Those who pursue the doctrine of God, unless they are engaged in the ministry of good works, will not profit from the food of that table; for to them every reading of the very prophecy, though understood, turns to a trap and a stumbling-block. For just as children come from a wife, so from wisdom the works of a good will are begotten. These, then, like young olive shoots, will surround our table—that is, they will overshadow the knowledge of our doctrine with the fruits, as it were, of excellent branches. And the prophet observed this reason also, that he called it a 'neophyte' olive—that is, newly planted—because through wisdom, taken as a wife, whose sons are the works of faith, these same works are planted in this earth of our body.
This wife, then, is like a fruitful vine spread over the sides of our house; these sons—that is, the works begotten from such a wife—will stand like planted olive trees around our table. And because this is the blessedness of those who fear God, the prophet added: 'Behold, thus shall every man be blessed who fears the Lord.' To the merit of the one who fears is joined also the prayer of the prophet who says: 'May the Lord bless you out of Sion, and may you see the good things of Jerusalem.' Of Jerusalem and Sion we have already spoken frequently in the preceding psalms—from which, or in which, the consummation of all good things is to be hoped. For now, although we enjoy heavenly goods, yet greater things are reserved for us in the times of Sion and Jerusalem.
For this world is not capable of the promised goods. For now 'woe to the world because of scandals,' in which the devil has oversown tares, in which is a region of corruption and a place of iniquity and a valley of weeping, in which the world-rulers of these darknesses hold sway. But in the meantime we have the light of the goods promised to us, in which, as through a mirror and in an enigma, we behold the image of happy things; then we shall see face to face, with no cloud of obscurity interposed nor the glare of a rivaling mirror, but we shall rejoice in the true and clearly visible contemplation of our blessedness, beholding the fruits of our works and seeing the reward of an innocent life. For as works are begotten from wisdom, so from works is retribution born.
Wisdom, therefore, is the mother of innocence, and again innocence brings forth the fruits of retribution. These, then, we shall obtain when the devil has been crushed, the sting of death blunted, and every prince and power of this world removed, when there is now peace within us, the enemy conquered and destroyed—which the prophet attests in the very conclusion of the psalm, saying: 'May the Lord bless you out of Sion, and may you see the good things of Jerusalem all the days of your life, and may you see your children's children: peace upon Israel.' Let us therefore hope for these good things of the heavenly Jerusalem, and of Mount Sion, and of the peace of Israel, because the place of the Lord is in peace—in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. A Song of Ascents.
'Often have they assailed me from my youth—let Israel now say.' We are instructed by the prophetic sayings unto the endurance of present sufferings, and the weakness of our nature, ever impatient against the injuries of the world, receives the doctrine of patience from him who says in the present psalm: 'Often have they assailed me from my youth.' The age of a religious man is not idle, nor does he pass a quiet life. He is assailed from the very years of his youth, and he is assailed often. The hatreds of his assailants, therefore, are neither new nor rare, but they are hostile often, even from the very beginnings of his age. And for this reason these are the things which prove faith, which attest patience, which merit the crown of unconquered virtue.
The blessed Apostle Paul knew this crown of the long combat, saying: 'No one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully.' The mere struggle does not suffice for the crown: one must strive lawfully—that is, all the wars of the passions must be carried through; it is not enough to have soldiered once, nor in the battle of a single contest. And let us hear this very man striving lawfully, when he says of himself: 'In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often: from the Jews five times I received forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I spent in the deep.' Deservedly did he, having gone through so many and so great battles, dare to say:
'For the rest, there is now laid up for me a crown of righteousness,' since no one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully. To this, too, agrees this prophetic voice: 'Often have they assailed me from my youth.' It is a rejoicing of the greatest confidence to recall so many and so numerous battles; but now, with the name of the assailants left unspoken, the assailing alone is recorded. And the reason must be known why the authors of the assault are passed over in silence. All the human injuries which are inflicted on religious men do not have the same authors as they have executors: the carrying-out is indeed of men, but the instigation is of the devil. And of this understanding the Apostle is our author, saying:
'For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, the world-rulers of these darknesses, the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places'; and again: 'according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.' These spiritual wickednesses, then, work in those who are disobedient to the law of God, whom they choose as workers of their own will, intending to use them for their own ends through the ministry of another's intervention. And we understand this not only from the apostolic sayings, but we are also taught it from the book of Job.
For when the devil had demanded the power to tempt Job, being about to vent his fury first through the plundering of his substance, he stirred up men to the slaughter of the shepherds and to the plundering of the flocks, and kindled them into this will of brigandage. He accomplished, therefore, what he wished, through the agency of human action. Judas also, in the Lord's passion, was the ministry of the devil, and through him the devil carried out the effect of his own will, as the evangelist attests thus: 'Satan,' he says, 'entered into Judas, who is surnamed Iscariot.' In every injury, therefore, that we suffer, it is the work of one and the instigation of another; and whoever does anything by the impulse of a turbulent will does not accomplish it for himself.
We must not, therefore, be angry with those from whom we suffer certain things; but whenever we are provoked to anger through insults, whenever we are stirred to quarrels through reproaches, whenever we are compelled to grief and to an impious complaint of loss through robberies and thefts, or are enticed toward the pleasures of the body by the instigation of a flattering exhortation, that enemy is to be recognized through whom these incitements to deeds and words are supplied. Nor must we be angry with men who are the workers of another's instigation; but rather in them the foul intervention of a detestable office is to be pitied—that they are vessels of the devil, the ministry of Satan, the darts of brigands, and the abettors of another's warfare and wickedness.
For the sake of this knowledge, then, the prophet mentioned only the assailants, without distinction of name, speaking indiscriminately of these and those, because through men that which belongs to the spiritual wickednesses was being carried out against him. And so the prophet began as it were in his own person; but what ought to be said by us, he himself first announces beforehand by a kind of example of confession. For such is the order of the words: 'Often have they assailed me from my youth—let Israel now say.' First, then, Israel is taught what he ought to say; then afterward, as one taught and imbued with the example of the prophetic confession, Israel himself now speaks: 'Often have they assailed me from my youth; yet they could not prevail against me.' Such ought to be the confession of the religious.
And this is the true proof of faith: that those who assail often and from one's youth are nevertheless never victorious over those whom they have assailed both often and long ago. But against the stronger the battle is both long and frequent; therefore the hostile and spiritual powers try men firm in faith and in the fear of God both long and often, because that must be repeated which is long carried on and never obtained. Let us therefore continue, so that we may be assailed often, and, though often assailed, may have this glory—that we never at any time yield; and let the persistence of our assailing come from this, that the strength of the assailants is not victorious.
Now it is the custom of those who by no means prevail in long and continual battles, to approach a victorious army marching in firm ranks from behind and at the back, and, wherever it now passes by, to contrive ambushes, there to fabricate deceits, there to practice all the arts of ambush. So too the sinners, having tempted the faithful in vain, approach at the back those who now go forward in the way of truth, lie in wait at the back, and devise deceits at the back. And therefore he says: 'Upon my back the sinners have wrought.' The Apostle runs, forgetting the things that are behind and stretching himself out toward the things that are ahead. The Law spoke thus to the faithful: 'Your enemies shall pursue you and shall not overtake you.' And he teaches that they have not overtaken them when he says:
'They wrought'—for it is a signification of indefinite time. For they were always working, never attaining the effect of their working, while he ran with the untiring course of faith, against whom daily wars were being wrought upon his back. And the following verse rounds off this persistent iniquity of the harassers: 'They have prolonged their iniquity.' It is the prophecy of Isaiah, who says: 'Woe to those who draw their sins like a long rope.' For they do not cease to link sins to sins and, as it were in the manner of a rope, to extend them ever interwoven into length. For while the holy man runs and the sinners work upon his back, since for him there is no limit to running to the appointed goal, and for them no limit to working, there arises a prolix series and manifold length of sins.
But it must be known what at last awaits this length of iniquities. For it follows: 'The just Lord will cut through the necks of sinners.' The Lord is just—patient, that is, in taking vengeance, dissembling until the time of repentance, not at the beginnings of human iniquity prompt to punish, but awaiting the sinners' will to cease from crimes, late though it be; then he will cut through their necks, when it is wrought without any measure of ceasing, when sins are stretched out to length, when now all the time of patient mercy has been closed off. And we recall that the stubborn are always reproached by the Law for being stiff-necked: when
the people is stiff-necked, as Moses argues before God, and as the prophet reproaches the daughters of Sion for walking with high neck—with a neck, that is, that disdains the yoke, that is insolent toward the works of faith, that abuses the patience of God to prolong the length of sins. But the neck must be submitted to the sweet yoke, to which the Lord invites, saying: 'Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.' The neck that submits itself to this yoke is not to be cut through, for this is a yoke of humility and meekness, not always assailing, not working upon the back, not prolonging sins, but cherishing the neck submitted in humility and patience—while that proud and insolent neck is to be cut through by the decree of the just judgment. Thereupon follows:
'Let all who hate Sion be confounded and turned back.' We have often reminded that Sion is a mountain near Jerusalem. But when the king of Sion, the daughter of Sion, the gates of Sion are named by the prophets, first from the very name it must be understood that something else is being shown under the signification of Sion; for Sion is by interpretation 'watching,' and what with us is 'watching,' that in Hebrew is called Sion. Then next it is fitting for us to recall the apostolic saying, that we have come to Mount Sion and the heavenly Jerusalem, we who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose glorious body—which has been transformed into heavenly glory—we behold the honor of our hope, our body of humility being conformed to the glory of his body.
The Apostle is witness that the Church is the body of Christ, of which we are members one of another—which Church is itself Sion, the mountain of the Lord, the daughter of the king, the holy city built of living stones upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles. Whoever, then, hates this Sion, hates him whose body it also is; for there is a special hatred of the unbelieving against the faithful. Those, therefore, who hate Sion shall be confounded and turned back—not running toward the heavenly things nor tending toward the things to come, but turning back to their own earthly and original things, feeling at the time of judgment the shame of their iniquity and unbelief, and returning into the penal sensation of their bodies, having lost the transformation of the resurrection. And the following words of the psalm teach this same thing:
'Let them become like the grass of the housetops, which withered before it could be plucked out; with which the reaper does not fill his hand, nor he who gathers the sheaves his bosom. And those who passed by did not say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you.' There is, as I judge, no grass of buildings according to a bodily understanding; grass belongs to a field, and to a most fruitful one. Therefore nothing here is to be treated or supposed according to the sense of the ears. But according to the authority of Scripture there are firm buildings, and there are also weak ones. Firm are those which, laid on faithful foundations upon the rock, are not moved by floods, winds, or inundations. There are also weak ones which, built on a sandy foundation, when the storms have arisen, produce a mighty ruin.
There are also two sowings, according to the Apostle: of the spirit and of the flesh; and he who sows spiritual things shall reap spiritual things, and he who sows carnal things shall reap carnal things. Therefore those who assail often and long ago, who wrought upon the back, who prolonged their iniquities, whose necks shall be cut through, who hate Sion—these shall be useless like the grass of the housetops, bringing back the empty and vain fruit of this present bodily life. For buildings and roofs, according to the evangelical comparison, are human bodies, either firm in faith or about to fall through unbelief. And from the roof of this building, when persecution is at hand, the Lord forbade each one to descend, saying:
And let him who is upon the housetop not come down to take anything out of the house. Assuredly, in persecution one must flee; and why did He forbid coming down from the roof, unless it be that, the care of the body being left behind — because standing upon the roof, that is, remaining above his earthly nature — he is forbidden to seek again the lowly things and to descend to what is beneath? But the wicked are the grass of the housetops — for they have sown empty things — grass moreover that withers even before it is plucked up, of which neither shall the reaper fill his hand, nor shall he who would gather the sheaves load his bosom; nor did any passer-by bless it with rejoicing over its fruits. They are empty, they are void, they are useless.
For they have sown empty and useless things. O unhappy toils and unfruitful works of the flesh, likened to the barren grass of the housetops and, before they are plucked up, already dry — that is, dead before the very time of their own useless harvest! But since we have shown that the grass of these housetops is the fruit of carnal works, we must consider what difference there is between him who fills his hand and him who gathers the sheaves into his bosom. For it is not the same thing, nor is Scripture wont to repeat the same matters in twin expressions; for to gather into the bosom is more than to fill the hand. And indeed those who fill the hand seem to receive the fruit of things rightly done, because in the hands the divine word signifies works.
But in the bosom is shown the disposition of conscience, of faith, and of a perfect will. For conscience reaps more than deeds; for deeds fill the hand, but conscience gathers the sheaves into the bosom. The Lord holds the two mites of the poor widow as more acceptable than the abundant coins of the rich. By so much does the will surpass the works. And works for this reason fill the hand, but the bosom has room for the sheaves. Therefore this grass of the housetops shall fill neither the hand of the reaper nor the bosom of him who gathers the sheaves. And neither shall the passers-by say: The blessing of the Lord be upon you. And who are the passers-by, but those who, as pilgrims, pass through the age of bodily life, not abiding in those things which are nothing, but stretching toward things eternal;
not lingering among those things that lie before the sight, but pressing on toward things invisible? But that we may understand thoroughly who they are that pass over, let us hear Moses speaking at the time when he beheld fire in the bush without harm to the bush in which it burned. For he says: I will pass over and see this vision. What is this: I will pass over? No intervals of place had separated him; in the same place he both speaks and sees; what then does he pass over? He plainly passes over carnal and bodily cares: and while feeding the sheep of his father-in-law, he passes over into heavenly knowledge, leaving earthly works behind. And he too passes over who says in an earlier psalm: I have seen the wicked highly exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and lo, he was not.
Him whom he had admired amid the affairs of the world, whom, while remaining in bodily works, he had beheld lofty and lifted up — this one, passing over, that is, having become a pilgrim to the world and passing over from earthly and perishable things into heavenly and spiritual knowledge, this one he counted as nothing, and now said that he was not, and reckoned him as dead. Therefore those who pass over deny to the grass of the housetops the blessing of God, knowing that the grace of the divine gift must be denied to fruits that are dry and perishable. But the vows of the prophet might be thought harsh and severe; for his whole speech was as of one wishing, when he said: Let them be as the grass of the housetops. But far be it that the prophet should be believed to have uttered an imprecation.
Rather, he spoke this out of prophetic knowledge, and that saying was of understanding, not of a wish: at the same time that terror might fall upon sinners, who were to come to know the emptiness of the fruits of their housetops. Furthermore, however, he shows the disposition of his own wishes, saying: We bless you in the name of the Lord. A blessing is ready for those who were sowing the grass of the housetops, if they begin to sow that which may fill the hand of the reaper and the bosom of him who gathers the sheaves. Therefore by dry works the prophet showed their fruits to be dead in the grass of the housetops, by denying blessings; but he showed his own wishes toward the salvation of the penitent, for the return of good working, by again wishing the blessings which he had denied.
Let us therefore sow to profit, and let us prepare our labors for the filling of hands and of bosoms, that we may be partakers of the blessings of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. Amen. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Among the many excellent things which the Apostle writes to the Romans, when he had spoken of the faith of the Gentiles and the unbelief of the Jews, and had treated much concerning the judgments and decrees of God, he says: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him?
For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things: to Him be glory unto the ages of ages. It is the religious confession of human weakness to know this alone concerning God, that He is God. But as for those secret and deep decrees of an inscrutable judgment, the earthly mind does not penetrate them. To investigate and search them out is indeed pious; but they must be confessed to be unsearchable and past finding out: of which the one belongs to a religious will, the other to a nature that cannot be perceived. For who shall know the causes and natures of heaven, both this one and the one above and the rest? Who shall grasp the offices and reasons of the angels and powers and dominions and thrones and principalities? Who shall understand the perpetual and eternal voices of the Cherubim and Seraphim?
Who shall know those who praise God above the heaven of waters? Who shall boast that the lights of the sun, the moon, and the stars are comprehended by him? Who shall measure this fullness of the air, empty to us, as we falsely suppose?
And indeed, who by the knowledge of full understanding shall attain either the ordering of the round world, or the powers of the elements, or the changes of the seasons, or the courses of the rivers, or the bounds of the sea, or the vicissitudes of the ocean, or the blowing of the winds, or the natures of animals, or the rages of beasts, or the kinds of trees, or the powers of roots, and the origins of souls, and the growth of bodies, and the deaths of infants, and the lives of the aged, and the toils of the age, and the glorious calamities of the saints, and the unhappy blessednesses of the irreligious, and the books of the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels and the Apostles, consecrated with a heavenly mystery? Fixed therefore and held fast in all these things, the prophet, out of the inward secret of his heart, according to the word of the Apostle, also himself cries out, saying:
Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Set him, according to the Apostle, as one abiding in the depth of the unsearchable and unfathomable riches of God; place him as one praying out of the depth of the surge of human calamities, according to that word of the Lord which is in the earlier psalm: I am come into the deep of the sea, and the storm hath overwhelmed me. Consider him as praying not with the lips, but, as was commanded, with the secret of the heart: this word of the speaker is fitting either to ignorance, or to suffering, or to prayer: Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord — while he either knows not, or suffers, or entreats. And because he cries out of the depths, he says confidently: Lord, hear my voice; let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer.
But it must be asked whether Hear my voice and Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my prayer are one and the same thing. For he prays out of the depths, and whatever he prays is a depth. And first it must be understood that God is incorporeal, and does not consist of certain parts and offices of members, out of which one body is formed. For we read in the Gospel: God is a Spirit — invisible, that is, and an immeasurable nature abiding within itself and eternal. It is also written: A spirit hath not flesh and bones. For of these the members of a body consist, of which the substance of God has no need. But God, who is both everywhere and in all things, wholly hears, wholly sees, wholly acts, wholly moves.
And this we are taught from the Scriptures, when it is said: I am a God at hand, and not afar off; and again: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being. The power of God therefore, which is equal and undivided, has the names of offices and members: so that the power by which He sees may be eyes; the power by which He hears may be ears; the power by which He acts may be hands; the power by which He is present may be feet — the potency of this power accomplishing the diversities of offices. God therefore is everywhere, and wherever He is present, He hears, sees, acts; but He is to be prayed to by us, that according to our prayer He may be present, may hear, may see, may act. It is of His nature that He hears; but it is of our faith that we pray to be heard.
He hears those who revile, He hears those who curse, He hears also those who speak within the secret places of the heart; but faith fulfills its own office, that it may entreat the hearing of God, that He who by His nature hears may deign to hear through the prayer of him who prays. But if perhaps someone shall suppose God to be corporeal and shaped and diverse in members — because the eye is not the same as the hand — thinking it to be so on account of what was said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, he ought first to remember that the constitution of man is contained in two natures, namely of soul and of body, of which the one is spiritual, the other earthly, and that this lower matter was fitted for the efficiency and operation of that more excellent nature.
Therefore whoever shall wish to believe thus, that God is corporeal because man was made to His image, will establish that God is composite, namely of a more excellent and an inferior nature, because of such things is man composed. But whatever is composite must needs not have been eternal; for composition has a beginning, by which it is put together, that it may endure. But these are the ravings of unbelief, while through ignorance of the heavenly nature it is cramped within these narrow bounds of opinion by the fault of a degenerate mind.
But God, who always and in all things abides, everywhere the same, and nowhere not wholly Himself, when He began that most beautiful work, the world being now completed — namely making man to His own image — composed him of a lowly and a heavenly nature, that is, of soul and body. And first indeed He established the soul by that divine and, to us, incomprehensible work of His power. For not when He made man to the image of God did He then also fashion the body. Genesis teaches that long after man had been made to the image of God, the body was taken from dust and formed, and thereafter again was made into a living soul through the inbreathing of God — this earthly and heavenly nature, that is, joined together by a certain covenant of inbreathing.
The blessed Apostle Paul knows that he is divided through the inner and the outer man. Through the inner man indeed he delights in the law, but through the outer he does that which he wills not: since the inner man desires the works of the spirit, the outer covets the pleasures of the body. Therefore the inner man was made to the image of God — rational, mobile, moving, swift, incorporeal, subtle, eternal.
As far as lies in it, it imitates the appearance of the principal nature, while it runs across, while it flies about, and swifter than a word is now beyond the ocean, now soars into the heavens, now is in the abysses, now ranges over the east and the west, while it is never abolished so as not to exist — for the nature of God is in all these things — nor departs from elsewhere so as to be present in another place. But the human soul in this mobility of its sense was made to the image of God its Maker, while the perpetual mobility of the soul imitates the nature of God, having in itself nothing corporeal, nothing earthly, nothing heavy, nothing perishable. And let us hear Paul still teaching thus: