A skilled physician, whenever he desires to give full medicine to those worn out by various sicknesses, lays open the deep causes of diseases, sets forth the hidden onslaughts of the plague, warns that pestilential regions be avoided, demonstrates very many kinds of remedies, unfolds the powers of herbs, speaks of the qualities of medicines, and promises to the obedient the longest health: thus he persuades the sick and leads them to hard and harsh cures. Hence it is that the holy prophet, about to bring forth from heaven medicine for body and soul, opens up the deep recesses of impiety, lays bare the covered sores of sins, exhibits iniquities, and by a wondrous method draws forth the secret poison, the natures of vices, the origins of transgressions, and the roots of crimes.
Thus by a pious moderation he leads the sick minds of mortals continually to salvation by divine healing, according to age, sex, season, and strength. The psalm which we sang today is the preface of the Psalms, indeed the psalm of Psalms, the title of titles; it is the argument that begets arguments, it is the whole theme of the canticles that follow. And just as the key of the royal palace, when it has opened the first door, renders accessible the inner and manifold chambers, so this psalm, when it has unlocked the first approaches of understanding, opens the mystery of all the psalms, opens their secret. Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence (Ps. 1). Blessed is the man:
Just as to one about to fight with beasts and to undergo the perils of most grievous contests, the prizes, rewards, and crowns are proclaimed beforehand, so the prophet set beatitude first, that he might provoke the man to conquer the whole savagery of crimes which he afterward enumerates. Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners. That he said walking in counsel and standing in the way may perhaps seem absurd, since to remain in counsel and to walk in the way is rather the usual manner of men. Indeed all things are perverse to the perverse, nor can those things keep order which are not done in an orderly way. Yet here the prophet speaks not of the movement of the body, but of the mind; nor does he forbid the slips of the feet, but wards off the ruin of souls.
Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly. He walked away, he walked away from himself, when the ungodly man departed from God; nor does he stand in counsel who wanders about in ungodly thoughts. Now he is borne up to heaven, now brought back down to earth, tossed about the seas, lifted by the waves, plunged into the deep; and while he is ever whirled about in his own mind like a drunkard, he does not reckon himself, yet he reckons heaven. He who supposes he knows the whole, knows not himself; for if he knew himself, he would never adore heaven, sun, moon, wood, stones, which are all given over and made subject to his service; but he adores a stone and serves wood, who has disdained to serve the living God, the true God.
And that we may retrace the deeds of impiety from the very beginning of things: the counsel of impiety led down to hell, changed an angel from the heights, a messenger of the heavenly secret, into a devil; it sent man from the governance of life into the exile of a mortal dwelling; it drove out the wretched from the delights of paradise to the labors of the world; it cast down woman from the glory of virginity to the groanings that accompany childbirth. Hence it is that before she rejoices, she is not ignorant of sorrows, and pays the penalty for guilt before she rejoices in the offspring's birth. Multiplying, he says, I will multiply your sorrows and your groanings; in sorrow and groaning you shall bring forth children (Gen. 3). What kind of end is there, where the origin is penal?
In the way, what gladness will hold him who takes the beginning of life from grief? This the prophet knew, who said: In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother bear me (Ps. 50). If thus, brethren, we are cast from the womb into the way of sinners, and run the whole road of transgressions through all our ages—let us consider the vanities of infancy, the slips of adolescence, the ruins of youth, the diseases of old age—then we shall see ourselves treading not the way of life, but the way of sinners. This way Christ marks out, saying thus: How wide and spacious is the way that leads to perdition, and many there are who enter by it (Matt. 7). Wide with transgressions, overflowing with billows, spacious with crimes—and truly the present life is the way, into which man comes and along which he goes.
A generation, he says, passes away, and a generation comes, and the earth stands for ever (Eccl. 1). And therefore he said before: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners. He did not say, He has not come; for no one fails to come into the way of sinners, into which the very law of nature and of death leads us; but, Blessed is he who does not stand in it. That man stands, that man lingers in it, who lifts up the burdens of sins, and being a laden traveler arrives late, and finds the heavenly mansion closed to him. Hindered by these weights, the prophet wept, saying: My iniquities have gone over my head, and like a heavy burden they have become heavy upon me. And because he bore these through the whole time of his life, he cries out:
I am made miserable, and am bowed down even to the end (Ps. 37). That traveler passes through the way of sinners who sees the evils of this life but despises them, feels them but treads them underfoot; suffers, but conquers; and while he flees them, he runs the faster: whence the heavenly porter meets him, and the heavenly mansion does not close itself against him. But what is it that the prophet thus set the counsel of impiety before the way of sinners: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners? Because although a man, once born, soon comes into the way of sinners, yet at first he lies still: he does not at once run into the way of sin, but when he has begun to taste the poisons of impiety, then he draws savor from the fatness of sinners. The impious man was tending toward God; he walks away from God when he transgresses;
God despises sinners, he who before commanded that men ought not to sin. Darkness flees the light; the darkness returns when the light withdraws: where God is, there is no sin; where sin is, there God is not. And that you may know, man, that a man runs the way of sinners away from the sight of God, hear the prophet: God is not before his eyes; his ways are defiled at all times (Ps. 10). More grievously therefore does a man then slip in the way of sinners, when he falls into it through the precipices of impiety. And he has not sat in the chair of pestilence. He proves impiety who does it and loves it; and he who loves it cannot but teach it: hence it is that in teaching impiety he sits in the chair of pestilence, and by honeyed speech thus spreads the poison of deadly doctrine among his hearers.
Philosophy set up the chair of pestilence, which taught either that there are many gods, or that he who is either is not, or cannot be found to be; philosophy which gave the very creature to nature, so as to deny to nature its Author. The Pharisee set forth the chair of pestilence, who, preferring human traditions to the heavenly decrees, poured out a vast darkness upon the people of the Jews. In the chair of pestilence the heretic has sat, who under the appearance of faith cuts, breaks, and tears apart unity. Blessed therefore is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the chair of pestilence.
And plainly blessed, because by declining these three he has merited to attain to the beatitude of the Trinity. Let him therefore meditate on the law of the Lord, and let him meditate day and night, that he may merit to see hereafter what follows, and to hear it more fully at a fitting time.