ye did it unto me.'
So then 'and not unto folly for me' is said in the same way as 'ye did it unto me' is said, and so 'why hast thou forsaken me?' is said in the same way as it is said: 'He that receiveth you receiveth me,' and, 'he that despiseth us despiseth me.' Therefore it is not unto folly for us, but that we may be wise: that we ought to be Christians not for the sake of this life, in which God sometimes leaves us even unto death in the hands of persecutors, but for the sake of that everlasting life, because we behold this to have gone before in him from whose name we are so called. Behold, so it has come to pass; yet so many wish to be Christians for no other reason than to enjoy the felicity of this life, and therefore when it fails they fail.
What if in our very Head so signal an example had not been set up, whereby we might learn for the sake of heavenly things to despise earthly things, not regarding the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen? For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. Whom did he deign to transfigure into himself by those voices? For as far as pertains to himself, in what manner would he wish to be freed from that hour, who for that very purpose had come unto that hour? Or in what manner did he so speak, as though something befell him which he did not will, when he had power to lay down his soul and to take it again, nor could anyone take it from him, but he himself would lay it down and take it up again, as he says in the Gospel?
But without doubt we were in those voices of ours, and the Head was speaking for his body, with no disjoined signification of the voice, where the connection of unity is not disjoined. Finally, in the psalm it follows, and, as he prays, mark what he says: 'For thou,' he says, 'didst draw me out of the womb, my hope from the breasts of my mother. Upon thee was I cast from the womb; from my mother's womb thou art my God' — as though he said: From one thing and away from one thing thou hast transferred me unto another thing, that thou mightest be to me a good in place of the earthly goods of this mortality, which I obtained in my mother's womb, because I sucked the breasts. For this is the oldness out of which thou didst draw me, and those are the goods of carnal nativity from which thou art my hope; for thence was I turned unto thee.
'And from the womb,' that is, from those things which I began in the womb, 'upon thee was I cast,' passing over to thee, committing myself wholly to thee. And therefore 'from my mother's womb,' that is, from the goods of the flesh which I took in my mother's womb, 'thou art my God,' that out of these things thou mightest be my good; which is spoken in that manner of speaking, as if one were to say, for example's sake: From earth I inhabit heaven, that is, hence I have migrated thither. And this transfiguration of ours into him it is, we who through the grace of the new testament change our life, passing over from the old to the new.
For he, signifying this matter by the sacrament of his passion and resurrection, changed his flesh from mortality to immortality, but did not change his life from oldness to newness, who was never in impiety, whence he might pass over to piety. And yet there have not been lacking those who felt that this which is said, 'From my mother's womb thou art my God,' pertains for this reason to our very Head, because the Father is his God in so far as he is man in the form of a servant, not in so far as he is equal to him in the form of God; therefore, 'From my mother's womb thou art my God,' as if he said: From that whereby I was made man, thou art my God. But what is 'Thou didst draw me out of the womb,' if it be referred to himself, begotten of the Virgin?
as though God does not draw out others also, in whose providence is the whole order of being born; or did he by this wish to signify the Virgin's childbearing, the integrity of virginity being preserved by a marvel, when he says: 'Thou didst draw me out of the womb,' so that what was there wondrously done — since God is said to have done it — might seem incredible to no one? What then is that also: 'My hope from the breasts of my mother'? In what manner can this too be referred to the very Head of the Church, as though his hope, which is in God, began for him from his mother's breasts, and not already before in the womb itself? For no other hope is to be understood save that whereby it was to come to pass that God should exalt him from the dead; for the whole of this is said according to that which he was made man.