Verse 8. — But now my sorrow has oppressed me, and all my limbs are brought to nothing. 9. The sorrow of the Church when she beholds the weak dragged along to the examples of the wicked. — Holy Church is pressed by her sorrow when she beholds the perverse growing in their malice. And because, while the depraved grow, even the weak who are in her are provoked to follow the pursuits of depravity, it is rightly added: And all my limbs are brought to nothing. For just as by the bones the strong, so by the limbs the weak are wont to be designated. The members of the Church therefore are brought to nothing when, from the imitation of the depraved who grow in this world, the weak are worse enfeebled.
For beholding the prosperity of the wicked, they often are torn away from the very state of faith, they desire temporal goods, and are as it were brought to nothing, because, while they forsake the abiding essence of God, loving transitory things, they tend as it were toward non-being. But well is it said: But now my sorrow has oppressed me, because, namely, the time of the Church's sorrow is now, and the time of joy shall follow afterward. But it often happens that holy Church not only tolerates the unbelievers and adversaries set outside, but scarcely endures also the snares and hostility of those whom she has within. Whence, in the voice of the blessed man, it is fittingly added at once: