Explanation of Twelve Psalms

God set before us, as the highest incentive to virtue, the delight of future blessedness; the devil, for his part, devised delight as a vehement spur to error. Of both purposes the first of the human race gives proof: Adam, placed by the Lord God in the paradise of pleasure so that he might enjoy everlasting delight and so be roused to the virtue of the offspring to come (for it was not unknown to God that he would give way to error, and that the hope of salvation must be set before the rest, by which they might strive to be restored to the seat snatched away from the human race), was the same Adam who, through the form of the serpent, which prefigured the enticements of delight, was deceived by his wife's persuasion.

So the adversary, seizing the occasion, worked death for me through delight. Thus what had been granted by divine grace for life became for me a means of death, and the enemy found man's consent to the fall all the easier because he held out the appearance of nature. For his works delighted the Lord; the first beginnings of nature delighted him; seeing them the Lord said: "Very good."

The angels praise the Lord, the powers of the heavens sing psalms to him, and before the very beginning of the world the Cherubim and Seraphim, with the sweetness of their tuneful voice, say: "Holy, holy, holy." Countless thousands of angels stand by, and the elders and a great multitude, like the sound of many waters, sing together: "Alleluia." A more explicit saying holds that the very axis of heaven turns with a certain

sweetness of unceasing harmony, so that its sound is heard in the farthest parts of the earth, where certain secrets of nature lie. Nor does this seem foreign to the way nature works, since a voice sent out rebounds with a more pleasing echo from woods or mountains, and they return with sweeter sound what they have received. Even in cliffs and stones nature has found something to delight: some delight by their outlook, others by their use or their beauty. Wild beasts themselves and birds are soothed by the delight of a pleasanter place or a more tuneful voice; and in nursing infants severity causes fear and caresses pleasure. Delight, therefore, is natural.

Hence holy David too, who perceived from what height man had fallen and by what fraud he had been cast down (for if he had held fast the grace of that eternal and heavenly delight poured into him by the Lord, and had not lost it, captured by the enticements of the world, he would never have suffered the injuries of so wretched a hardship), therefore, eager to restore and re-form it, established for us, through the office of psalm-singing, a likeness of the heavenly way of life.

For although all divine Scripture breathes the grace of God, the book of Psalms is especially sweet. Moses himself, who described the deeds of the ancestors in plain speech, nevertheless, when he had led the people of the fathers through the Red Sea in a crossing worthy of wonder, seeing King Pharaoh drowned with his forces, raised his genius to greater things,

because he had achieved things greater than his own strength, and sang to the Lord a song of triumph. Miriam also, taking a timbrel, urged the other women, saying: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been gloriously honored; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea." Moses himself, too, when he had read the law of the Lord, in order to fix its memory in the hearts of the hearers, spoke by means of a song, saying: "Hear, O heaven, and I will speak; let my utterance be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew, like a shower upon the grass and like snow upon the hay."

God, then, is delighted by song, not only to be praised but also to be reconciled. That is why Moses made most use of song at the time when he was calling heaven and earth to witness, so that the world might listen more eagerly to its own salvation sounding together with the strain of heavenly grace, and the keeping of the law might be implanted for ever in human minds by the sweetness of a sacred delight.

Indeed, before the tablets of the law were confirmed by a song, they were broken and shattered through Moses' indignation; but when they were consecrated with such a seal, human anger had no place, because the sanctification of sacred sweetness shut it out. And so the Lord's song came down from heaven like gentle dew and poured faith into men as a shower of spiritual grace falls on grass. These two songs, then, in the books of Moses, like two eyes of the world and lights of heaven, illumine the whole body of his work.

But David was chosen by the Lord chiefly for this office, so that what in others seems rare and stands out above the rest of their work should shine in him constantly and without break. We read one song in the book of Judges; the rest is told in the manner of history, in which the deeds of the ancestors are set out. Isaiah wrote one song, with which to soothe the hearts of his readers; in the rest he roared with the terrible trumpet of rebuke.

Not even his enemies, who persecuted him to death on account of his other sayings, could reproach him for his song. Daniel wrote one, Habakkuk one; Solomon himself, David's son, though he is said to have sung countless songs, left only one that the church has received, the Song of Songs; he also wrote Proverbs. In the others, then, one may notice single instances.

History instructs, the law teaches, prophecy announces, rebuke chastises, moral teaching persuades; in the book of Psalms there is the progress of all, and a kind of medicine for human salvation. Whoever reads it has a special remedy with which to heal the wounds of his own passion. Whoever wishes to look into it, finding various kinds of contests made ready, as in a common gymnasium of souls and a sort of stadium of virtues,

may choose the one for which he knows himself fitter, so as to reach the crown more easily. If anyone is eager to review the deeds of the ancestors and wishes to imitate them, he receives the whole course of the fathers' history gathered within one psalm, so that he may acquire a treasury of memory in a brief reading. And what is explained more briefly also seems easier. How profound, too, that in a short space he set out the adversities that came from offenses and added the blessings of reconciliation, so that

you might learn at once what harm the offense of unbelief does and what ready faith confers! If anyone examines the force of the law, which consists wholly in the bond of love (for "he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law"), let him read in the psalms with what affection of love he alone exposed himself to grave dangers to remove the reproach from the whole people; and in this he will recognize a glory of love not unequal to the triumph of courage. If anyone fears the harshness of rebukes, let him hear one saying: "Lord, do not reprove me in your wrath, nor in your fury

chasten me," and let him learn how he ought to temper the sentence of an angry judge. If anyone longs to know an example of patience, let him read in the psalms: "If I have repaid those who rendered evils to me," and let him note that he foresaw the gospel precept in spirit and anticipated it in virtue. So you have that proverb: "A gentle man is a physician of the heart." And further, if anyone wants to be armed against the assaults of spiritual wickedness, what should he know better than that he must sing psalms? David sang psalms when quite young and put to flight the evil spirit of Saul, which had been gripping him before.

And what shall I say of the power of prophecy? What others announced through riddles seems to have been promised to him alone, plainly and openly: that the Lord Jesus would be born of his seed, as the Lord said to him: "Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne."

So in the psalms Jesus is not only born for us, but also undergoes that saving passion of the body, rests, rises again, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father. What no man would have dared to say, this prophet alone announced, and afterwards the Lord himself proclaimed it in the gospel.

Moreover, all the other writers have placed in their writings examples or some sayings of those before them; the psalms have nothing but what is their own. What, then, is more pleasing than a psalm? So David himself says finely: "Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good; to our God let there be joyful and seemly praise." And truly: for a psalm is the blessing of the people, the praise of God, the commendation of the multitude, the applause of all, the speech of everyone, the voice of the church, the tuneful confession of faith, devotion full of authority, the gladness of freedom, the cry of joy, the echo of gladness. It calms from anger, frees from anxiety, relieves from grief;

it is armor by night, instruction by day, a shield in fear, a feast in holiness, an image of tranquillity, a pledge of peace and concord, expressing, like a lyre, one song out of different and unlike voices. The rising of the day re-echoes a psalm; its setting resounds with a psalm.

The apostle bids women keep silent in church, yet they do well to cry out a psalm; it is sweet to every age, fitting for either sex. Old men sing it, laying aside the stiffness of old age; sad veterans answer it in the joy of their heart; young men sing it without reproach of wantonness; youths sing it together without the danger of a slippery age and the temptation of pleasure; young women themselves sing psalms without loss of a matron's modesty; little girls, without lapse

of modesty, with sober gravity, sing a hymn to God in the sweetness of a modulated voice. Boyhood longs to hold it fast, infancy rejoices to practice it, though it shrinks from learning other things; it is a kind of play of learning, more profitable than when discipline is handed down in earnest. How hard it is in church to get silence when the readings are read! If one person speaks, everyone makes a din; when a psalm is read, it makes its own silence: all speak and no one makes a din.

Kings sing a psalm aloud without the arrogance of power; David rejoiced to be seen in this ministry. A psalm is sung by emperors, shouted with joy by peoples. Each strives to cry out what profits all. A psalm is sung at home and repeated outside; it is learned without labor and kept with pleasure. A psalm joins those at variance, unites those in discord, reconciles the offended; for who will not forgive one with whom he has lifted a single voice to God? It is truly a great bond of unity, for the whole number of the people to come together into one choir.

The strings of a lyre are unlike, but the harmony is one. On very few strings the fingers of a craftsman often err, but in the people the Spirit, as craftsman, does not know how to err. The psalm is the exchange of night's work, the wage of daytime rest, the instruction of beginners, the strengthening of the perfect, the ministry of angels, the warfare of heaven, a spiritual sacrifice. Even rocks answer a psalm; a psalm is sung and even rocky hearts are softened: we see the hardest weep and the merciless bend.

In the psalm teaching vies with grace; it is sung for delight and learned for instruction. For harsher precepts do not last; but what you have received with sweetness, once poured into the heart, does not usually slip away. What is there that does not meet you as you read the psalms?

In them I read the song for the beloved and am set on fire with longing for sacred love; in them I recognize the winepresses of the divine mystery; in them the grace of revelations; I review the testimonies of the resurrection, the gifts of the promise; in them I learn to avoid sin and unlearn being ashamed of repentance for my offenses. So great a king, so great a prophet has challenged me by his example, that I strive either to lessen a sin committed or to guard against one not committed.

What, then, is a psalm but an instrument of the virtues, which the venerable prophet, playing it with the plectrum of the Holy Spirit, made to echo the sweetness of heavenly sound on earth? At the same time, since he directed his song of divine praise to heavenly things on strings and chords, that is, on dead remains, modulating the differences of various notes, he taught us that we must first die to sin, and only then, in this body, distinguish the various works of the virtues, by which the grace of our devotion may reach the Lord; so that, while we are occupied with the pursuit of heavenly things, no lust for earthly vices may creep in, and at the same time the soul may shine with the sweetness of heavenly grace. Rightly, then, does the Lord praise the minister of so great an office, saying: "I have found David after my own heart."

They say too that the more skilful of those who sing to the lyre sing inwardly, as the stories tell of the lyre-player of Aspendus, and that the principles of the melodies and certain closures of the rhythms lie in the upper part of the psaltery. So David taught that we must sing inwardly, sing psalms inwardly, as Paul also sang when he said: "I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also; I will sing psalms with the spirit, I will sing psalms with the mind also"; and that we must shape our life and actions by looking to higher things, lest the delight of sweetness stir up the passions of the body, by which our soul is not redeemed but weighed down; since the holy prophet declared that he sang psalms for the redemption of his soul, saying: "I will sing psalms to you, O God, on the lyre, Holy One of Israel. My lips will rejoice when I have sung to you, and my soul, which you have redeemed." But let us now enter on the opening of this psalm which is set before us.

"Blessed," he says, "is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly." How apt, how timely a beginning! For just as those who have undertaken to stage some solemn contest usually set out the prize and display the splendor of the crown, so that the competitors may gather with greater zeal and contend with more eager effort, so our Lord Jesus has set before human virtue, as its incentives, the glory of the heavenly kingdom, the grace of everlasting rest,

and the blessedness of eternal life. An emperor too, when he goes out to war, promises the soldier a donative and promotions in rank in the military units, so that the hope of gain may steal away the toil and hide the fear of danger. So holy David, like the herald of a great emperor, exhorts the soldiers, calls the athletes, names the prize, saying: "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly." He began with the prize, to lighten the weight of the contest to come; he put the reward first, so that each one, passing over in his heart the anxieties and toils of present things,

might strive with eager haste to earn the blessedness of things to come. "Blessed," he says, "is the man." What more could be given to man than that than which nothing greater could be ascribed to God on apostolic authority? For God is called "blessed and only potentate, King of kings and Lord of lords." He who alone is potentate, King of kings, Lord of lords, does not yet go beyond the power of blessedness; and he has given us a common share in that title, which was judged worthy of divine honor.

Let us consider now for what reason he said "blessed is the man" and not rather "blessed are human beings," since both sexes are called to grace. Did he exclude women from a share in blessedness because he named the man alone blessed? Far from it; for neither did God exclude women from a share in creation because he made the man first.

For God said: "Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness"; and "God made man," it says, "in the image of God he made him; male and female he made them." In "man" (homo) both are marked; in "man" (uir) the sex is expressed. But just as both are included when "human being" is said, so when "man" is named, the woman whose man (husband) he is is also understood.

Then: "She shall be called woman," it says, "because she was taken from her man." Add this, that those whose nature is the same cannot have separate operations, and those whose work is equal certainly have an equal reward. So when Scripture said "man," it did not pass over his partner in the union, just as in saying "human being" it did not keep silent about his partner in nature.

So, just as there we read that man was made and, though the nature is one, we cannot deny that the principal sex was created first, so here too, when we read "man," we recognize from the principal part the nearly equal sex as well. Equal, then, are the pursuits of virtue, because equal is the privilege of creation. Why do you examine the sex, where contests not of the body but of the soul are required of you, and the soul has no sex? Do not, then, distinguish honor or divide the reward where sex is not distinguished.

Yet it is not without care that he who was later in the fall is called first to the exercise. She who began badly ought to follow, not to lead; or, after the experience, let her be more modest. Eve did wrong in passing over the order of nature; she ought to have waited for the one who went before. The serpent cunningly began with the later one; so the prophet returns to the earlier, the one who would not have fallen had he not followed the later.

So he called us back from the fall before he called us to the palm of victory. "Blessed," he says, "is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly." See where you are called blessed, O man: not in riches, not in powers and honors, not in nobility of birth or comeliness and beauty, not in health of body, in which there is nothing good by nature. Indeed, not only do these change easily into their opposites; they also serve as an instrument of guilt for one who does not know how to use them. For who is just because of money, who humble in high office, who merciful because of nobility, who chaste because of beauty? These things entice to sin more than they bear fruit for progress in virtue.

What, then, does it mean that he chose to say "has not walked" and "has not stood" as of the past, when he could have said: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, and does not stand in the way of sinners, and does not sit in the seat of pestilence"? See the teaching: for not

at once is he blessed who is not ungodly or a sinner, because the outcome is uncertain. For it is not idly written: "Before death do not praise anyone." So while anyone is in this life he cannot be praised with a final verdict, since he can still be open to error; but he who has ended his life without stumbling is rightly judged worthy of the name of blessed, for he enjoys the company of the blessed.

But perhaps you say: For what reason, then, did he say elsewhere: "Blessed is he who considers the needy and the poor"? He did not say blessed is he who has considered, but he who considers. Because those who do good find in the work itself that by which they are approved, obtaining their reward in the work itself, since a good deed is the fruit of a blessed conscience. But those who refrain from evil are not at once blessed if they have avoided a fault once or twice, but only if they have been able to escape the contagion of fault through the whole time of their life.

Now the question arises why he chose to call blessed not him who has performed some office of piety, but him who has refrained from the counsel of the ungodly. For he who has fulfilled a duty of virtue seems more to be praised than he who has escaped sin, since neither an ox nor a horse nor a stone is accustomed to be in sin or to sit in the seat of pestilence. But those things do not have

the fruit of blessedness, since they have no sense of virtue; for how do they reach the reward of the law who have no desire to follow the law? So I see that the sentence set before us is about rational beings, that is, about us. And for us the beginning of good things is abstaining from sins, since we read: "Turn aside from evil and do good." For this is the order of discipline: that you strive from lower things to more perfect, lest you be frightened by the bulk of the greater when you ought to be drawn on by beginning with the lighter.

For Scripture teaches us that the ascent of piety is like the ladder on which holy Jacob, the man of exercise, saw the angels of the Lord ascending and descending; he is set before us so that through him we may learn that we must advance a step of virtue little by little, and that we can so strive from the lowest to the highest, if by small advances we go on to things that seem higher than human nature. Keep this ladder always before you.

Do not fear, O man, to climb these steps of discipline. The first step is near the earth; the next is like the first. So by equal steps one climbs to the top. Do not despise, O man, that first step as if it were the meanest. That first ascent separates you from the earth; you tread the air when you have lifted your foot from the ground. Set in virtue, by rising you have left the earth; you leave the earth if you turn aside from sin. The beginning of progress toward virtue, then, is to abstain from sin.

And so that we may know that this is the discipline of the teaching, hear the law saying: "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder"; for these precepts seemed fitting for the imperfect. Indeed the Lord Jesus himself, knowing that the man who asked him by what works he might attain eternal life was imperfect, answered him:

"You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal," and so on. Then, when he said he had done all these things, he added the more perfect, saying: "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven"; and he taught that turning away from evil is so far from imitating the good that the man refused the latter who judged the former easy for himself. But because he had not climbed even those, he could not fit himself for these;

for had he loved his neighbor, he could not have refused the poor the help of his patrimony. And so climb the first step of the law, so that you may be able to reach the heavenly summit of the gospel. Hence I think that the holy prophet, as one placed under the law and following the manner of the law in the first psalm, speaking in his own person, declares rather what is to be avoided than proposes what is to be followed; whereas in the fortieth psalm, which is spoken in the person

of the Savior, there is rather an exhortation to virtue than a restraint of error; for it speaks of the Savior's passion. And therefore he, as steward of the gospel too, as we may judge when we hear him say: "Blessed are the merciful," crowned mercy both in the psalm of his own passion and in the gospel. But let us now take up the explanation of the psalm and look into its prophetic power.

"Blessed," he says, "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 seat of pestilence." We can say that there are three kinds of sins, which we think are expressed here: of thought, of action, of persistence; and that he is meant as blessed who has not even thought what is evil.

For how can he be blessed who, with his own thoughts accusing him, is to be convicted on the day of judgment? Even if he has deceived a man, fled a witness, escaped an accuser, he will not be able to escape himself as his own accuser; and him he ought most to fear, for he will have both an accuser and a confessing defendant.

Blessed, then, is he who has not thought what is evil, and has not committed sin (for sometimes we offend even without thought; for "in much speaking we do not escape sin"), and has not persisted in sin. Or thus: he who has not thought what belongs to error, or has not stood in that thought, or at least has not persisted in thoughts he perceived to be full of error.

But whether these agree correctly the reader will judge. For he who has once thought evil ought neither to stand in it nor to persist. But even if he did not persist, he could not be blessed, because he stood in what he wickedly thought; and even if he did not stand, yet whether by the very fact that he thought evil he has the fruit of blessedness, he must look for some lenient interpreter.

Lastly, since no one can say that he has a clean heart, grant that a thought is pardonable: is the doing of sins pardonable? Again, if standing is pardonable, is it also full of blessedness merely because he does not persist in the crime? Then, how could he who did not think wicked things stand in sin or persist in it? For him to be blessed who has rightly kept these three, the order must surely be different.

For the first is not to persist in sin, the second not to have stood in it, the third not to have thought what belongs to error. For he who did not persist could still have stood; he who did not stand could have thought; but he who did not even think is truly blessed.

So I thought that another tradition should not be passed over, by which we may assert that the three steps are made in the right order: that he who wishes to be blessed should not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, that is, should not go about in their

thoughts; next, should not stand in the way of sinners; third, should not sit in the seat of pestilence. You, then, who have been made a Christian for the church, or you who are making your way toward grace, abstain from the counsels of the ungodly, so that you may say: "Do not destroy my soul with the ungodly, O God, nor my life with men of blood," and do not think what is ungodly. What are these but things devised to wrong God?

For piety is first toward God, second toward parents. And indeed the enemy often plants various things in our minds; so the prophet cautiously judged that thoughts, rather than sudden suggestions, are to be held as guilt. You have abstained, then, from the counsels of the ungodly; rightly so, yet you are not at once blessed. Take care also not to have stood in the way of sinners.

With what scrutiny the words of divine Scripture are set down! For since we are all under sin, it does not demand of you what is beyond nature, that you commit no sin, for not even an infant of one day is without sin; but that you do not remain in sin by a kind of lasting standing. Not all are ungodly; so you are called back from all the thoughts and conspiracies of the ungodly. But all are sinners; so you are warned to cease from sinning. If you have fallen in the more youthful time of life, the advance of maturity ought to correct you.

So do not go off into graver things; do not stand in lighter ones. You have this also said by the Lord in Isaiah: "Go out from Babylon, fleeing from the Chaldeans"; that is: even if you have entered into the confusion of vices, go out. You ought not to have entered, but you went in under the compulsion of the law of the flesh, which takes you captive in the law of sin. Go out, depart even if late, strip yourself of a heavy slavery. Through frailty you could not avoid entering into sin; it is granted you to go out of sin through sobriety. Go out, then, from Babylon, fleeing from the Chaldeans. Babylon is confusion, which does not keep the order of the virtues; for it is with a mind confused by enticements that we offend.

The Chaldeans are those who explore the courses of the stars with the zeal of vain superstition and sow the errors of ungodly paganism. Flee from them, lest they capture you, lest they bind you in the heavy snare of captivity. Abraham was a Chaldean, but he fled from the Chaldeans, and that before the law; you have been born already under the law: flee from the ungodly. He rejected the inheritance of his fathers so as to possess that of faith; you, leave the succession of the body and acquire the inheritance of devotion.

But if you have not stood in sin, even so you are not blessed; there is still something you must be free of. Many are the enticements, many the turnings aside from virtue; heavy are the provocations of pleasures, heavy the tinder of avarice, the desire for power, the ambition for honor, which, as by a kind of poison, defile the minds of men and, by a kind of pestilent wasting of vices, their souls. This is the seat of pestilence, on which the scribes and Pharisees sat, who lay heavy burdens on men but will not themselves move them with a finger.

These seats the Savior cast out of the temple: the seats of those who boasted of honor and sought the primacy of dignities, of those who used the priesthood or the primacy of honor for gain, of those who, indulging their gluttony, by no means kept the guard of continence that was due. This is true pestilence; indeed the sons of Eli were sons of pestilence. On this seat, as it were, of vices Scripture forbids us to bend back our neck and recline the strength of the whole body. Note, then, the precise meanings.

"Blessed is he who has not stood in the way of sinners and has not sat in the seat of pestilence." That the course of this life is called a way is not in doubt, since Scripture itself says: "In this way where I was walking they hid a snare for me," and: "Be

agreeable with your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the way." For as long as we run the course of this life, we have a path on which we walk daily until we come to the end; even if we do not seem to go bodily, we advance. For just as those asleep on ships are driven by the winds into harbor, and though they have no sense of sailing while they rest, yet the voyage presses them on to

the end and drives them on unawares, so, as the span of our life flows away, each one is carried to his own end by a hidden course. Hence it is said: "Rise, you who sleep" (for you are asleep and your time is walking on), and see that while you sleep long your time does not pass by. So, even if you sleep, let your heart keep watch; your heart will not be struck down. If your heart is not idle, your times are not idle. You are on the way, O man; walk, so that

you may arrive, lest night overtake you on the way, lest the day of life be spent before you hasten your progress in virtue. You are a traveller through this life; all things pass, all things fall behind you; everything on this way you see and pass by. You saw the loveliness of trees, the greenness of grass, the clearness of springs and whatever of this kind delights the eyes: it pleased you to look; it delighted you to pause a little; while you pause, you have passed. Again, as you walk, you have come upon a rocky and rough road, hollow cliffs, steep mountains, dense forests:

you were wearied a little; again you passed on. Such is this life: neither its prosperity lasts nor its adversity endures. So, as one placed on the way, let neither good fortune lift you up nor adversity break you, neither pleasing things delay you nor sad things hold you back. Hasten always to the end, hasten so that you may arrive; but choose your way before you run.

There are two ways, one of the just, the other of sinners, one of equity, the other of iniquity, of which the prophet said: "And see if there is a way of iniquity in me." Not only is our life a way, but our very life is either a way of virtue or of iniquity. Take care, then, that avarice does not set its steps in you and you become a way of crime; that wickedness or lust does not, and you become a way of iniquity, trodden down by the shameful deeds that travel it. You may choose whom to follow, either the just or the unjust.

The way of the just is narrower, that of the unjust broader; the one of sobriety narrower, the other of drunkenness broader, so that it can hold those who stagger; this has the enticements of this world, that has the rewards of things to come. In the one the fruit is more immediate, in the other the hope slower; for what is sweet does not put off a long expectation but has present enjoyment, while what is serious is sought with labor, what is scarcely grasped by blessed thought, what "eye has not seen nor ear heard, which God has prepared for those who love him."

We find it hard to believe what we do not see, and so the soul is restless and carries its thoughts this way and that like a kind of eyes. Then various forms of things meet it and press upon it; if it attends to things eternal it chooses virtue, if to things present it prefers pleasure. Heavy and unequal is the contest against the delights of present things.

Here there is freedom for the desires; there, the injury of slavery: to do what you do not want and to abstain from what you have desired. Here a banquet, there a fast; here intemperate joys, there persistent tears; here dancing, there prayer; here sweet songs, there heavy groans. It is written indeed: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of fools in the house of feasting. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than a man hearing the song of fools." But few hear these things, fewer follow them.

The sweetness of sin, which flows in for the present and fattens the listener's appetite, attracts men more than the bitterness of virtue, which wraps the hope of faith in a kind of rind of bitter toil. Blessed, then, and wonderful is he who, set to choose between such ways, has not been bent by the enticements of pleasure to plant his step on shallows and crooked places; to him it is not said: "You who have left the straight paths by going into ways of darkness."

We know, then, what the way of sinners is, in which the prophet warns us not to stand; and Ecclesiastes too teaches it, saying: "Do not stand in an evil word," that is, do not persist in evil words, and likewise in deeds to be condemned. How one must stand in good things, the same holy prophet directs, saying: "Our feet were standing in your courts, Jerusalem."

One must stand in Jerusalem and flee from Babylon. And to Moses it is said: "But you, stand with me"; he fled from Egypt and, standing with the Lord, persevered. And in the gospel those who stood until the eleventh hour received a wage equal to those who worked; and the virgins who stood until the coming of the bridegroom were found worthy to go in together to the wedding, while those who went away and came back afterward are shut out by the authority of the Lord's sentence. We have learned, then, not to stand in the way of sinners, but to stand in the duty of virtue, for it is written: "But you stand by faith."

Now let us consider what "and has not sat in the seat of pestilence" means. And indeed we state first that it is not simple sitting on the kind of chair in common use that is blamed (for what odium could that bring toward guilt?); but since the eyes of the Lord are always upon the faithful of the earth, we must stand as though placed in the sight of an emperor and set, as it were, in some service.

A soldier ready for battle stands, he does not sit; a soldier under arms does not lean back but rouses and raises himself. So it is said to the soldiers of Christ: "Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord." But iniquity, on the contrary, sits on the talent of lead, because, fixed in sin, it cannot separate itself from it. Indeed those grown old in error and eagerly clinging to shameful deeds are said to sit, who will not rise or hear one saying: "Rise, after you have sat."

Indeed this same prophet says elsewhere: "Princes sat and spoke against me." Or do we not know that an inveterate habit of sinning has such force that it shuts out nature, which, though it is curable unto health, yet, when the passions have been strengthened by time, is found incurable? Let us not, then, remain in vices; but let each one, even if he has been there, leap away from guilt, as it is written of the harlot: "Do not fix your eye upon her, but leap away, do not linger; leap away before the years of youth find you."

But, what is graver, many have followed the luxury of the body, have not blushed even with whitening gray hair, and have prolonged a stained life to old age; for the plague of guilt conceived in the inmost parts grows worse with the passing of time. Beware, then, of the counsels of the ungodly; let such counsels not penetrate your mind, lest it be said of you: "Will anyone bind fire in his bosom and not burn his garments?" For he who

has once kindled in the bosom of his mind the flame of a burning shameful deed will soon burn the garments of his body. And as fire leaping into stubble clings and stays until it consumes everything it has seized, so even a tiny spark of sin, if fanned by some tinder of vices, kindles a great blaze. Do not, then, stand in sin. If at last you have set your foot over the abyss of guilt, quickly withdraw it, lest pollution rise above your sole and, deceived by an easier slip, you sit down in the mud.

The first vices, then, must be guarded against, lest they creep on into more and graver ones. For just as those who roll in mud are the more defiled the more they wallow, so he who has once spattered himself with the mud of wickedness, unless he leaps quickly out of it, draws over himself more heavily each day the filth of his disgrace through a muddy way of life.

So from the heavy stench of that foul and shameful abyss a kind of pestilence of souls is contracted, and when the breath of wholesome thoughts is corrupted, the pitiable plague of raging passions spreads. From this a deadly poison pours itself into minds; from this sickness creeps into bodies and languor into souls.

For error is an evil languor, avarice a languor, insatiable desire a languor. Such are riches, as Ecclesiastes says: "There is an evil languor which I have seen under the sun: riches kept to the harm of the one who possesses them." Tell me, O Ecclesiastes, why this languor is evil. He will answer: because greedy hope devours many. The voracity of desire is insatiable; those who covet silver do not know how to be satisfied with silver.

Riches distend; they do not fill. Even if someone is sated with riches, "there is none," it says, "who lets him sleep." And indeed "all his days are in darkness and mourning and much anger and languor and wrath." For how can he sleep who keeps anxious watch over gold, who dreads losses, thinks of gains, reckons interest, counts his storehouses? An evil languor, then, which takes away the mind's good rest.

Luxury, lust, concupiscence, worldly delight, ambition, which quickly corrupt the health of sobriety, are an evil languor. In short, every corruption of this world is a pestilence. "Do not touch it, then, do not defile yourselves with it": it is a plague, it contaminates; it is a disease, it pollutes. "Do not taste the things which all lead to corruption by their very use," as the apostle said, who also cries out elsewhere: "Avarice is the root of all evils."

It stirs up diseases, implants pains; indeed "those who have desired it have pierced themselves with many pains." This is the pestilence which often makes men neither hot nor cold but, what is worse than hot or cold, lukewarm, so that those whom the Lord Jesus has rejected for grave sins are spewed out of his mouth. This is what stirs up the sicknesses not of a few but of all. "Every head in pain, every heart in sadness."

"From the feet to the head, the sores of sinners." Every head is in pain when those who are thought wise are tormented by the pain of avarice. For "the sense of the wise man is in his head"; this may also be referred to those who preside over the church. Every heart is in sadness when we savor fleshly things and bury the sight of our heart in bodily pleasures. Hence the Lord says to such that he has given them a heart of flesh.

From the feet to the head the dreadful plague of diseases creeps, when men suffer from contagion, when they sympathize with others: if someone is cheated of the fulfilment of his lust, if he could not overcome a widow's chastity or seize a field; and all the sick pass their sicknesses to one another. How often old men groan that they cannot drink long! How often they grieve that they have ceased to go whoring, while they still have the will to whore! How often, amid the talk of drunkards, virtues are a reproach,

sins a matter for praise, honor a mockery, continence a joke, mercy folly! These are the diseases that pass their evils on to many; from a few the corruption reaches all. They sit in gatherings disparaging the sober, belching their drunkenness; they sit in taverns competing in drunkenness; among them a harlot full of wine, smiling on this one, burning that one, and inflaming all with the heat of lust. If a modest man passes by, he blushes and is mocked by each of them; if a shameless one, he is praised by every mouth, and like a disease passes into the souls of each;

for he who is famous for shameful deeds draws very many to imitate his error. So, while they imitate another's sin, they make the evil their own. Do not sit among those whom the holy prophet fled; imitate him fleeing and certainly not sitting, who says: "I have not sat in the council of evildoers, and with those who do wicked things I will not go in." Tell us, David, why you fled them;

point out these parts, so that we too may be able to flee them, lest we be infected by their contagion. "They are corrupt," he says, "and have become abominable; there is none who does goodness, not even one." This may be referred generally to all the shameless, then specially to the mockers of the good, whom Aquila called "scoffers"; for these are truly diseases, who by mocking the good work very much error in souls and corrupt minds. How many things he has named from which the blessed man must abstain! And he adds still others.

"But in the law of the Lord was his will, and in his law he will meditate day and night"; that is: blessed is he who does these things by counsel, reason and prudence. For even a little child can abstain from the things mentioned, not through virtue but through inability and ignorance of offending; it can also suit an irrational beast, which has no power of counsel and no sense of error.

This, then, is the fourth point, or what follows, in which the definition of the blessed man is distinguished from the beast: that the wise man is subject to the law by will, not by necessity. For it makes a great difference: in will lies the fruit of reward, in necessity the obedience of a stewardship. So the apostle taught us, saying: "If I do this willingly, I have a reward; if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me." And the fitting order is that you first love the law, second that you meditate on it. He who loves keeps the commandments of the law from will; he who fears observes them unwillingly.

This discipline of teaching, God's justice too, we have received in the law; for so it is written: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one God; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart and in your soul; and you shall show them to your sons and speak of them sitting and on the road and at rest and awake; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be ornaments before your eyes; and you shall write them on the thresholds of your dwellings and on your doors."

And below: "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but that you love the Lord your God and walk in all his ways?" Wisdom too says: "Desire, then, my words, love them, and you will have instruction. Wisdom is bright and never fades, and is easily seen by those who love her and is found by those who seek her."

Rightly, then, we are taught by the holy prophet to have our will in the law and our meditation according to the law. Will in the law lies not only in zeal but also in deed; first the will, second the working. Indeed the Lord too, to the man who said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean," answered: "I will; be clean," to show that will must go before our works. The law seeks the willing, for "the law of the Lord is blameless, converting the soul," and no one is converted except one who is converted by will. The willing man hides labor and steals away its sense.

And so he meditates on the law day and night; in this what is required is not so much a continual effort of reading as a love of keeping the law. For he meditates fully who is a law to himself, attending to the work of the law written in his heart. Aquila, however, put only "day," not also "night"; he put it not so much in disagreement with the others as

referring it to something else, since he who meditates on the law is always in the light and has no night. For he whose works shine cannot walk in darkness, because his justice shines forth like the light. Let our life, then, meditate on the law; let our conduct meditate on it, our actions, our understanding of heavenly mysteries. For the law is the pattern and shadow of heavenly things, the shadow of good things to come. Let him who recognizes in the gospel what he believes in the law meditate in darkness and by day, that is, both when set in adversity and in prosperity; for the law commands us to love the Lord. He who loves must keep the affection of lasting love in every condition.

A father loves his son; he loves him even when he rebukes, loves him even when he beats him with a rod; for "he who spares his rod hates his son." The Lord too chastises us and loves us. So even when we commit what deserves correction, he still loves, who even takes back the offender; "and the Lord chastises every son whom he receives." And you, when you are chastised, love, for you are chastised so that you may be received.

For what great thing is it if you love the Lord your God when you have abundance of everything, when you enjoy your wishes, when you rejoice in honors, means and children? We are used to showing gratitude even to a man from whom we have received a kindness. Indeed when Job was praised by heaven's judgment, the devil answered: no wonder if he was grateful to God, who had such an abundance of prosperity; he must be tested when he loses all of it and still performs the duty of a pious worshipper.

This, then, is the first virtue: not to be broken by adversity nor lifted up by prosperity. This the law teaches you: in affliction not to slacken your effort or put on despair; and as victor not to say: "My strength and my might have granted me this," but to know that everything is to be credited to God's mercy.

Isaiah cries: "He who is in distress will not be confounded until the time. Drink this first." What is "drink this first"? Let us set aside the mystical sense and follow the moral one which the letter teaches. Because of the grievous errors he says there will be grievous crushings and afflictions of the people, and these had to come first so that mercy might follow. Drink, then, tribulation first; for through many tribulations we must

enter into the kingdom of God. Drink, so that the sense of tribulation may be poured into the inmost parts of your breast; drink with the patient feeling of one who mourns his grief; for when you have turned and groaned, then you will reconcile the offended Lord to yourself. So drink this first, so as to be in grief and distress; gladness quickly pours in error. The people, grown fat and thick, rose up to play and departed from the Lord.

It profits you to have a contrite heart; drink this first, so that your sacrifice may be accepted by the Lord. Let the apostle teach you what "drink this first" is, that is, the cup of tribulation; for tribulation works patience. There can be no patience unless there has first been tribulation: "tribulation," he says, "works patience, patience testing, and testing hope; and hope does not confound." Drink tribulation first, so that afterward so many cups of virtues

may be served to you. And so that you may know that tribulation is drunk, you heard the prophet today saying: "You have made us drink the wine of compunction," and in later verses he says: "And you will give them drink in tears in measure." He asks for drink in measure, not beyond measure, lest they cannot bear it. And how good a disposition he prayed with he proved by his own example, who mixed his drink with weeping to incline the Lord's mercy toward himself.

Drink this first, then, so that you may drink the second too (for this is the time to bring in the mystical sense): drink the Old Testament first, so that you may drink the New Testament too. Unless you have drunk the first, you will not be able to drink the second. Drink the first to soothe your thirst; drink the second to draw the fullness of drinking. In the Old Testament there is compunction, in the New gladness.

See how the Lord met the devil's arts on behalf of his servants. He deceived one man with the food of fraud, to ensnare all in one; but Jesus redeemed all with the food of salvation, so that in all he might re-form even him who had been deceived. The devil devised the golden cup of Babylon, so that whoever drank more would thirst more; and since the drink could not please, he enticed men to drink by the value of the gold.

He offered a toast of his own wine, for which he needed the support of the metal; but the Lord Jesus poured water from the rock, and all drank. Those who drank in figure were satisfied; those who drank in truth were made drunk. A good drunkenness, which pours in gladness and brings no confusion; a good drunkenness, which steadies the gait of a sober mind; a good drunkenness, which waters the gift of eternal life. Drink this cup, then, of which the prophet said: "And your cup that makes drunk, how excellent it is!"

Do not be troubled that Babylon's cup is golden, for you too drink the cup of wisdom, which is more precious than gold and silver. Drink both cups, then, of the Old and the New Testament, for in both you drink Christ. Drink Christ, because he is the vine; drink Christ, because he is the rock that poured out water; drink Christ, because he is the fountain of life; drink Christ, because he is the river whose stream makes glad the city of God; drink Christ, because he is peace; drink Christ, because rivers of living water will flow from his belly; drink Christ, so that you may drink the blood by which you were redeemed; drink Christ, so that you may drink his words: his word is the Old Testament, his word is the New Testament.

Divine Scripture is drunk and divine Scripture is devoured when the juice of the eternal Word goes down into the veins of the mind and the powers of the soul; indeed "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." Drink this word, but drink it in its order: first in the Old Testament; quickly see that you drink also in the New Testament. And as if he himself were in haste, he says: "Galilee of the Gentiles and parts of Judea, people who walked in darkness, see a great light;

you who dwell in the region of death, a light will shine upon you." Drink quickly, then, so that a great light may shine on you: not the daily light, not of the day, not of the sun, not of the moon, but that which shuts out the shadow of death. For those who are in the shadow of death cannot see the light of the sun or of day. And as though you asked whence comes such splendor, such grace, he answers: "For a child is born to us, a son is given

to us": a child, because he arose from a virgin; a son, because, born of God, he is the author of so great a light. A child is born to us, to us who believe, not to the Jews who did not believe; to us, not to heretics; to us, not to Manichees. He is born to us, because "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us"; he is born to us who took flesh from a virgin, because as man he was born of Mary. The flesh is born to us, the Word is given; what is ours was born among us, what is above us was given to us.

We have run out far enough, as we think, but not idly, so as to teach that we must love the Lord even in tribulations and not depart from him, since tribulation often succeeds gladness and gladness tribulation. In short, he who is not broken by tribulation and follows the law is blessed.

"And he will be like the tree that is planted beside the streams of waters, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall; and whatever he does will prosper." What blessedness is this which is compared to the wood of a tree, unless we understand the tree of life in paradise, that place of the blessed, brought forth from the earth in the midst of the other trees?

For among the many trees that were beautiful to see and good for food, the earth brought forth this tree also, and it was in the midst of paradise, so that the other trees might flourish with its greenness. What do we say this tree is but that through which salvation came to us? And rightly the earth brought it forth, because a virgin bore him, who was earth according to the Author's sentence spoken against it: "Earth you are, and to earth you will go."

Finely too it is read "in the midst of the other trees" of him who was in the midst of the apostles as they learned, or because he was in the midst of mind and heart, as he himself says: "In your midst stands one whom you do not know"; and elsewhere he says: "But I am in your midst." Indeed Solomon also said of him: "He is a tree of life to all who lay hold of him."

He who is blessed, then, will be an imitator of the Lord Jesus, who is the tree of life, the tree of wisdom, planted in the virgin's womb by the Father's will, by whom he is planted to remain for ever, so as to give fruit in his season. For this planting could not wither, which had within it the abiding richness of spiritual grace.

Indeed, "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan." These are the streams of waters of which he says in the gospel: "Rivers of living water will flow from his belly." This he said of the Spirit, which those who were to believe in him were beginning to receive.

There is also another tradition: that there are waters from which Jeremiah forbids us to drink, saying: "What have you to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the water of Gihon?" There is also the river Tigris flowing past the Assyrians, there is the Euphrates stretching toward Babylonia, there is the Pishon too, which in Latin interpretation is called "change of mouth," going around the land

of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good, and the carbuncle stone and the leek-green stone. Rightly is the mouth changed there, so that the faith of promises is not kept, but there is deceit in the mouth where there is good gold; for avarice breaks faith and does not keep the simplicity

of words; precious ornaments, too, change the mind and spirit, so that there is one thing in the breast and another in speech. In those regions of the rivers, then, the Jews were led away captive to Egypt and to the Assyrians and to the Babylonians, where they sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept over the hardship of their calamity, and, as this same prophet testifies,

there they hung up their instruments and laid aside all gladness, where they endured heavier things. In fact the other ten tribes were led to the Assyrians, but the two, Judah and Benjamin, as guilty of a graver crime, passed into Babylonia. For a priest's daughter who commits adultery is punished more severely than other women, because she has discolored the grace of the priestly race with foul disgrace.

So, just as they were in the gravest temptations, so our Savior exposed himself to many temptations, so as to pass over none of the contests of our temptation. Rightly, then, he is said to be planted beside the streams of these rivers, not in the streams themselves, so that you may understand him as bordering on them, not submerged. His first encounter was with flesh and blood; indeed he says: "Father, take this cup from me; yet not what I will but what you will." There was the temptation of riches set before him, when the enemy offered him all the kingdoms of the earth if the Lord would fall down and worship him. There you have the streams of two rivers, Gihon and Pishon. He had a struggle against the princes of the world; in the passion itself he had a contest against the tempters, whom the Hebrew interpretation calls "Persians," who brought false testimony, against those who said: "Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him," which the devil was suggesting. There you have the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.

That our contest is fourfold the apostle also includes, saying that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world and of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness which are in the heavenly places." These are the rivers that go out of paradise.

Hence I think that he who longs to return to paradise must cross these streams of waters. Not idly did the same holy prophet express this, showing that he who has undergone all temptations may now hope that the rest of paradise is owed him. So he says: "My eyes have gone down streams of waters."

For just as there is a fiery sword at the entrance of paradise, so that he who returns may return through fire, burn his sins and prove his gold, so he who returns returns through these streams; and rightly the saints say: "We passed through fire and water." Of these streams Isaiah also says: "If you pass through water, the rivers will not shut you in." What rivers? Hear David saying of those hastening to paradise: "Perhaps our soul would have passed through an unbearable water."

Some also take of these four temptations the verse: "You will walk on the asp and the basilisk, and you will tread down the lion and the dragon": that he walked on them in the incarnation and trod them down in the passion, or will tread them down in the handing over of the kingdom, which he will hand over to the Father when he has abolished every principality. Aquila finely said "transplanted," because he was first planted in the virgin and afterwards transplanted into paradise, as he said to the thief: "Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

This tree, then, will give its fruit in its season. Earthly trees are said not to give but to bear fruit; but the tree of life and of wisdom gives fruit, that is, bestows and grants it. Again the question arises: if it is the tree of wisdom, why will it give in season and not always? Lest perhaps it be hard for us to think this of Christ. But you who have read that "the Lord will set a faithful and prudent steward over his household, to give them their measure of wheat in season,"

(in season, certainly, not always), you surely ought not to be troubled. Wisdom can always give fruit, but because it is wisdom it must give wisely and dispense prudently, if ever we either deserve or are able to receive the full measure. Just as here the last time gives fruit, so there too he will give good fruit to the needy, so that we may be able to take and keep a share in his resurrection. Now we cannot; in a vicious world we cannot bear it; for here there is corruption.

And care had to be taken that we should not corrupt the good fruits which the tree of life would give, because now we are corrupt, but there incorrupt, when, he says, "the dead too will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality." What good, then, would it have been to one about to die to receive what death would take from him? Wisdom knows, then, to whom and when it should give, and does not lose even the leaf of its tree. And so let us consider what the fruit of wisdom is and what the leaf.

The fruit is within; the leaf is that by which the fruit is protected from the scorching sun or the cold. The fruit seems to be faith, peace, excellence of doctrine, the pursuit of true knowledge, the understanding of the mysteries. A good life guards these fruits; a bad one loses them even if it has received them. For to the sinner God said: "Why do you recount my justices?" In the mystical things lies the fruit; in the moral things the leaf, by contemplation of the heavenly mysteries.

For virtues without faith are leaves: they seem to be green but cannot profit; they are shaken by the wind, because they have no foundation. How many pagans have mercy and sobriety, but have no fruit, because they do not have faith! Leaves soon fall when the wind blows. And some Jews have chastity, much assiduity and diligence in reading, but they are without fruit; they turn about like leaves. These perhaps are the leaves which the Savior found on that fig tree, but he found no fruit.

The mystical things save and free from death; the moral things are ornaments of beauty, not aids to redemption. That the mystical surpasses the moral the Lord himself teaches in his gospel, saying of Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and heard his word while Martha hurried about the serving and complained that her sister did not help her with serving the table: "Martha,

Martha, Mary has chosen the best part for herself, which will not be taken from her." If she who served Christ at table was not compared with her who longed to hear the word, which man of works shall we be able to compare with one eager for eternal knowledge? Yet in such a way that neither the one's working lacks faith nor the other's knowledge, like Mary's, lacks working, lest either the leaves be without fruit or the fruit be uncovered, without its natural protection, and exposed to harm.

We can also understand that Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves, seeking bodily garments, because the resurrection of the Lord's body was being prophesied: that the flesh, which before used to perish like leaves, would not perish in Christ nor in all the just, who, according to the gospel, would shape their life and actions in imitation of the tree of wisdom born of the virgin.

For the Greek says: "which will give its fruit," which can be referred to the blessed man (in Greek "blessed ... will give"), while in Latin it is "which" [the tree], so that the sense is: he who is blessed will give fruit in his resurrection, when he can give it for ever. It can also be taken thus, "its fruit" as of the tree, so that it is referred to the tree, all of whose deeds will prosper. In this there is clear testimony that it was said of the Savior;

for whose deeds but his can all be praised and have prosperous outcomes? Aquila, however, says "will be directed," which seems also to be referable to any man whom the Lord directs by heavenly favor; for "a man's steps are directed by the Lord," and the prophet David asked that his prayer be directed in the sight of God. But the Lord himself also directed his works, so that they were bent by no winding of error.

There follows: "Not so the ungodly, not so, but like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth"; that is, not so as the blessed man, who is blessed because he has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, because he has not stood in sin, has not sat in the council of the pestilent who wish to pervert those who believe or live piously; who had his will in the law and will meditate on it, or, as Aquila put it, "will resound in the law," so that his life may resound the law's precepts and his conduct echo them, like those whose sound has gone out into all the earth.

Perhaps here the sound of human teaching goes out, but there, where it will be given to see face to face, a kind of fuller expression of the word seems to come about. Not, then, as this blessed man who has done these things, who will be like a planted tree, all of whose deeds will prosper, so too will the ungodly be.

So either he who wrote it or he who added it later (as some think) repeated it, so that the sentence might be the firmer for being repeated, saying: "Not so the ungodly, not so," who will be like dust. For they are earthly; and as dust is driven from the face of the wind, so they too will be driven out and scattered by the Holy Spirit, who is wont to breathe on the fertile and fruitful earth of the saved soul like the south wind.

To this wind it is said in the Song: "Come, south wind," so that, by the mildness of a gentler air, the fields of our heart may be loosened, which, bound by winter frost, refused their lap to the seeds to be received. It is good for us that this wind should blow, which brings safely into harbor the ships of Tarshish, which bear to the true Solomon what seems needed for his temple.

But this wind blows only if that heavy wind, the north wind, has stopped blowing. So either the church or the pious soul says: "Rise up, north wind, and come, south wind," that is: you, north wind, withdraw, and come, south wind, blow upon my garden, not to scatter the flowers but to preserve them. The soul full of piety, then, has a garden or is itself a garden that bears fruit; the soul open to ungodliness has dust, which is barren of fruit. The Lord made it fruitful, but it gathered for itself the dust of ungodliness.

Why do you boast, you who are full of ungodliness? Because you are powerful with honors and abound in riches? Do you not notice that you are dust, and will be scattered and dispersed? "I saw," he says, "the ungodly man exalted and lifted above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not." Why do you glory because many servants throng about you, many friends cover your sides, very many horses

follow you, whose pedigree you recount to us as if it were the race of their ancestors? You display your riches because you feed your companions at banquets. Would that you fed the needy; would that you fed not the ministers of jests but the helpers of prayers! You boast because people give way at once when you come out, and men avoid you like a wild animal or a beast. Do you not know that these things are nothing? Do you not hear that they all pass away like a shadow? What good are consular robes or triumphal tunics gleaming with gold?

Naked you will go out; no one there will recognize a consul. What good are countless possessions? They are public, not yours; today you hold them, tomorrow another. When you go out, another comes in; you have scarcely moved your foot when another has set his step there. How many were there before you, how many will be masters after you! And you think this is private property? Whom have riches ever redeemed from death? Rather, whom have riches not driven to death?

Whom have his riches called back from the underworld, whom has power excused from punishment? Ungodliness is dust, as the power of the ungodly is dust; it brings darkness, it cannot give salvation. As soon as a strong wind begins to blow, it scatters and dissolves it, troubles the air, lays bare the ground; like dust it is driven off, it vanishes like smoke, it melts like wax.

Hence many have raised no small question, whether divine Scripture seems to assert that a nature will perish, especially because it says elsewhere: "I will grind them like dust before the face of the wind, and like the mud of the streets I will blot them out," and elsewhere: "Behold, all the adversaries will be confounded and ashamed; for they will be as though they were not."

First, then, I ask whether they think ungodliness is according to nature or contrary to nature. If they assert it is according to nature, their opinion is certainly mistaken. Let them say whether sin suits nature or not. But it is certain that to sin is to stray from what is according to nature. What, then, is so absurd as for them to say that being ungodly seems a lesser thing than being a sinner, when the bitterest of all is whatever is done to wrong God?

But if acting ungodly is not contrary to nature, then living ungodly is according to nature, and is neither to be counted as sin nor judged worthy of blame; for no one is blamed who acts according to nature. Hence it is concluded that ungodliness is contrary to nature. How, then, along with the destruction of the habit, does Scripture introduce "natures perishing together,"

that is, perishing natures, when ungodliness is certainly not natural but contrary to nature? For what you do not have you do not lose, nor can a substance perish that did not exist. For dust too, when stirred up, is changed either into the substance of water or into air or into fire; that is, it often seems to pass into another nature. It does not, then, vanish into nothing, but passes into something else.

What prevents, then, that he too who is ground like dust by the power and reason of the Word should not be scattered into nothing but changed for the better, so that from an earthly man he becomes a spiritual man, and is blotted out like the mud of the streets in such a way that whatever seems rough and filthy is taken away and whatever is smooth and clean remains? And what he says of the adversaries of Jerusalem,

"they are as those who are not," he could surely have said: "they will not be." But since he said: "they will be confounded and ashamed," you surely understand that they will exist in substance and through the progress of conversion, but they will not exist as adversaries, which they were. So through the failing of their wickedness they will not exist; they will exist, changed by faith and devotion. Indeed elsewhere it is said in the person of the sinner: "And I will bear the wrath of God, because I have sinned, until he justifies my cause"; for God, desiring to convert the sinner, punishes him and burns him in order to purify him.

Hence he says: "And he will bring me out into the light." For fire burns wax too, and it melts so as to be purified; and we are tested by fire; and smoke, when all its material is consumed, is purged and does not pass out of nature. So the soul too, purified from every stain, passes away into what is, not into what is not, as Balaam says: "Let my soul die in the souls of the just," so that his fall and a certain practice of wickedness might die, and he might pass into the habit and life of the just; for God wills all to be saved. Hence Solomon also said: "God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living."

He made the soul so that it might be; he created man for incorruption, whom he made in his own image; but men, straying from the gift of nature, made themselves liable to death, so that they are corrupted as earthly. But God drives them through tribulations to repentance, so that through repentance that accidental evil of wickedness may be burned and consumed and perish, and that place in the soul which was the possession of accidental ungodliness may lie open to receive virtue and grace. And it is certain that the nature of the soul is precious, which, made in the likeness of God, admits the reception of every virtue, as one not cheated of a share in heavenly knowledge.

Now there remains, we think, the question that is in many mouths: for what reason God, without whose will not even the cheapest sparrow falls, and with whom the hairs of the head are numbered, said through Isaiah: "If all the nations are counted as a drop from a pitcher and as the turn of a scale, and will be counted as spittle"? Will all the nations, then, perish like a drop from a pitcher, and as spittle perishes and is of no use?

But you who know that our God did not hold the nations so far for nothing that he said to Abraham too: "In you all nations will be blessed," and spoke through David to the Son, saying: "I will give you the nations as your inheritance," and below: "All nations will serve him"; you who have read that he offered his Son for every nation, to save sinners, ought in this place to consider the force of the divine sentence.

For in comparison with the heavenly creatures, which are many: such as heaven, which is many times greater than the earth, so that by most the earth is reckoned a point in comparison with heaven; the angels, archangels, principalities and powers, thrones, dominions, thousands and ten thousands and countless thousands; in comparison

with these, then, the nations are counted as a drop from a pitcher, of which all is fullness. From that heavenly fullness, then, the nations are counted as a drop falling. For how could they seem very great, when the earth itself, on which the nations are, is the least part of the world, and of all that God has made the nations are like the slight tilt of a scale? At the same time, learn through this scale that God founded all things with justice, and that there is something by nature in the nations themselves in which there seems to be even a slight weight of justice; and that the spittle itself comes, as it were, from the inner part of the whole body.

So mercy is rather proclaimed here, since he who came to seek what was lost did not despise that drop as worthless, raised up the turn of the scale, and deigned to give that spittle the substance of a good body, that is, to gather all the nations into the one body of the church. And among the nations Israel too can be counted, by no means without a share in his divine justice, since Moses himself said of Israel:

"Behold a wise people, holding fast to discipline, a great nation." And that you may know that God's goodness has overflowed beyond our merit, the apostle, interpreting this prophetic passage, says: "God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all"; and he added: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid him?" And the prophet, putting this passage first, says: "If all the nations are counted as a drop from a pitcher" and the rest, so that you may recognize that this understanding agrees with the apostle's interpretation.

But what is clearer than that he does not seem to introduce perishing natures, since the holy prophet himself added: "Therefore the ungodly do not rise in judgment"? For he did not say: they do not rise; but he said: they rise indeed, but not in judgment. And he who rises certainly is and remains; but because he did not believe in Christ, he is already judged, and so does not come into judgment, since the penalty of a judgment already made awaits him. And of the resurrection there are very many testimonies of the Scriptures, which we did not pass over in the books On Consolation and On the Resurrection.

As for his saying: "The ungodly do not rise in judgment," according to the gospel the sentence is unqualified, since not all will be judged. But the apostle says: "For we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." Many think these contradictory and do not notice that the Savior spoke of the faithless and ungodly, who did not believe in the Lord Jesus.

For he says thus: "He who believes in me is not judged; but he who does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into this world and men loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil." It is clear, then, of whom it was said, that is, of those who did not believe in the Lord Jesus. The apostle

too, though he said "all," certainly said it of those who have believed but will render an account of their actions on the day of judgment. Indeed he himself says elsewhere that the testimony of our conscience will be revealed on the day of judgment, when our thoughts will either accuse one another, as it is written, or defend, and the secrets of the heart will lie open. And what is clearer than his saying elsewhere: "We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed"? For the just will be changed into incorruption, the reality of the body remaining.

Daniel too says: "The judgment sat and the books were opened." He shows, then, that there will be a judgment, especially since he says elsewhere: "Many who sit in the mound of the earth will rise, these to eternal life and those to reproach and eternal confusion; and those who understand will shine like the brightness of heaven, and many of the just will shine like the stars."

What is this judgment of seated judges, and what are the books opened, but our consciences, like books containing the record of our sins? Although it is mean to reckon this as if it were like a human judgment. Christ's judgment is another thing: there conscience itself betrays itself, unable to hide from the judge of secrets; there thoughts shine before him who said to people still thinking them:

"Why do you think evil things in your hearts?" When he said it to the Jews, he said it to all, so that no one might think that what he did could be hidden, no one think that, shut in by walls, he could escape the witness of his secret error. And so the evangelist too testifies, saying: "But Jesus knew their thoughts." How, then, does it say: "the books were opened"? Not written in ink, surely, but by the traces of offenses and the defilement of shameful deeds. The book of your conscience will be opened, the book of your heart will be opened, our guilt will be read out.

There is a book where there is a tablet; rather, there are books written where there are written tablets, which the apostolic teaching inscribes with the Holy Spirit, as we read when Paul says: "You are our letter, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on fleshly tablets of the heart." There are, then, tablets of the heart written by the Holy Spirit; these will be read out; if you have done well, the writing will remain.

See that you do not take away the grace of the Holy Spirit; see that you do not blot it out and write your shameful deeds in ink, lest the day of judgment come and the judge say: "Let the books be read, let the tablets of his deeds be read," and say to you: "I wrote your tablets; why did you blot out my letters? I wrote my gifts; how did you blot out my gifts and write your disgraces? Did you not read that I write? Did I not say to you through the mouth of my prophet: 'My tongue is the pen of a scribe writing swiftly'?" And the judgment belongs to the Word.

Many, then, of those sleeping in the mound of the earth will rise: those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. What Daniel says, "to eternal life," the Savior called "to the resurrection of life"; again, what Daniel says, "to reproach and confusion," the Savior called "to the resurrection of judgment."

Hence it is not good for us to come to judgment, and it is not good not to come, lest either we seem condemned in advance or, in this stain of vices, undergo the weight of so great a judgment. The prophet asks that the Lord not enter into judgment with his servant; how much more ought we to fear the Lord's judgment! Suppose that the merciful Lord will pardon: how much will be brought to light that I believed was hidden! What shame, what confusion will there be when I, who professed to teach others, am caught myself in what I reproved in others!

And so, since the Savior set out two kinds of resurrection, and John too in the Apocalypse, saying: "Blessed is he who has a part in the first resurrection" (for these come to grace without judgment, while those who do not come to the first resurrection but are reserved for the second will be burned until they fulfil the times between the first and the second resurrection, or, if they have not fulfilled

them, will remain longer in punishment), therefore let us ask that we may deserve to have a part in the first resurrection. There are those who rose at Christ's passion, and these are plainly blessed, who received Christ's grace and heard his voice, of which it is written: "The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live," and: "They went into the holy city." I think it signifies rather that heavenly city than this Jerusalem, which he left and which he accused; for they entered this one with their feet, but that heavenly one by their merits.

But let us beware of this too: that while placed here we rise from the mound of the earth. There are those who, while living, are surrounded by a tomb and filled with the dead, whose throat is a tomb, speaking not words of life but of death. If we rise from the dead here, we shall rise there too; if here we are not dry bones but have received the dew of the Word, the moisture of the Holy Spirit, we shall live there too; if here Jesus has roused us with his loud voice, as he roused Lazarus, and through his disciples loosed us from the bonds of death and led us into Bethany, where Lazarus was, that is, into the house of obedience, and admitted us to his banquet, then there too we shall always feast with him, there too we shall recline with him, and there the ointment will be fragrant for us, whose pouring out only the betrayer lamented.

"Therefore the ungodly do not rise in judgment," that is, into the portion of those who are to undergo judgment, "nor sinners in the council of the just." You see that the ungodly rise and do not rise in judgment, since sinners too, though they do not rise in the council of the just, yet rise in judgment. Hence it seems that those who believed rightly and carried out their faith in works are themselves not judged but rise in the council of the just; while sinners, who cannot rise among the just, will rise in judgment.

You have two orders; there remains a third, that of the ungodly, who, since they did not believe, are already judged, and so rise not in judgment but to punishment; for they loved darkness rather than light; so their judgment is punishment, and perhaps the punishment of darkness. And indeed it could be understood that those who have evil works while believing in Christ, wanting indeed to live rightly but overcome by the enticements of sins, loved darkness more than light, that is, loved both, but darkness more.

But since he spoke first of those who did not believe, I think it must be taken thus: that they loved darkness and not light; for the light is Christ. It is absurd, then, that those who did not believe the light should be thought to have loved even a little the light they did not know; for "they did not know nor understand; they walk in darkness," as it is written.

There follows: "For the Lord knows the way of the just, and the path of the ungodly will perish." Note the sense: the ungodly do not rise in judgment, because the Lord knows the way of the just. He certainly knows the ways of those whose steps he directs; for there are steps of men that are directed by the Lord. The ways of a man too are directed by the Lord. The Lord knows these ways which are straight, which lead to that life of him who says:

"I am the way and the truth and the life." This is the good way; but the way of the world is crooked; he does not deign to know that way. For he knows those who are his, who do his works; but to those who work iniquity the Lord says: "Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity; I do not know you." Not through ignorance, but because they are unworthy of God's knowledge, are they not known.

Finely he says: "and the path of the ungodly will perish." The Latin made a distinction, so as to say "path," and as it were distinguished path from way; but the Greek said "way" in both places. Yet not idly the Latin, since the Lord too said "I am the way," he did not say "I am the path." And he said that the path of the ungodly perishes, not the ungodly; he preserves their substance, so that, if they are converted, they will lose only the path of ungodliness, which neither was from the beginning nor will be. What is accidental, then, perishes; what is substantial remains. And the ungodly perish in the way in which it is said: "The soul that sins shall itself die," so that they die by the sting of sin, not by a total dissolution of their substance.

The prophet, about to say in the following psalm what the pattern of the just man is, expressed first the pattern of the unjust. For we cannot know what the pattern of justice is unless we know what the likeness of iniquity is; for they are opposed and contrary to each other. In the one there is the simple disposition of nature, in the other the deceitful cunning of wickedness; the one displays images of the virtues, the other holds out the fictions of the vices.

That this order is fitting, reason itself teaches; and, if testimony is to be taken from opponents, the teachers of philosophy themselves have acknowledged it, while following it. And who would doubt that David was far earlier than the times of Plato, whom not only Plato's teacher but not even the grandfathers of his grandfathers could have seen, since David was at the beginning of the kingdom of the Jews, which was continued through countless courses of years, and Plato after the times of the captivity, when the kingdom of his nation had already been dissolved?

So he himself, who holds the first place among all in worldly wisdom, when he said that the pattern of justice could not be grasped unless they first thought the course of injustice must be examined, offered the example that those who want to seek gold first smear themselves with mud. Justice, then, is the gold, iniquity the mud. That this was also said by our writers is not in doubt, since it is written: "Like the mud of the streets I will blot them out"; and truly mud, since it defiles those who come near it.

Let us flee injustice, then, lest we be defiled with muddy filth, and lest not our outward foot but, what is graver, our mind be sunk in its abyss. Philosophy indeed says it seeks gold, but it handles mud, seeking divinity in statues; but the rod breaks the vessels of the potter. We seek the gold with which to cleanse our bodies, carrying about in our body the dying of Jesus Christ, so that the life of Jesus Christ may also be manifested in our body. Good gold is the blood of Christ, rich in value, flowing abundantly to wash away every sin. We have spoken of the order; let us consider the title.

"To the end," it says, "for the servant of the Lord, a psalm of David." In the whole body of the psalter this is the only title by which he testifies that he wrote a psalm for the servant of the Lord. Who is this servant of the Lord? Let us see what the course of the psalm indicates, to whom this psalm is spoken. Let us hear to whom he speaks: "Lord," he says, "your mercy is in heaven and your truth reaches to the clouds; your justice is like the mountains of God, your judgments like a great abyss."

To whom is this said but to the Son of God? For these belong not to human but to divine power. But what does it mean that the title declared that this psalm is spoken to the servant of the Lord, when in a later title it preferred to name a prayer of "Moses the man of God" rather than of the servant of the Lord? What the prophet's purpose was, then, I do not understand, or rather the purpose of the Lord the Savior himself, who spoke in the prophet.

Truly his judgments are like a great abyss: that he reserved honor for the servant and ascribed to himself the condition of servitude. I seem to myself to understand, I seem to have drawn something of spiritual grace. This psalm, as we have said, was written against injustice; and so the injustice of the faithless is made the heavier,

who refused to receive Christ Jesus the Lord, since he took on servitude for their sake. For what is so unjust as to have been ungrateful for such great benefits, so that those to whom he gave salvation shed his blood? Indeed elsewhere, speaking of his passion, to sharpen the odium of the Jewish ungodliness, he says thus: "Do not turn your face from your servant; for I am afflicted, hear me speedily. I am poor and in pain."

Come, Paul, interpret for us for what reason the Lord of heaven and earth called himself poor, what this poverty is. You certainly called him rich; how is the same one rich and poor? Let us hear Paul's testimony: "You know," he says, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich."

Come you too, Isaiah, interpret for us how Christ, who was used to healing the pains of wounds, called himself in pain. The physician came to cure the sick: what had he that pained him? Let us hear Isaiah's testimony also: "He is in pain for us," he says, "and we thought him to be in pains."

He expressed the feeling of a physician, who, even if he himself had no wound to pain him, yet suffered with the wounded. This, then, the Lord reproaches the Jews with in the psalm: "I became poor for you, I am in pain for you, and you laid ungodly hands on me, saying: 'Let us take away the just one, for he is useless to us. Let us throw wood into his bread.'" Well does he say "bread" for his flesh; he brought nourishment, they in return for the kindness repaid him with punishment.

No wonder, then, if they hunger who denied themselves the nourishment of eternal life. Finely, too, they joined these two: "Let us throw wood into his bread"; the Jews did not know what they were saying and spoke a mystery. The cross of Christ has given paradise back to us; this is the tree which the Lord showed Adam, saying that the tree of life, which was in the midst of paradise, was to be eaten, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be eaten. Adam erred, did not keep the commands, tasted the forbidden;

through a tree we began to hunger, until the flesh received its nourishment. So the Lord in Christ joined flesh and wood, so that the ancient hunger might cease and the grace of life be restored. Blessed the tree of the Lord, which crucified the sins of all; blessed the flesh of the Lord, which supplied food to all!

On the Lord's poverty and pain, then, we have brought forward, I think, fitting testimonies of the saints, of whom one saw and spoke, the other was chosen to speak. Let us bring forward again the testimonies of these approved men about the Lord's servitude, or rather his own, which he himself spoke of himself in both. Let us hear, then, what he says: "Thus says the Lord who formed me from the womb as his servant, to gather Jacob and Israel to him."

We note, then, that he took the form of a servant for the gathering of the people. Hear, O Jew: you turn even grace into insult and divert to faithlessness the very thing for which you ought rather to have believed. He came to call you, and you revile him. He said "servant from the womb." Hear, Arian, from what womb; run back a little above: "From the womb of my mother," he says, "the Lord called my name." Let us hear what his name is, by which the Father called him: "Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and

his name will be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted: God with us." For what other name of Christ is there but Son of God? Take another. Gabriel indeed had said to Joseph of Mary: "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus." Take the voice of God: "And you, Bethlehem of Judea, are not least among the princes of Judah;

for from you will come forth the prince who will rule my people." Note the mystery: from the virgin's womb the same one came forth both servant and Lord, servant to work, Lord to command, so as to root God's kingdom in men's minds; both one, not one from the Father and another from the virgin, but the same, who before the ages was from the Father, himself afterwards took flesh from the virgin. Therefore he is called both servant and Lord: servant for our sake, but by the unity of the divine substance God from God, prince from prince, equal from equal; for he did not beget a degenerate son, in whom he declared that he was well pleased.

"It is a great thing for you," he says, "to be called my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob." Everywhere he keeps the titles of his dignity: great God and great servant; nor does he lose the name of his greatness in the flesh, of whose greatness there is no end. And rightly secure, "being in the form of God," as the apostle says, "he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men; and found in appearance as a man he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross."

This one, then, is equal as the Son of God; this one took the form of a servant in the flesh; this one tasted death, whose greatness has no end, because "Christ is the end of the law for justice to everyone who believes," so that we may all believe in him and adore him with inmost love. Good servitude, which has made all free; good servitude, which has gained the name above every name; good humility, which brought it about that at his name every knee should bend, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. To this end, then, this psalm is directed, that we too may be servants for justice, not proud unto arrogance; for servitude is the wage of freedom, but arrogance is the wage of death. But let us now take up the course of the psalm.

"The unjust man said that he would sin against himself." What he said is not expressed, and so I think it must be understood thus: that whatever the unjust man says is sin. For all injustice is sin; since, where the instrument is faulty, how can the song not be faulty? The offspring of degenerate matter is discolored. Whatever the unjust man speaks, then, is iniquity, which falls back on its own author,

like the offspring of the viper, which first tears open its own mother, as the common saying is; so he sins against himself. I think nothing more sublime has been said than this sentence; among those who have claimed for themselves the wisdom of the world I have read nothing like it, known nothing like it. No wonder, since they spoke by human ingenuity, while this the Spirit of God poured in, the Spirit of truth: that the unjust man sins against himself, begets wounds for himself, stabs himself. For just as thorns grow in the hand of a drunkard, as Scripture

asserts, so too in the unjust man's speech grow things that prick the speaker. The unjust man speaks and his inner conscience is wounded, because in every word he speaks he is not free of fraud. For whose punishment is heavier than one's own, when he pays the penalty for every word? A serpent pours its venom into others, the unjust man into himself; for whatever he pours out flows back on him. The unjust man, then, is both useless to others and harmful to himself; but the just man's life is fruitful to others and sweet to himself; for Solomon says: "Son, if you are wise for yourself, you will be wise for your neighbors too; but if you turn out evil, you alone will drain the evils."

We note, then, that justice is born rather for others than for itself; it looks to the common advantage, not its own, and counts another's good as its own gain. Blessed and glorious justice, whose good profits all; it often sets out from one and reaches all. Just was David, who spared his enemy and preferred to guard his innocence rather than his life, lest he be avenged to the public harm, and, by seeking the king's life, give others an example even in bad causes, had he himself taken vengeance on the one who lay in wait for him.

Just was Abel, who thought that the firstfruits of his sheep, which the Lord had given him, should be offered to the Lord, and so pleased God more, because he made no delay and proved his devotion. But this the ungodly man could not bear, the violator of justice, the root of iniquity, and so he killed his brother, because his brother's victim had been approved by God more than his own offering. But Abel, slain, spoke to God in the voice of his blood; Cain, alive, was driven from the face of the Lord, and, while punishment from the Lord was still held back, the conscience of his sins tormented him.

The wretch lay hidden, trembling and fearing, and, while there was still no one to strike him, the unjust man's very life tormented itself. He had received a sign, so that no one should kill him, not that he might enjoy the sweetness of life, but so that death should not take away his misery, and that he might suffer by fearing his slayer daily. He had indeed deserved that the slayer be held back; but without any respite he was his own executioner, his own slayer.

What punishment is greater than to fear what you cannot avoid, and not to escape what you have feared? Hence David, describing excellently the very heavy confrontation of a sinning conscience, says: "For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my offense is always against me." For the avenging image of our sin is spread before us and does not allow its defendant to be at peace, bringing on wretched slavery and dragging him into its chains, so that he cannot untie himself, since he sold himself willingly, who was free not to take on the debt of offenses and to keep the freedom of innocence.

So while we pray, sin spreads itself before us; when sleep has relaxed the body's senses, sin comes back. Our error always meets us like a harsh tax-collector or like a wicked moneylender accosting his debtor.

Hence the Lord says: "He who commits sin is the slave of sin." But the just man knows how to loosen the chains of his sins, and does not wait for an accuser but forestalls him, so as to lighten every offense by confessing it, lest the adversary have anything to charge. And so Scripture says to you: "The just man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech"; for he snatches the voice from the adversary and, as it were, breaks the teeth

of hostile accusation, bent on prey, by the confession of his sins. Judas Iscariot said, so as to sin against himself (what did he say?): "Whomever I kiss, he is the one; seize him." This he said, and drove himself to death with his own mouth. How many torturers do we think were in him, that he should press upon himself as the exactor of so heavy a penalty and strangle himself with a noose!

The unjust man spoke and sinned against himself; the just man spoke: "Behold, I the shepherd have done wrong, and this flock, what has it done?" And all the sin was forgiven. So the just man spoke and profited himself. Cain said: "Am I my brother's keeper?" and lied to himself. Ananias said he had brought the whole price of the field he sold, and lied to himself, who could have offered less without fraud. So it is excellently said: "And iniquity lied to itself." For it lies first to itself when it lies about its own ruin; it sins against itself which snatches from itself the sweetness of innocence.

For what fruit is sweeter than purity and simplicity of heart, what food more delightful than that on which a soul with a good conscience and the mind of an innocent man feasts? But iniquity, as with a talent of lead, as Scripture testifies, weighs down the conscience; and rightly David says: "Like a heavy burden they have weighed upon me," and Solomon: "As a sour grape to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is iniquity to all who use it."

A heavy punishment, which hinders food, clouds the sight and, what is more, pours dark mist over the eyes of the inner mind, so that the unjust man cannot see what is true. So he sins against himself who snatches from himself what is precious.

So the unjust man speaks so as to sin against himself, but the just man speaks so as to profit both others and himself; the one speaks to ruin, the other to salvation. Of the just and faithful it is said: "With the heart one believes unto justice, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." The tongue of the one wounds, but the tongue of the prudent heals.

Hence when David remonstrated with King Saul that, forgetful of the kindness of his own safety, he ungratefully pursued to death the man by whom he saw he had so often been saved, and sought the life of one who had offered his own life to dangers for the king's safety, he said that the fruit of justice was not lost to him, who had not killed the man lying in wait for him when the Lord delivered him into his hands. From the unjust iniquity came forth, venom was poured out by serpents; the venom and the weapons of iniquity perished.

So it is written: "The unjust man said that he would sin against himself." What did he say? "I will set my throne above the clouds and I will be like the Most High." The words have no effect, but they have sin; it is indeed an empty display of boasting, but the criminal, in a spirit of pride, does not fear to violate the divine majesty with insult. For if any fear of God were in his heart, he would not with rash daring have thought he could do deeds full of deceit in God's sight, as though God, who is the searcher of inmost things, could not know hidden things.

God sees all things; there is nothing that escapes him, no one who deceives him, to whom all things to come are present and things hidden manifest. For if this worldly sun often slips its light into closed rooms of houses, how much more does God, supreme and eternal, search and anticipate with his knowledge even the secret recesses of the human mind and every counsel of the angels! What else, then, does the unjust man do but seek iniquity and hatred for himself?

For thus it is written: "There is no fear of God before his eyes, for he acted deceitfully in his sight, so as to find his iniquity and hatred." What is "to find"? For everyone who seeks finds; so if evil is sought, it is sought in order to be found. But just as he is praiseworthy who has found the good he sought, so he is blameworthy who has toiled to find the evil he sought; we ought to spend our labor on good things, not on shameful deeds and crimes. What, then, is it but the height of folly and madness to seek hatred and to find by evil arts iniquity, which no good man has sought?

Let us consider, then, how the wicked seek their iniquity and hatred. Herodias, indeed, was joined in lawful marriage to the tetrarch Philip, abounding in the wealth of royal power. She received Herod, on his way to Rome, as her husband's brother, by the right of hospitality

and kinship; joining her sins with his, not long after she left her husband and changed the rights of her partnership. Did she not seek iniquity and hatred, who deserted her marriage so as to find adultery? And because the holy Baptist steadfastly rebuked the unlawful wedding, saying to Herod: "It is not lawful for you to have her as wife," who had left her husband against the law and came together with her husband's brother as though by law, the adulteress was enraged so that she wanted to kill him. But knowing that she could not easily bend Herod to the killing of the just man, she devised a way to bring it about.

It was Herod's birthday, which he was accustomed to celebrate with excessive luxury, as is the custom of most kings. She adorned her daughter to dance at the king's banquet, a royal child. And when she had pleased Herod, though it should have displeased him as her uncle, he offered her to ask whatever reward she wished for the disgrace of her dancing. She consulted her mother, at whose urging she asked for the head of the Baptist.

Herod, overcome because he had bound himself by an oath to give whatever his own niece asked, ordered John to be killed and his head brought. When it was brought he gave it to the girl, and she carried it to her mother. It is true, then, that iniquity and hatred are sought, since that woman drew out by the wicked arts of a fraud she devised what she could not obtain by a simple request.

What shall I say of Judas the betrayer, who sought avarice and found sacrilege, saying: "What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you?" and, not satisfied with the spoils of the poor, reached the fullness of the gravest crimes by sowing crimes, mixing the holy pledges of love with shameful deeds when he said: "Whomever I kiss, he is the one; seize him," so that it cannot be doubted that it was truly said of him: "The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit." He brought kisses with his lips, poured poison into hearts; he was planning bitter tortures and brought the pledge of grace.

Well did the prophet add of him: "He would not understand, so as to do good"; for he sinned not by nature but by will. Indeed he was an apostle, heard daily the divine commands, learned the heavenly mystery; he could have understood so as to do good, had he not refused. He saw paralytics healed, light restored to the blind, the dead raised;

ought he not to have understood that he was God who could do such things? But he would not understand, because, a greedy man intent on money, he turned the vigor of his mind away from the knowledge of the Godhead. For everyone who has gorged himself with shameful deeds does not want to understand what belongs to the heavenly commands, lest he be called back from his vices. See him who flees understanding, who says: "Darkness covers me and walls surround me; who knows whether the Lord sees?"

For he does not want to seek and find that God sees and knows all things, lest he be held back from crime by fear. See King Ahab asking Naboth for his vineyard; recognize him answering: "Far be it from me to give up the inheritance of my fathers." Ought he not to have understood that he answered justly? But he would not understand, so as to do good and not seek what belonged to others. Ought he not to have understood that Elijah truly served God, when he saw heaven shut at Elijah's word for three years and three months, and rain sent down at his prayers so that everything dry was watered? But he would not understand, lest he condemn faithlessness and follow faith.

Moreover, "he meditated iniquity on his bed," where he ought to have sought the truth. For on our beds our sins ought to prick us, not be committed by our sinning in them, as the prophet says: "What you say in your hearts, be pricked with compunction on your beds as well."

"He set himself," it says, "on every way that is not good, but did not hate malice." Not without reason does he meditate unjust things who stands by on the way of error and loves malice, which he ought to hate. He said something more with "set himself," as though he had long remained on the way of wickedness in a lasting stand; for that man is blessed who has not stood in the way of sinners, not he who does not cease to stand in it.

And so the first precepts of the holy prophet David are to flee ungodliness, not to stand in sin, to meditate on the law, so that you may understand what is good and just and distinguish the unjust. In all things, then, the root of what is begotten must be watched, lest a useless sap infect it from the beginning; and the vices of souls are much graver than those of shrubs.

Above all, then, we must take care that the practice of malice does not grow into human nature and every age to come degenerate; for "a bad tree makes bad fruit." For if we often do what we do not want and cannot avoid it, and do what we hate, bound either by a kind of delight in shameful deeds or by the stealth of sin, how can we avoid what we love? We are bound even unwillingly; how can we not be held when we are willing?

Paul scarcely freed himself from errors, wrestling in daily combat, so that, stripped of the chains of captivity, he might be saved by Christ's grace; and do you think that by standing by your offenses you can attain the merit of the heavenly promises? The crown is sought by wrestling, not by resisting; it is gained by zeal, not by refusal. And those who strive must ask for the support of divine mercy, so that the crown of justice may be conferred for the merits of their labors.

Next let us consider what follows: "Lord," he says, "your mercy is in heaven and your truth reaches to the clouds; your justice is like the mountains of God, your judgments like a great abyss." Did not Paul follow this passage when he said: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord"?

For when the human mind is troubled and the hard and rough contests weary us, the Lord's help must be asked. So, turning to the Lord, he calls on him and implores him to stand by those who labor as their helper. Mercy, then, must be sought from heaven; the truth of God must be gathered from the oracles of the prophets, who, like clouds, veil the mysteries of divine knowledge.

For God made darkness his hiding place, so that you may first receive the rain of mystic fruitfulness and then, soaked with heavenly dew, recognize the brightness of the light disclosed, so that you can say: "Of his fullness we have received." For who can easily grasp the secrets of God, whose justice is like the mountains of God, or, as Aquila

put it, "like strong mountains," because the precepts are full of strong power? Hence the apostle too, seeing that they are sublime, dares to say: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?"

He referred the depth of the riches of wisdom, then, to the height of mountains; hear what mountains. For the Son of God himself is a great mountain; and so: "Go up on this mountain, you who bring good news to Zion," so that you may stand rooted and planted in Christ. There is a mountain that is the wisdom of God, there is a mountain that is the justice

of God, there is a mountain that is the knowledge of God, there is a mountain that is sanctification, there is a mountain that is redemption, there is a mountain that is resurrection. Scripture showed us these mountains when it said: "But in him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and justice and sanctification and redemption"; or because the Son of God became an angel to angels, a prophet to prophets, "whose judgments are like a great abyss." Hear the good things: "Deep calls to deep at the voice of your cataracts"; that is, the Scripture of the Old Testament calls on the course of the New Testament to the completion of sanctification and the fullness of grace, with a kind of sound and outpouring of spiritual abundance.

"Men and beasts," he says, "you will save, O Lord, as you have multiplied your mercy, O God; but the sons of men will hope in the protection of your wings; they will be drunk with the richness of your house, and you will give them to drink the torrent of your pleasure." What are "men and beasts"? Rational and irrational beings, surely. To the rational, judgments; to the irrational, mercy; the one are ruled, the other fed.

And so he added: "But the sons of men will hope in the protection of your wings," that is, not a brood of vipers but sons of men, who live after the image and likeness of God, are placed not in pastures but at banquets; for some are in a place of pasture, others in the privilege of the sacraments: to the imperfect the juice of milk, to the perfect the table of refreshment, of which he said: "You have prepared a table in my sight," on which is the living bread, that is, the Word of God; on which is the oil of sanctification, with which the head of the just is anointed and the inner sense strengthened, so that the oil of the sinner may be abolished; on which also is that cup that makes drunk, how excellent, or how strong; for the Greek said "mightiest," whether powerful or strong or mighty; mighty, by which shameful deeds are washed away or blotted out.

Good, then, is the drunkenness of the cup of salvation. But there is another drunkenness from the abundance of the Scriptures, and another through the infusion of the Holy Spirit; indeed those who spoke in different tongues in the Acts of the Apostles seemed to their hearers full of new wine. The house, then, is the church; the richness of the house the abundance of graces; the torrent of pleasure the Holy Spirit.

Do not let the name or the habit of a torrent offend you, that it is sometimes drier or thinner, so that its streams are wont to cease. Ours too has ceased; the torrent of spiritual outflow once ceased among the Jewish people. Why do I say the torrent ceased, when the sea ceased, as today's reading taught us, when the Lord says: "Behold, by my rebuke I will make the sea desolate (and make the rivers

a desert), and their fish will dry up," surely the fish of the Jews, by the dryness of their faithlessness, so that they cannot swim out? The torrent ceased, then, because of the sacrileges of the synagogue, for that people was dry in faith, barren in works, captive to sins. For what should flow for those who did not drink but defiled the sacred channels, when they denied the very fountain? Good the torrent that ceased for them so as to abound for us and turn away the thirst of human captivity, like a torrent in the south. Hence Scripture says too: "Rise, north wind, and come, south wind," which is wont to blow through the shrubs of paradise.

We have stated the sense; let us consider the wording too. Why did he say "you will give them to drink the torrent of your pleasure" and not "from the torrent," if not because he wished to express the eagerness of the drinkers, as though they wished to drink up the torrent itself if they could? This perhaps is the torrent of pleasure which we read of in Genesis, the fountain which waters paradise and is divided into four rivers which go around the whole earth. From this fountain flow the spiritual virtues too: prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice. Good the fountain of grace and of splendor, of the same nature as that river of which it is said in later psalms: "The rush of the river makes glad the city of God."

Most fittingly, then, he adds: "For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light. Extend your mercy to those who know you, and your justice to those who are upright in heart." For after recalling the heavenly benefits, thanks are rightly returned to their author, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, the watering fountain of eternal life, came down to earth to water the dryness of our hearts.

He is the brightness of the glory of God the Father and the image of his substance; and so in his true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, we shall see, he says, the Father, for God is light. Rightly too it is said: "In your light we shall see light," according to that saying: "He who sees me sees my Father also." With you, then, fountain of life, we shall see the Father present.

For as you were with the Father in the beginning, God the Word, so the Father is always with you, who is in you; for he is with him in whom he also is. And the coming of the Lord the Savior is prophesied, who, when he came to earth, would say: "I and the Father are one," that is: we are one light as one name; by the unity of light and name we both are one; indeed the Trinity is one in unity of substance, but with the distinction of each person.

"Trinity" signifies the distinction of the persons; "unity" the power. It can also be said to the Father: "For with you is the fountain of life," that is, from which life proceeded, which was the Word, and was always so, because it was with you. All things were made through him and in him, and he is the life of all, and he has made you manifest to us, so as to enlighten the hearts of men to the knowledge of your majesty.

"Extend, then, your mercy to those who know you." A privilege is held out, that those may deserve mercy whom the merit of knowing you supports. Indeed in later psalms we recognize that zeal for knowledge supported even lower persons, when the Lord says: "I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon, for those who know me," that is: I will be mindful of that harlot Rahab and of that confusion among those who know me, or among them themselves, because that harlot recognized me, whom the chosen people did not know.

Among those, then, who knew me Rahab will be remembered, so that she may obtain the reward worthy of faith. Hence we note that it was said in the gospel too: "Harlots and tax collectors will go before you into the kingdom of heaven." But since we are weak in carrying out, though devoted in believing, extend your mercy to those who believe in you, so that our deeds too may match our devotion and faith, and the weakness of this body may not abandon the zeal of our mind; but let us glory in temptations and weaknesses themselves, in which the apostle gloried, saying: "Most gladly, then, will I glory rather in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may extend over me."

Most beautifully, then, he added: "Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of sinners move me. There the workers of iniquity fell; they were driven out and could not stand." Some take the "torrent of your pleasure" above as fortitude in temptations, like that of the martyrs, in whom it pleased God to show the pleasure of a sweet and grateful contest. For if winters are taken for temptations (whence the Lord warns us to pray that our flight be not in winter or on a sabbath, that is, either in temptation or in idleness; and in winter a torrent rises, fills and swells), the torrent can surely be taken for the graver temptation that occurs in persecutions. And so it is well called a torrent of pleasure, because where the sin of persecution abounded, the grace of confession abounded the more.

See the power of the prophetic arrangement. First he set out the unjust man, who says either in his heart or in speech that he will sin against himself, or in himself; for the Greek manuscript has "in himself," though not all do. And perhaps for this reason: since "the fool said in his heart, there is no God," lest perhaps the unjust man too should say within himself and sin within himself, although it is the mark of a madman to deny God openly.

But many profess injustice as a matter of praise; for many think it glorious to rob, to harm even those who have done no injury, to cheat. So first he set out the life of the unjust man, then added the mysteries of divine knowledge, so that, fearing God, we may turn away from iniquity and injustice. He added a prayer, that he would deign to free his just ones from the company of the unjust, so that in those too who are clean of heart divine justice may extend itself like a loving watchman, lest the assault of sins, like that of enemies, steal upon us and capture us asleep.

So we must always keep watch and fortify the Lord's camp, because the enemy and adversary comes by night, when the senses are held by sleep and the body is distended with food; we must pray that God's justice may extend itself in us, to make us stronger when placed in weakness, so that each of us can say: "When I am weak, then I am strong."

Then he prays specially for himself too, to teach us how we ought to pray to the Lord: "Let not the foot of pride come to me," he says, that is: let me not fall into pride. Indeed elsewhere he recalls himself, saying: "If I have not walked in great things." Here he prayed, there he fulfilled; he would not have fulfilled had he not prayed. Pride must be guarded against, which trips us even in prosperity; indeed Adam fell more gravely in paradise than if he had fallen on earth.

To fall from the heights is a headlong plunge; on level ground it is called a slip. So the foot of the proud man strays, because he does not hold to his head; for "the eyes of the wise man are in his head." No wonder, then, if the step strays where there is no eye. Let the eye go before so that the foot may follow. How, then, will you walk as a traveller in darkness? The foot soon stumbles at night if the moon, a kind of eye of the world, does not show the way. You too are in the night of the world; let the church show you the way, let the sun of justice enlighten you from on high, so that you need not fear a fall.

And because he had spoken of the foot of pride, he added: "and let not the hand of sinners move me." For as the saints are members of Christ, so the ungodly are members of the devil. Let not the hand of sinners move me, that is: let not the actions of those who sin move me from my station of justice. For often, when we see sinners abounding in prosperous successes, we waver in feeling and are torn, as by a hand of sinners, from the root of virtue. We must take care, then, that those whom the divine hand has planted in the house of God an adverse hand does not uproot. Yet he says this finely who is beaten by persecutors. But those who are moved from their root, which had already clung to Christ, fall.

Hence he added: "There the workers of iniquity fell." What is "there"? Is it where pride is, where the hand of sinners is, or where they stood, where they had been planted before, there they fell; or in the mud, or at once, as it were at that very time, in that very place? It seems ambiguous. But elsewhere we are taught what "there" is, where it is said: "There, pains as of a woman in labor." Good is the pain for one who has a birth of faith, by which Christ is formed and born in the church.

And elsewhere he says: "I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon for those who know me"; for "the foreigners and Tyre and the people of the Ethiopians, these were there," that is: where those who know me are, where the foundations are on the holy mountains, there are the foreigners too, because they also thought they should believe in me. There, then, they fell where they ought rather to have stood; for Adam fell even in paradise, and Christ came "for the fall and for the rising," so that there might be the ruin of the faithless but the rising of the just and faithful.

Then "they were driven out," because unjust men could not stand in the holy place. Hence the apostle too said: "And you who stand, see that you do not fall," and he certainly said it to one who stood not in body but in faith. We can also understand "there" of the future, as in: "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth," and: "Naked I shall go there." How brief, then, in its close, and how great a conclusion!

Let me not be proud, he says, lest I sin; let me not sin, lest I be moved; let me not be moved, lest I fall; let me not fall, lest I be driven out, as Adam was driven out of paradise, because in him first the foot of pride could not stand. Pride does not know how to stand, and if it falls it does not know how to rise again. And so he finely spoke in earlier psalms too of the proud: "Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of our God" (for this is stable, that untrustworthy), and added:

"They were bound and fell, but we have risen and stand upright." And in the book of the prophet Micah it is written: "Do not proudly rejoice over me, my enemy, because I have fallen; but I shall rise again." For we have fallen in this world, but in Christ we have risen, to whom be honor, glory, power, eternity, both from the ages and now and always and for all the ages of ages. Amen.

All divine Scripture is either natural or mystical or moral: natural in Genesis, in which it is expressed how heaven, seas and lands were made and how this world was established; mystical in Leviticus, in which the priestly mystery is contained; moral in Deuteronomy, in which human life is formed according to the precept of the law. Hence too three books of Solomon seem to have been chosen out of very many: Ecclesiastes on natural things, the Song of Songs on mystical, Proverbs on moral.

But because the body of all the psalms is one, nothing in them is divided and distinguished; but as the occasion presented itself, no part of this kind of teaching has been left out. For it includes the natural very plainly when it speaks of angels and powers, sun and moon, stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the water above the heavens: "For he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created. He established them for ever and ever; he set a precept, and it will not pass away."

And it has spoken of mystical things, since it has written of hidden things, of the ointment of sacred anointing and of the completion of the tabernacle. Their grace is manifold, since in many ways and many manners the Lord spoke in the prophets. For it foretold that the Son of God would come as chief of priests; the titles "for the winepresses" declared that he would suffer for us and cleanse our sins with his blood; the psalm of the resurrection expressed that he would rise; and another title afterwards indicated, in which his land was restored, the change also of all things that is to come through the mysteries of faith.

And of moral things it has woven together a great deal and shown different kinds of virtues and given precepts for living, by which it has healed the sores of our errors, renewed human conduct and changed our inmost feelings, as the thirty-third psalm teaches, which holy Peter too fixed in his epistle on our hearts like a plaster, and this one, which has been set before us in today's reading. For these are found to be ethical above the others, but this one more fully, which is entitled the thirty-sixth.

For although that one is very sweet and clear, this one is sweeter, because that one taught me to restrain my tongue from evil, this one to cease from anger and leave indignation; that one directed me to speak without deceit, this one trained me to be gentle, for it showed the rewards of gentleness. What greater salves are there for the human heart than gentleness and simplicity, by which every pain of an injury received is relieved and every stain of crime is shut out?

To these remedies, then, let us put our hand, to cure our wounds, lest, if we wish to say that we can cure others, it be said to us: "Physician, heal yourself." So, as is common not only to physicians but to ordinary people too, that few profess medicine but very many say they know some of its remedies, or as physicians' boys do, let us too bring a remedy to the needy from another's medicine.

Let the rich man engage a master, the poor man an assistant. Let him who grasps the height of the perfect take from the psalm itself; let him who desires plainer things graze in the valley, as a little child who fears the river drinks from the brook, and one who is afraid of the deep swims by the shore. Finely holy David describes in the previous psalm the life of the unjust man, here that of the just; there the unjust man is set out, here the just man is trained; the one sins against himself, the other takes away even the sins of others. So let us consider what the first remedy of justice is.

"Do not be malicious," he says, "among the malicious, and do not envy those who do iniquity." First let us learn what it is to be emulous, although the force of this word is less in Latin than in Greek; for we read of emulation both in a good sense and in a bad. Indeed the apostle says: "It is good always to be emulous in a good thing"; and above he himself said: "They are zealous for you not well, but they want to shut you out, so that you may be zealous for them"; and again he says: "Be emulous for the better gifts." To the Romans you have: "I say, then: did they so stumble as to fall? Far from it; but by their offense salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them emulous"; and below: "For I say to you Gentiles: as long as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I will glorify my ministry, if somehow I may provoke my own flesh to emulation and save some of them," that is: I may move my flesh; indeed the Greek has παραζηλώσω ("I will provoke to jealousy"). For here too it has μὴ παραζήλου ἐν πονηρευομένοις and μηδὲ ζήλου τοὺς ποιοῦντας τὴν ἀνομίαν, that is: do not provoke the malicious to emulation, since they contend not about good but about evil.

What is "to provoke to emulation"? Let us show it by an example, if we can. There are certain immoderate women who tempt the hearts of other women's husbands. When they have subjected them to their own habit and shame, not content to keep their error secret, they are eager to flaunt their shameful deed before the men's wives, so as to rouse and inflame them to jealousy of them, seizing a kind of triumph from the pain and agitation of virtuous minds.

The wives, who with a woman's jealousy cannot bear the insult to their own marriage bed, either dissolve the bonds of the marriage they had agreed to, or contend in daily quarrels; and from emulation comes discord, from dissension separation, by which the whole house is thrown into confusion. By the example of a wanton woman, then, recognize, reader, that it is the part of the vilest and most detestable cunning to stir another's soul by wicked emulation, and that jealousy is one thing, provoking to jealousy another.

For this is the depraved emulation that steals into the affection of good people, by which the Jew too erred, who, straying from the true and good of the gospel discipline, was turned aside by emulation of the law, as the apostle says of himself, that in zeal for the law he persecuted the church of Christ.

So, although our God was often offended by the ungrateful feelings and complaints of the Jews, he did not abandon the people he had once taken up and chosen for himself; but the synagogue, like a wanton harlot, began to provoke him to the bitterness of jealousy by mixing itself in the sacrileges of transgression. Indeed they said to the priest Aaron:

"Make us gods that we may worship," and they began to worship the head of a calf. Hence through the great song of Moses the Lord resounded in his mouth, saying: "They provoked me to jealousy with what is not God, they angered me with their idols; and I will provoke them to jealousy with what is not a nation, with a

foolish nation I will anger them." See how the Lord condemned the synagogue for its harlot's ways, so as to turn their own cunning back on them and let them be moved by their own device, who rejected the Lord their God, by whom they had been taken up, with grave sacrileges, choosing for themselves gods to worship; while he for his part took for himself the church from the profane, so that the Jewish people would groan that these were preferred to them without law, without grace, and their feeling would be roused to jealousy of them the more, the meaner those chosen were;

for before the people had nothing to be moved by, since it considered that it alone was chosen by the Lord. But when it noticed a people gathered in from the nations, which claimed for itself the Lord's law, the oracles of the prophets, the Lord's new testament, then at last it began to be tormented with excessive feeling, after it learned that it had been repudiated. Indeed if it sees the ceremonies of the Gentiles, it is not moved; if it hears of the progress of the church, it is tormented with wretched envy. So it is fulfilled in Judea: "And I will provoke them to jealousy with what is not a nation."

To the misery of a heavier torment is added this, that sinners from the Gentiles seem to have been preferred to them, who do not even bear the name of any nation or people. For every gathering of any region is accustomed to claim a name for itself, as Egyptians, Ethiopians, Syrians, Jews, Arabs bear the title of their province and lands.

We, gathered from different peoples, cannot take for ourselves the name of one nation; and so, because we had no name on earth, we received one from heaven, so as to be called Christ's people. But the pagan thinks this folly, the Jew a reproach. True, then, is what is written, that God avenged the insult to himself by seeking a church for himself from a non-nation and preferring it, from a foolish nation, to that ancient and royal people.

Hear one saying what the foolish nation is that has been preferred: "For God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise," and again: "If anyone among you seems wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise." So the Lord returned, did not inflict, the disturbance of jealousy, so that it might be not in the form of imitation but in the punishment of iniquity.

Indeed the Latin translator, wishing to distinguish between emulation of virtue and emulation of offense, says: "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?" that is: do we bring on the Lord the offense of jealousy by eating of things sacrificed to idols, as the Jews exasperated him by sacrificing to idols? And if among men the intention of stirring jealousy gives offense, and often the person exasperated is found to be the stronger, which usually turns to the harm of the instigator, what folly it is to provoke the divine majesty and assail it with the stumbling-block of jealousy, where vengeance has no difficulty!

We must not, then, furnish the malicious with goads of jealousy against us, who, even unprovoked, are roused by the stings of envy to do harm, as Cain killed his brother because his sacrifice was accepted rather than the one he had thought fit to offer; in which Abel was not emulous, but envious Cain pursued with criminal fratricide the favor of preference. For Abel did not wish to overshadow his brother's sacrifice, but to keep the discipline of sacrifice, so that no

sloth should delay the firstfruits, nor any usurpation violate them by diverting them to private use. Saul too, when David the prophet, the triumpher over the Philistines and preserver of his own safety, was preferred to him in the speech of young women, assailed him with plots, prepared to kill him with the cast of a spear, and almost shed the innocent blood of his son-in-law, had not David evaded the wound by bending his body. What malice was there, if the young women said: "Saul among thousands, David among ten thousands"? But how fierce the envy of King Saul, who turned an error of speech to the ruin of an innocent man!

"And do not envy," he says, "those who do iniquity." He did not repeat what he had said but changed it. For it is one thing to provoke to emulation, another to emulate; provoking has cunning, emulation simplicity. But even simplicity itself must be cautious and provident, so as to know what to beware of; for not idly was it said: "Be cunning as serpents and simple as doves." Cunning, then, must be spiritual, preserving salvation and knowing no deceit; simplicity must be spiritual.

Scripture seems to have made the distinction of provoking to emulation in another place too, when it says: "And the jealousy of Ephraim will be taken away and the enemies of Judah will perish; Ephraim will not be the rival of Judah, and Judah will not vex Ephraim." But elsewhere it has: "So you too, since you are emulous of spiritual gifts, seek the building up of the church, that you may abound." He used "emulous" for the good and imitators of a good thing, "rival" for the oblique and envious.

The first, then, is not to provoke the malicious to the malice of rivalry; the second, not to envy those who do iniquity. For often the pious, seeing that some have sought riches by fraud and cunning and reached honors, long, with an ugly emulation, to follow their ways, so as to reach riches and honors by a like art, or to trick young girls in contracting marriage.

For what does it profit, when riches themselves and all worldly glory dry up like hay and perish like garden herbs in the very beauty of their flower? "All flesh is hay, and all the glory of man like the flower of hay." Do not, then, greatly strive after what cannot be lasting; do not be a rival and oblique; do not be contentious and a combatant in jealousy. Hence Aquila too said: "Do not compete among the malicious"; Symmachus: "Do not contend."

Do not be an imitator of iniquity and fraud either, but be an imitator of the apostles' teaching, the prophets' grace and the saints' virtue, so that you may bear fruit and store up a harvest of goodness, like Joseph, who with a multitude of grain shut out the famine of long barrenness; like Habakkuk, who, carrying lunch to the reapers, was lifted by an angel and took a path through the air, and, returned to earth amid the fierce roaring of lions, served a sweet meal to the pious prophet.

Rightly, then, the prophet says: "Hope in the Lord and do goodness, and dwell in the land, and you will be fed in its riches." What is the land he urges you to dwell in but your soul, which you ought to cultivate well, often ploughing it with spiritual ploughshares, lest it grow rough with long neglect? For a good farmer works his field with daily labor and watchful care and

guards his own fields, lest the boar from the forest lay them waste and a robber snatch the ripe fruit. Plough your land, then, so that when he comes who sows the word he may find your soul prepared, lest the seed fall on the uncultivated parts of your heart and the birds of heaven come and snatch what has been sown. Hear one saying, then, what the land is: "Behold, the sower went out to sow his field. And as he sowed, some fell by the way, some on rock, some on good ground." And what fell on good ground, these are those who with a good heart

hear the word, keep it, and bear fruit through patience. Let your heart, then, be clean, let your soul be clean, so that you can bear the fruit of goodness, that is, of spiritual grace. For goodness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, as it is written: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, modesty, continence." These are the fruits on whose riches we are fed and with whose abundance we are filled. In this land righteous Noah planted that fruitful vine, and drank of its fruit

and was loosened in his inmost heart, when his twofold descendants clothed him with the praiseworthy cloak of their piety and virtues. In another place too the holy prophet showed us these riches, in which he was rich in Christ and abounded in all things that lead to eternal life. And indeed who is richer than he who is rich in the Lord, so that he can say: "In the way of your testimonies I have delighted as in all riches"? For what could be lacking to a man who was enriched by heavenly oracles? And so in this psalm he urges us to seek for ourselves that eternal treasure and take delight in its acquisition.

And so he says: "Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the requests of your heart." Why did he not say "your requests" but "the requests of your heart"? For the requests of the outer man and the inner are not common, nor are all approved by Christ, since the law of the flesh often fights against the law of the mind. But those requests that belong to the inner man, renewed by the Spirit, the Lord, when asked, grants in effect.

Hence he says elsewhere too: "May the Lord grant you according to your heart and confirm all your requests." He says "according to the heart," not according to the appetite of the flesh; and may he confirm, he says, those requests which come from the inmost heart, not those directed by the enticement and pleasures of this flesh.

"Reveal your way to the Lord and hope in him, and he himself will act; and he will bring forth your justice like light and your judgment like noonday." By this one verse he has declared what you ought to be; for who reveals his way but he who confesses the inner things of his heart to God, the judge of his secrets?

Well does he say "reveal," that is, open your conscience, lest the shadow of this world or of the flesh weigh it down. For sprouting seeds, if overshadowed, grow thin; exposed to the sun they grow fat. Why speak of seeds? The shade of the forest kills even shrubs, so that they do not rise on high, and prevents them from spreading their branching arms.

And finely he says: "Reveal your way to the Lord," because human nature, prone to sin, draws a kind of veil over our mind, so that we do not confess our sins to the Lord, who can heal our wounds,

so that a man is ashamed to ask for medicine with his own mouth, lest his disgraces be exposed before men. So conscience presses itself in within a man, though it cannot be hidden, and puts off so long that the wound festers, until it is uncovered no longer by the health of faith but by the incurable fierceness of the ulcer. "Reveal," he says, "your way to the Lord," that is, open your way, do not hide it, as Cain hid it, who wished to lie hidden;

for "everyone who does evil hates the light." David revealed his way, who said: "I tell my works to the king." Open your mind, so that there is nothing you fear to be blamed for; Paul too revealed his, who dared to say: "I am conscious of nothing against myself." Let your action, your life be such that your way may shine before your Father who is in heaven.

But because every human condition is subject to frailty and it is not in our power to direct our path by our will, he therefore says to you: "Hope in the Lord, and he himself will act," that is, to open your way and not allow you to be such as to flee the light, fearing to be exposed, and love darkness so as to be able to hide your shameful deeds, saying: "Darkness covers me;

who knows whether the Most High sees?" For how can he who plots adultery not seek a night suited to his attempts, he who plans falsehood not bring a witness to his fraud, he who seeks to corrupt a judge in order to crush the innocent not explore the secrecy of iniquity? The robber besets lonely places and covers himself with the darkness of night so that his crime may succeed.

Iniquity, then, is darkness; God is light. And even if you wish to hide your justice, God brings it out into the light and does not allow the judgment to lie hidden by which you chose what is good and rejected what is wicked. And he not only makes your judgment shine, but shine like noonday. When this sun pours itself out wholly into splendor, it is noon; it was noon when Joseph feasted with his brothers, not avenging the injury but forgetting it.

"Be subject to the Lord and entreat him." You are warned not only to be subject to the Lord but also to entreat the Lord, so that you may fulfil your zeal for subjection; as he said above: "Reveal your way to the Lord and hope in him." It is fitting not only to reveal your way but also to hope in the Lord. Good subjection is not abject, not base, but glorious and sublime; for he is subject to God who does the Lord's will.

Indeed, who does not know that the wisdom of the mind is more excellent than the wisdom of the flesh? And the wisdom of the mind is subject to God's law, the wisdom of the flesh is not subject, and the apostle added: "nor can it be." Be subject, then, that is, near to Christ, so that you may fulfil the law. Indeed Christ fulfilled the law by doing the Father's will, and so he is the end of the law and the fullness of love, because, loving the Father, he applied all his effort to his will.

Hence the apostle said as a matter of glory: "But when all things have been subjected to him, then he himself also will be subject to him who subjected all things to himself, that God may be all in all"; and he himself says: "Is not my soul subject to God? For from him is my salvation." Indeed it was out of piety, not weakness, that he was subject to his parents Joseph and Mary. And Christ's greatest glory is to pour himself into the hearts of all men and call all back from the ungodliness of faithlessness and the attachment to paganism,

so as to make them subject to himself. But when he has subjected all things to himself, when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and all Israel has been saved and there is one body in Christ in the whole world, then he himself will be subject, offering his gift to God the Father, as the chief of all priests and possessor of the heavenly altars, so that the faith of all may be the sacrifice. This subjection, then, is one of piety, in that

the Lord Jesus will be subject in his body, whose body and members we are. Be subject, then, O man, to Christ, that is, subject to the wisdom of God, subject to the Word, subject to justice, subject to power, because Christ is all these. Let every man subject himself to God; for

he teaches not one but all to subject their heart, subject their soul, subject their flesh, so that God may be all in all. He is subject, then, who is full of grace and takes up the yoke of Christ and carries out the Lord's commands vigorously and without delay; but he is without subjection who exalts himself in vain, puffed up by the sense of his own flesh, unaccustomed to devotion and turning from the observance of loving service which by the very law of nature we owe to the eternal Author. Lastly, he who is without sin is subject to Christ, because he has been redeemed by the Lord; but he who is in sin cannot be called free, but a slave, whom the heavy chains of sin hold.

There follows: "Do not envy him who prospers in his way, doing iniquity." Here he has plainly indicated what he meant above: that the malicious are not to be roused by rivalry to malice, nor those who do iniquity imitated. For it is not iniquity but the prosperity that comes to those who act unjustly that often tempts us to think them worth imitating, so that we may reach their successes, saying: "Behold, these are sinners, and, abounding in the world, they have gained riches. And I said: then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent, and I have been scourged all day long."

If, then, David was scourged, we must take care that we are not scourged too, and that it be said to us that riches, honors, powers seem to be allotted to this generation as wandering and uncertain products of money and profits of iniquity, not as any rewards of virtue, and so they come like a dream and vanish with the dream as you rise. Athletes themselves, it is certain, are crowned when they have won, not before they win.

Our wrestling is with the world; conquer the world before you seek the crown. No one is crowned before he has completed the contest. Do those who run the race receive the prize before they have run the course? How many who were ahead fall at the finish and are cheated of the speed of their running! Are you more acceptable to God than Paul? He, the vessel of election, the teacher of the Gentiles, never dared to ask for a crown for himself in this world. Indeed hear him saying: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; for the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord will give me on that day."

Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven (who heard things that it is not lawful for a man to speak, and whether he was caught up in the body or without the body he does not know, as he himself testified), Paul, then, says that the crown is to be given him on that day: and do you insist that it be given you here? Complete, then, the time of your contest. An athlete does not wrestle once, nor does a soldier fight once, so as to complete his service; and you too have a struggle not with one passion only.

If you have escaped the earlier passions, anger follows; and so Scripture says to you: "Cease from anger and forsake indignation." There are many vices that creep up on the unwise. Anger is a heavy passion; it often kindles a man against his will, and, when he wants to punish mildly, sweeps him into fury, so that he kills one he thought should be corrected.

Stirred up, he often runs an innocent man through with the sword; very many have killed friends and brothers through indignation. So the wise man says: "Anger destroys even the wise." It is a saying of Solomon that anger destroys not only any men from the crowd but the wise themselves. And David warns the wise man, saying: "Cease from anger," lest, once you are kindled by it, it should not cease before its flame consumes you. "Forsake," he says, "indignation," that is: nature sweeps you along, feeling moves you, someone's fault or offense rouses you to be indignant; but not without limit, so that you know no measure:

forsake it, put an end to it, lest it draw you into sin. This is what he said above: "Be angry and do not sin." For he does not urge you to be angry, but for a time yields to the feeling, yet gives a remedy, lest the force of the sore creep further. "Be angry," as he says, belongs to your passion. For a physician does not at once apply medicines to an illness. If the pain is burning, he applies poultices so that the pain may ease; if the fever

rages, he waits for the time for the remedy, and is accustomed to deny drink itself to the thirsty. He does not say "do not be feverish" when the patient's heat is burning, but says: wait for the fever to stop, let the agitation be digested. So too the prophet could not say to man, whose flesh is stirred by various passions of agitation as by various diseases: "You shall not be angry," but he says: "Cease from anger and forsake indignation," lest you sin;

for anger is a heavy teacher of sin. Another physician also says: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," lest, while you put it off long, he should come who is wont to rouse the warm body from sleep, and goad you, plant thoughts in you and plunge himself into the secret places of your heart, saying: "Avenge your injury, know that you are a man; it is a woman's weakness not to take vengeance.

So a slave was to despise you, a brother deceive you, a friend mock you, and you still do not avenge your insult? You must proscribe him, you must rise up with the sword and console your pain with your adversary's death. He was a man who killed his enemy; he is rightly praised, because he avenged himself so that no one else would dare to do him wrong." With these goads he is kindled more, moved more, so that what is written is fulfilled: "Anger destroys even the wise."

So do not listen to him; do not envy so as to act wickedly, "for those who act wickedly will be exterminated." Those are exterminated who have no roots, like herbs or hay. "Let the weak eat herbs"; but you, plant a vine in your field, lay out a vineyard; and if Ahab comes and says to you: "Give me your vineyard, so that I may plant herbs for myself," do not consent to him, lest by your consent he sow perishable things and cut down eternal ones.

Naboth is counted among the saints because he thought the inheritance of his ancestors should not be given up even to the king, and preferred to be stoned rather than give his vineyard to be plundered. The inheritance of our ancestors is the true faith. There arose Hamans, propped up by royal power, who thought the temple of the Lord should be handed over to them, threatening bitter punishments. But far be it that, in a mind serving the Lord, fear of punishment should outweigh the form of piety.

Faithlessness did not prevail, because faith stood firm. There is also a kind of vineyard in the hearts of the faithful, of which Isaiah says: "A vineyard was made for the beloved on a fertile horn." This vineyard the Lord planted in our hearts, and so we read God saying: "I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true." Let no one, then, take this vineyard from the field of our soul, for that vineyard is blessed. And so it was said of the saints:

"By the fruit of grain, wine and oil they were multiplied." It is good, then, to have within you winepresses overflowing with wine, so that wine may flow into your vessel from the vineyard of Sorek, that cup that makes drunk, how excellent. For Sorek is the vineyard of the new beginning, of the new equity. Hence it is said to us too: "Sing to your God a new song; his beginning, magnify his name from the end of the earth." Let this vineyard, then, make grapes, not iniquity. That is why the vineyard of the Jews was abandoned, because it made iniquity, as it is written, and not judgment. Let us, then, bear fruit in Christ, so that we may deserve to be everlasting.

"For those who wait for the Lord will possess the land," surely that land of the living. There is a kind of heavenly land, which bears fruit for heavenly beings, of which he says: "I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." This land supplies food for the belly with much human sweat; that land, the good land of the Lord,

bears fruit without any labor; in it is the lasting possession of the just and the inheritance of the pious mind. And well he says: "But those who wait for the Lord will possess the land by inheritance." For this is the land that does not pass away; for "heaven and earth will pass away, but the words of the Lord will not pass away." And so neither will that intelligible land of paradise be able to pass away, in which are those who keep the words of the Lord. In this land Adam was placed, to take the fruit of eternal life; but because he could not keep the words of the Lord, he did not deserve to remain in the possession he had received.

But he who keeps the words of the Lord confidently says: "Waiting, I waited for the Lord, and he looked upon me." But because Adam did not wait for the Lord (for how did he wait who fled and was afraid to present himself?), neither did the Lord deign to see him; for "the eyes of the Lord are upon the just." Him he was so unwilling to see that he asked, saying: "Adam, where are you?" He who is sought is counted as absent. It is faith that makes us present to God, faithlessness that makes the ungodly exiles.

So no one is absent to God except one who has made himself absent; and therefore he says: "Be it done to you according to your faith"; for "he who does not know will not be known." So Adam, as a sinner, could not keep his place; cast out of paradise, he was banished to a stronghold, to do penance. He received a delay, so as not to perish utterly at once, so that Eve might be saved through the bearing of children: the faith of holy Abel, the grace of the prophets, the posterity of the church.

But he who will not be redeemed through these things and thinks he should persist in sin, of him the prophecy says: "And yet a little while and the sinner will not be; and you will seek his place and will not find it." For how can he exist in the future, when the place of sin cannot be lasting? For this is the land that opened its mouth to receive the blood of the innocent, and so in this land is the place of sinners.

The earth passes away; how can the sinner's place be found? I think that God commanded the firmament to be between water and water for this reason: to separate sins from virtues, so that the upper water, which praises the Lord, might remain free of error, and the lower be liable to sin. Indeed that one sees God, this does not see him;

the water above the heavens sees, that in the abyss does not see. Hence it is also said: "The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and feared; the abysses were troubled; a multitude of the sound of waters." Rightly the abysses are troubled, over which is ugly darkness, and so they cannot have peace. Hence the legion of demons asked to be sent into the abyss, and threw itself into the waves with great tumult so as to drown the herd of swine it had found. Sinners, then, seek the abyss, where the gloom of darkness is.

"But the gentle will possess the land and will delight in the multitude of peace." Rightly they possess the land in whom God himself rests, as he resounded through Isaiah in a divine oracle, saying: "On whom shall I rest but on the humble and quiet and him who trembles at my words?" Who are the gentle but those whom no

goad of dissension stirs up, anger does not disturb, savagery does not exasperate, the madness of cruelty does not inflame? And so, because while placed in the body they loved not wines, not banquets, not riches, but the Lord's peace, in place of that delight of bodily pleasures of which they thought they would be deprived in order to gain eternal grace, they will delight in the multitude of peace, which our Lord Jesus gave to the human race in his days, as the prophecy, which did not lie, includes, asserting: "In his days justice will arise and a multitude of peace, until the moon is lifted up." What, then, is the peace by which the people of every church has been multiplied, but that of which the Lord said: "My peace I leave you, my peace I give you"? He gave peace who calmed the wars of souls.

There follows: "The sinner will watch the just man and gnash his teeth at him. But the Lord will laugh at him, for he foresees that his day will come." It is indeed the habit of one who is indignant and seething with anger to gnash with his teeth; but the heart of the malicious also has its teeth, which are wont not to make a noise but to tear. Plots, the devices of wickedness, are the sinner's teeth.

So the sinner lies in wait for the just man, because he envies him; for the just man's life refutes the sinner, and condemns him silently with greater authority than if it spoke with a clear voice. But the just man must not fear the sinner's gnashing, because wickedness cannot be perpetual. Plots are temporal, but the defenses of virtue eternal. The sinner's death dissolves all his power and fraud.

He adds more: "Behold," he says, "sinners have drawn the sword, they have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy." What is the sinner's sword but the opposite of the sword of the Holy Spirit? Scripture has taught me this sword, the apostle has taught it, saying that we have "the breastplate of justice and the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." The word of God, then, is the sword of the Holy Spirit; on the contrary, the sword of the wicked one is an evil word.

With this the apostle Peter struck Ananias and Sapphira, as with a sword of his speech; with this sword Paul took away the light of the eyes from Elymas, who opposed his arguments, and poured in the night of blindness. Consider now, I pray, sinners quarrelling and hurling bitter insolence and bringing forth the reproaches of accusations. If you hear them, will you not say: "Sinners have drawn the sword," when shameful speech is brought out of a wanton mouth as if

from a sheath, which ought to have been held back and put away? Just as the word of God is called a sword, and so too is the sinner's speech, so also the bow which sinners bend is their mind, and the arrow they shoot is poisoned speech. For as Christ, who is the Word of God, is an arrow, to whom it is said: "I have set you as a chosen arrow which is brought out of the quiver of God," so there are arrows of the faithless, which, shot from a kind of bow of iniquity, wound

the unwary innocent, unless their fiery darts are driven back by the shield of faith; and so you must be careful, soldier in battle, because your fight is not only against flesh and blood but also against the very spiritual forces of wickedness which are not seen. Let weapons mighty for God abound in you, so that you can easily draw out whatever darts you wish, lest the enemy be able to overpower you poor and unarmed. Be strong for God, rich for God, so that it may be said of you:

"The ransom of a man's soul is his riches." Abound in the treasure of wisdom, be rich in word and good works, so that you can be fortified. Flee the riches of the sinner, lest he find where he can wound you. Be merciful, so that you may remain unwounded or be able to heal yourself if you have been wounded. There is also a poor man whom the adversaries wish to wound, of that number of whom the Savior said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

And so, he says, "let the sword of sinners enter into their own heart and let their bows be broken," so that, just as the peace of those who bless returns upon the servants of God from those who did not receive it, so too the malice of sinners, with which they try to harm the just man, may return to their own ruin, so that they are slaughtered by their own darts and wounds; for often darts are thrown back on those who threw them.

This happened too in the recent war, when the faithless and sacrilegious were attacking a man who trusted in the Lord and were striving to snatch his kingdom from him, threatening the churches of the Lord with savage persecutions: suddenly a wind arose, which struck the shields from the hands of the faithless and turned the darts and missiles of all back upon the army of the sinner.

The enemy was not yet at hand, and already they could not bear the battles of the winds and were laid low by their own javelins; and, what is worse, those wounds of the body were not graver than those of the mind; for they lost heart when they realized that God was fighting against them. They had gone out, then, provoking, and from the quiver of their heart were bringing out against the Christian people the poisoned darts of faithlessness; but their ungodliness returned on their own head.

In the end they were broken up among themselves by their own faithlessness, and the Lord scattered the plots prepared for the faithful, so that not only could they not harm the pious but they were stripped of their own auxiliaries and their weapons passed over to the enemy. How much better had they not drawn the sword from the sheath, that is, had never uttered ungodly words! For if each will render an account for an idle word, how much more will he expiate words of sacrilege with grave punishments!

"You have tried us by fire," David says. All of us, then, will be tried by fire. And Ezekiel says: "Behold, the Lord Almighty comes. And who will endure the day of his entrance? Or who will endure when he appears to us? For he will enter like the fire of a furnace and like the lye of the washers. And he will sit smelting and purifying like gold and silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and pour them out like gold and like silver, and

they will be offering sacrifice to the Lord in equity." The sons of Levi, then, will be purified by fire, Ezekiel by fire, Daniel by fire. But these, though they will be tried by fire, will yet say: "We passed through fire and water." Others will remain in the fire. For the former the fire will be as dew, as for the Hebrew youths who were thrown into the blaze of the burning furnace; but the avenging fire will burn up the ministers of ungodliness.

Woe to me, if my work burns: I shall suffer the loss of this labor; even if the Lord saves his servants, we shall be saved by faith, yet saved as through fire; even if we are not burned up, yet we shall be burned. How, though, some remain in the fire and others pass through, let divine Scripture teach us in another place. The people of the Egyptians was sunk in the Red Sea, but the people of the Hebrews passed through;

Moses passed through, Pharaoh was cast down, because grave sins sank him. In the same way the sacrilegious will be cast down into the lake of burning fire, who have flung proud insults at God. While placed here, then, let us follow the pillar of fire, which may enlighten us while we are in this body and show us the way, so that in the future the cloud may cool us by night, by which we may be able to relieve the fierce burnings.

But see what Scripture says: "Let the Lord break the bows of sinners." But he set his own bow in the cloud when the floods had ceased, so that calm might be restored. Hence we must believe that the adversary and wicked one bends his bow to stir storms in quiet souls and raise blasts of wind. Let us pray, then, that the Lord our God may break the bow of malice and stand by his poor and needy one, who, for fear of God, does not know that riches are to be grasped, the estates of lesser men seized, widows stripped of the inheritances left by their elders.

"Better is a little to the just than the many riches of sinners." It is not riches, then, that are accused, but the riches of sinners; unless perhaps because the sinner said: "All these things have been handed over to me, and I give them to whom I will"; and then because riches rather inflame the torch of desire, and each one, while he desires more, does not turn aside from the byways of sins.

Hence the Savior too said: "Make friends for yourselves of the mammon of iniquity." For that wealth is of iniquity which is in the devil's power, to be conferred on whom he wishes. It can also be understood that "better is a little to the just than the many riches of sinners," because there is a kind of man rich in words, like the philosophers of this world disputing about sacrileges, about the motion of the stars, about the star of Jupiter and of Saturn, about the generations of men, about the worship of images, about geometry and dialectic. Philosophers, then, are rich in speech, poor in faith, without share in the truth.

And there are many simple priests of the Lord, poor in speech, sublime in abstinence and virtue. Those speak faithlessness to many, these assert the faith in few words; those daily lose their own priests, this poor man gains peoples for the church and for the number of believers. He who hears these and sees the quality of their works will say: "Better is a little to the just than the many riches

of sinners." From here Solomon drew what he set down as though his own: "In much speaking you will not escape sin." Dialectic, then, flows with riches of words; piety keeps the fear of God. So this man, sparing in words, rich in spirit, prefers to fear rather than toss about vain words of truth. For fear is the discipline of wisdom; talkativeness is the shipwreck of innocence and virtue and an incentive to falling and guilt.

"For the arms of sinners," he says, "will be broken," so that their actions cannot hinder the just man, "lest the rod of sinners be left upon the lot of the just." And Paul says: "May God crush Satan under your feet." For if his arm is broken, he himself will be wholly crushed, so that his devices may be trodden down like the venom of a serpent.

"But the Lord strengthens the just," when the adversary's arm is broken; and so the just man says: "And you have strengthened your hand upon me," and Job says: "The hand of the Lord has touched me." The Lord, then, put his hand on his servant and broke the hand of the sinner, which he had put on him with the power he had received, and broke his arm. So the devil was deceived by his own word, who said: "Put your hand on him and let us see whether he will not bless you to your face";

for he did not dare to say "curses," but left it to be understood. The Lord put out his hand and Job was strengthened; he who was thought to curse began to bless; for the divine hand heals the just when it touches them, it does not wound. He put out his hand and every spot of the leper departed; he touched the eyes of the blind and, the blindness driven away, the light of the eyes shone again. Ask always, then, to be strengthened, since "you too who stand, see that you do not fall." We must stand so as to be strengthened by the Lord. The world is slippery, we soon fall; so let us ask that the Lord may deign to make us stable and strong.

Do not think that the Lord does not know your way; if you are just, he knows it. Believe the prophet who says: "The Lord knows the ways of the spotless, and their inheritance will be spotless; they will not be confounded in the evil time." He who knows Christ is known by the Lord; he knows the just, he does not know the unjust. So he will say to the unjust: "Depart from me, all you who work iniquity; I do not know you," that is: because you are unworthy of divine knowledge; I do not know you, because you yourselves chose not to know me. Your works do not know me, your deeds do not know me; even if you say that you know me, your sins refute you.

"Every sin is from the evil one, but he who does not sin abides in me": this John wrote. Why should I speak of the Lord, that he disdains to know the ungodly? Paul disdains it, who said: "If anyone among you is a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge what I write to you; but he who does not know will not be known"; and elsewhere it is said thus: "The Lord knows those who are his." Let us, then, be the Lord's, so that the Lord may know us, "and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."

The Greek has: "The Lord knows the days of the spotless"; for there are days of Elijah, there are days of Nebuchadnezzar. So the gospel has: "in the days of Elijah, when heaven was shut." It was night for the faithless, but there was light for Elijah; heaven was shut for the faithless, but open for Elijah; there was famine for the faithless, but plenty for Elijah. For he who was fed with food by heavenly things could not hunger, nor did he hunger who himself fed others. So the just man is day to himself in darkness, because "the light also shines in darkness." Joseph too was in Egypt and noon shone for him, as he said above.

But to the sinner God said: "Why do you recount my justices?" Justice is light, for above he has: "And he will bring forth your justice like light." You have, then, what may shine in you, if you follow justice. The day shines for you, the night gives you light, because for the faithful even night will be lit up like day. The Lord, then, knows the days of the just man, because he himself enlightens every man coming into this world, that is, him who lives after the image and likeness of God, him who knows himself as God's man, so as to flee the neighing lust of horses, the fury of wild beasts, the timidity of hares, the fraud of foxes, the rapine of wolves; that

man who acts as though he had come into this world as a newcomer, who is born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh but of God. You have come, then; do not stay, do not cling to earthly things. And so that you may know that there are good days, hear one saying: "Abraham saw my day and rejoiced." He has a good day who knows the Son of God as good God and confesses him as Lord. And again he himself warns us that we must beware, because "the days are evil." What days are evil? Those in which evil is known, which is from the evil one.

Or perhaps the days of the world are evil, because the world lies in the evil one. But we read of an evil day after the world too: "In the evil day the Lord will deliver him," that is, on the day of judgment because of the punishments of many. For the unjust must be tormented and the just must suffer with them, since the angels too rejoice when one sinner is saved from death. They suffer with him, then, when he is punished, even though we have read elsewhere: "The just will rejoice when he sees the vengeance on the ungodly"; this I reserve for its place, though you have often heard why he rejoices; but let us not insert one occupation into another.

"The Lord knows the days of the spotless," because his grace and fullness have mercy on spotless innocence; he does not have mercy on those who go astray. These have no day, because they flee the light; of them it is finely said: "Their days pass like a shadow." The knowledge of God, then, is one of favor, not of sight. His eyes are light; those he looks upon he enlightens; and so his eyes are the day of the just.

Hence also "their inheritance will be for ever," because they sought eternal goods, not the gains of a temporal inheritance, "and they will have nothing to blush for in the evil time," that is, of the heavenly judgment, "and in the days of famine they will be satisfied," because "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." But what man? "I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows), caught up as such to the third heaven."

That man, then, who is in Christ, who does not know that he is in the flesh, who walks not in the flesh but in the spirit, who is caught up not only to heaven but to the third heaven, and is caught up to paradise and hears words which it is not lawful for a man to speak, who glories not in his powers but in his weaknesses: he lives not by bread alone but by every word of God. For the Word of God is life, because the Word was made flesh. Hence the evangelist excellently said: "What was made in him is life."

The Alexandrians, indeed, and the Egyptians read: "All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing that was made," and, placing a stop in between, add: "In him is life." Let that punctuation be kept safe for the faithful; I am not afraid to read: "What was made in him is life,"

and the Arian has nothing to hold on to, for I do not consider his poisons but recognize the custom of reading sacred Scripture. For he did not say "the Word was made before every beginning"; he did not say "the Word was made"; but if you want to hear what he said: "The Word," he says, "was with God." He was with God who worked with him, who ruled with him. He did not say "the Word was made," but said: "The Word was God."

And God is not a thing made, but the maker and creator. Open your ears and hear: "All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing": you learn that he is the Son, in whom is the fullness of the Godhead. Open your ears a little more and hear him saying: "What was made in him is life."

"In him," he says, "was made," not "the Word of God was made." Or if this moves you to cavil, because he said "was made in him," do you cavil against God the Father too, because the Son of God said: "But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they have been done in God," or because David said: "I will confess to you, O Lord, for you have heard me and have become my salvation," that is: you have turned to me for salvation, you have worked for my salvation? I could use other passages, but I do not want you to believe me, lest you think them arguments of ingenuity, not testimonies of truth.

Let the son of thunder himself, he who reclined on Christ's breast, he from whom the Lord did not keep his secrets, to whom Peter nodded to ask the Lord, and he asked and the Lord revealed it, let him explain what he meant by saying: "What was made in him is life." Hear him interpreting, then, for he was already guarding against your cavils, Arian: "What was from the beginning, and what we have heard and seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have examined, concerning the Word of life; and the life appeared."

It is the flesh, then, that appeared in Christ, or Christ in the flesh; he is our life in all things. His Godhead is life, his eternity is life, his flesh is life, his passion is life. Hence Jeremiah too says: "In his shadow we shall live." The shadow of the wings is the shadow of the cross, the shadow of the passion. His death is life, his wound is life, his blood is life, his burial is life, his resurrection is the life of all.

Do you want to know how his death is life? We have been baptized into his death, so that we may walk with him in newness of life. And he himself says: "Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He himself, the grain, was loosed in body and died for us, so as to bear much fruit in us. His death, then, is the fruit of life. What was made in him, then, is life.

Flesh was made in him: it is life; infancy was made in him: it is life; judgment was made in him: it is life; death was made in him: it is life; forgiveness of sins was made in him: it is life; a wound was made in him: it is life; mockery was made in him: it is life; division was made in him: it is life; burial was made in him: it is life; resurrection was made in him: it is life. See how many things were made in him, by which the conversion of our life was made, so that the life which had perished might be restored.

Lastly, sale was made in him: it is life; redemption was made in him: it is life. He was sold to death by Judas, bought to death by the Jews, so that by his precious blood we might be redeemed to life. This is the life that was made, this is the life that appeared, this is the life we have seen, this is the life that was with the Father; because he who was in the beginning, he himself was born of the virgin, to be life for the dying.

Let us question this very passage set before us. What is "a man in Christ"? That is, made in Christ, in whom all things were made, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and in him, and he is before

all and all things hold together in him, that is, in his power. A man in Christ, then, is one made after his image and likeness; a man in Christ, one who is wholly in Christ. For just as God the Father, through the unity and fullness of the Godhead, is wholly in the Son and the Son in the Father, so, by intention and the affection of piety (to use it as an example, not a comparison), man is wholly in Christ; for "he who clings to the Lord is one spirit."

The man in Christ, then, is not that earthly man, not the man of sin, but Christ's man. Why, then, should "what was made in him is life" trouble you, if the man too, especially the inner man, was made in him, crucified in him, renewed in him, buried in him and buried with him, raised again in him? Why should it trouble you, as I said, that it is written: "What was made in him is life," when a man has said:

"In God we shall do valiantly"? If you ask what life it is, let it move you what was made in him; take it: surely the life is the church. In him she was made, in his rib; in him Eve was raised again. And Eve is life, that is, what was made, because Eve who had perished was saved through the church, that is, through the bearing of her children, as it is written, because sober posterity amended the offense of the earlier. Hence Paul himself too was caught up to life, who before was a persecutor unto death.

We have strayed rather far, in order to speak of that man who lives not by bread alone but by every word of God. Let us return to the psalm: and so the spotless will not be confounded in the day of judgment, "and in the days of famine they will be satisfied."

"Failing, they will fail like smoke." The Greek has ἐξέλιπον, that is, "they failed." You see someone suddenly come to power and the insignia of honor; you judge him lofty. You see he has success; do you not say of him: "Where is this man who was honored and exalted?" He has failed. So the Greek said more, because where someone is thought to be honored and exalted, there he is overtaken by his own failing, so that you realize the flowing of rivers has passed sooner than it came, and while you wait for the streams to come, they have flowed past while you were still waiting. On the other hand, the humble and gentle, while they are put under and oppressed by the rich, are exalted from their humility and suddenly shine. And so Paul was well pleased in weaknesses, not in powers.

But let us take care that no one thinks he gloried in revelations, and let us repeat the words, so that he himself may defend himself as a teacher of humility: "I know," he says, "a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows), caught up as such to the third heaven." He says it was revealed to him fourteen years before, and yet he kept the revelation so long and held it back, and would not have spoken had he not judged it useful to us to speak, lest we be puffed up by revelations.

For if Paul did not glory in so great a grace, neither should we glory. He did not glory when young: would he glory when old? Then, he could not deny that he was caught up to the third heaven, and yet he testified that he did not know whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body. He glories, then, not in knowledge but in ignorance, and proclaims God's grace toward himself. What belongs to knowledge he denies, what belongs to love he confesses; for "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." And again he said such a man was caught up;

how he was caught up, whether in the body or out of the body, he said was uncertain to him. See the balance of wisdom. He set one man in Christ and himself as another, who says: "I do not know." What is another's he extols, what is his own he humbles. "And he heard," he says, "ineffable words." He did not say "I heard," but he did not deny that another had heard. Modestly, then, he preferred to signify himself as a witness rather than a seer, and avoided seeming an arbiter of heavenly secrets. For to bear witness belongs to truth; not to refuse the merit of the revelation belongs to one who glories. And so he says: "Of such a one I will glory, but of myself I will not glory."

And what does he mean that a man, that man in Christ, heard what it is not lawful for a man to speak? How does it fit that it was not lawful for a man to speak what it was lawful for a man to hear? If it is not lawful for the man who heard to speak, how was he entrusted with hearing what he was not permitted to speak? What is this difference? If it means for another man, an outer one, how could a man come to know what it was not lawful for a man to hear?

Hence it seems that it was not the grace of speaking that was lacking to that man who was in Christ, for it was not lacking to him, but that place, time and merit were lacking to those who would hear. For he heard in heaven, and so it was judged unfitting that he should speak on earth what he had heard in heaven, since even on earth there is this distinction, that what is sung in one region is not sung in another, according to what is written: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

Indeed the Hebrews did not sing in the land of captivity what they had been accustomed to sing in their homeland. This land is one of captivity, another is the land of freedom; this one of sin, that of eternal rest; this one of the valley, that heavenly. In heaven, then, Paul now proclaims what on earth he could not proclaim before; for the secrets of wisdom are to be spoken among the perfect.

And yet what does the mention of this revelation accomplish, if not to teach that one must by no means glory in revelations but in weaknesses, because weakness is both a remedy against revelation and an exercise of virtue, whereas revelation is a slippery path to elation? For lest Paul himself, who was caught up to the third heaven, should be exalted by the sublimity of the revelation, he received a thorn in the flesh.

Weakness, then, came to the rescue, lest grace turn into danger. Weakness, then, was more useful than grace. That same weakness is also the workshop of virtue, as the Lord testified, that "power is perfected in weaknesses." Indeed after the revelation he asked for the remedy of health and did not obtain it; but in weakness he did not seek a remedy, but finished the course and found the crown.

"The sinner borrows," he says, "and will not repay, but the just man has mercy and gives." This too fits the person of Paul, because the just man has mercy and gives. See him distributing the Lord's words, see him lending the Lord's silver at interest.

He received one mina and returned two; he received two and returned four; he received five and returned ten. He did not tie up in a napkin what he had received, but paid it out to the money-changers and received back with interest what he had paid out. So he both freed the receiver from the greatest sin, lest the Lord's money perish with him, and himself deserved to be set over ten cities. What the ten cities are, recognize in the epistles he wrote, although the apostles, to whom it was said, are not bound by a prescribed number:

"Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature." So he from Jerusalem through the East and Illyricum and Italy dispensed the Lord's money. And lest anyone think he lent his own, he testified that it was the Lord's money, saying: "To those who are joined in marriage I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not depart from her husband"; and elsewhere:

"Do you seek proof of Christ who speaks in me?" Indeed the king himself, in whom there is a figure of the Lord, said this: "You ought to have entrusted my money to the money-changers." "My," he says, not "yours." The just man, then, has mercy and gives. Hear him saying how he gives: "I teach in all the churches." But the sinner borrows and does not repay. See the rich man borrowing and not repaying, the poor man receiving and at once paying back, lest he remain longer in debt. So much for the moral sense.

See now the mystical poor man, that is, the simple man who fears God's name, hearing the word about chastity and repaying it, hearing about mercy and repaying it, hearing about gentleness and not becoming angry; but that arrogant and proud rich man hearing indeed, but casting God's words behind him, hearing about the condemnation of luxury and indulging in luxury the more.

In short, the church repays what it received; the synagogue does not repay. Recognize that the church repays: "They were yours," he says, "and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word"; and elsewhere: "For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me." The church, then, returned the money of love which it received from the Lord, but the synagogue did not return it. And so it is said of the Jews: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin," because they certainly heard and did not believe.

It is proved, then, that sinners borrowed and did not repay. The sinner, then, is always in need, but the just man abounds and gives, whose conscience is rich. So the Jews were in need in their riches ("the rich were in want and went hungry"), but Christians did not fail in the riches of their simplicity.

The just man, then, is good, and so Scripture added: "For those who bless him will possess the land, but those who curse him will perish." How does the just man possess the land, or what land, when Scripture says: "Will you alone dwell on the earth?" and elsewhere: "Woe to those who dwell on the earth," which is a word of rebuke and curse? Of what land, then, is the possession blessed? Not of this one, which is hidden in darkness and filled with bitterness, but of that which flows with honey and milk, that is, has the grace of sweetness and the brightness of eternal light.

Take the sweetness of good honey, rather, sweeter than honey: "Pain and sadness and groaning have fled," because the grace of sweetness will shut out the bitterness of human frailty. And elsewhere: "And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, nor mourning." Take also the brightness of the milk: "And they will not need a lamp or the light of the sun; for the Lord himself will give light upon them, and they will reign for ever and ever."

There is also a mystical just man who has mercy and gives, who gave us all the words he received from the Father, forgave us the debts of our sins, and paid his blood for our debts, so that we should not be in another's usury, but the good creditor might hold us in his own debt. And there is that sinner who gathered what he did not bring forth

and borrowed what he did not own, and will not give back what he received. Hear that the devil borrowed: "To you," he says, "I will give all this power and their glory, because they have been handed over to me, and I give them to whom I will, if you fall down and worship me." Most wicked one, you received it for testing, not for death; that is, you received it so that

God's servants might be proved, not destroyed; you received it so that God might be worshipped, not denied. You received the things of the world; why do you snatch what is eternal? You received what belongs to the world; why do you want to take away what belongs to Christ? Give those things to whom you will, we do not envy; why are we grudged by you what we want? Do you want to be worshipped, who, more wicked than all, are unworthy even of slavery?

"By the Lord a man's steps will be corrected." The Greek said "steps" in the sense of crossings, that is, passages, and so it is said to you: "If you pass through water, the rivers will not shut you in." Pass on, then, do not stop, as a good traveller, when he comes to some milestone of the road, does not stand but passes by; and you too are on the way, as long as you are set in this course. Had Paul stood still, he would not have finished his course. See that he does not say for this reason: "And you who stand, see that you do not fall"; for he who has passed on cannot fear falling.

"I saw," he says, "the ungodly man exalted and lifted above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not." Seeing, then, the ungodly man exalted, he who did not stand did not stumble; had he stood, he would have admired him and followed him, would have stumbled and fallen like the ungodly man. So Moses, seeing the bush shining and not burning, said: "Passing over, I will see this great sight." He who passes over from this world sees a great sight; he who loosens the chains of this bond by which we are tied to this body sees a great sight.

Moses saw many miracles in the Exodus; another who is not in the exodus does not see so many. The same Moses passed through; the people of the fathers passed through too, because they were going out of the land of captivity. So their steps were directed by the Lord, for whom a pillar of fire shone by night, of cloud by day, so that neither the heat of day should afflict the travellers nor the darkness of night hinder the wayfarers.

You too, deserve by deeds and ask in prayers that your steps may be directed by the Lord, lest your feet be moved, for it is written: "But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well-nigh slipped." We must take care too not to abandon the straight path and be deceived by the byways of crooked roads. So it is said: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

Let us prepare, then, the way of the Lord our God in our minds; let us make his paths straight, let us make straight the paths of our souls, lest we slip. Let our steps not slip like those of Lot's wife, who looked back and could not keep her steps, but they slipped when she was suddenly turned into salt. Let them not slip like those of the Egyptians, whose step the waves of the sea overthrew. Even the Hebrews who were with Moses, because they sinned in the desert, the footsteps of their feet fell, so that they did not enter the land of resurrection.

Is it not also finely said of these that their progress has slipped away, whose hopes have fallen, whose labor has been poured out in vain, whose vows have been abandoned? Consider someone who for several years has had zeal for uprightness, the guarding of chastity, a love of a more careful life, the purpose of pious service, the duty of diligent observance, and suddenly

he is changed, has left the monastery, said farewell to fasts, renounced continence, indulges in delights, pursues luxury. Not long ago they went out of the monasteries, and now they are teachers of luxury, sowers of incontinence, inciters of wantonness, detractors of modesty. Will you not say finely of these: their steps have slipped, who regretted having directed them well? They have done penance of a new kind, for their virtues, and do none for their offenses. But "these went out from us," says John, "but they were not of us; for if

they had been of us, they would have remained with us." These, then, have condemned their own way, to whom it is fitting to say: "O you who have left the straight paths, going into ways of darkness, and who rejoice in evil things and are glad in evil overthrow, whose paths are crooked and their courses winding," like their slippery and winding author. Why have you begun to hate the straight way and deserted just counsel? The Lord has not directed you. But he whom the Lord directs will desire his way, as it is written, and will delight in his paths.

Both senses, however, can be understood (the phrase is so balanced): that he who is directed by the Lord will desire the Lord's way, because with him as guide every labor is lightened, all hindrances are removed, incentives are supplied; and that the Lord himself does not spurn but gladly accepts the way of the man whom he himself has directed to virtue. Finely, too, a man's steps are said to be directed by the Lord, because it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy, to keep one's step without stumbling. For he who plants and he who waters are nothing, but God who gives the increase: to him alone the glory of virtues is rightly given.

Indeed, even the just man sometimes falls. But if he is just, when he falls he will not be troubled. What belongs to his condition falls; what belongs to justice rises, since God does not abandon the just man but strengthens his hand. Why did he say not "foot" but "hand," unless perhaps because one who falls does not slip by the foot so much, but the weak man is often deceived on a slippery place or stumbles on a rock? But here understand the fall of the just man, that is, of the stronger.

Indeed, among the people who wrestle, if one goes down on his knee or slips with his foot, he is counted as beaten. An athlete who has the skill of wrestling and wrestles for the crown even goes down on his knee deliberately in order to win; and if he has slipped he is not excluded, and if he is pressed by one who is on top, yet holding himself up with his hands he contends lawfully, and the prize is not taken from him unless he has been laid flat on his belly or pinned by the grip of arms. Hence frequent contests arise, because there are many kinds of falls unknown to most. For they properly call their falls "ruins";

for in Greek they are called πτώματα (falls). So when he is gripped and pressed, he often rolls himself over, and the one who was held to be underneath gets on top and, as he rises, throws down the one above. This Scripture seems to signify when it says: "You have turned over all his bed in his weakness." And so it is said of him: when the good athlete falls, he is not troubled. Many, too, who trust in their art even want to be held, so as to win sooner.

But even if he has been marked down, to use the very word, both a first and a second time, he is not excluded; he is sometimes allowed to renew the struggle, and it often happens that he wins and that the one who overcame him in the second bout yields. So, then, the just man too, even if he has met with a stumbling-block

and fallen, should not abandon the zeal of devotion and faith; let him hold to sobriety, do penance, often restore himself. And so Peter asks: "If my brother sins against me, how often shall I forgive him? Up to seven times?" And the Lord answered: "Not only seven times, but seventy times seven." And so that you may know that we are athletes, and are pushed, and others fall, and many are thrown down, hear one saying:

"The Lord upholds all who fall and raises up all who are thrown down." Hence too David says of himself, or he who spoke in the prophet: "Pushed, I was overturned so as to fall, and the Lord took me up"; for Jesus did not fall, but was pushed. For since he himself raises the thrown, how could he himself be thrown down? And that the just man, when he has fallen, can rise again Scripture testifies, saying: "Does he who falls not add to rise again? Or does he who has turned away not return? Woe to those who turn away with a shameless turning away, says the Lord."

Would that Christ's athlete were unconquerable and unbeatable and glorious at every age, in every kind of virtue, as he says: "But in all things we overcome because of him who loved us"! What is "in all things"? There are athletes who are called boys, youths, men, that is, παῖδες, ἀγένειοι, ἄνδρες. Scripture too knows these ages among wrestlers, when David says: "Do not turn your face from your boy," and: "I was young and have grown old."

Hence John too says: "I write to you, boys, because you have known the Father. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome evil. I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning." Writing to the brothers, then, he marks the mature by progress of faith and devotion. These, then, are ages of virtue, not of weakness; for the boy who has known the Father, the God of powers, is not without virtue.

From that Boy come these boys, he who, before he knew how to call father or mother, received the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria. He is the Boy who is born to us, the Son who is given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulders. He himself taught us that childhood is virtue, saying: "Let them be and do not forbid the children to come to me," and elsewhere: "Amen, amen I say to you, unless you are converted and become like this child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."

And even in bodily strength boys often defeat men. And certainly, if we consider the age of boyhood, a boy cannot know the whole practice or endure the force of wrestling; yet we know that boys have often defeated those they could not carry; so far does vigor of mind shut out weakness of age.

As the boys are, so are the youths, that is, spiritual. Scripture knows the young man Paul, already near his conversion; it knows the young man Eutychus too, who, clinging intently to Paul's words, overcome by sleep, fell from the third storey and rose again; it knows John too, a young man, reclining on Christ's breast, who was so strong that he did not fear persecution and overcame evil.

He is the boy who left his natural father and followed the Father whom he knew as eternal; as a young man wrapped in a linen cloth he followed the Lord at the time of the passion, having left all his things; more mature, he knew that God the Word always was and is in the beginning, and proved that he abides in himself.

Scripture has also taught us spiritual men, when the prophet Agabus says: "The man whose belt this is the Jews will bind thus in Jerusalem," and Festus says: "There is a certain man left in custody by Felix." Before his passion Paul is called a young man; in his passion he is signified as a man, who, having finished his course, was already near the crown.

We have learned the ages that contend for faith and devotion; let us learn also the kinds of the several contests. Let the course of the Scriptures teach us these too. In this worldly contest, then, there are some who wrestle in a simple and regular kind and contend only by holds of the body, and do not know how to strike, who are called wrestlers; others who mix blows and the throwing of dust with the efforts of their limbs, with every right of striking allowed them, whom they call pammachoi, because they have power of every kind of struggle and fight against one another; others who contend against one another with the gloves and are tortured with torn heads: these are called boxers.

All these contests the apostle Paul underwent, as he himself shows. So he says elsewhere: "For our wrestling (πάλη) is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and" (to be brief) "against the spiritual forces of wickedness." In most Latin copies "struggle" is found; in all the Greek, πάλη is written; for the Greeks' πάλη is the Latins' wrestling.

And truly πάλη (wrestling), because flesh and blood and the spiritual forces of wickedness are overcome by patience and continence of body and moderation of mind. Anger, fury, slaughter are the devil's weapons. Elsewhere too he signifies that he was beaten with blows beyond measure, saying: "in blows beyond measure, in deaths often," and that at Jerusalem he was struck with fists. There, when, soldiers intervening, the Jews had at one point stopped beating Paul, the high priest Ananias himself ordered those standing by to strike his mouth.

To him the apostle answered: "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall; and do you sit to judge me according to the law, and contrary to the law order me to be struck?" He certainly knew how to strike back, who struck the high priest back with a heavier fist; for he himself was struck bodily, and he returned to the other that he would be struck in the soul by Christ. Writing too in the first epistle to the Corinthians he says: "So I run, not as uncertainly; so I strive, not as beating the air." What he said in Latin as "I strive," in Greek he says πυκτεύω ("I box").

And truly, like a good boxer, he struck not the air but the powers of the air and the heads of the Jews, because they did not have the Lord Jesus as head of all. In every contest, then, the apostle was proved, who also received the crown when he had finished the course. Hence he himself says: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me."

Christ also has those who in their boyhood overcame men mature in age, as Daniel, a boy, with a strong spirit refuted those Jewish elders and by right of victory cast them down to death. He has others too who wrestled in their mother's womb before they were born. Indeed Jacob supplanted his brother Esau and overcame evil, and so came out of his mother's womb as to show a mark of victory and, as victor, overturn the foot of the degenerate elder. Jeremiah was sanctified and approved in his mother's womb.

John the Baptist, not yet born, knew that the president of the human contest and giver of prizes to the wrestlers had come, and, leaping in his mother's womb, won the prize of pious confession. Rightly was he already then marked out for the crown, who before all had offered his name for Christ's contest as witness of faith and herald of virtue. A good herald, who roused others to the contest; and truly a good herald, who cried with so great a voice that at its sound the heavenly secrets echoed.

What more? He moved the earth, filled heaven. And so he received the name of voice, because a sacred voice went before the Word of God, as he himself taught us, saying: "I am the voice of one crying in the desert." Isaiah the prophet said it; he confirmed that it was said of him. We have heard what the herald said: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." This is the singular voice, alone so resonant that it was heard by all, so sweet that it soothed the hearts of all. The Lord, then, strengthened his just athletes to win; for he never deserts and abandons his own.

And so the prophet added: "I was young and have grown old." So the Latins; but some, following the Greeks, have: "I was young; for I have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken nor his seed seeking bread." For one who wants to understand simply, the sense is plain: that in his lifetime David did not see a just man forsaken. But this is both of short time and incredible; for we see many just men in the world forsaken by men, when some of the powerful persecute them, and no one dares to approach them, when he sees them set in fear or injury.

Hence Job says: "My brothers have gone away, they have acknowledged strangers rather than me; my friends have become merciless and those who knew me have forgotten my name." David too cries that he was not only forsaken but even attacked by friends and neighbors: "My friends," he says, "and my neighbors drew near against me." If, then, just men are found forsaken in this world, how did David say things contrary to himself, unless you understand that the just man, even if forsaken in the world, is yet not forsaken by the Lord?

For neither was Job, when he sat on the dung heap, forsaken by the Lord, whom the Lord himself praised with his own voice in the council of the angels, whom he allowed to be tempted so as to crown him; he gave the temptation power over the body, he denied it over the soul. Nor was David forsaken, to whom he gave the kingdom, to rule the chosen people; when he was attacked in parricidal battles and driven from the borders of his kingdom, he restored him by right of victory.

Jacob himself too, Elijah and Elisha and John the Baptist and the others who went about in goatskins, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth, though they seem to have endured many mockeries and bitter punishments, were nevertheless not forsaken. For when Jacob fled his brother and wandered alone through the desert, he fell asleep and, rising, saw there a multitude of the heavenly army and said: "This place is called the camps of angels." It was not enough to call it a camp, but camps, as suited so great a multitude.

You see, then, that he thought himself alone, and the camps of the heavenly army followed him, just as the rock, as it is written, followed our fathers in Moses' time, so that they should not thirst in the desert. For when we read in Exodus that, the people thirsting, Moses struck the rock with his rod and water flowed and the people of God drank, and again read in Leviticus or in Numbers that Moses again touched the rock with his rod and water gushed out for the fathers to drink, the apostle excellently interpreted this, saying: "And they drank from the rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ."

Those complaining, those murmuring, those transgressing, then, the Lord did not desert, but followed. What shall I say of Elijah and Elisha, to whom, as they walked through the desert, horses from heaven and a fiery chariot came? How was Elijah forsaken, who was invited by Christ? How forsaken on earth, who was caught up to heaven? How needy and naked and empty, who left to his disciple the inheritance of a double spirit, so that the heir, endowed with a single sheepskin, stopped rivers, called the Jordan back to its source, fed the armies of kings in the desert and supplied drink to the thirsty?

At his will drinks flowed down from heaven, and the dead rose on earth. How was Elisha lifted up, who, when he was surrounded by the army of the Syrians, to be carried off captive to the king, and his servant Gehazi said: "Lord, what shall we do?" said: "Do not fear, for those with us are more than those with them." And he said: "Lord, open his eyes that he may see." And his eyes were opened

and he saw the mountain and everything around full of countless horses and heavenly legions. Paul too, who said he had been tossed about by perils at sea, perils in the desert, yet himself testified, saying: "If God is for us, who is against us?" He, then, so forsaken and destitute among men, abounds and overflows with God. For Elijah too was so destitute that he said: "Lord, take my soul," and yet he was so strong with God that he was terrible in power to kings themselves.

How could David as a young man understand this? For a young man considers temporal things rather than eternal, since that age leans toward vices. But some are old in youth and others young in old age. There are, I say, men whose minds are judged by the gravity of the old, in whom "the age of old age is a spotless life," in whom white-haired prudence flourishes; such was Jeremiah, who, when he spoke of himself as young in view of his age and excused himself through his youth, because he seemed unequal to the office of preaching, the Lord said to him: "Do not say, I am young, for to all to whom I send you, you shall go."

So he did not think him young whom he judged fit for the grace of prophecy. Such a young man, then, was David, who had been renewed and had flourished again, as he himself said, like the youth of the eagle. It must be understood thus, then: I was young, but sanctified, but set as a prophet among the nations, who could already know the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom and consider the true rewards of justice; but I did not see the just man forsaken. Afterwards too, elsewhere, strengthened both by experience and by gift, I acquired increases of wisdom; the same grace seemed to me to remain toward the just man.

We have explained as we could how he said: "I was young"; but let us consider how he added: "for I have grown old." Good is youth, but better old age; for "he who perseveres to the end will be saved." Hence it is not lightly said of the patriarch Abraham that he was nourished in a good old age. And John began to write the gospel or the epistles as an old man.

He, though he avoided writing himself as apostle, wrote himself as the elder, and was not thought less, since a kind of swan-like grace of old age was at hand for him. The vessel of the Lord's election himself, writing to Philemon, says: "Since you are such as Paul the old man, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I beseech you for my son, whom I have begotten in chains, Onesimus." Wishing, then, to show him the greatest deference, he compared him to the old Paul, not the young,

and gloried in being old where he was already held in chains. And see the difference: he is described as a young man in another's passion, as an old man in his own; there as a young man, because he guarded the clothes of the Jews, here as an old man, when he was putting off the spoils of his own body. Indeed Peter too is called old there where the contest of the passion is: "When you were younger," he says, "you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish."

"This he said signifying by what death he would glorify God." Before the contest he is called younger; in the contest, old, one who has completed every contest. This, then, is what David, a warrior in youth, a peacemaker in old age, says: "I was young," he says, "but I do not want you to think me still young; for I have grown old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken nor his seed seeking bread."

What is the seed of the just man? "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say 'and to seeds,' as of many, but as of one: 'and to your seed,' which is Christ." Hear the seed of the just man: "My little children, with whom I am in labor until Christ be formed in you." And now, if anyone coming from the Gentiles hears our word and the Lord deigns to help, so that

Christ is formed in his soul, so that he bears the fruit of faith, Christ will be his seed. Abraham, then, was both father of the race according to the flesh and he who first poured the word of the Lord into the hearts of the just. And so this seed of Abraham does not seek those loaves by which bodily nourishment is supplied, since it has the bread of justice that came down from heaven. For just as those are denied to be sons of Abraham who have not done the works of Abraham, so those are the seed of Abraham and received among his sons who have done his work. A true seed of Abraham was Elijah, to whom an angel gave food, and in the strength of that food he walked for forty days.

The true seed of Abraham did not seek this nourishment of the body, he to whom loaves were brought from heaven; indeed ravens served him a daily banquet. He was so needy of all things that he had nothing of his own, and he was sent to bestow food on others. A true seed was Daniel, to whom, placed among the lions, dishes filled with the reapers' meal were carried through the air by the prophet Habakkuk.

It is, then, the bread of angels that man ate; for so it is written: "Man ate the bread of angels." This is the bread of which David said: "The Lord feeds me and I shall lack nothing. In a green place there he has set me; beside the water of refreshment he has brought me up." Good David has taught me the bread of angels, and he himself has taught me the water of refreshment. This refreshment is spiritual; this refreshment is rest of the inner mind. Good is the water that washes sin and cleanses within.

Let us hear what this water is: "If anyone thirsts," he says, "let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his belly. This he said of the Spirit, which those who were to believe in him were beginning to receive." So the just man does not lack this bread or the water of refreshment, for whom the Holy Spirit is rest and refreshment.

And how can he be in need who "all day long has mercy and lends"? What is it that the just man lends? Not bronze, not iron, not lead, but silver tried by fire. This he brings to the Lord's table and distributes to those who seek it, to one one mina, to another two, to another five he distributes daily, and never runs short.

But we have heard lending at interest blamed in the law, when Moses says: "You shall not lend at interest." Lending is twofold: one of money, the other of grace. Distinguish the two, for it is written: "If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned; be still." You too, divide rightly, lest you sin. Let Moses himself teach you to divide, who warned that one must divide rightly, so that you may follow what Abel was, who divided rightly, and flee what Cain was; he was a fratricide who did not know how to divide rightly. So the Holy Spirit divides

the divisions, who works all things, dividing to each as he wills. He as he wills, you as you can, as you are able by your talent. Distinguish when the law speaks of money and when of grace. For it said to you: "You shall lend to the nations," whose interest the Lord requires, "but you shall not borrow." There is money for lending and there is grace, whose interest the Lord requires; money for lending holds bronze, grace confers faith. Lend faith, then, to the nations, so that grace may abound to you;

but do not borrow as one in need; lend as one rich and wealthy. Peter lent, Paul lent, John the Evangelist lent, or both Johns, and did not lack; that is, they lent the money of Christ, they did not lend money at usury. Lend, then, and do not cease lending. Do you hear what Scripture says: "All day long he has mercy and lends"? The just man lends by day, the greedy man by night; for grace belongs to light, but avarice is the usury of darkness. And so the seed of one who lends faith will be in blessing, having indeed the reward of blessing.

"Turn aside from evil and do good, and dwell for ever and ever. For the Lord loves judgment and will not forsake his saints; they will be preserved for ever; but the unjust will be punished, and the seed of the ungodly will perish. The just will possess the land by inheritance and will dwell upon it for ever and ever." By these verses the prophet shows that we belong to the Lord and that he is the judge of our thoughts and actions, looking on the merits of each, who does nothing without judgment, but distinguishes evil and good acts by judgment.

One must, then, turn aside from evil and do good. Lest you confuse good and evil, first you must be free of crime, afterwards bring the fruit of innocence, so that you can be everlasting. Do not think that your sins escape God; for so many slip. He sees all and condemns, and exterminates the seed of the ungodly, the seed not of bodily generation but of the inner mind and the succession of ungodliness.

For indeed Job is marked by the testimony of Scripture as born of the seed of Esau. How, then, did the seed of Esau perish in Job, when he was so great a man that he foresaw the Lord coming to earth, who would subdue the devil, the sea monster of this world? What is sought, then, is that malice not be passed on to descendants.

This Christ works through the sacrament of baptism, so that each one puts off what he was born and puts on what he was reborn, and becomes heir not of a family but of grace, so as to be able to acquire for himself a perpetual dwelling of eternal habitation. And he who has deserved to dwell for ever and ever will himself honor God for ever and ever.

When he has trained the just man in moral disciplines, to teach you what he ought to be toward God and what the form of perfect justice is, he wants his mind to rise to wisdom and contemplation, and rouses his attention, so that he may look with intent heart on heavenly things and turn over within himself the divine oracles and shape his affection toward what pleases God;

that he may meditate on the law, that none of the Lord's commands may escape him, and that he may know the movements of the divine mystery. Indeed from here see the holy prophet rise in his precepts: "The mouth of the just will meditate wisdom and his tongue will speak judgment; the law of his God is in his heart. Nor will the Lord condemn him when he is judged. Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you, so that you may possess the land by inheritance; when sinners perish you will see. I saw the ungodly exalted and lifted up beyond the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found."

The earlier things were moral, these are intelligible. What is the mouth of the just that will meditate wisdom but that of the inner man? For there are two men in each one, one inner, the other outer. The inner thinks the things of the mind and speaks the things of the mind; the outer the things of the body. Yet the Lord, coming, joined both and made the two into one man, so that they should not

attack each other with different movements but be joined to each other in the unity of their wills. Therefore the mouth of the just will meditate wisdom. For now even the outer man of the just has been transferred into the discipline of the inner man and, conformed to its nature, performs its offices, so that the flesh meditates what belongs to the inner mind. But lest this seem incredible to you, hear one saying that the Lord Jesus transfigured the body of our lowliness, so that it might be conformed to the body of his glory.

Who would dare to say that the flesh without sin, the flesh taken from the virgin, the flesh begotten by the Spirit of God coming upon Mary, which in nothing departed from the disciplines of wisdom, was without share in the virtues of the inner man and could not pass into its uses, when it was above man that by its touch the sick were healed, light was poured back to the blind, the dead rose?

Fittingly, then, it is written: "The mouth of the just will meditate wisdom," because the whole man is spiritual, not earthly. For "as is the earthly, such are the earthly, and as is the heavenly, such are the heavenly." The earthly, then, has gone; the heavenly has remained. And so the prophet, referring to the times of redemption, said "will meditate," although one of many has written "meditates," nor does it depart from the sense, because to the spirit of the prophets future things are as present. Others think "mouth" is said for "mind."

Finely Solomon explained this to us, saying: "The talk of the just is always wisdom, but the fool changes like the moon," that is, he often varies and does not persevere in his opinion, and seems as it were in darkness to spread light and not hold it.

Let there be, then, always in our heart and mouth the meditation of wisdom, and let your tongue speak judgment, let the law of your God be in your heart. So Scripture says to you: "You shall speak of them sitting in the house, walking on the way, lying down, rising up." Let us speak, then, of the Lord Jesus, for he is wisdom, he is the Word and the Word of God. For this too is written: "Open your mouth to the word of God." He breathes him who resounds his words and meditates his sayings.

Let us always speak of him. When we speak of wisdom, it is he; when we speak of virtue, it is he; when we speak of justice, it is he; when we speak of peace, it is he; when we speak of truth and life and redemption, it is he. "Open your mouth to the word of God," it is written. You open, he speaks. So David said: "I will hear what the Lord speaks in me," and the Son of God himself says: "Open your mouth and I will fill it." But not all can grasp the perfection of wisdom as Solomon did, not all as Daniel;

yet the spirit of wisdom is poured into all according to their capacity, but into all who are faithful. If you believe, you have the spirit of wisdom. So the wise man says: "I believed, therefore I spoke." When you have believed, you will receive the grace of speaking. And he who believes is redeemed, and he who prays is redeemed, if he applies himself devoutly to prayers and is assiduous in prayer, anticipates the day, frequents the night, meets the morning sun, so as to be enlightened by Christ before the earth by the sunrise. And he who sings psalms is redeemed, and he who is pricked to compunction is redeemed.

So meditate always, speak the things of God, sitting in the house. We can take the house as the church; we can take it as the inner house in us, so that we speak within ourselves. Judges sit in Jerusalem; thrones sat in judgment; the council of judges sat too, and the books were opened. The prophet says: "And do all things with counsel." With counsel judge your deeds, with

counsel drink wine, with counsel speak, so that you escape sin and do not fall through much speaking. Sitting, speak with yourself as one who judges. On the way speak, so that you are never idle. You speak on the way if you speak in Christ, for the way is Christ. On the way speak to yourself, speak to Christ. Hear how you should speak to him: "I want men," he says, "to pray in every place, lifting up pure hands, without anger and dispute." Speak, O man, when lying down, lest the sleep of death steal upon you.

Hear how you should speak when lying down: "If I give sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob." Overcome nature by diligence, shut out the sleep of the body. We cannot form our nature for ourselves; we can our diligence. David was a man; he indulged somewhat in sleep at night, but he shut out sleep, washing his bed every night and watering his couch with tears.

So he always remembered his Lord on his bed and meditated on him, so as to anticipate the dawn and that Christ might shine on him in the darkness, saying: "Rise, you who sleep." This grace is not in all, but diligence can be in more. Do not wait, then, for Christ to rouse you, but rather rouse Christ. He rouses him who thinks of him while lying down. If you rouse him, he too will rouse you from sleep, raise you from death, saying to you: "Arise from the dead."

When you rise, then, or rise again, speak of him, so that you fulfil what you are commanded. Hear how Christ rouses you. Your soul says: "The voice of my brother knocks at the door," and Christ says: "Open to me, my sister, my bride." Hear how you rouse Christ. The soul says: "I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you rouse and rouse again love." Love is Christ. Hear also how you speak while sleeping: "I sleep and my heart keeps watch." These things in common; now lift your mind a little higher.

Speak sitting in the house, in this earthly house of our dwelling which is dissolved, in which we are exiles from the Lord. For placed in this body, while we wish to be clothed over rather than stripped, we are exiled from Christ and groan heavily. Sitting in this, then, confess your sins, because you sat and did not stand and did not say:

"Our feet were standing in the courts of Jerusalem." Speak rather and do not hide your offenses; speak sitting, so that you may hear one saying: "Rise, after you have sat, you who eat the bread of sorrow." Speak walking on the way, that is, running the course of this life. Speak here, lest you become dumb there, as he became dumb who did not at first believe the angel of Christ, yet afterwards, when he had believed, recovered his voice.

Speak sleeping and resting, buried with Christ, so that you may rise with him in newness of life. Speak even buried in the tomb, as the souls of the saints spoke, asking vengeance from the author of death: "How long, O Lord, holy and true, do you not judge and avenge our blood?" Speak, lastly, when you rise, as he taught who said:

"I slept and rested and rose again, for the Lord will take me up." There too, then, the mouth of the just will meditate wisdom, until he reaches the more sublime secrets of the tabernacle, full of heavenly and sacred joy and gladness, as Scripture taught us when David said: "These things I remembered and poured out my soul upon me, for I shall go into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and confession, the sound of one feasting." So, both sitting in this bodily house and having gone out from here and walking on the way, when we are caught up, if we deserve it, to meet Christ, even sleeping we shall speak.

Take a third ascent (anagoge), by which the soul of the just man lifts itself. For there is a kind of spiritual sleep to be understood, of which Solomon says: "For if you sit, you will sit without fear; if you sleep, you will rest sweetly; and you will not fear the terror that comes upon you, nor the attacks of the ungodly coming upon you." You will rest with sweetness and not fear the terror and the attacks of the ungodly coming upon you, if your tongue speaks God's judgment and you always have it before your eyes, so that you leave no place to sin and know that the price of offense will be paid by the requital of punishment.

For he himself explained this in the ninetieth psalm, saying: "You will not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the business that walks in darkness, nor the attack and the noonday demon. A thousand will fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you; yet with your eyes you will look and see the requital of sinners."

For the just man, when he speaks God's judgment, or when he himself speaks what is just and full of true judgment, does not speak with anger, not from the affliction of a grieving mind, not from pain, not from any passion, but speaks from truth, speaks from equity, so that he does not lean by feeling but weighs what he says by a true balance; for he judges what is to be said or not to be brought out. Like this is that saying: "The lips of the wise are bound by sense," because all they say seems to agree with true sense, and by the prudence of their sense they understand what they ought to speak or keep silent, so that what must be kept silent they hold back with a kind of bar

and binding of the lips, while in what ought to be said the bonds of the lips are loosed. Rightly, then, he put first: "The mouth of the just will meditate wisdom"; for long meditation can hold full judgment, which the just man will speak in its time, when he sees face to face what is perfect; for now we cannot speak true things about what we do not grasp. Indeed not even Paul dared to say, who, caught up into paradise, heard the heavenly secrets; but, wishing not to err in what he said, he said: "How unsearchable are the judgments of God and his ways past finding out!" But now, released from the body, perhaps he grasps the kinds of the unsearchable ways and his judgments, which are like a great abyss.

Still the form of justice is described and increased, as Scripture says: "The law of his God is in his heart, and his steps will not be supplanted." In the heart of the just is the law of God. What law? Not written, but natural; for "the law is not laid down for the just man, but for the unjust." The law is in his heart, not superficially as on the lips of the Jews; for "with the heart one believes unto justice." He who believes also speaks; but he who speaks does not necessarily believe. Indeed the people did not believe of whom it was said:

"This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." If, then, the Gentiles, when they do the things of the law, are a law to themselves, knowing what they should follow or avoid, how much more does the faithful and just man, who lives after the image and likeness of God, know how to discern the seemly and honorable and use a kind of lawful rudder of natural wisdom, lest his footsteps be supplanted like Esau's, whom his brother supplanted because of the greed of his gluttony, so that he fell, and poured out his footsteps into death!

The more just anyone is, the more the enemy lies in wait for him; and so Scripture says: "The sinner watches the just man and seeks to destroy him; but the Lord will not leave him in his hands nor condemn him when he is judged." So the sinner, seeing that the just man speaks with his mouth and meditates wisdom in his heart, that he speaks judgment with his tongue, that he keeps the law of the Lord in his heart, tries to bring on him the death of sin; but the Lord protects him.

And so let us not fear the sinner's plots, since God is for us. "If God, then, is for us, who is against us?" Therefore God will not forsake his just one nor condemn him when he holds judgment on him; for he is the true judge, and so justice cannot be endangered. Hence Aquila too said: "nor will he condemn him in judging him"; Symmachus: "nor will he condemn when the just man is judged."

But because the Seventy put it thus: "when he is judged," we think it looked to what is written: "For the Lord himself will come into judgment." But into what judgment? Hear one saying: "Against you only have I sinned and done evil before you, that you may be justified in your words and overcome when you are judged."

So the Lord offers himself to be heard, to be judged, so as to overcome the more. Hear how he offers himself: "My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I grieved you, or how have I troubled you? Answer me. For I brought you out of Egypt and freed you from the house of slavery"; and elsewhere: "I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities and will not remember them. But you, remember, and let us be judged."

Heavy is this judgment, when the Lord asks to be judged about himself against man. For what will you answer him who has bestowed all things on you, set you over all, subjected to you the Egyptians to whom you had come as a guest, and afterwards drowned them in the sea when they pursued you? He destroyed and overthrew your enemies; he created and formed you; he redeemed you with his blood; and do you hand yourself over to serve his enemy?

He has forgiven you all your sins, and do you commit graver ones? He calls you: coming into judgment, what will you answer him, without whose giving to you again you have perished? And so holy David, seeing that by this kind of moral dealing of God he is weighed down the more, flees judgment, asks mercy, saying: "And do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living will be justified in your sight."

He confesses that he has been placed in darkness like the dead of the world. Carefully he said "like the dead of the world," not "dead." For those who die in Christ are not the dead of the world; but those are the dead of the world who place their whole life, which they lived in the world, in ruin and death. And so, as one desperate, he flees to the remedy, saying: "Hear me quickly, O Lord, for my spirit has failed." For he failed when the offer of such a judgment was set before him, in which truth was to be examined rather than mercy conferred.

Yet the Lord is so loving that, even if no one living is justified in his sight (for who, however just, is not liable to sin, or whose life is such as to be judged worthy of God's likeness?), yet one made after the image and likeness of God ought, as God is without sin, so to be without sin as one who is after his image.

What punishment, then, does he deserve who has lost so great a grace of the Lord's working and the likeness of divine beauty? But because he is merciful, even if he subjects himself to judgment, he does not judge the just man, but the unjust. He spares the just man as one sinning through the frailty of his condition; he punishes the unjust as one who detests the ungrateful. Then, even if you have many works of justice, do not be impatient and arrogant, thinking that the rewards of justice should be demanded for you in this world, or complaining that some adversities have befallen you undeservedly. For as long as you live, a contest is owed you, not a reward.

"Wait, then," for the Lord as helper or as rewarder, "and keep his ways." This is to wait: to keep the commands of him you think you should wait for. Even if you are crushed, even if afflicted, even if you fail through sickness, yet wait for the Lord; hope will not confound you.

The Lord will come "and exalt you, so that you may possess the land by inheritance." It is clear that the land is the higher one, not this earthly one in the valley, but that of the eternal promise, in which whoever is set is exalted by the Lord.

"But you will see when sinners perish." For then will be the reward of the just, when judgment has been given on the deserts of the ungodly. But sinners do not perish in one way only. They perish for you beforehand if you do not admire their power, (if) not their riches, if it does not move you when you learn that they abound in honors, children, friends.

For these belong to the world, and the world lies subject to worldly malice, and the prince of the world favors those who serve him, according to that saying: "All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me." Why do you seek that these be given you, when the ungodly one who gives them cannot remain long in them himself? He too passes away: how can the things he bestowed not pass? You, only keep a constant mind, hold to justice, let no one move you, and you will see that the ungodly man is nothing.

In short, hear one saying: "I saw the ungodly man exalted and lifted above the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not." I saw him in this world, I saw him with the eyes of the body; I saw him boasting too and exalting himself with his words, thinking himself to be something when he is nothing. How does he exalt himself? "I will set my throne," he says, "above the clouds and I will be like the Most High."

He exalts himself, so that you see him like the cedars of Lebanon exalted. These too are high and stand on a very high mountain; rightly, then, they are exalted, and the ungodly man seems exalted who has set himself on that mountain of which it is written: "If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this mountain: be taken up and cast into the sea." "To this demon," he means, by whom this man had been invaded and oppressed whom you wonder to see healed. And so you have more love in Christ than power in the devil. You see a cedar on

a very high mountain exalted, but it is broken by the wind, burned by fire, dissolved by age. So is the rich man in the world: he shines indeed with a kind of splendor of worldly favor like Lebanon, leans on the world's power, exults in wealth and riches. He seems to you to be something, before you say: "Passing over, I will see." For as Moses in mind and spirit passed beyond material things and saw God, so you too, if you pass from here, raising the step of your mind to God's grace,

will see that he is nothing who seemed to himself most powerful on this earth. Therefore God the Word says to your soul, says to your mind: "Come here from Lebanon, bride, come here from Lebanon; you will pass and pass through." If you pass beyond worldly things, you will pass through to paradise. Hear one passing: "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom"; hear again one passing through: "Amen, amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

What is "behold, he was not"? In the beginning, surely, the Word was, and he who sees the Word, who shares in the Word, himself also is, because the Word of God always is, and the speech that is from him is not "is and is not," but is and remains in him who follows God. But he who does not know the Word is not, because he does not cling to him who said: "I am who am." But he who clings to him is one spirit; and where the Spirit is, there is life. So Scripture says to you of God: "who gives life to the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were," that is, calls the nations which were not as his people which was; for our fathers were, who were God's chosen.

And elsewhere, where it is said: "The Lord knows those who are his," he does not know those who are not; and Esther says: "Do not give your scepter to those who are not." Rightly, then, the just man says: "And I passed by, and behold, he was not"; that is: I saw him exalted in the world before I considered that the world is nothing; but when I passed in mind above the world, I saw that he who before was exalted in this world already was not.

And you, if you are just, pass from present things to those that are to come, and present things will pass for you. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." For the just man, then, all things pass. The ungodly man passes; he is like vanity and his days pass like a shadow. And not only do present things pass for the just man, but when he has turned his attention to things to come, these already pass.

See how present things passed for the just man. Certainly in the times of the prophet David there was the synagogue; the church from the Gentiles did not exist; and yet he speaks of future things as present: "Bless our God, you nations"; then above he says: "God has gone up with jubilation." He passed over the times to come of faithlessness, not by age but by mind, and celebrated with the pious devotion of faith the Lord's resurrection, which was to come many ages later, saying: "Sing psalms to our God, sing psalms;

sing psalms to our King, sing psalms." As though present at the very mysteries of the marriage union of Christ and the church, he so dances and rejoices. He also expressed the cause of the celebration, saying: "The Lord has reigned over all the earth." So if we pass on, the things to come also seem to us to have passed, just as, if you pass the land in sailing, you see it too pass and, as it were, depart from you. Often sailors, especially in a storm, flee the land, and yet, while they flee it as they sail, it rather seems to flee from them.

And you, if you flee this world, it too will flee you; if you pass this land, it too passes you. You too are sailing on this sea and tossed on the waves in this world: flee the land, it has rocks, it has stones, as it is written: "Throw the stones out of the way." If you hasten through this airy deep to the harbor of divine pleasure, you will see that all these things have passed for you. For what difference does it make whether they have passed or you judge that they have passed for you?

There is also another ungodly man who seems exalted and lifted above the cedars of Lebanon, and, if you pass by, he will not be, nor will you find his place. See, I pray, the Jewish scribe reciting the series of the old Scriptures but not following it; you hear that he recites with his lips, you admire him as learned. You ask what he understands; he answers according to the letter, runs through the history.

He seems to you exalted and lifted up, if you think of the letter. Pass to the spiritual understanding, for the law is spiritual; you see that he is nothing; then you say: "I saw the ungodly man exalted and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found." I sought him where he should have been, where life is; I did not find him; he was not

there where life was, because he was dead, and so neither was his place found. For what place has a dead man, who was not and never has been? For he who was in the letter did not exist; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. I sought him, then, to find him; he did not offer himself to be found; that is: I wanted to convert him; he would not offer himself to me to be converted. I did what belonged to one who seeks; he shunned what should have belonged to one who returns.

In short, the soul that wishes to be converted seeks the Word, and when it has found him says: "I held him and will not let him go," that is, the Son of God, the Word of God. But the unjust man, who would not be healed, I sought, and did not find; and so do not imitate him.

"Keep innocence and see equity." He who keeps innocence sees equity, since he who is clean sees God, whose rod is a straight rod and straight justice, so as to turn away from those who have turned aside to pursuits of depravity. Good is innocence, which sees God. Indeed others have put: "Keep perfection"; for he is perfect who does not know malice nor know deceit.

"So keep perfection," he says, "for there are remains for the peaceable man." The remains of a man are said of the body of the dead, of his spoils. They are called remains because they seem to survive after a man's death; for what is kept for the resurrection survives. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality."

So rather a man's remains are the hope of resurrection, the faith of conversion and the grace of love, since the ungodly do not rise in judgment, but the life of the just is known to God and approved by the Lord's judgment. To this place that saying is finely suited: "The remnant according to the election of grace has been saved."

"But the unjust will perish together; the remains of the ungodly will be destroyed." The remains of the just are virtues; the remains of the ungodly are wickedness and faithlessness and sin. These will be blotted out, so as not to be.

"But the salvation of the just is from the Lord," not from the world, not from an element; "heaven and earth will pass away." I do not entrust my salvation to heaven, because it too passes, since it was said of the many heavens: "They will perish, but you remain." I entrust it to God alone, who remains, who can forgive sins, that he may be my protector in the time of tribulation and help me and free me and rescue me from sinners in the time of his judgment and save me, because I have hoped in him. In him alone I have hoped; for he does not want us to serve both himself and another. He who serves him alone is freed, for to him is praise, glory, eternity, from the ages and now and always and for all the ages of ages. Amen.

I wrote two little books on repentance some time ago, and I think I must write again. First, because it is useful to pray for pardon of offenses even daily; then, because in those two books there is exhortation to repentance, or its progress if it is done, but now it must be set out how repentance ought to be done; for it is of no use to do it unless it is done as it ought to be. In this holy David has set before us a teaching to follow, who seems to me to have tasted sin so that he might teach how sin could be abolished. For from what did medicine take its beginning but from a wound? While the first age of the human race teaches others what profited it, and shows others how

it healed its own wound, experience made the art and sickness the teaching. For this is the first and strong school of medicine, which experience, not conjecture, formed; and so from experience physicians were first called empirics, and from that school the others derived and took from it a kind of sap of their own strength. And what is stronger for exhortation to repentance than that the holy prophet David taught us to repent of our sins? For who would disdain to humble himself before God, when a king has humbled himself, or who would hesitate to afflict his soul, when so great a prophet afflicted his, paying the price of tears for the redemption of sin?

And although he spread precepts for doing penance through the whole body of his writings (for which of his psalms is not a medicine for a sinning conscience, since in one he shows how he was pushed, in another how he was troubled, so as to show not only how wounds are to be healed but also how they are to be avoided, and teach us by his own example? And who would think himself standing, where even the stronger has fallen?), yet in the thirty-seventh psalm he expressed a greater force of inner grief and lamenting.

Indeed at the opening the title itself warns us that precepts of this kind are being formed; for so we read: "For remembrance," he says, "concerning the sabbath day, a psalm of David." For the full definition of repentance is the remembrance of offenses, so that each one may chastise his sins as with the whip of daily speech and condemn the shameful deeds he has committed. For so we are taught, when God says: "Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified," and the apostle says: "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

But perhaps it may trouble someone that he did not say "remembrance of sins," but "concerning the sabbath day," or, as another has it, "of the sabbaths." What, then, is the sabbath but the rest of things to come, the relief of things present, on which the law bids men's works cease and burdens be laid down? What are heavier burdens than our sins?

Let these be laid down on the sabbath days, that is, in this time of this life. For every week is concluded in seven days; in six days this world was formed; on the seventh day the Lord rested from his work, who rests in our gentleness, as he himself said: "On whom shall I rest but on the humble and gentle?" Free yourself, then, every sabbath; lift off the weight of error, so that you may deserve to come secure to the rest of that future sabbath; for if you carry grave sins from here, you will have no rest there. Unburden your mind, then; cast off all

that weighs and presses on your conscience, lest your flight be in winter or on the sabbath. This life is in labor, that in rest. Let the end of this world find you lighter, lest, weighed down with sins, you cannot flee. Flee beforehand, so as to anticipate. He flees the world who is not held by the world's enticements, who frees himself from all its care. Flee also the wrath to come, that is, the day of judgment. He flees it who has done penance; for so John the Baptist defined it, saying: "Brood of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits, then, worthy of repentance."

You heard it read today that John was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. Aenon is interpreted "eye of punishments," Salim "he who ascends"; so the interpretation has it. He, then, who chooses to be baptized

foresees punishments and so flees to the sacrament of baptism, to lay down every sin, lest he begin to be liable to punishments. And perhaps he who is baptized with the baptism of repentance foresees punishments; but he who is baptized in Christ looks to grace. John's baptism, then, is the eye of punishments, Christ's baptism the eye of graces. Yet, though John baptized in Aenon, he baptized near the one ascending; for this too the interpretation has, that Salim is called "he who ascends." Near,

then, to Christ was he who announced his coming. For the Son of Man who came down from heaven is he who also ascended into heaven, to fill all things. But because "as is the heavenly, such are the heavenly," he too ascends into heaven who, laying aside earthly things, is buried with Christ, so as to rise with Christ from the death of sin to newness of life and share in the inheritance, to become, as it is written, an heir of God, a co-heir with Christ.

True medicine, then, is to do penance, which was rightly preached when the physician came from heaven, who would not inflame wounds but heal them. A good physician, who taught how we should seek remedies in this earth of our body, when the flower of the healing herb arose for us, who condemned sin by sin in the flesh.

So the flesh, which before was the poison of sin, became an antidote, since it was the enticement of sins. Hear how the flesh is an antidote: the Word of God became flesh, put his hand into the hole of asps, emptied the poison, took away sin; that is, "he condemned sin by sin in the flesh."

And so that this can be considered more fully, let us review the very passage of the apostle. For so it is written: "God, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, also by sin condemned sin in the flesh, so that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." The Son of God came, then, in the likeness of sinful flesh; he certainly did not come in the likeness of flesh, who took true flesh, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, that is, of sinful flesh;

for by the serpent's fraud and poured-in poison our flesh had become the flesh of sin. After it became liable to sin, it had become the flesh of death, because it was owed to death. The likeness of this flesh, already guilty, already prejudged, Christ took in his own flesh, because, though he had taken the natural substance of this flesh, yet he had taken no contagion, nor was he conceived in iniquities and born in offenses,

who was born not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of the Holy Spirit and the virgin. What, then, is: "by sin he condemned sin in the flesh"? Is it by the likeness of sinful flesh, or because Christ took our sins not by practice but by condition, not by crime but by the mystery of his mercy, and he who did no sin was made sin for us? Or rather because even by this flesh of sin, that is, this liable and prejudged flesh of ours, he condemned sin in the flesh, by teaching

how, placed in the flesh, we may walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit? For it is sin to walk according to the flesh, because he lives for luxury and pleasures and wantonness and the desires of the flesh who conducts himself according to the wisdom of the flesh; for the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God, hence those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And so he condemns sin by sin who, lifting himself from the vices of the flesh, lives according to the Spirit, wholly given to God and intent on the heavenly oracles; for this Christ came, to do not his own will, that is the flesh's, but God's. If anyone follows him, then, so as to do what pleases God and restrain the appetite of his flesh, he is an imitator of Christ.

We have expressed what we think; you who read, choose what to follow. There is no error where there is a simple feeling of piety and every sense is faithful. Christ condemned sin by taking the likeness of sinful flesh, so as to abolish the offenses of our flesh. He condemned sin, so as to crucify our sins in his flesh, himself made sin for us, so that we might be the justice of God in him, who were the captivity of death and the prey of the serpent.

This taking of sins, then, is one of piety, not of crime. By this sin the eternal God absolved us, who did not spare his own Son and made him to be sin for us. Then Christ condemned sin in the flesh by the very flesh of sin, which, with a kind of judging vigor and censorial authority, hates the vices it used to love and shudders at the impurity it used to think pleasure.

It separates itself from wantonness, renounces desires, renounces crimes and shameful deeds, drives off avarice, which makes effeminate a certain manliness of the flesh. Here you have that imitator of Christ himself condemning sin by sin in the flesh: "So I run," he says, "not as uncertainly; so I wrestle, not as beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into servitude, lest, having preached to others, I myself become reprobate."

We have not strayed superfluously, I think, for this too belonged to man's medicine. Providing for this medicine, God, as he commanded this earth to bear healing juices of herbs and trees by which the wounds of the flesh might be cured, so also filled the series of the divine Scriptures with healing precepts by which the weakness of the soul might be healed.

So how grave it is that dumb animals know how to doctor themselves and seek healing herbs for their wounds, and do not refuse to choose them, while human diligence does not seek them, to whom a physician was even sent, to show the seeds of healing medicine in the old Scriptures and to bring new ones himself! How many things, then, are healthful that are lightly judged harmful: let us take examples from the earth itself.

The serpent nourishes venom, has harmful bites, wounds the flesh; but in its very venom you will find an antidote, if you seek it. Indeed its flesh is burned, and from its ash theriac is made, by which the force of venom is usually blunted so that it cannot harm. The fault, then, is not in the earth, which produces the serpent, but in him who does not know how to beware of the serpent.

The serpent itself can profit you, if you understand, or rather if you do not spurn the physician's precepts. Learn to imitate him whom you think should be fled: "Be wise," he says, "as serpents and simple as doves." Guard your head as the serpent does; even if you are torn in your whole body, you will revive. Your head is Christ, for he is the head of man; if you keep the faith, even if you die like the serpent, you too will rise again. Imitate the serpent, which strips off its outer self so that the inner may be renewed; imitate the serpent, which vomits up its venom.

Blessed are you if you too vomit up your evil thoughts and lay aside the poisons of your malice. It is a well-known saying, strengthened by the authority of writers, that the serpent, approaching the waters, betroths by a hiss the embraces of a female eel; she, looking to her own safety, promises the use of the union he seeks on this condition, that the serpent vomit up his venom; and he, caught, obeys the commands, lays down his arms and, in the manner of their union, puts his head into her mouth; and when the intimacy begins to grow warm, whether by a kind of violence of nature or by the heat of lust, the female grips his mouth and presses her bites with the kisses of lust, and so the serpent's head is cut off.

Will you not recognize in the serpent's nature the mystery of faith? That serpent of paradise first provoked the woman to the adultery of guilt. But when his venom had been poured out into this world, the offspring of that woman, avenging the deceiving of their mother and the serpent's fraud, stripped him of his own arms and cut off his head. But if the poisons have prevailed and sin, in which is the sting of death, has crept in, use the physicians' example, so that the serpent may die for you even late: crush his venom and grind his body, and know that it must be mixed with healing juices, so that it not only loses its force and poison but even a remedy is made from the venom.

And that intelligible serpent dies for you if you die to sin and your sins die to you. So his venom is crushed if your deeds prick you; so all his force is abolished if you cover the crime committed with good works and temper it with faithful confession. Hear how the power of the dragon himself is crushed: "May God," he says, "crush Satan under your feet." Crush first your heart, in which was the dragon's lair, so that he finds nowhere to dwell. Crush the dragon's flesh; his flesh is our sins.

So God says to you: "Nations feast on him," and below he says: "Death runs before him." And the flesh of his body is those who cling to him. For as the saints are the body and members of Christ, so sinners, who do not leave sin but cling to sin, are the dragon's body and members. So we feast on the body of Christ, but they feast on the body of the dragon. We who strive to cling to Christ feast on daily remission and pardon of sins; but they, who daily link sins to sins, feast on a continuation of shameful deeds and crimes.

Crush, then, this flesh, and sprinkle over it the contrition of your heart; then pour over all of it the water of the Jordan. For the Jordan is descent and ascent, since he who goes down into the sacred font also ascends, to seek the things above; for he who is baptized in Christ goes down into Christ's death and ascends into his resurrection.

But if, already baptized, you have strayed, pour the water of tears, not false but true, so that you cry from the depths to the Lord your God and it may be said of you: "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and much wailing; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, because they are not."

Rachel is the church, in which the people of God is blessed. Let her weep for you, let her lament your sins and weep very much, so that she does not easily admit consolation, as those who grieve very much. So she would not be consoled, because you who were have ceased to be; but by this perseverance of grief and weeping let her deserve to say: "My son was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and is found."

Or perhaps Rachel would not be consoled in the children of the Jews, because they are not, whom she had borne for this, that they might be. And so she admitted no consolation when the little ones were killed by Herod, because they did not believe even in the coming of Jesus, filling up the measure of crime, so as even to kill little children, so that among them the virgin's son too might be killed. The Lord's church, then, would not be consoled among the Jews, because they are not; but among the Christians, gathered from the nations, she feasts and rejoices, because those who were not have begun to be.

You have poured, then, the water of the Jordan, the water of grace; "drink this first." You have poured the water of tears, the water of repentance; this is the second cup, to restore the first. Drink water from your own vessels, drink water from your own weeping, so that you may say: "And I tempered my drink with weeping." Your weeping, then, is your drink, and your tears are your food.

"My tears," he says, "have been my bread." If tears are bread, you have from the sin of iniquity the food of conversion, according to what you read in the gospel, that he to whom more is forgiven loves more. Hence we often see some who before were negligent Christians, after committing some sin,

become more diligent, and through penance usually emerge from it perfect. As, then, conversion from sin, so a remedy from venom. Hear this remedy: "The just man at the beginning of his speech is his own accuser." Sin is venom, iniquity is venom; confession of one's crime is the remedy for the fall. And so truly there is a remedy from the venom if you tell your iniquities so as to be justified.

But let us now take up the psalm, so that it may itself teach us how penance is to be done. So it begins thus:

"Lord, do not reprove me in your wrath, nor chasten me in your fury." He who does penance must be ready to bear reproaches and undergo injuries, and not be disturbed if someone throws the crime of his sin at him. For since he himself ought to accuse himself, how does he not endure another reproving him? And if he ought not to fear being reproved by a man, how much less by the Lord his God, against whom we all sin even in hidden things, especially since condemnation in the present is absolution for the future; but those who are not condemned in the world will not be scourged with men.

Woe to me if it is said of me: "He has his reward!" If a good deed is condemned by this sentence, how much more is a crime weighed down! For if mercy, flaunted in easy speech, is cheated of eternal fruit, how much more is the punishment of iniquity deferred with the accrual of bitter interest! He, then, who does penance must offer himself to punishment, so as to be punished here by the Lord, not kept for eternal torments; nor wait for the time, but go to meet the divine indignation.

See David's deeds agree with his prayers. He had offended the Lord because he had ordered the people to be numbered. By confession he anticipated God's messenger, saying that he had sinned greatly and acted very foolishly, not as though reminding one who had forgotten, but as though urging one who delayed, lest he put off longer the anger at the offense. "I have sinned," he says, "go, because I have done this thing; and now, Lord, blot out the iniquity of your servant." Hear one saying how sins are blotted out: "His sin is loosed,

for he has received from the Lord's hand double for his sins." He does not ask, then, that the sin be entirely remitted to him, but that it be blotted out by a moderate payment, that is, that its memory be blotted out for the future. Indeed the Lord, as though summoned by the voice of one appealing, so that the vengeance of the error committed should not be drawn out, sent to him the prophet Nathan, and he came to the king and said to him: "Choose what you wish to be done: three years of famine on the land, or for three months to flee before your enemies while they pursue, or for three days death in the land.

And now know and see what I shall answer him who sent me." See God teaching by what moderation his indignation is softened, if we do not entirely refuse the blows but ask for a kind of lightening, not avoiding, of the punishment. He proposed three, so that he might choose what he thought more moderate. See also how he calls to penance, so that we offer ourselves to suffering, commanding him to choose, so that even in the punishment a certain privilege of choice is kept and he flatters his defendant by this word. "And David said to Nathan: I am in straits in these three; but let me rather fall into the hands of the Lord, for

his mercy is great, than into the hands of men." Did he ask that the penalty for his error be remitted? Had he done so, he would have been marked with impudence, as ungrateful to the divine moderation. A modest confession helps the defendant most, and the punishment that we cannot avoid by defense we lighten by shame. He chose not what was free of the scourge, but what he judged more moderate, so as to entrust himself to the gentleness of God, who knew how to forgive, rather than to the power of men, who often exceed the measure of vengeance. He has mercy who does not know how to err; he does not have mercy who shares in error.

Nor did his faith deceive holy David, but even in the offense he won the grace of divine compassion. For he who had proposed to exercise death three days in the land did not let even one day pass, but at the hour of the midday meal gladly relented and, to use the word of Scripture, repented of the evil. See how Scripture urges you not to shun repentance either, if you follow God, whom you ought to follow.

Well he added "of the evil," because every vengeance seems hard. So the day of judgment too is called an evil day, from which he is blessed who is freed through God, as it is written: "In the evil day the Lord will deliver him." "And the Lord said," it says, "to the angel, that he should spare." See that, when the Lord wishes to forgive, he gives the grace and confidence to pray. "And David saw the angel striking and said: Behold, it is I; I have sinned and I the shepherd have done evil; and these in this flock, what have they done? Let your hand be upon me and upon my father's house."

If the Lord had commanded the angel to spare, how was the angel still striking, unless because the Lord, even when he wills to forgive, wills to be asked, and works so that he is asked? Nor would a man have seen the angel striking, unless the Lord had revealed the angel to his eyes. Hence Elisha too says: "Lord, open now the eyes of this boy that he may see"; and the eyes of his boy were opened and he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots around the prophet. Do not be troubled that the person of a servant is meaner than that of a prophet or king, because the sight of horses and chariots is also meaner than the holiness of angels.

And perhaps to some who read carelessly it may seem hard that David, humble of heart and gentle, who spared his enemies, chose the death of the people rather than his own flight or famine on the land. He avoided the famine of the people, because it is held graver than death and all punishments, and pestilence also follows it, which pollutes the sky and heaps up death. He did not ask for his own flight

because the prophet could pray for the people, as happened, but the people could not intercede for the prophet. For it is written: "If the people err, the priest will pray for them. If the priest errs, who will ask for him?" And yet, when he saw the people being killed, he offered himself to the striking angel, so that he rather might be struck for the people. It is more that, not terrified even by the sight of the dead, he offered himself to the sword, than if he had wished for remission of the proposed condition. In the choice, then, he followed reason; in grief, piety.

But see the Lord's grace, that he too turned from the proposed condition. Is it any crime of compassion that he threatens more and exacts less? He who in rewarding keeps his promises, in exacting punishments takes back what he prescribed. When he is angry, he puts off the defendant; when he has mercy, he hastens to absolve. He terrifies to correct, warns to amend, anticipates to forgive.

Hence elsewhere too the prophet says of the Lord: "A cup in the hand of the Lord is full of mixed unmixed wine; yet its dregs are not emptied." To terrify the cup is full; to strike it is not emptied. The cup was full when

death was commanded for three days; but God's mercy ran to meet it and held the angel's hand before he emptied that cup. And so that you may know that the cup is punishment or the sword, hear one saying: "Take this cup of unmixed wine from my hand, and you will make all the nations to which I send you drink, and they will vomit and go mad before the sword"; and to Jerusalem it is said: "You have drunk the cup of wrath from the hand of the Lord; for you have drunk the cup of ruin and emptied it, and there was none to comfort you." Jerusalem drank the measure, which sinned beyond measure.

The Christians' church does not know how to empty the cup of wrath, but it emptied the ointment, for whose sake Christ emptied himself, so that it might be fragrant everywhere. This gift it received from the Lord's hand, but it does not know the cup of death. I read of two cups, one of death, the other of life. The cup of death Christ emptied in his own blood and served a new cup, so that we may say: "I will take the cup of salvation," the cup of the new testament, which is poured out for the remission of sins. This cup is poured out, and its dregs are not found, because it cleanses every offense.

We have said how the Lord bends his anger in avenging; let us say how in rewarding he anticipates our prayer, and teach by an example. Hear that one of the two thieves saying to the Lord: "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom." The Lord answered: "Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." He was still asking to be remembered when he came into the kingdom, and the Lord was already granting the heavenly kingdom. How swift a mercy! Slower is the vow of the one praying than the reward of the one giving.

So David kept to moderation; he did not pray for remission, saying: "Lord, do not reprove me in your wrath, nor chasten me in your fury." "Fury" in Greek is θυμός, the impetus of anger. This the Latin wished to express: neither in anger nor in the very impetus of anger reprove or chasten me. And chastening is instruction; in Greek it is called παιδεία, of which it is said: "Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord."

For God is not open to passion, so as to be angry, since he is impassible; but because he punishes, he seems to be angry. It seems so to us, because we ourselves are used to punishing with agitation. Yet often men too are found who, when they punish, are not moved, but carry out punishment and apply torments with the greatest calm. Why, then, wonder at it in God, if you sometimes recognize it in man?

And we said above, of the day of wrath, that wrath is punishment. Indeed usage has it that we say of someone punished that he fell into the wrath of the laws, not because the laws have wrath, but because he fell into the severity of the laws. So too elsewhere, of the ten plagues of the Egyptians, he says: "He sent wrath on them through evil angels," that is, punishment; for the law does not know how to be angry, but the minister of the laws does. Neither, then, does he know how to be angry who is the author of laws, whose will is to frighten, not to punish. Imitate, then, you emperors, the divine example, so as to be more severe in making laws, merciful in exacting punishments.

Let the severity of the laws restrain insolent boldness; let the mercy of princes withdraw the guilty from punishment. So the prophet recognizes his guilt, sees his wounds, asks to be healed. He who wishes to be healed does not fear to be reproved, but he does not want to be reproved in fury, but in the word of God. The word of God is health; for so we read: "He sent his word and healed them." He does not want to be instructed in anger, but in teaching, as if you asked a physician not to cut your wound but to apply a medicine. He presses with medicine but does not cut; there is pain, but not beyond the measure of pain; it bites, but does not draw blood.

And he added: "For your arrows are fixed in me." He seems to say the same as holy Job, but they are different. For he too says: "For the arrows of the Lord are in my body, whose fury drinks my blood; when I begin to speak, they prick me." He complains of the wound of his body; this one laments the wounds of his soul. And perhaps this one does penance for sin, that one pleads the cause of human weakness and, as a defender of our frailty, begs the help of the Creator as a remedy for his work.

This one, then, prays; that one pleads; and so this one's grief is the more vehement, because the wounds of the soul are graver than those of the flesh. That one says the arrows of the Lord are in his body; this one laments that they are fixed; that one's blood is drunk, this one's is poured out; that one is pricked, this one wounded; the hand of God touched that one; upon this one it is confirmed with heavy weight; this one weeps that his soul is filled with mockeries, that one that his body is filled with sores. And by the hand of God we understand the power of punishing.

This hand David experienced in himself, and lamented in his children the incest of one, the parricide of another; and, what is graver for a loving father than the ruin of his own safety, he wept at once the disgrace of his offspring and the destruction of family love. Of these, one to incest

was kindled from brotherly affection, the other armed for parricide by zeal for chastity. How the borders of virtues deceived them in the gravest crimes! Would that the one had not loved his sister or the other had not avenged her! Lastly he himself, driven from the borders of his country by his son, fled the enemy whom he wished as heir; he feared to conquer, lest he be conquered at the cost of fatherly love.

This hand scourged the king of the Egyptians for the wrong done to Abraham, for the attempt on Sarah's chastity; this hand sank the chariots and horses and peoples of the Egyptians in the depth of the Red Sea; this hand weighed down King Saul's mind, so that he hated the favor of his preserver, and, for his transgression of the heavenly command, deserted by his companions, bereft too when his sons were killed, beaten by his enemies (than which no sight is more shameful for a king), he turned his own sword on himself, lest he live as an aged captive surviving his sons and his kingdom.

But perhaps someone may say: how was the hand of God in the parricide or the incest, when that is the enemy's work? Let us learn, then, that even where the devil wounds, the arrows of the Lord are said to wound. Indeed so we read that, when in the council of the angels the Lord, turning to the devil, praised holy Job his servant, so that the envious adversary of the human race might be burned (for the praise of a man of lower substance is the condemnation of him who was cast down from a higher state),

the devil answered that Job did not worship the Lord for nothing, who by God's will abounded in all things. "But put out," he says, "your hand and touch all that he has; let us see whether he will not bless you to your face." And God gave the devil power to put out his hand on all that Job had. When this was done and holy Job remained in his fortitude, because Job was not moved either by the death of his sons or by the loss of his means, the Lord again said to the devil, mocking him, that he had scattered all that Job had and killed his sons,

yet could by no means move him from his station of virtue. And he answered: "Whatever a man has he will give for his soul. But put out," he says, "your hand and touch his flesh and bones." And he received power again to put out his hand on his body, yet so as to keep his soul, and he covered holy Job with sores when he went out from the Lord. We note, then, that it is called the hand of the Lord where there is the temptation of a man with the devil attacking, since Job too said it was the hand of the Lord that had touched him, and called the arrows of the robbers the arrows of the Lord: "And he has handed me over," he says, "into the hands of the unjust."

He himself, then, resolved it: because, when the devil wounds, the arrows are the Lord's, who allowed the devil power to wound. Indeed, if you order your slave to be beaten, is he not said to be beaten by you, even if he is struck by another standing by? There is also this reason: the Lord gives the tempter power so that men's affection may be proved in temptations; persecution happens so that faith may shine, virtue excel, the inner mind be shown to all.

So temptation penetrates the inner parts of man like an arrow, and like the sword of God which searches inward things. And the sword is the word of God, powerful and sharper than any sharpest sword. Of this sword hear one saying to Mary: "And a sword will pierce your own soul, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

For by the word of God all things are revealed, in whose sight all things are naked and open. The soul itself is divided, the inner marrow and the thoughts are made manifest; in short, "there is no creature," as Scripture says, that hides itself from his knowledge. Let us sell all things, then, to buy the Word, and store him in our inmost parts.

Lastly, the devil himself testifies that a man gives all he has for his soul, and confesses that the price of a whole patrimony is not worthy for the redemption of one soul. Why do we spare a patrimony which even the devil judges cheap for salvation? I have said too little with "for salvation": he testifies it is little even for error.

Indeed: "All these," he says, "I will give you, if you fall down and worship me," and he showed not only the riches of the world but honors and kingdoms. If it costs so much for the devil to be worshipped, how much ought a Christian to offer to be raised with Christ? But let us send the devil away like the scapegoat into the desert; for he is not a faithful witness of truth, even if he sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light.

The testimonies of the divine Scriptures abound for us, by which we are taught that nothing in man is more precious than faith, that no patrimony is so great as to be compared with the price of our salvation and soul. By faith Abraham left his country and land and neighbors too whom he saw, and followed him whom he did not see as though seeing him;

Moses too judged the price of his soul greater than all the riches of Egypt. Why speak of sublime men? Rahab the harlot, that foreigner of the world, yet thought her soul must be redeemed not only by contempt of all she had but even by the dangers of her life; she refused the spies of Joshua son of Nun to her citizens who sought them, and preferred to hide rather than betray those who were enemies of her country yet envoys of faith.

Neither the threats of the citizens, nor the dangers of war, nor the burning of her country, nor the perils of her family terrified her. Learn, man, learn, Christian, how you ought to follow the true Jesus, when a woman despised all her things and followed Jesus in figure because of the likeness of the name. Hence Solomon excellently said: "The riches of a man are the ransom of his soul." Ransom, then, your soul. Money is cheap, but becomes precious through faith; cheap when hoarded, precious when scattered; for so it is written: "He has scattered, he has given to the poor; his justice remains for ever."

If, then, you are such that you can despise not only all your things but even your very flesh for justice, than which no possession can be richer (for a clean man is a precious possession), even if the upper rivers shut you in, you pass through; even if the Lord has given power to tempt you, yet he commands the devil to keep your soul himself, according to what is written: "to destroy the enemy and the defender"; for he tempts as an adversary and defends as a servant.

For it is written: "And will the unicorn be willing to serve you?" For he serves who carries out what he desires not by his own will but, by necessity, unwillingly obeys imperial commands. See the depth of Christ, who turned back on the devil the price of his malice. He forces us to do what we hate; for "I do not do what I want," as the apostle said, "but what I hate, that I do." The Lord turned it back on him, so that he too often does not what he wants but what he hates; in short, he guards the soul he wants to conquer.

We condemn the corruption of the flesh and follow it, like that widow who made void the faith promised to her husband and afterwards wants to marry, which before she fled. He is an enemy to the saints and is employed as a defender, so that he may be punished the more, not daring to harm though he desires to harm. And how much more bearable it is to love the virtues, even if you cannot fulfil them, than to hate virtues you cannot harm!

"There is no health in my flesh," he says, "from the face of your anger." Isaiah explained this place for us: "You were angry, and we sinned." Yet what is the face of the Lord's anger? Is it perhaps that "the eyes of the Lord are upon those who do evil"? For if the eyes of the Lord are on the just, how is the prophet weakened from the face of God's anger? Hence consider also what David himself said in later psalms: "For you have rescued me from all tribulations, and your eye has looked upon my enemies."

For as he looks on the good things of the just, so he detects the hidden things of sinners. Unless perhaps you refer this to Christ, who was rescued from all by whom he was crushed, when he stripped himself from the Jewish people, who crushed him with frequent sacrileges and daily impieties, and called his enemies to grace, whom the eye of God saw and loved. Since God is loving, then, there is no reason to despair; even if he is angry, he forgives; even if he strikes, he heals; even if he hands the flesh over to destruction, he saves the spirit. Do not fear, then, the weakness of the flesh, because the saint, when weak, is stronger.

And what is it he says: "There is no peace for my bones from the face of my sins"? What are these bones? Of the soul or of the body? But there would not be such care for bodily pain where the soul too suffers, since it is the saint's will that the flesh be scourged for the soul's sake, as Paul too scourged himself, lest his preaching be rejected. There are certain bones of the inner man, just as there are other members, eyes of the mind and nostrils, as Job said: "the divine spirit which is in my nostrils."

There are, then, bones by which a kind of framework of love is formed. Hence Adam too said of his partner in love and co-heir of the grace of life: "This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," which the apostle interpreted, saying: "This mystery is great, but I speak of Christ and the church." And who would doubt that the mystery of Christ and the church is not carnal but spiritual, since every good man, even in marriage itself, is held not by the beauty of the flesh but of virtue, and loves the character in his wife, not her use? Indeed hear that he speaks not according to the flesh but according to inner virtue: "My bone is not hidden from you, which you made in secret." It is virtue, then, not flesh, that knows the hidden things of God the Father.

There is no peace, then, for the virtues of the soul when our sins run together before our eyes and spread themselves over our minds. And this the chosen teacher of the Gentiles explained well in the second epistle to the Corinthians, saying: "For even when we had come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were afflicted in every way: fightings without, fears within."

The sins of the Macedonians troubled him; how much more do each one's own sins disturb us, so that there can be no rest for us! Our own guilt is a heavier adversary to us, which troubles the idle, afflicts the healthy, saddens the glad, disquiets the calm, harasses the gentle, wakes the sleeping. We are defendants without an accuser, tormented without a torturer, bound without chains, slaves without a seller.

Hence Scripture too says: "By your sins you have been sold." These, then, are the sins which are always against us, as the prophet said: "They sold us and they rule over us." A slave who is sold leaves his former service to pass to another master; we neither lay down the yoke of the former and bend to new sins.

Hence the saint groaned, saying: "For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they have weighed upon me," that is: my iniquities have passed over my head and tower above me, so as to press down my senses; for "the eyes of the wise man are in his head." And so Nabal was evil and hard, because malice and iniquity locked up his senses. Hence he could not bear Abigail's word, but his heart hardened and he died like a sick man.

Or see whether this is not the head of which the apostle says that he does not hold it, puffed up by the mind of the flesh. And this head is Christ, for the head of every man is Christ. This is the head which, through the joints and bonds of the whole people, grows with the increase of God, because in all of us Christ rises up through each of his members. So when our sins weigh us down and we are pressed to earthly things by a kind of leaden talent of iniquity, let us break their chains and cast their yoke from us, so that we can lift up the eyes of our mind and hear one saying:

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you." Indeed avarice burdened Egypt, the trade of the Ethiopians troubled it with money, as it is written: "Egypt has labored, and the trade of the Ethiopians, and the Sabeans, tall men, will pass over to you." Egypt labored before it knew the truth, but it labors no longer since it passed over to Christ. The Sabean men who once fled now follow willingly, because the chains of love hold them, which are stronger than adamant. Isaiah's saying too fits this place finely: "Every head in pain and every heart in sadness. From

the feet to the head there is no wound nor scar nor festering sore." For iniquity festers when it rules over our head, exalting itself and occupying the place, so that Christ, the teacher of penance, may not hold it. These iniquities have no small force, if you consider that man of iniquity who is to come according to the working of Satan with all power and lying signs and wonders and every seduction of iniquity, whom the apostle showed must be guarded against, because he will receive the working of error, so that the faithful may be proved and the faithless judged.

Rightly, then, placed under iniquities, he says that his scars have rotted and festered for himself and, what is worse, for his own, from the face of his foolishness, because the remedy followed late on one carrying the burdens of iniquities. Yet health was poured back into holy Job too, who scraped the pus of his sores, covered with sores from his feet to his head; and Lazarus the poor man, who lay at the rich man's gate while the dogs licked his sores, was taken from the stench of his scars by angels and placed in Abraham's bosom. There is, then, in holy David hope and a remedy of health, because the wounds of his sins smell not of ointment but of stench, and because he is afflicted and bowed down by them and does not delight in them.

Look now at some young man, wanton and exceedingly lustful, who spends his life in debauchery, in the manner of that rich man lying in fine linen and purple and feasting splendidly every day, whose floors swim with wine, whose ground is covered with flowers, and whose dining rooms, the fish-bones covered, are filled with the burnt odors of various incenses: how he thinks himself blessed and judges that he smells sweet, when he bears grave and long-standing wounds of his soul and runs with corrupt blood, yet perceives no stench of his scar. He has nostrils blocked with mud and cannot say: "the divine spirit which is in my nostrils." So that rich man could not find the remedy of salvation; the poor man found it; in the end one is in torment in the underworld, the other in rest.

The holy prophet David, then, found the remedy of everlasting salvation, who confessed that the wounds of his soul stank to him and said that his scars had rotted from the face of his foolishness. But there is also a foolishness which through the foolishness of preaching brings salvation to those who believe. The prophet, then, already with the gospel spirit, shuns

the wisdom of this world, by which God is not known, which covers its wounds and does not reveal them to the Lord. Better, then, is the foolishness that has eyes to see its sores than the wisdom that has none. And so, warned by the spiritual sight of his foolishness, so great a king declares himself afflicted by miseries, so as to find the remedy of penance, which Judas, who possessed a field from the reward of iniquity, could not find.

"By miseries," he says, "I was afflicted and bowed down to the end; all day long I went about sad." To what end does he say he was bowed down: to the lawful end of penance, or further, that we may understand it mystically, even to Christ, who is the end of the law, who allowed himself to be stoned, allowed his dead body to be wounded?

But those wounds smelled not of the stench of penance but of the fragrance of grace. Indeed not the decay of death, as with other men, but the fountain of eternal life gushed from his wound, as Scripture teaches us, saying: "And water will leap up with delight from the fountains of salvation." Water leapt from the wound, then, so that we might drink salvation; all the sinners of the earth will drink, so as to lay down their sins. See each point. Christ was afflicted with miseries, so as to make blessed the men who were set in miseries. Let no one call a just man miserable, because he himself said: "No one will make you miserable." He was bowed down so that we might be raised up; he was saddened so as to gladden us, according to what is written: "For if I sadden you, who is it that gladdens me but he who is saddened by me?"

He, then, who is saddened by the Lord Jesus Christ himself gladdens Christ and is himself gladdened by Christ. And so we too know that we must not make satisfaction carelessly. Let us be bowed down to the end, that is, bringing to Christ not only faith but also perseverance in our sufferings, and let us rejoice in our sufferings, as Christ too rejoiced in his sufferings. Those he undertook for his servants, let us undergo for the Lord.

This, then, is the end: "that I may fill up," he says, "what is lacking of the tribulations of Christ in my flesh for his body, which is the church, of which I have been made a minister." We see what we must undertake, who undertake the priestly ministry: that we ought to bear bravely the sufferings of the body not only for ourselves but also for the Lord's church. But David added the sufferings of the soul too.

Indeed he says: "For my soul is filled with mockeries, and there is no health in my flesh. I am bowed down and humbled exceedingly; I roared from the groaning of my heart. And before you is all my desire, and my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart is troubled and my strength has left me, and the light of my eyes is not with me." We note, then, that the labor of the soul is greater than that of the flesh.

In short, understand with what mockeries the soul is filled: that in temptations the devil seems to mock and insult it as it labors heavily. Symmachus, however, says "loins," in which are the seeds of human generation. Hence the wisdom of God bids you have your loins girded, lest your chastity be loosened. And so that you may know that in the loins are the stirrings of lust, which are often roused by the devil when he strives to scatter the members of Christ and make them

members of a harlot: "Behold," he says, "his strength is in his loins and his power in his belly." In the man's loins are the seeds, in the woman's womb. So the devil mocks in these, to make adultery, incest, fornications. And so "he who commits fornication sins against his own body," not outside the body: first because the flesh is weakened, which dissolves in lusts and does not keep the restraints of chastity; then because the seeds which

should serve to beget offspring work the defilement of the body, not the fruit of posterity. Those, then, are called mockeries, perhaps because in them the heat of the body often mocks without the act of union. Hence the Seventy rightly called them mockeries of the soul, because the devil, mocking someone's affection, strives in vain to pour out its strength, empty its virtue, loosen its fortitude.

And so elsewhere he says: "And my reins are loosened." In this the blessed apostle too confirms us, that we should fear not the weakness of the flesh but the mockeries of the soul, because Christ is the strength both of our soul and body, who cures the sick as a physician and strengthens the weak as the strength of all. Indeed, "even if our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner is renewed day by day."

Wearied, then, by these mockeries of the soul, holy David had bowed down and humbled himself exceedingly, not so as to give place to iniquities placing themselves over his head, as we said, or to yield to the enemy, who teaches in later psalms that one must not yield, saying: "How much evil the enemy has worked in your holy places! And those who hated you have boasted in the midst of your feast. They set up their signs as signs, and I did not know, as on the way above the summit. As in a wood of trees they cut down its doors with axes."

When my enemies, he says, set up the signs of their iniquity above the summit (and what is the summit but your head, where the senses are, where Christ is wisdom?), I did not know them, that is, I did not acquiesce, did not consent to them and add the judgment of my thought. Hence elsewhere too: "I did not know the wicked word, and the malicious who turned from me I did not know." Indeed, though Christ knows all things, he did not know sin; for he knows what is his, that is, what belongs to the virtues, not what belongs to shameful deeds.

And so Scripture says to you: "The Lord knows those who are his," and to the wicked he says: "Depart from me, for I do not know you," and through Jeremiah he spoke, saying: "Like a lamb I was led to the slaughter, and I did not know." How did he not know what he had foretold would come? But I did not know, he says, their thoughts, their malice; I will not know what is of blood; indeed, "I will not gather their assemblies from blood."

I blot out their iniquities and do not remember; I will not know what I came to forgive. I did not know the wood that is to burn, nor what is placed in the pile of wood, either stubble or hay, so that the flame may consume them sooner with its fuel. I will know those things that remain, so that they may receive the fruit of their reward.

I will know those things that are built on the foundation, so that they may be improved, not those on the way, where passers-by snatch them. I will know those things that belong to the vine, those sure trees that bear fruit, not those gathered in a bundle and prepared for burning; that is: I am not judge and partner of those things that are perishable. It is not, then, partnership in any thing, but criminal partnership that is in fault.

For what reason, then, did he not know those who glory in fruitless and fragile things? Because with evil works and the axes of their iniquity they overturn the entrances of the faithful soul, and with cruel deeds split the porches of the pious mind, so that Christ cannot enter through them. Each one ought to guard his gates and doors, so that, when Christ comes and knocks, the ministering powers who go before and run ahead may say:

"Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, eternal gates." Truly princes are those who have ruled themselves well, so that Christ may enter into their souls. Like this too is Solomon's saying: "If the spirit of one who has power rises against you, do not leave your place, for care will soothe great offenses." For diligence and faith hold the higher place, faithlessness the lower. So let good diligence rise to you, which shuts out the enemy's

snares and takes away sin, so that the malice of the one who has power cannot harm. In "the Canticles" Ecclesiastes saw this malice under the sun, that is, in this world; hence Scripture also called this place the region under the sun. He saw it under the sun, then, not above the sun, where is the peace of angels or the holiness of the heavenly powers. Or perhaps he said "under the sun of iniquity"; for the devil presides over malice, Christ over the virtues. And so, to overcome the spirit of the one who has power, which he received for a time, David bowed himself in prayer, bending his neck like a ring, and humbled himself in his entreaties; for the prayer of one who humbles himself pierces the clouds and goes beyond the heights of the elements, so as to draw near to Christ.

"And I roared from the groaning of my heart." He roars who utters only a groan, not words. This, then, is that excellent prayer, when the Spirit intercedes for us with unutterable groanings, as the vessel of election declared. This is the groaning God does not despise, who does not despise the younger servant bereft of his father, nor the widow if she pours out her complaint.

So the apostle puts groaning, before all, as a sign of the Holy Spirit, as we read. Let us guard, then, the doors of our soul, lest the entrance of our confession be split by the axes of much speaking. Let nothing insolent and proud come from our mouth, nor let us raise the axe or hammer, which do not enter the church of the Lord. Shut the doors when you pray, lest the evil spirit thrust himself in, to extort sin where we wish to gain the profit of piety.

He who prays thus, his groaning is not hidden from the Lord. Indeed holy Peter's groaning was both known and heard when he wept most bitterly; not that the tears were bitter, but the feeling of him who shed them. Even in faithless Ahab groaning would have found grace, had not persistent envy heaped up the offense. For not a perfunctory groan is praised, but one that has conversion; for it is written: "If, turning, you groan, you will be saved."

Let us also set before the Lord all our desire. What is desire? For I have read of desire for a good thing: "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you," and: "The deer desires the springs of waters."

But I think that he who does penance, who afflicts himself, ought to enumerate not his good things but the sins he has committed. Indeed by those verses, I think, we are taught this, where he says: "O God, I will declare my life to you; you have set my tears in your sight." For he does not proclaim his life as innocent where tears are shed, which usually undertake the embassy for offenses. Unless perhaps we understand it thus: that even if someone is innocent, he cannot be secure, who has against the gravest enemies

daily contests; and so even where a glad conscience shines, the fight is still tearful. According to these verses, then, we can take "concupiscence" rather than "desire"; for the Greek put ἐπιθυμίαν, and both concupiscence and desire are called ἐπιθυμία; but concupiscence is said both of good and of evil: "My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord," of good; but in the law otherwise: "For I did not know concupiscence, unless the law said:

you shall not covet," surely of evil. Indeed what follows teaches us that sin, seizing the occasion, through the commandment works every concupiscence in man's affection. Yet we can take it thus: I set all my desire before you, that is, I make plain to you what I desire to obtain, so that it seems to refer to the series of petitions, not to boasting of virtues; for boasting is insolent even in a sound man, entreaty praiseworthy even in a sinner.

The prophet also added this: that, since his heart was troubled, his strength left him. A great danger, if the heart with which we believe unto justice is shaken. But yet, as in great dangers of sickness, if pain is felt and its sense expressed, a remedy of health is shown (for it is more bearable to feel pain than not to feel it; it is one sign of life still remaining if you feel pain, another a sign of final death if there is no sense of pain), so the heart too shows signs of health when it recognizes the causes of its disturbance.

Indeed David's heart was troubled against Nabal, a pestilent man, and found grace. Abigail met him, to soothe the agitation of his indignation, and received the sanctification of blessing. But Nabal, with hard and rigid heart, could not bear his wife's word, and, stupefied, grew stiff and fell into death.

And what strength left the prophet, of the flesh or of the mind? If of the flesh, health is surely not to be despaired of; for power is perfected in weakness. Of this one argued not lightly who was a judge and fighter in the wrestling of mind and body, knowing how to temper the contest of both, so as to restrain the flesh if he saw it stronger, lest it lead the mind captive in the law of sin. So he called back the flesh and joined it to the strength of the mind; thus he deserved to reach the crown.

So, as to what the prophet says: if the strength of the flesh left him, the strength of the mind prevailed. But if we take it that the strength of the mind left him, no wonder if in the gravest temptations, with troubled heart, a man thinks he is forsaken by the strength of his mind. Let him teach you himself, saying: "The Lord is my strength and my praise." He was seeking the Lord, then, and so, lest he deserve to be forsaken,

he thought he must seek him more often, and, if ever he wavered, thought himself forsaken. So the apostles woke the sleeping one, lest he sleep for himself, not because they believed he had fallen asleep. So Elisha, to use examples from earlier: "Where," he says, "is the God of Elijah?" not because he thought him absent, but because he sought his presence in benefits. So Jeremiah followed him as a physician, saying: "Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. I have not labored following after you."

So the church sought him in the Song of Songs and asked the daughters of Jerusalem to rouse love; she sought so as to find him whom she held by her love and never felt absent. So, then, David too did not complain that he was forsaken by Christ, but judged that, with him present, he could not be troubled.

Indeed, so that you may know it is rather to be understood of Christ, he added: "And the light of my eyes is not with me." What is the true light of all but Christ, of whom John says: "He was the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world," since he it is who enlightens both the eyes of the body and the sight of the mind? Let us ask, then, that he always pour his light into us and always be with us, as he was with David. And so he dared to say: "For with

you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light." He certainly, as a prophet, had seen a great light; for us let his lamp shine, so that we cannot go astray; and the lamp is the word, as the true light is the Word who enlightens the whole world. Indeed: "Your word, Lord, is a lamp to my feet"; and the prophet sought that lamp, not a lantern, but a lamp. John found the lamp and pointed it out; with a lantern the persecutor came and pointed him out; for a lantern has a closed, not a free, light.

The light of the Jews is like a lamp under a bushel or torches under a veil; it can be seen, but is not seen. But we, with unveiled face, behold the eternal glory of the Lord, so as to be re-formed into his image from glory to glory through the Holy Spirit. So the crowd of persecutors came with lanterns, and so their eyes could not see the enclosed light; it came with torches, which have more gloom in their smoke than splendor in their light.

Indeed corpses of the dead are usually burned with torches. So the Jews were already carrying burnings for themselves, who persecuted the author of salvation. They came with weapons, signifying that by weapons they would perish at the hands of the Romans, to the destruction of the whole city and temple, they who refused the Lord's peace.

"My friends and my neighbors drew near against me and stood, and my neighbors stood far off; and those who sought my soul used violence, and those who sought my evils spoke vanity and meditated deceit all day long. But I, like one deaf, did not hear, and like a dumb man who does not open his mouth; and I became like a man who does not hear and has no rebukes in his mouth."

I shall see who they are who discuss these things subtly. To me, especially in this first verse, the Lord's saying seems to be kept, that in temptations a man's enemies are even those of his household. This, then, holy David confesses purely and sincerely and with grief. For true grief and confession of the inner heart is when all those things are enumerated by which the secret inner parts of the mind are pricked with most bitter feeling and embittered by domestic gall.

So the prophet laments that he was attacked by friends and neighbors, by whom he surely ought not to have been attacked but helped. This agrees with holy Job's complaint, for he too reproached those three kings as comforters of evils, who brought him greater contests when they had come together, by the grace of friendship, to comfort him; and this we must beware of. For consolation should be gentle, not

harsh, so as rather to soothe pain and calm fever than stir up agitation. Certainly the medicine of the body itself may teach us, which is accustomed to apply milder remedies to inflamed wounds, by which to relieve pain. And so wounds are first fomented, afterwards cut, lest the hardness itself offend and the incision inflame the wound. How much more, then, ought we to take care, when we have come to console, not to speak easily or carelessly! Job was silent for seven days;

his friends were silent, and they would not have spoken had not Job in his pain burst into speech. For you must seek where to begin, lest in the very speech your consolation offend; even silence itself is medicine, and one quick in words rather wounds. Why do you wonder if he wounds another, when he himself is often wounded, since in much speaking he does not escape sin? For if a physician waits for the time of healing, so that the aids of medicine may be applied when the sicknesses have been digested, lest the sickness, still harsh and unripe, as they assert, resist the remedies of cure and be unable to feel the benefit, how much more ought we to

examine, so that a healing word may come from us opportunely, which seems not to kindle grief but to soothe it! The force of grief presses, the heart of an afflicted woman is crushed, who has lost her husband or children by untimely death: why do you hurry, when she does not hear you until the grief cools? We have often seen quarrels stirred up over consolations. You came to grieve, not to quarrel. The order of speech must be sought, lest you incur sin before God while you wish to console a man; lest, when you say: "Hear these and many other things," which are of no profit, she answer: "Hear, comforters of evils"; lest you bring into another's mourning the contest of a chattering dispute; lest you not come when you ought, or come and your speech be too harsh. Indeed let holy Job teach you what is said of such men: "At once the gravest temptations came upon me, they surrounded me, watching. My brothers departed from me, they acknowledged strangers rather than me; my friends became merciless." This, then, is the natural sense of holy David the prophet too: he complains that he was attacked by friends, abandoned by neighbors.

But not even a mystical feeling of piety should be shunned, so that he may have spoken of the angels, who are set before those who fear the Lord, to rescue them from temptations they cannot bear. How, then, do they stand far off who are assigned to help? But they do not separate themselves; rather he who is pressed by temptations thinks they are far off, whom he desires to be nearer to him, and thinks they hold back, while they await the time for helping at the nod of their commander, who has ordered his athlete to contend longer so as to win more gloriously.

And this seems to fit better with what follows, because, when the angels relaxed the watches of protection, the enemies lay in wait, seeking to find in his soul something to harm. For power of graver temptation is permitted them when graver guilt of soul is found. Hence you have in the book of Kingdoms that saying of King Ahab to Elijah, when the prophet rebuked him vehemently and announced his death to him:

"Have you found me?" he says; and Elijah answered: "I have found you, because you have done evil in the sight of the Lord." You see, then, that kings must not be rashly wronged by God's prophets or priests, if there are no graver sins for which they should be rebuked. But where sins are graver, there it seems the priest should not spare, so that they may be corrected by just rebukes.

Yet David in this place says that they seem to have found nothing, and so his enemies spoke vanity, since they found nothing to speak for the truth. Or at least: although I sinned, yet I was purging my sins with the grief of repentance; in which they spoke with me with deceit, to confound me with reproach and call me back from conversion. And see whether he did not rather mean this: that they sought his evils, but, when they wished to accuse, were forestalled, because he himself laid open his wounds, being his own accuser, and so the force of their accusation was weakened, and they spoke vain things of the truth, which could not harm one who had already confessed his guilt.

Shut out, then, from the odium of accusation, they used deceit, "to rise up," he says, "against me and insult me," so as to goad me to some agitation; seeing their deceit, I, like one deaf, did not hear. Consider the force of the word. He did not say: I pretended not to hear what they said; but he said "I did not hear," and that by the attention of his mind he shut out the voice of the speaker and did not open his mouth, like a dumb man.

Blessed is he who can have such virtue that, provoked, he is not angry, stirred, he does not want to avenge himself. Enemies do this to provoke to anger: they curse that we may curse, accuse that we may turn the accusation back, revile to rouse us to return the insult. Hence Peter excellently put in his epistle of the Lord Jesus, that when he was cursed he did not curse, when he suffered he did not threaten.

To his likeness and image the just man, desiring to form the ordering of his life, when accused is silent, when hurt forgives, when provoked lets it pass, and does not open his mouth, so as to imitate him who was led like a lamb to the sacrifice and does not open his mouth, and, though he could have something to reply, prefers to be silent rather than speak.

For the Lord Jesus himself was truly silent when he was accused, and when he was struck did not strike back. Indeed, when struck, he answered: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; if well, why do you strike me?" See how, as if truly weak and as one who could not avenge himself, he spoke with a kind of childlike feeling. So you too, if you have the means to refute your accuser, will do better to be silent, lest by refuting in turn you betray your agitation; for it is better to overlook an injury than to avenge it by refuting.

Good is the dumb man who does not know how to speak evil, from whose mouth crime does not know how to go out. This is the truly blessed dumb man, who, when silent, speaks within himself: "The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, when I should speak a word." Such things Zechariah spoke within himself when he had become dumb; and truly, because speaking had not profited him, he became dumb so as not to speak, and was heard by Christ so as to speak. Indeed he wrote what Christ would hear, and received the voice which

Christ granted, and added a grace he had not had before, so as to prophesy of him whose commands he had not believed before. Why speak of the Lord of all virtues, when the woman Susanna, not troubled even by the weakness of her sex, uttered no word to those by whom she knew herself handed over to the danger of death? She was accused and was silent, she was led to death and covered herself with silence, lest she bare her modesty. Yet within herself she spoke to God, who heard her the more when silent, who, had she wished to speak, perhaps would not have been heard.

You too, then, who have resolved to make satisfaction for your offenses to the Lord your God, purify yourself to him alone with your inner heart; look to him who can wash away sins. He helps you who thinks you should be reproved. Indeed, when David was being cursed and his captain Abishai wished to avenge his injury, David said to him: "Let him alone, that he may curse, for the Lord has told him, that you may see my humiliation, and the Lord may repay me good for this cursing." You see, then, that you are helped by those who revile you, so that the Lord may hear you and remit your sin.

For since you ought to be your own accuser and heap up your shameful deeds and offer yourself to punishment, how do you desire to deny what is charged? Repentance seeks patience; patience soothes great offenses. How are you angry with others, yourself guilty in your conscience? How are you stirred, when you ought to be pitiable? He who is reproved, and what is more by himself, must cure his own wounds, not wound another. No one heals himself by wounding another. "Physician, heal yourself." If a physician, how much more must a defendant cure himself first!

You confess your sin, and profess yourself another's physician: even if what you retort belongs to truth, it does not belong to the time; for God said to the sinner: "Why do you recount my justices?" You have usurped the right to reprove from the law, you who have stood against the law. Why do you lose the time for tears? Why, by contending, do you either hear or speak vain words, when it is written for you: "Do not receive a vain report," when you have read in the gospel that judgment must be undergone for every idle word? Even if another speaks, be silent; even if another reviles, stop your ear.

David overcame his adversaries by keeping silent, and, because he became like a dumb man, he received his voice, for, turned to the Lord, he spoke, saying: "For in you, Lord, have I hoped; you will hear me, O Lord my God. For I said: lest at any time my enemies rejoice over me." See each point. David was silent, the enemies spoke, they provoked him so that he too might say something.

They said: let us hear your voice; he, silent, spoke within himself. What need is there for these to hear what cannot profit them? In you, Lord, I have hoped, to you alone I speak; you hear, who can hear. I have always asked of you that my enemies may never rejoice over me, because, even if I sinned, you forgive sin; even if I fell, you raise up; so that those who rejoice in others' sins may have nothing to exult over.

For we who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace makes us more blessed than our innocence. We have this sense in the book of the prophet Micah too: "Do not rejoice over me, my enemy, because I have fallen; but I shall rise." The fall of weakness is not grave, if there is not also a will's desire not to rise from it. Have the will to rise: he is present who will make you rise again.

David spoke, then, in his heart, asking to be heard by the Lord and that his enemies should not exult over him, asking too that he might persevere in the purpose of his conversion, lest, while the steps of his purpose, like certain feet of his soul, were shaken, his adversaries should speak proud things full of boasting against him, as those do who desire to insult.

Yet, even if he is shaken as a man, he says he is ready for scourges, so as to pay for his error even by punishment. Even if the Lord's scourges cease, he recalls that he is scourged by his own grief, so that guilt, which good confession has forestalled, may find nothing to condemn. This, then, is what he says: "And while my feet were moved, they spoke great things against me," because they are so ready for the mockeries of insult that in the moving of my feet they had boasting ready. Or certainly thus: while my feet were moved, thinking I would fall, they already spoke proud and boastful things.

But yet, because in a later psalm he himself said his feet were almost moved, lest any scruple arise from this, consider that here we are taught the feeling of penance, there the opinion of that error is excluded, that the riches and more prosperous success of the shameless should not move us.

And a usage of expression of this kind is found in the divine Scriptures. For so elsewhere: "When the Lord turned back the captivity of Zion, we became like those comforted," although the saint wishes to be proved not in a display of words but in the power of the Spirit. The sense, then, must always be looked to, which frequent translation from Hebrew into Greek and from Greek into Latin usually weakens.

For all the foregoing, then, there is a fine remedy: that he is ready for scourges and offers himself to the Lord, to bear whatever scourges please God. I read indeed that holy David chose a kind of scourge he could bear with equanimity; but he chose because the necessity of choosing one of three conditions was laid on him.

But where it is not commanded, God's servant is ready for everything, whether he undergo bodily sickness or flight from the face of the enemy or the death of his children, whom he does not fear to send ahead, because he can receive them back undaunted. For he knows that, if he is punished here with temporal punishment, he can lighten the penalty of perpetual misery in the future. He asks, then, that his petition be received and that he himself be chastised so as to be received; "for the Lord chastises every son whom he receives."

If you see your slave confessing his own sins and offering himself of his own accord to punishment, you are moved, you forgive: and do you distrust the Lord's compassion? A judge himself, who in many cases may not hold back the sword because he serves the laws, can yet grant remission of penalties; and do you still tremble about what to ask of the Lord of the laws and author of mercy, whose will is law and who has the right to give, if only you ask that your sins be forgiven you, and do not consider your honors or blush before your friends, lest you seem to have bent your dignity?

A friend of God, a prophet of God, a king chosen by God himself and anointed to the kingdom, offered himself willingly to scourges and did not blush, and do you blush? That shame will not help you much when you come to God's judgment; but you will repent of that shame when, set in the sight not only of men but of angels and all the heavenly powers, you begin not to deny your own sins. How will you excuse yourself, when you have committed so much? You will plead the weakness of your condition, because no one is without sin.

It will be answered you: then you ought to have done penance; I had given a remedy, why did you refuse it? You will add shame, that you blushed for your honors. He will say: "If you were ashamed of me before your friends, I too will be ashamed of you before my Father who is in heaven." Learn that what is written is true, that "there is a shame that brings sin." David set his grief before his eyes, lest he ever forget it; David himself pronounced his iniquity; David thought about his sin, not his wealth; David did not blush to review his sins, lest he blush for them when set in my judgment:

and will you blush? My servant Job would not today be at rest if he had been ashamed before those three kings his friends; nor David himself, if he had been ashamed to confess his own offenses. So, because he was not ashamed to open his sins to me, neither will I be ashamed to unlock my secrets to him. And because neither of them was ashamed to place the price of his deeds in my power and to commit himself to my judgment and will, neither shall I be ashamed of such

servants, so as to call them friends who strove to do my will. And so, since they were formerly in grief, now in consolation; you, because you were in delights, now in torments. There is a great chasm between you, so that neither their grace can pass to you nor your punishment to them. Do you hear, then, what David says? Hear, while you are permitted to correct and amend; if you amend here, you will rest there. Let not the sweet things of the world and the pleasures of this age delight you; they usually vomit heavy gall. He did not seek pleasant things, though set in a kingdom, who chose the death of the saints rather than the life of the shameless.

"My enemies," he says, "live and are strengthened against me, and those who hate me wrongfully are multiplied; those who repay evil for good slandered me, because I followed after justice." But how much more illustrious he who died daily, to give life to his people,

and offered his body to the wounds of death, as he himself says: "in deaths often"! For an honorable death is the redemption even of a discolored life, or the confirmation of an innocent one, and the outcome of death is in the hand of life; and so the apostle preferred to die daily, to prove the merit of his life; for it is written: "Do not praise a man in his life." For those who live die; those who die will rise. He is nearer to salvation, then, who dies to rise again than he who lives to die.

And who is it that dies daily but he who carries about the death of the Lord Jesus in his flesh, so that all sins may die to him? David's enemies were strengthened and multiplied in this world; but no strengthening is sound except his who is strengthened in Christ. In short, those are strengthened in the world who hate the just man wrongfully; not, then, a just hatred but an unjust, since they hated wrongfully.

But see the difference. In a later psalm he says: "those who hated me without cause"; here he has: "those who hated me wrongfully." But there he speaks in the person of Christ, here in his own; where he speaks in Christ's person, he is hated without cause; where in his own, wrongfully. For a man can be closed to some one wound (for example, injustice, intemperance, impurity) but open to other wounds; but in Christ there could be no cause by which he could receive the wound of any sin, immune from guilt, whole from offense and spotless from vice. Some, however, think both psalms were run through in the person of Christ, who was making satisfaction to the Father for our sins. Here, then, he said he was attacked against justice, there against grace.

And well he adds, to prove that he was attacked unjustly: "because I followed after justice." What force of the word by the addition of this syllable, so that he said he "followed after" justice, not "followed"! For he who follows after is nearer than he who follows, and "nearly equal" than "unequal," and the succession of an heir is so called rather than an accession.

And yet, although he follows after justice, he thinks it belongs not to his own virtue but to heavenly grace, if he is not forsaken by Christ, and so he prays more earnestly, saying: "Do not forsake me, O Lord; my God, do not depart from me"; that is: men have forsaken me, my friends have attacked one dear to them, my neighbors have not come near. They fled me as one dead and abhorred me, because I desired to confess my sins to you, because to your scourges

I offered myself to be wounded, because I chose the scars of wounds above the banquets of kings and the boasting of powers. Do not you alone forsake me; you cling to your servant, who raise the needy from the earth and lift the poor from the dunghill. Supported by your company I will reckon myself more thronged than if peoples surrounded me. My scars have rotted indeed, but I still desire the scars of your blows, which close over healed wounds so that afterwards no sore appears.

Good are the scars of triumphal wounds, in which the victors of this earthly battle glory: how much more illustrious the wounds seen to be received for faith and the glory of your name! This is the scar that opens heaven, gains the kingdom, finds immortality. This, then, brothers, is the blessed scar, since blessed are those who have washed their robes in their own blood. So the flesh of death began to be a robe of glory, in which even Paul, God's chosen, was once in danger, had he not asked to be freed from the body of this death, as we read.

And so, we who are in this body of death, let us pray that that good physician, beloved of God, may not forsake us, whom the patriarch David prayed not to depart from him. Let us commit ourselves to him, ready to be cured with whatever medicine he wishes. No one tells the physician of his body how he is to be cured. The physician knows what medicines suit each wound, which ulcer's rot must be cut off with iron, lest it creep on to the destruction of the whole body.

If the physician names the kind of medicine by which the sick man should be cured, and he disdains it, the physician leaves and abandons the sick man. See him who wishes to be cured consenting to every kind of medicine; note the order. He first opens his wounds to the physician and says: cure me, but I ask, not in your anger, because my weaknesses do not bear harsh medicine. Christ's medicine is rebuke; for the Lord rebukes him whom he wishes to convert. So Paul too says to the physician: "Reprove, entreat, rebuke." He does not, then, refuse to be cured who asks to be reproved; but he wishes the penalty lightened, lest he be reproved in anger and chastened by the impetus of wrath.

And see the progress. First he asks to be reproved, then, what is greater, to be chastened. Then he not only confesses his sins but even counts them and accuses them; for he does not want his offenses to lie hidden. For as fevers, when deep within, cannot be soothed, but when they break out give hope of ending, so the disease of sins burns while it is covered, but evaporates if it is betrayed by confessions.

And so "the just man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech," before the contagion of the ulcer creeps inward; for the memory of offenses weighs on the conscience unless medicine is asked. And if the physician delays, the sick man must offer himself, to be cut sooner, as David offered himself to the Lord's scourges, saying: Repay me double for my sins, so long as you punish here; do not desert me, do not turn your face from me, do not disdain and shudder at the stench of my wounds.

And Job your servant was struck with an ulcer from the feet to the head and found the remedy of his health, although that wound was of virtue, this of error. The wounds stank which physicians could not cure. You spoke, O Lord, the mysteries of your sacraments, you made plain the serpent's poisons, and by the medicine of your word alone your servant's wounds were cured, because you did not desert him;

do not forsake me either, Lord; do not depart from me. Men have forsaken me, because my wounds, which I thought should be opened to your loving kindness, are foul to them. They say: Go away from us, because you are a sinner; depart, lest you pollute us. But you, Lord, cure and are not polluted, help and are not contaminated, because you are the God of salvation, Lord, and your hand is not wont to destroy but to heal.

We have completed the psalm, together with the interpretation of a verse which some Greek manuscripts have, but not all Latin ones. For before the nearest response there is the verse: "And they cast me off like an abominable dead man," that is, those who repaid me evil for good. "But do not forsake me, Lord, do not depart from me" (for this follows), that is:

do not forsake me, you who are wont to cure a stinking dead man. Indeed we have this in the gospel: for when he had come to Lazarus's tomb and said: "Take away the stone," Martha said: "He already stinks, for he has been four days." He answered her: "Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?" And he called Lazarus and he came out whole. Let us too, then, believe, so that from our wounds we may gain the medicine of salvation and future glory.

In prayers, then, and supplications, with grief and tears, penance must be carried out, so that we may deserve to see that glory of God. And let it not trouble you that mourning, grief, mortification of the body are the gravest sufferings; even if they seem gravest, yet such sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, as the apostle Paul is witness.

Let it not irk us, then, to bear lighter things here, so that there we may obtain things full of praise and glory, carrying off perpetual rewards for temporal labors, through the Lord Jesus, to whom be praise, honor, glory, eternity, from the ages and now and always and for all the ages of ages. Amen.

In the previous psalm the pattern of penance was expressed; in this following one the pattern of patience is marked. This psalm David wrote and gave to Jeduthun, a man trained in the Levitical and priestly disciplines, to sing, who used to lead the singing before the ark of the Lord, most skilful at composing the series of psalms. So, because Jeduthun did not write this psalm, but the prophet David, and gave it to Jeduthun, a man skilled in singing, to sing, the title is inscribed thus.

Indeed in secular writings too some were those who wrote, others those who used to sing on the stage either songs or comedies or tragedies. And they sought the Olympic crown, whence too their writings at the end bear witness to the epinician hymn. But David, who did not seek these garlands of fading crowns but that incorruptible and undefiled reward, and desired with pious affection the inheritance of heavenly things, wrote a hymn not epinician of victory,

but to him who imparts victory to those who believe in him, who is the end of all we ask with pious mind. For whether you seek wisdom, or pursue virtue, or truth, or the way and justice, or the resurrection, in all you must follow Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God, truth, way, justice, resurrection. To whom, then, would you strive but to the perfection of all and the summit of virtues? And so he says to you: "Come, follow me," that is, so that you may deserve to reach the consummation of virtues. He who follows Christ, then, ought to imitate him as far as he can, so as to meditate within himself his precepts and the examples of his divine deeds.

And so David meditated within himself, for he kept in mind that Christ had spoken in him, so that, when some were troublesome to him and tried to provoke him to contention, he might put on patience and avoid eagerness for disputing, from which empty din and quarrels often arise. And so, since many, envying the virtues of holy David, who thought he should be drawn away from his purpose of gentleness and the affection of humility, often attacked him, and the very spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, against which the just have a heavy wrestling, especially drove the ministers of their wickedness to stir him up, lest amid the frequent contests of those who clamored and

the tumult of dispute some word of offense should slip from him, the holy prophet resolved to be silent. O silence, strong shield of circumspect defense; O most faithful foundation of stability, on which if anyone can stand he cannot fear the slip of a word! For many, even established with a stable heart, have yet often fallen through the error of careless, wavering speech. So, seeing himself tempted by snares of this kind and the vain din of disputants, the prophet consulted silently within himself, laying on himself a law of silence; and when he was silent to those who insulted him and provoked him to say something (such as are usually the contests and speeches of the insolent: "Answer us, if you presume to be our equal; you see that you too are beaten and have nothing to reply"), when he seemed almost driven to speak by the insults, he called himself back so as to speak in his heart:

"I said: I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I set a guard on my mouth while the sinner stood against me"; that is: I resolved, I confirmed, I commanded myself, I spoke to my heart: I will guard my ways. If I had said it to others, my word ought to stand; how much more stable ought to be what I have laid down for myself! If anyone deceives a stranger, it is unseemly; if a neighbor, grave; how much graver, then, if anyone thinks he may cheat himself of what he has promised himself, so that he is judged faithless to himself and contemptible by his own judgment! To whom, then, can he seem fit who is cheap to himself?

Let us hold, then, the constancy of our soul, lest lips hasty in speaking burst out into offense. Job too overcame his blow by silence and surpassed his endurance by taciturnity. The flesh is not well trusted; we would have lived had Eve been silent. So that first sin came out from a voice, and that most wicked and cunning serpent first tempted us through a voice. And would that either Adam had been deaf or Eve had been dumb: he, so as not to hear his wife's voice; she, so as not to speak to her husband and pour the serpent's poisons into her man through the ministry of a slippery voice!

Cain too, though he violated human nature by fratricide and ungodly blotted out the rights of family love, yet through his voice added sacrilege to his crime, so as to deny to God his murdered brother's death. Why speak of individuals? The very people chosen by the Lord, for whom silent Moses opened the sea, ungrateful for heavenly benefits, murmured, by which it incurred divine offense. Then it rejected Moses himself, the leader of that pathless and unaccustomed journey, and asked his brother Aaron to make it gods to worship.

Hence, considering such dangers of the voice, he himself said: "I will guard my ways." What, then, these ways of man are that must be greatly guarded against, lest they incur some graver offense, so great a prophet warns us to consider more carefully; Solomon too, his son, interpreter of his father's mind, warns us to examine more keenly, who wrote: "Three things are impossible for me to understand, and a fourth I do not know: the track of an eagle flying, and the way of a serpent on a rock, and the paths of a ship sailing on the sea, and the ways of a man in his youth. [So is the way of an adulterous woman,

who, when she has done it, washes and says she has done nothing wrong.]" He said, then, that three things were impossible for him to understand, and a fourth, which he who had among men the seal of wisdom did not know, namely the course of the ways of a man in youth. How, then, can the guarding of things whose knowledge is inexplicable or difficult be easy? Hence not without reason David himself offered no defense for the offenses of his youth, but asked for forgetting: "The offenses," he says, "of my youth and of my ignorance do not remember." Not without reason, then, did Solomon say he did not know what his father, in whom was greater grace of God, testified he had been ignorant of.

And perhaps he referred the offenses of youth to the heat of the flesh, and those of ignorance to the slip of words, which are often poured out not from our considered judgment but by a kind of impulse and rush of speaking; knowing this to be dangerous, the prophet says: "I believed, therefore I spoke." On the foundation of virtue, then, the voice is safe; without a foundation it is slippery. So the chosen interpreter of divine Scripture rang out as with the sound of a trumpet: "With the heart one believes unto justice, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." The faith of believers is the principal thing; confession is of the carrying out.

How, then, or for what the holy prophet David resolved to guard his ways, let us hear: "that I may not sin," he says, "with my tongue." If the prophet guards against this, do you not guard? If he feared this in whom the grace of God spoke, do you not fear, who do not shun words of error and delight in theatrical speech? Do you not dread, to whom it is written in the gospel that for every idle word you will render an account? If there is danger for an idle word, how much more for a criminal one!

Not everything idle is also criminal, but everything that is not fruitful is dangerous and to be uprooted; for every tree not bearing fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. When the mind is moved and stirred by adversaries goading, clamoring, mocking, accusing, a word of agitation slips out; so silence is both safe and seemly, keeping caution with gravity.

For what are our lips but a kind of chains of ours? Indeed each one is bound by the chains of his own lips. So the wise man is silent in season and considers within himself at what time he ought to speak. Of this Solomon himself excellently says: "The lips of the wise man are bound by understanding." So when you see a wise man silent while the wanton mock, you will say: this man has bound his lips with understanding, that is, he is prudently silent, lest he be bound by the chains of his lips.

He has set a guard on his mouth, hedged his ears with thorns, put a bar on the doors of his mouth; he keeps the treasure of his heart and the silver of his speech, so as to bring it out, tried and purified, when it is fitting, lest any thief or disturber first break into his heart and drag him captive to those to whom he sells his shameful deeds.

Judas meditated selling Christ, but the Lord's great grace and certain soothings of fatherly love called him back, by which his fury was softened; and he would not have burst into crime had not the adversary plunged himself into his heart, because he thought he could deceive Christ. So do not doubt, when some are troublesome to you as you wish to keep

justice, that they are ministers of that most wicked sinner who is the author of all shameful deeds. David saw with prophetic eyes, recognized his figure; so he was silent, lest he do the will of him who longs to disturb our feeling. He pressed down his voice, shut his gates with silence, patience stood guard in him and the watch of taciturnity was awake, lest the enemy creep in, lest some wandering and careless word go out of the bars of the mouth. So the patient man who restrains himself is stronger than he who takes cities. The just man is himself his own bar, himself his own watchful guard.

So, setting this before himself, he said in his heart: "I set a guard on my mouth while the sinner stood against me." The enemy is always present, because he always lies in wait. Even if you do not see him, he is present; even if you do not feel him, he attacks. If you do not see, believe one who sees: "He stands," he says, "against me." He who sees his sin also sees the sinner mocking him in what he has done; but he who has foreseen the sinner can avoid sin.

David saw the sinner standing against him when Shimei cursed and stoned his king and cried: "Go out, man of blood." For he would not have been so reckless as to be moved neither by reverence for so great a king nor fear of his armed army, when one of his army could have killed the reviler; but the devil had made him mad, driving him to death. So David fought rather against the author than pursued the minister. For what great thing to take vengeance on a weak man whom another drove to fury, in whose death the sinner would have had the effect of his will?

The devil is overcome not by the sword but by the word of God; so let man's tongue be silent, let God's word speak. Indeed Christ too was silent when set before Pilate's judgment, to give us a pattern of silence, because the tongue of the body is easy to error, prone to falling. And there are those who speak while silent, like Moses, who stood astonished and was silent, to whom, silent, God said: "Why do you cry to me?"; like Susanna, who was silent in her dangers and the Lord heard her. So even if the word of God is in you, you will be silent in the word of God and, silent, will cry out, so as to be heard by Christ.

Meditate, then, on the things of Christ, on which the prophet David meditated within himself, in whom Christ spoke before what he says in this psalm that he meditated within himself. For so it is written: "But I, when they were troublesome to me in anything, put on sackcloth and humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer will return into my bosom." What is "in anything"?

Because it is then above all that either an untimely word slips out or the feeling is moved, when we are in some pain or sadness, or the mind is sick with indignation, or hindered by some anxieties, or occupied with disputes. Who, then, are the troublesome ones? First understand it of the very author of

sin and of his angels, then of those who prefer to be his followers rather than Christ's. A wife is driven on, as holy Job's was; a friend, as is shown in that same book; a son, as Absalom; a slave, a freedman and a member of the household, because a man's enemies are those of his own household, so that each one may harass him. What remedy, then, against such sicknesses of souls but patience, but silence? And, what is graver, he provokes you more who has enjoyed your kindnesses, and among them he exasperates more who owes you more, so that you are moved the more by the bitterness of an ungrateful man or the unworthiness of some mean person.

So the just man, even if his friend is insolent to him, grieves for his friend, because his friend slips so, because he is driven by the tempter. If he grieves for a friend, much more for a wife, for a son, if he finds them too insolent to him; and if a brother harasses him, as Esau did holy Jacob, he grieves and seeks to reconcile his brother to himself or to flee from his face, as Rebekah advised, lest his brother's anger find some occasion to harm; and if a neighbor or member of the household, he grieves; and if a servant or freedman,

or a slave, he bears it patiently and in all these is silent, lest he answer him by whom he sees him driven. Someone of the household reviles him: he grieves and is silent; a freedman reviles him: he is silent; a slave reviles him: he is silent. So he is overcome who stretches the snare for his soul with the bait of the voice. Be silent, then, you too, when an unworthy person reviles you; be silent when a slave, and especially your own, insults you, and say in your heart: "I am silent; but you, Lord, do not be silent," and add: "Do not depart from me," as David the prophet said; that is: do not leave me alone to those who attack me; for he is not alone to whom God is present. Take the testimony: "Behold," he says, "the hour comes when you will be scattered each to his own and leave me alone; but I am not alone, for the Father is with me."

The just man, then, is silent against those insolent to him; the just man prays. Hear the just man praying: "Instead of loving me they slandered me, but I prayed." The just man blesses those who curse him, as the apostles did, as Paul declares, saying: "We are cursed and we bless." The just man loves his enemies. See how he is taught to climb little by little, step by step, to the increase of virtues, as the Lord says: "Love your enemies."

The just man prays for those who slander him, because the Lord commanded this too, adding: "Do good to those who hate you, pray for those who slander and persecute you." He is just in all things who guards and keeps these: first because he is silent and does not answer his enemies, then because he prays, that is, is not idle in feeling. And he who prays prays for good things, not whatever could harm his enemy. It is more, then, to pray than to be silent. The just man blesses those who curse him.

This is more than praying for oneself; for, secure about himself, he blesses one he does not fear, or even one he feared before. The just man loves his enemy. It is more to love than to bless, because love of the mind is greater than the grace of speech. The just man does good to him by whose hatred he has been attacked; the just man prays for those who slander him. Good is love and good is piety; both are of God, and both are God, because God is love, as John said in his epistle.

So both are joined: "Love your enemies and pray for those who slander and persecute you." Love is the fullness of the law, but this too is the fullness of the gospel, to pray for those who slander and persecute us, asking pardon for their sins, as holy Job was chosen by divine judgment, whose prayer would abolish the offense of those kings who slandered the just man.

So, whether you are weak, pray, and whether you are strong, pray; weak, you pray for yourself; strong, you pray for your enemy. Prayer is a good shield of weakness: you pray and the Lord protects you. A good shield also of one triumphant, so that you defend your enemy, whom you could strike, lest he be slain by someone, and, what is more, by Christ, who said:

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay." This is the prayer that returns into the bosom of the one praying, bringing back the fruit of what he wished to obtain, so that the gifts he asked of the Lord return into his soul and mind, as this same prophet taught you in later psalms, saying: "So I will bless you in my life, and in your name I will lift up my hands. As

with fat and fatness let my soul be filled." This is the bosom of the soul: the secret of its prayer, the inner rooms of its will and certain inmost receptacles of returning prayers. Hence too the just are read to rest in Abraham's bosom, because they rest in his grace, in his rest, in his calm, who have put on a faith like his and done the same will in good works.

But perhaps someone may wonder, since the Lord said through David's mouth that he humbled his soul with fasting, how David himself says in later psalms: "If I was not humbly minded, but exalted my soul." But let him consider that it is one thing that refers to the wisdom of the mind, another to the humility of the heart.

The wisdom of the mind is sublime, but the wisdom of the flesh ought not to be puffed up. So he humbled his soul with fasting, to teach that the swelling of our flesh must be chastised; the prophet exalted his soul through the sublime grace of God, since "he who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted." And not only is the proud beaten back and the humble raised by a worthy reward of merits, as must first be understood; but because the word of God is sharp on every side like a sword, which is sharp on three sides, I think it can be understood that he who exalts himself knows how to humble himself, and he who knows how to humble himself also knows how to exalt himself. Indeed Paul shows it, saying:

"But I have learned to be content in whatever state I am. I know how to be humbled and I know how to abound." So David too, by not thinking humbly of Christ, exalted his soul, which the Arians humble and cast down; and by exalting his soul with vigor of sense and grace of faith he displayed the virtue of humility with pious affection.

So he said: "I was dumb and was humbled and kept silent from good things," because he knew when he ought to humble himself and knew when he ought to be silent. He was dumb, lest he make a din with quarrelsome contention with those who rebuked him; he was humbled, to cast down the swelling of the proud or to teach them by his example how they ought to humble themselves. He kept silent from good things, because a good conscience needs no defense of words, resting on its own testimony, itself its own judge. And so the just man says: "Who will contradict or who will resist me?" and Paul says: "For to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by a human day."

Against slanderers and sinners the just man is content with his own judgment, but reserves the judgment of his merits to Christ. And so he added: "He who judges me is the Lord." Most finely he chose as judge one who is deceived by no fraud, whom neither hidden things escape nor the slip of a weak condition offends, who knows how to forgive frailty. Silence, then, is useful for everything. If you acknowledge sin, be silent, lest by denying you magnify it; if you do not acknowledge it, be silent, secure in your innocence. Others' words cannot fix on you a crime which your own conscience does not admit.

There follows: "And my grief was renewed." Still placed on a lower step of virtue, he utters these words, that his grief was renewed by the reproach of old sins, which forgetfulness, now that they were blotted out, seemed to have covered, or the compensation of good works had hidden. Indeed in later psalms, as one stronger, he says: "They saw me and shook their heads," because they threatened and could not harm, and he added:

"They will curse and you will bless." And this he says as one stronger, heedless of injury or shame, for whom the Lord's blessing abounded for all. So in this thirty-eighth psalm, as in a kind of meditation, not yet set in all perfection of virtue, he says his grief was renewed.

For the strongest man does not know how to feel the hurt of a scar, nor can he fear a blow who is stronger. In the very contest of boxers the stronger often waits to be provoked by some blow of the weaker, so as to rise up more fiercely when struck; so he is strengthened by much exercise and patience, that, as if insensible to pain, he cannot feel a blow: struck, he laughs; provoked, he threatens. But the weaker, if he happens to receive the striker's blow on the scar of an old wound, feels the pain renewed. So it is with one to whom former sins are thrown up, which he fittingly

grieved over and wept, so as to cover the wound of his sins with a scar by fitting satisfaction. If he is perfect, he is silent to revilers, with no grief renewed in him, because, even if he sinned, he is secure, because the gifts of God are without repentance, and so he is not wont to undo and renew what he has once forgiven, since he himself said: "I am, I am he who blots out iniquities and will not remember." But if he is imperfect and unmindful of the heavenly precepts, his grief is restored as if the scar were cut open.

"My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire will blaze." Graver wounds, as we know, are cured with a caustic medicine or with fire applied. So the wise man is himself his own physician; yet, though he is a physician, he burns his wound; and so, if he is not fully perfected to the condition of unharmed health, his heart steams, has a fever, takes fire at insults thrown at him, and, if he is silent, is ground within himself.

If stone is struck against stone, it strikes out fire. So, then, even a good conscience is kindled by shame if the memory of its offenses is renewed, and in its very meditation a fire blazes. Not an evil fire, which scorches but does not burn up; such was the fire Moses saw in the bush, when the bush was burning but was not consumed.

There is, then, a fire which lessens sin and feeds on guilt with its heat. There is also a fire which is kindled by meditations on the heavenly Scriptures, like that of which Jeremiah says: "And there was a flaming fire in my bones," or that of which Cleopas and he who walked with him, when Christ joined them after the resurrection, spoke together, saying: "Was not our heart burning within us, when he opened the Scriptures to us?" And so the Lord came to send this fire on the earth, by which to enlighten the souls of all, kindle zeal, burn up crime.

"I spoke with my tongue: make known to me, Lord, my end and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what is lacking to me." Good is the fire which made the prophet speak. And see whether it is not that fire which was seen when, on the day of Pentecost, with the disciples gathered in one place, the Holy Spirit fell upon them with great force and they spoke in various tongues. For so it is written, that their tongues were seen divided like fire.

This, then, is he who said to Jeremiah: "Behold, I give my words into your mouth as fire." This tongue of fire David too received, so as to speak kindled by the ardor of divine knowledge: "Make known to me, Lord, my end." He does not ask about his death (for this is no end for one who will rise again), but about that end of which the apostle said: "For that is the end, when the Lord Jesus hands over the kingdom to God the Father and abolishes all principalities and powers

and when death, the last of all, is destroyed," so that evils may cease and eternal goods follow. And so it is said: "Pain, sadness and groaning have fled." This end Paul too was working in men, saying: "Or who is it that gladdens me but he who is saddened by me?" For by rebuking he roused pain, sadness, groaning,

so that they might do penance, by which they might deserve irrevocable pardon and salvation, of which God would not repent. That, then, is the true end, which will be the end not of one but of all. How, then, did he say "my end"? But consider who is speaking. Surely a man, either one among men sharing the common substance, or one who is portrayed in the form of all and instructed toward the perfection of the complete man.

Hence he also added that the number of his days, what it is, be made known to him, so that he may know what is lacking to him, lacking for perfection, surely, not for the life of this body, from which the prophet David desired to be released, saying: "Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the dwellers of Kedar." Indeed he wanted to know the number of days, not also of nights. Here

there are days and nights, but there days alone; there light is perpetual and lasting. And so he added: "what it is." "What is," he says, not what passes; for heaven and earth will pass away, but faith remains and the day of Christ, because he is the same yesterday and today and for ever. And what number he seeks, hear: "In my Father's house," he says, "are many mansions."

The Lord Jesus, then, gives each a place, that is, a mansion fitting the merits of each; for "each in his own order." He went ahead, then, to prepare a place for those who believe in him; hence he also says: "If I go away and prepare a place for you, I come again to you and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be. And where I am going you know, and you know the way." There is, then, a way by which Christ, rising, ascended.

And he indeed ascended above all the heavens to God's seat; but men ascend, those who deserve it, from the first heaven to the second and then from the second to the third, and from that by stages almost to the seventh heaven and into the very vault and summit of heaven. If, then, there is a number of ways and a number of mansions, surely there is a number of days by which one reaches the height of heaven.

"Behold," he says, "you have made my days old." Another has: "You have made my days handbreadths." If, according to the Seventy, we take "old days," that is, we understand them as spent according to the old man. But our old man has been fixed to the cross; so the old day too has passed, the new has come. For one is the day of man, another the day of Christ which Abraham saw and rejoiced, of which David too says:

"This is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it." The saint, then, exults in the day of the Lord, in the new day in which God the Lord has shone on us and given a new light, an innocent and whole life to those re-formed. So the just man, secure of the new light and grace of God, says: there will be for me a new heaven and a new earth and a new light. For no lamp nor light of the sun or moon will shine there, but the Lord will give light upon his people. Those things, then, I have desired, those I have longed for, and so I have not sought the day of man.

But if we take the days as "handbreadths" (palaestae), we understand from the name days full of contest and labor, since palaestae are the name for wrestlers in the contest who wrestle for the crown. So, because we too have a wrestling not only against flesh and blood but also against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, our days,

that is, of this life, are in labor and grief. Hence too in later psalms he says: "Our years were meditated like a spider. The days of our years in them are seventy years, but if in strength, eighty years, and most of them labor and grief." Hence the apostle Paul too labored more abundantly than the other apostles, so as by striving lawfully to reach the crown he desired.

But yet, since the measures of architects are also said to be called palaestae, by which they measure buildings to gather the number of the structure or the extent of the space and the place in which buildings are to be set; and since God spoke through Isaiah: "Who has measured the water with his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth with closed hand? Who has set the mountains in a balance?", let us see whether this sense is not perhaps to be gathered from this word: that God has the days of all known, to whom nothing is immeasurable, who comprehends all things by a kind of measure of his knowledge, and to whom nothing is beyond estimate, nothing unexamined and innumerable, who says: "But even the hairs of your head are all numbered."

This, then, the prophet says: Behold, you know my days, my daily actions do not escape you, you have set my sins before your eyes; "and so my substance is as nothing before you." For what is man that you are mindful of him? "Man has become like vanity"; man is in sin, and, if he has something of uprightness and virtue, he is rightly preferred to the other earthly living things and excels in the sight of the animals over which he is set; but in God's sight his substance is as nothing. Hence too elsewhere he says: "For no man living will be justified in your sight"; which Symmachus expressed more plainly, saying: "And my life is as nothing before you."

But there are those who think the days are called short, because Symmachus put "spans." A span is a palm's breadth; and because God is said to have measured heaven with his span (and a palm or span is a portion of the hand that measures and grasps something), they therefore think the days are called short; whereas the knowledge of God can be understood through measure, as we said above, and this is heavenly knowledge, that all things were made to measure. Not short, then, but great days of the prophet can be understood, which God measured with the span with which he measured heaven.

For he would not call the days of his life short who afterwards said: "Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!" unless perhaps because, on account of men's sins, he made the days of this life shorter, which before extended to nine hundred and seven hundred years, so that now it is enclosed within a course of a hundred years. So it must be understood thus: behold, you know my days liable to sin; for the days of this life, which is liable to sin, are short, but the days of eternal life without end.

Or certainly thus (for it is ours to seek truth by arguments, yours to choose what to follow): lest sin increase, he says, you have shortened the days of human life by which we live on this earth; and yet, though in this short course of this life the end of sins comes sooner by the swiftness of death, my substance is as nothing before you, because, although we were made after the image and likeness of God, yet a certain earthly contagion weighs on us set in this body, which would not weigh on us if we chose rather to put off the old man when we put on grace than to be clothed over;

for the old man stripped off would bring us less labor than one clothed over. For what we strip off we cast away; what we put on over we enclose; and so we groan and labor until this mortal garment of the old man, made liable to error, is swallowed up by the newness of its spiritual life; as, if much honey is poured over poison, the poison's venom is abolished with difficulty and too late, and much water too struggles long with the gall of poison, if one does not spit it out but swallows it. So penance is laborious, grace sweet, because sin is stripped off where grace is, swallowed up where penance is; there it is remitted, here hidden; and so it is written: "Blessed are those whose iniquities are remitted and whose sins are covered."

And he rested a little, groaning over the hardship of the human condition, because he had said: "Yet all things are vanity, every man living"; and after the pause, taking up his breath again, he says: "Although man walks in the image of God, yet he is troubled in vain; he heaps up treasure, and does not know for whom he gathers it." See how he first tempered the harshness of his sentence, and afterwards set out the reason of his word. He tempered it by saying that man walks in the image of God.

Blessed are you, man, who walk by faith after the likeness of God; blessed because you have faith in you, more blessed if you had no avarice. One is the eternal good of the mind, another the vain fire of fleshly desire; for faith serves God, avarice the tempter; the one heaps up what profits itself, the other what profits others. What, then, is so vain as not to know for what heir one labors? For who knows whether his son or his own grandson will survive? Often either the heir written in the tablets of the will precedes the testator to the tomb by a deadly death, or the survivor swallows the inheritance,

or the luxurious man dissipates it, or the very foolish does not look after it, or the proscribed loses it. If, then, you see someone eagerly gathering riches, you will say: "He is troubled in vain; he heaps up treasure and does not know for whom he gathers it." For he cannot take with him what he possesses, and when he dies he will leave his riches to others. Often an enemy and ungrateful man succeeds, and the successor insults his predecessor; those whom he loved this one persecutes, those whom he nourished this one sells.

The Greek, however, does not have "in the image of God," but only "in the image." In what image, then, does man walk? Surely in that after whose likeness he was made, that is, after the image of God; and the image of God is Christ, who is the brightness of his glory and the image of his substance. Christ, then, is the image of the saint. After the image this Image came to earth, so that we might no longer walk in shadow but in the image;

for he walks in Christ who follows the gospel. So he says to his disciple: "Get behind me," so that you may follow me. So the Jewish people erred, because it walked in shadow; so the Christian people does not err, because it walks in the image, having the sun of justice shining for it. Good is the image, not formed in the wax of a gleaming picture, but expressed by the fullness of the Godhead.

In this image both Father and Son are seen together, because the unity of operation of both shines forth. Although Christ has already risen, yet in the gospel his image is still shown us. I read that he raised Lazarus, and I believe it the work of Father and Son. The Son called, the Father heard, Lazarus walked. I read that the demons confessed him; they confessed the Father too, who besought the Son of God, and they were cast out in him or through him, as it is written: "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, by whom do your sons cast them out?"

First, then, the shadow went before, the image followed, the truth will be: the shadow in the law, the image in the gospel, the truth in heavenly things. The shadow of the gospel and of the congregation of the church was in the law; the image of the future truth in the gospel; the truth in the judgment of God. So the things now celebrated in the church had their shadow in the words of the prophets; a shadow in the flood, a shadow in the Red Sea, when our fathers were baptized in the cloud and in the sea; a shadow in the rock that flowed with water and followed the people.

Was not the sacrament of this most sacred mystery in shadow? Was not the water from the rock in shadow, as the blood from Christ, which followed the peoples fleeing it, so that they might drink and not thirst, be redeemed and not perish? But now the shadow of the night and gloom of the Jews has departed; the day of the church has drawn near. We now see good things through the image and hold the good things of the image. We have seen the chief of priests coming to us; we have seen and heard him offering his blood for us.

We priests follow as we can, so as to offer sacrifice for the people, though weak in merit, yet honorable by the sacrifice; because, although Christ is not now seen to offer, yet he himself is offered on earth, because the body of Christ is offered; rather he himself is shown to offer in us, whose word sanctifies the sacrifice that is offered. And he himself indeed stands by us as advocate with the Father, but now we do not see him; then we shall see him, when the image has passed and the truth has come. Then no longer through a mirror, but face to face, the things that are perfect will be seen.

Ascend, then, O man, into heaven, and you will see those things whose shadow or image was here; you will see not in part, not in a riddle, but in completion, not under a veil but in light. You will see the true light, the eternal and perpetual priest, whose images you saw here: Peter, Paul, John, James, Matthew, Thomas. You will see the perfect man no longer in image but in truth; for as is the heavenly, such are the heavenly, they too already in glory or beauty, already in the grace of resurrection, not in the body of death and the deformity of corruption.

See that you do not carry the image of the earthly where the light of the heavenly is. Here, if anyone has images of a tyrant who has been defeated and perished, he is rightly condemned. How do you bring the image of the enemy and adversary into the city of the true emperor, except so that he condemn you? And if you wish to bring in the image of the earthly, the prince of this world will contradict you; he will say: "This image is mine, and what you offer is mine." What will you do, caught, when he says to you: "Avarice is mine, ambition is mine, mine are the riches whose image I recognize in you"?

For he is both adversary and defender. But if you are such as Jacob, you will say to the Laban who transforms himself into an angel of light: "Recognize if you have found anything of yours with me." Then he will search and, finding nothing, go away confounded, because you have hidden and blotted out all the idols of vices. Blessed is he who can say: "The prince of this world will come and will find nothing of his in me." For he seeks what is his, not what is Christ's. If, then, you follow Christ, do not strive for riches you do not have, nor increase those you have; but let the poor man feel you rich for him.

Bring the needy into your house, break bread for the hungry and cover the naked, so that a treasure may be laid up for you in heaven which may pass with you. Christ became poor, though he was rich, so as to make us rich by his poverty. Do not, then, be troubled in vain on account of riches, roused from sleep, thinking how to keep your money, how to increase your wealth, setting out by night, keeping watch at the judge's house to plunder others' goods, bringing a lawsuit against a poor man, fearing the tax-collector. Vain is that disturbance.

And so the just man said: "And now what is my expectation? Is it not the Lord? And my substance is before you." Our hope and patience is Christ; he has become our redemption, he is our expectation, so that each of us may say: "Waiting, I waited for the Lord, and he looked upon me." Look, then, on us in your judgment, let your mercy look upon us, so that we who distrust our own merit may be freed through your mercy, in whose power is the substance of our soul and life. And so let us not fear the death of the body, but him who can either save or destroy our soul, whose substance is virtue, which God poured into human hearts after his own likeness.

Whoever, then, has this substance of his soul says: "Rescue me from all my iniquities." He does not confess the fall of one crime who prays to be loosed from all iniquities. For he knows that, unless the Lord forgives, no one can be saved who was born under sin, whom the very inheritance of a guilty condition has bound to guilt.

"You have given me," he says, "as a reproach to the fool." Who is the fool but he who commits sin and chooses evil for good? So he who is the author of sins is himself more a fool than his minister.

When we sin, then, we are handed over as a reproach to the adversary, so that he, as an enemy, may accuse and betray us on the day of judgment. Let us take up, then, the reproach of Christ's cross, which Moses took up and preferred to the royal treasures of Egypt; and so he was not handed over as a reproach to the fool. Other manuscripts have: "Do not give me as a reproach to the fool." But David rather has this habit, that he confesses his own reproaches and sins and does not blush at his sins and reproaches, for he knows that in confession is pardon and in condemnation of one's sin is justice.

Indeed from what follows this sense is made plain, for he added: "I was dumb and did not open my mouth, because you made me"; that is: you gave me as a reproach to the fool; so I was dumb and did not open my mouth, lest I contract greater sins. I recognized your will, that I should blush for a time and afterwards be saved by asking pardon. Reproach, then, sometimes profits, since even the destruction of the flesh profits, as the apostle testifies, saying: "I have handed him over to the destruction

of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." That reproach profits, David himself testified, saying to Abishai: "Let the Benjaminite curse me, for the Lord has told him, that he may see my humiliation and the Lord repay me good for this cursing." And indeed the Lord saw his reproach, that he went weeping, barefoot, with covered head, and took away his reproach. It is clear, then, that since, given as a reproach, he fled and was humbled and made satisfaction to the Lord with bare feet and did not strike back at the one throwing stones and did not allow vengeance on the curser, and after this was restored to his kingdom intact, the reproach was from the Lord and it profits more to bear reproach than to repel it. Indeed victory followed afterwards.

Reproach, then, profits. But what is it that he added: "because you made me"? Does he not say he was dumb and did not open his mouth because he recognized the Lord's will, and therefore bore patiently, so as to make satisfaction to the Lord for sin through reproach?

Hence he also added: "Remove your blows from me." How does this agree with itself? In the previous psalm he offered himself to the scourges; here he asks that the scourges be removed from him, unless because he has already paid double for his sins from the Lord's hand by blushing, by bearing reproaches. There are compunctions of his heart and thoughts, and there are scourges of rebukes. Let us see, though, whether he did not say that the substance of his soul is before God for this reason: that the adversary would not attack it unless he had received power from the Lord; for what the Lord made, he also protects.

Indeed an angel is around a man, to stand guard lest anyone harm him. The angel does not depart unless commanded by the Lord, so that his athlete may contend. So, as the Lord's substance, he presumes that pardon of his iniquities can be granted him by his maker, and so he asks, because he knows his author is merciful.

Then, because he has been given as a reproach, he does not resist, but allows the sinner to stand against him, and the conscience of his substance, which is good, is silent and can rein in the body's ferocity, so that virtue may succeed and guilt be laid down. Lastly, because he was made by the Lord, he confidently reckons that sin can be forgiven him the sooner, who has been able to bear the strength of the Lord's hand.

And this surely belongs to a good substance, even though he says he failed from the strength of the Lord's hand. A strong hand, as it strikes hard, so it soon heals; that which is strong for the wound is strong also for the remedy. Hence he himself says: "I will strike and I will heal," so that he who has escaped healed does not remember the wound. Indeed this hand of the Lord took away everything from holy Job

and restored everything, rather increased everything in abundance, so as to double what was lost. And do not be troubled that he said he failed. There is one who fails and rises stronger; for the Lord upholds all who fall and raises up all who are thrown down; for whoever is raised up rises with strength. Paul failed from the strength of this hand; the persecutor fell and the preacher of the gospel rose. This is what he says: "From the strength of your hand I have failed."

And he added: "With rebukes for iniquity you have instructed man, and you have made his soul waste away like a spider." The Greek said ὑπὲρ ἀνομίας, that is, "for iniquity," and put the whole verse in common construction, which is: "With rebukes for iniquity you have instructed man." So the Wise Man said: "Who will give me scourges for my thoughts and a seal for my lips?", so that he might scourge his heart with his own thoughts and seal his lips, so as both to lessen old sins

and not renew others by speaking, so that, instructed by his own rebukes, he might put on the exercises of virtue. And the soul wastes away when sin is lessened; or, when the soul wastes away, guilt is laid down; it grows fat when sins are heaped up. Hence the Lord says of sinners: "My spirit will not remain in them for ever, because they are flesh"; and elsewhere Scripture says: "The heart of this people has grown fat." So Jeremiah too saw first a rod of almond, then a boiling pot, so that the soul of the beginning prophet might waste away, that guilt might depart and grace come in.

But why first the rod, afterwards the pot? Because he who is not corrected by the rod is put into the pot, to burn and waste away. And so to the prophet Ezekiel too it is said: "Take for yourself a pan, and you will receive the iniquities of the house of Israel and complete them; and they will waste away," he says, "in their iniquities"; and elsewhere in the same book the Lord says: "But I will make the firebrand great and multiply the wood and kindle the fire, so that the flesh may melt and the broth be lessened."

By these testimonies it is signified that the souls of the faithless waste away when fire is applied, so as to lay down a kind of fluid of carnal fatness. So the souls of sinners too are put into a pan, so that a certain flesh of sin may run off, which had covered the vigor of soul and mind and had, as it were, steeped the soul in the enticements of desires. Certain pans, then, await us. So let us crush our heart here, so that it becomes fine and lays down all hardness and a kind of fatness of carnal lard.

This those will suffer who have lived in luxury in this life and believed, in the Jewish manner, that they should practice the mockeries of disgrace rather than any works of virtue. For Jacob grew fat and became thick and rose up to play, whom that play led from the truth of faith into the error of faithlessness. Rightly, then, Paul chastised his body, lest he nourish the flesh of sin; for by luxury we make members of sin, but by sobriety members of justice. It is not nature, then, but guilt that offends.

Nor again let us follow vain and empty things, lest we be judged to weave a spider's web, because sins can have no substance of permanence. Hence, when you see some eager to enlarge their means, heap up powers, seek after beauty, you will say that saying of Isaiah: "These weave a spider's web" in everything of a single day, which cannot last but is soon torn and all its work dissolved; for it is not set on any solid foundation but hung in the void. Nothing slack, nothing soft befits the true soldier of Christ; for behold, those who are clothed in soft garments are in kings' houses.

All the greedy seem to themselves shrewd and industrious. What is shrewder, what more careful than the spider, which always attends to its work day and night and makes its garment with no cost or expense? But all it has made is vain. So is every man who does not set his work on the foundation of Christ; he too is troubled in vain nights and days, since often, like the spider, in the very effort of his wickedness the ruin of his work entangles him.

And so the wise man, who knows the vanity of this world, does not pray for a long use of this life, but hastens to those eternal things and longs to be freed from the labor and pain of this body, as the prophet is known to have desired, saying: "Hear, Lord, my prayer and my supplication; give ear to my tears. Do not be silent toward me, for I am a stranger with you on earth and a sojourner, as all my fathers were."

An inhabitant is one thing, a stranger another, a sojourner another: the inhabitant is he who is from the place and dwells in his place of birth; the stranger he who comes from elsewhere; the sojourner he who dwells for a time and moves with the turns of years. This, then, is what David says: I am a foreigner with you while I am on earth; I am not now an inhabitant of your paradise. Hence he himself explained it, adding: "and a sojourner, as all my fathers." The apostle Paul too made this plain, asserting that, while we are in the body, we are exiles from the Lord, because, though faith is in us, we walk by faith, not by sight, that is, not face to face as though present; for we still walk in a riddle, not in truth.

Then he added: "We are bold, then, and are confident rather to be exiled from the body and to be present with the Lord." "We are bold" is a word of the presumption of faith in God, not of rashness; and "we are confident," that is: willing we acquiesce and wishing, not depending as on our own judgment principally on the authority of fuller knowledge, we want what we desire to be true, that we may draw near to the Lord, from whom the distance of things future and present seems to separate us. We are bold, then, to be present, and so, he says, "we strive." You recognize the word of one still wishing to arrive, not of one who has arrived; desire, then, is shown in this word, not attainment.

Indeed question the desire of his very word, or rather hear him saying, or rather hear him doubting, when he says: "So we strive, whether absent or present, to please him": absent still by faith, present by sight. Hence this too can be understood: that both placed here and there we desire to please both our judge and the redeemer of our souls. For we must stand before him by sight, so that each may obtain the merits of his works by the examination of a worthy lot, either the just in rest

or the ungodly in misery. He sheds tears, then, because, when the stranger has come to earth, he lingers and is separated from his homeland, held in long exile. Consider now, I pray, that Adam, cast out of paradise, banished to a stronghold, looking toward the place from which he was cast down, weeping abundantly, because he remembers what he lost or whence he fell. And so let us give thanks to God, who has freed us from perpetual exile, opening a door by which we may return to our homeland. Hence the apostle dared to say: "So you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God's household."

Wishing to receive this, David said, before Christ came to earth: "Remit to me, that I may be refreshed, before I go, and be no more"; that is: remit to me here where I sinned. Unless you remit to me here, I shall not be able to find there the rest of remission; for what remains bound on earth will remain bound in heaven; what is loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven. For the prophet and herald of the church to be gathered foresaw with the gospel spirit the Lord's pardons, and the Lord revealed to him what was to be commanded to the apostles;

rather, this was the old sentence, that he who had bound himself on earth would depart from the body bound. So the Lord, what before belonged to his judgment, gave the apostles the equity of remitting sins, to be loosed lest they remain long bound. Indeed hear him saying: "To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven." "To you," he says, "I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven," so that you may both loose and bind. This Novatian did not hear; the church of God heard it; so he is in a fall, we in remission; he in impenitence, we in grace. What is said to Peter is said to the apostles.

We do not usurp a power, but serve a command, lest afterwards, when the Lord comes and finds bound those who ought to have been loosed, he be moved against the steward who kept bound the servants whom the Lord had ordered to be loosed, saying that the servant who knew his master's will and did not act according to his will will be beaten much; but he who did not know and did what deserved blows will be beaten less.

Rightly, then, David asks that remission be given him, which he knew had not been granted to the priests after Aaron but was reserved for the gospel. He, then, to whom there is no remission is in exile, persists in the injury of sojourning. Here, then, pardon must be asked (for here it is said: "Blessed are you who weep, for you will laugh"); here is the place for asking pardon. Let us lament, then, on earth, so that we may deserve indulgence.

Unless sin has been remitted here, we shall not have rest; if there is no rest, there will be no eternal life; if there is no eternal life, we shall not be. So he asks that it be remitted to him before he goes, so that he may be. For if it is not remitted, I shall not be, he says, with those who are, with those who deserve to ascend into paradise. And he who is not will be consumed with those who go down into the pit, who has been left in chains and prison.

He does not, then, say definitively "I shall not be," because elsewhere he says: "I will sing psalms to you on the lyre, O God, Holy One of Israel. My lips will rejoice when I have sung to you, and my soul which you have redeemed"; he presumes, then, on redemption. And elsewhere hear him saying: "I will please the Lord in the land of the living"; he will be, then, who presumes to please. It can also be understood thus, because he said: "I am a stranger with you on earth and a sojourner, as all my fathers," and therefore: remit to me, so that I may cease to be a sojourner;

remit to me the exile to which I have been banished. If you remit it before I go from here, I shall no longer be an exile and a sojourner; for when you have remitted it, I shall not be a sojourner, but I shall be a citizen of your saints, I shall be with my fathers, who themselves were sojourners before but now are citizens. I shall be a member of God's household, so as not to fear punishment and to deserve grace through our Lord Jesus, with whom to you be praise, honor, glory, eternity, with the Holy Spirit, from the ages and now and always and for all the ages of ages. Amen.

In the preceding psalms he preached repentance; then he spoke of his own patience and of the distress of man. But in the thirty-ninth psalm he announces the New Testament. For one who does penance for evils is waiting; but it belongs to the perfect not to be waiting but to have waited; for no one will be saved except one who has persevered to the end.

Therefore he added: “Waiting, I waited for the Lord.” Where, then, is this rightly said but in the gospel? In it the one who was awaited has now come to us; in it the shadow of the law no longer darkens us, but the truth shines, because Christ has shone forth, who heard the prayer of his own and brought us out of the pit of misery and out of the mire of the dregs, where we were held sunk in the whirlpool of our sins, and our whole man stuck fast, and our mind, overwhelmed by the stain of manifold wickedness, could not pull itself out.

Thanks, then, to the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, our Redeemer, who came down from heaven to forgive us all our sins, to rescue us from the pit and the slime of this world and from a kind of muddy swamp of the earth, and also from the body of this death, and to set in his own flesh the inner footsteps of our mind, so that, made firm in the word of God and set free through the cross of the Lord’s body, we may walk no longer in the reproach of disgrace but in the forgiveness of sin.

Made firm, then, and rooted in Christ, he recalls that the steps of his feet were set upon a rock. Hence the apostle says: “They drank from the rock that followed, and the rock was Christ.” A rock, in that it follows the thirsty and makes firm those who slip, so that the thirsty may not lack water nor those who slip a firm footing.

To me, then, as I waited, Lord Jesus, you came at last; you directed my steps in the gospel; you put into my mouth a new song, which is the New Testament. Rejoicing, we now sing a hymn to our God, because we have come to know the precepts of new virtues: that we should leave all that is ours to follow Christ and should love our enemies. We have drunk in new ways of life too: that we should bring prayer to the Lord for those who persecute us. See, we bless those who curse; we do not know how to boast of our works or to hide our sins; after the manner of the angels we even decline marriage.

In short: from that wretched sinner a blessed man has been made, no longer looking to the varied vanities of this world; for this whole world is “vanity of vanities, and all is vanity”, as the wise Solomon said. For what is it but vain to pursue things that cannot last and all pass away like a shadow? And “false madnesses” is the name declared for these contests of wars, in which so much blood has been shed for a temporal possession, or the quarrels of the theatre’s contests, or the frenzied passions of the circus, or the deadly doctrine of heretics, or the feigned gestures and contrived words of false prophets in the manner of heavenly oracles. For so the prophet said: “Blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not looked to vanities and false madnesses.”

There are, then, also true madnesses, perhaps those of the prophets, who prophesied in ecstasy, filled with the Spirit of God, so that to some they seemed to be mad, when, heedless of their own safety, often naked and barefoot like holy Isaiah, they ran among the peoples, crying out not what they themselves wished but what they were bidden by the Lord. From these things, then, it is understood that the remedy of salvation has flowed to us, since the one who was awaited is here.

Adam, cast out of paradise, awaited him, to be freed from long exile. He awaited him in righteous Noah, who was kept for the seed of those to come, so that from him the seeds of righteousness might spring up among men. He took Noah himself to be the author of the common salvation, since he had been found worthy to survive the flood,

and him the prince of wisdom, since he had cultivated the vine and been made drunk with its fruit — for what is the vine but wisdom? as David, the interpreter of the heavenly oracle, has revealed to us, saying: “Your wife like a fruitful vine on the sides of your house” — because in him was the fullness of wisdom that was awaited in Christ. Christ, filled with the new mystery of wisdom, which “eye has not seen nor ear heard”, hastened to bring us an unheard-of mystery: to lie naked and pour out unheard-of cups of overflowing wisdom, so that, forgetting what lay behind, we might rise again to new ways and a new sobriety of eternal life, and so that through the foolishness of preaching God might be known, whom this world did not know through wisdom.

Finally, in that figure of the sleeping and uncovered father, the son who laughed at the folly was cursed, while those who showed reverence obtained the grace of blessing. And so those who believe that the death of the only-begotten Son of God, the Father and Creator of all, is to be thrown up as a stumbling block or a reproach to our faith are held bound by the chains of their sins to the everlasting misery of the curse; but those who accept it for the release of the whole human race are upheld by the protection of eternal power. For the cross of Christ is to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness, as the apostle said, but to us who believe in our Lord it is the power and wisdom of God.

He was awaited in Moses, when he had divided and crossed the waves of the sea and opened in the floods a path to walk on, impossible to human strength, when the rock followed and poured out waters to satisfy the inward parts of the thirsting fathers in the midst of the desert.

He was awaited also in Aaron, the chief of the priests, who stood between the living and the dead and checked the creeping plague of death, so that it should not pass from the corpses of the dead to the destruction of the living. For what is so proper to Christ as to stand as advocate for the peoples before God the Father, to offer his own death for all, to drive back death, to restore life to those about to perish?

He was awaited also in Jesus son of Nave, and surely he came, who received both his power and his name, to lead the people into the land of promise and to be truly called by the name Jesus. He dried up the streams, turned the waves back to their source, made the sun stand still until he completed the victory in power. But that was still a figure, not the truth. Finally the true leader of the heavenly army shone forth, and Jesus son of Nave worshipped him, although he had not yet stood there in a true body, but had still come in a figure.

When, then, did the true one come? Hear him saying: “I have announced and spoken; they are multiplied beyond number. Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but a body you have perfected for me. Then I said: See, I come; in the head of the book it is written of me; to do your will, my God, I have willed.” What is clearer than that the true Jesus came to us with the gift of his gospel? He himself spoke, and innumerable peoples of believers were gathered, where before scarcely one here and there believed. He himself came in the flesh, and the sacrifice of the Jews ceased, the offering for sin ceased, because the forgiver of sins had come. The remedy of the law was not needed where the author of the law stood present.

“Then I said: See, I come; in the head of the book it is written of me.” It was certainly written of Christ at the beginning of the Old Testament that he would come to do the will of God the Father in the redemption of men, when it is written that he formed Eve, as a type of the church, to be a help for man. For what can be a protection to us in this weakness of the body and the turmoil

of this world but the grace of the church alone, by which we are redeemed, and our faith, by which we live? In the head of the book it is written: “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh.” Who it is who spoke, or of whom this mystery is, hear him saying: “This mystery is great, but I speak in Christ and in the church.” Hence he also admonishes that a man should love his wife as Christ loves the church, since we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. What greater salvation, then, than to be with Christ and to cleave to him by a certain unity of body, in which there is neither any stain nor filth of sin?

It is written in the head of the book that the sacrifice of righteous Abel pleased God and the offering of the fratricide displeased him. Did not the Lord Jesus plainly signify that he himself was to be offered for us, so as to consecrate in his passion the grace of a new sacrifice and to abolish the rite of a parricidal people? And what more express than that a son was offered by the holy patriarch and a ram was sacrificed? Did it not plainly show that the flesh of the man, which is common to all earthly living things, and not the divinity of the only-begotten Son of God, would be liable to the wound of the sacred passion?

It is written in the head of the book that a man would come who would command the heavenly powers. It was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus came to earth and angels ministered to him, as he himself deigned to say: “From now on you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

It is written in the head of the book: “A lamb without blemish, clean, full-grown, male, a year old, shall be yours, and the whole synagogue shall slay it.” Who this lamb is you have heard him say: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” This is he who was slain by the whole people of the Jews, whom they still pursue with hostile hatred. And it was indeed necessary for him to die for all, so that in his cross there might be forgiveness of sins and his blood might wash away the defilements of the world. But woe to those who denied the author of their own salvation! “You have made a counsel,” he says, “but not through me.” How could he approve the parricide who did not approve the counsel? And yet how great his mercy! He shrank from their counsel, but if they turned, he did not refuse them the remedy.

It is written, not only in the head but in the whole compass of the law, that a man would come to preserve the human race who would will all that God wills. From this you understand that he who is of the same will is of the same divinity. Hence too he came of his own will to the sacrifice of the passion, and rightly foretold: “Willingly I will sacrifice to you.”

But perhaps you say: How did he say in the gospel: “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me; but not as I will, but as you will”? There seems to be a difference of will. But we understand that what is expressed according to the unity of the Godhead, where he says: “I and the Father are one”, is one thing, and what he spoke according to the feeling of a man is another; he taught man that he must be cautious and not presume

what he could not easily fulfil, lest, while he seeks the prize, he fall into sacrilege. Hence he says: “When they persecute you in this city, flee to another.” Rightly, then, here too, about to undergo the passion of the body, he began to be sorrowful and sad, and having taken Peter and the two sons of Zebedee: “My soul is sorrowful.” This he said first, and added afterwards: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” You see that everywhere he speaks as man, prays as man, is sad as man, said as man: “My Father, if it is possible.” What indeed is impossible to God? But it belongs to man

to doubt, to God to confirm. Therefore he took the readier ones as chosen witnesses of his last judgment, men who would recognize the mystery of his words. Finally, the others were sleeping; these alone kept watch with faithful mind. Hence also through Jeremiah, before he had taken a body, he himself says: “I was led like a lamb, and I did not know.” What is there that the Wisdom of God does not know, which is always in the secret of the Father? And therefore the Son of God has declared all things, because he himself is the Wisdom of God the Father.

How did he foreknow that he was to be led like a lamb, and yet say that he did not know where he was being led? Or how did he say above, through the mouth of David himself: “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” How is the Son forsaken by the Father, who says: “And I am not alone, because the Father is with me”, and elsewhere: “I was delivered up and did not go out”, and elsewhere: “I arose and am still with you”— unless you are to notice that he expresses the feeling of men, who think that they have been forsaken by their Lord when they are in danger?

Finally, hear what follows: “Far from my salvation,” he says, “are the words of my offences”; that is, the words of offences are one thing, the mysteries of eternal salvation another. Words do not prejudge power; the divine substance is upheld by its own strength: man is seen, man is heard, God is recognized in the works. And yet of this man it was said: “He is also a man, and who will know him?” What does “who” mean? Not that no one will, but that few will, the wise will, as in that verse: “Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?” “Who

is wise, and will understand these things?” Finally elsewhere: “The foolish man will not know, and the stupid will not understand these things.” So you too, when you read the gospel, as a wise man and not a fool, understand what you read; let the brightness of eternal wisdom enlighten you. They are words, yes; but they themselves cleanse, they enlighten, they confirm, they give life. Hence Peter says: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we will not leave you.”

Finally, so that we might notice that he speaks as man, a little later he said: “See, the hour draws near when the Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of sinners”; and to Judas as he kissed him he said: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” That is: do you pour poison into the kiss by which the grace of love is poured in, the kiss which is the sign of holy peace, the kiss by which faithful friendship is made firm, the kiss by which holy faith is sealed? With this kiss, then, do you hand over to danger one whom, because of the exchange of the kiss, you ought

to revere; and do you, a man, betray the Son of Man, who came down from heaven for the salvation of men? For so it is written: “The Son of Man who is in heaven, he it is who came down from heaven.” Do you betray the Son of Man, who made you an apostle out of a sinner; do you betray the Son of Man, who came to wash away the sins of all in his blood? I do not refuse the kiss; it is for you to see to it, you who have violated the holiness of the kiss. Or have you not read that the wounds of a friend are more useful than the willing kisses of an enemy? And not undeservedly with a heavier

weapon of such great condescension was Judas struck than if he had struck him with a thunderbolt. Finally, he who betrayed the majesty could not bear the patience of the Lord, so that the guilt of so great a crime could not be washed away by himself. And so … he paid back the money, that is, he condemned his avarice, the author of such great impiety, and returned the price of treachery to the synagogue. The traitor is not excused, for he could find no place for repentance; but the sacrilege of the Jews is made heavier, for they are refuted even by the traitor’s words. He acknowledged his crime, saying that he had betrayed righteous blood; they both received the price of the crime and persecuted the prince of righteousness with fiercer zeal.

Therefore, to the everlasting condemnation of all of these, the crucified thief is absolved: because he acknowledged Christ in his own punishment, whom they did not acknowledge in his benefits, and confessed his sin to Christ, who knew how to forgive; because on his cross he discerned in his mind the Lord’s kingdom, which Judas could not see at Christ’s supper.

Therefore the thief’s prayer was followed by a heavenly voice of this kind: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” You exulted, dragon, that you had taken an apostle away from Christ: you have lost more than you took, you who see a thief carried over into paradise. There is no one who can be shut out, when a thief, your servant, has been received and has reached the place from which you yourself were cast down.

We have added these things because of that verse, for he said: “To do your will, my God, I have willed”, that is: Father, my will of the Godhead is one with yours; and because there is one will, there is one substance and an inseparable majesty and power of the Trinity. But the voice of the flesh is another, and yet it too consented to the will of God, saying: “Not what I will, but what you will”, and elsewhere: “If this cannot pass unless I

drink it, your will be done.” To fear death is a common feeling, which Christ took on in order to crucify it, as he crucified the flesh too; for he wrestled for me, to conquer for me. Though the flesh of Christ was strong and not subject to sin, yet he took on sins; he took on weaknesses, though he had nothing to grieve over. Finally, hear one saying:

“that he grieves for us, until he brings forth judgment in truth.” For he did not take on another flesh, but this one, as the apostle teaches, saying: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality.” Though he was born of the Virgin and of the Holy Spirit, yet he is the son of man, because the virgin is human. And therefore what is born of the flesh is flesh, and he who is born of a human being is called man: “the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

For this reason the incorruptible took on this flesh, to make it incorruptible, and the immortal, to make it immortal. If anyone, then, follows him, he will put on immortality; if anyone does his will, he will not die for ever, but Christ will say to him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” What is “today”? That is: you have passed out of night, you will be with me in light;

do not fear darkness, you whom eternal light has received. Beautifully, too, he added: “You will be with me in paradise”, that is: do not doubt about the flesh; you have seen me too in the flesh. Do not fear that you too may fall from paradise as Adam fell, but hear that you will be with me, in whose presence you cannot fall.

The flesh had fallen in paradise before it was taken up by Christ. You will be received there where he too is who took it up, who did not lie when he said: “I will that where I am they too may be with me.” The shepherd will not depart from his flocks, although you can no longer fear the wolf in paradise, of whom it was said: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” Therefore before the consummation the adversary is cast down into the burning and is bound with everlasting chains, so that you need no longer fear any snares.

And Adam, so that he fell, was deceived by the serpent and swayed by his wife. Therefore there will be no more marriages in paradise, but all will be without the celebrations of marriage, like the angels in heaven. He had not said to Adam “You will be with me”, because he knew that he would fall, so as to be redeemed by Christ. Happy ruin, which is repaired for the better! Therefore now the kind shepherd, the good merchant, does not leave his flock and his own merchandise. There will indeed still be a fight in paradise with the angels against the serpent, until he is cast down; but whoever is with Christ will not be able to fear.

Adam was not with Christ when he was deceived; for if he had been with Christ and had remained in his command, he certainly could not have perished. He did not remain in Christ, because he did not abide in his word. Finally, hear who remains in Christ: “If you remain in me,” he says, “and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you will and it will be done for you”; and below: “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.” Do you want to know that Adam was not with Christ? The Lord said to him: “Adam, where are you?”

He who seeks him as though absent would surely not say “Where are you?” if he knew that he remained in him. But let us hear who made him absent: “They both hid themselves,” it says, “from the face of the Lord.” Christ sees all, but the one who hides himself is hidden, since “he who does not know will not be known”; for “the Lord knows those who are

his.” He wants all whom he formed and created to be his. Would that you, man, did not flee and hide yourself from Christ! He seeks even those who flee and does not want the hidden to perish, but cries out, saying: “Adam, where are you?”, that is: Man, where are you? I set you in light; you have sought out darkness.

Finally, in paradise, where the day is always morning, evening came, since all sins are darkness. Therefore you have it that they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise toward evening. Recognize the mystery as well: in the morning you went astray, toward evening you are set free. For how is there evening where Christ is?

For although his seat is above the heaven of heavens, yet Christ is in his saints. How, then, is there evening where God is, since God is light? Finally, a light shone around Saul on the road when Christ met him, so that the persecutor was blinded as the light of God shone. Why, then, was he blinded, unless because he had not known Christ? For if he had known the arbiter of light, he would not have lost the light of his eyes. And indeed when he acknowledged him, he received it back. It is evidence that he had not known Christ that, when he heard the voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”, he answered: “Who are you, Lord?” He would not have asked who he was if he had known him.

Hence the Lord too says, as to one who did not know: “I am Jesus whom you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” And he said: “Lord, what must I do?” See how fittingly each plays his part. The physician threatens in order to correct, holds fast in order to cure. The sick man first asks who the physician is, whether he is competent, from whom he may expect to be healed; when he heard the author of the medicine, he asked for the remedy, and found health. Finally, when he came, not only was his blindness driven away, but he also received a light he had not had, so that he saw Christ whom before he had not seen.

But let us look at what follows, repeating, however, the verse that seems to have been treated: “See, I come, to do your will, my God, I have willed, and your law in the midst of my heart. I have well announced your righteousness in the great church; see, I will not restrain my lips. Lord, you have known your righteousness; I have not hidden it in my heart.”

From the earlier verse, then, we understand: “See, I come”: not only will I do your will, but also your law, in the midst of my heart. Others have: “in the midst of my belly”. For there is also a belly of the mind, which conceives the seeds of thoughts, of which Isaiah said: “In the womb we have conceived and brought forth the spirit of salvation.” With this womb Paul too was in labour, who says: “My little children, with whom I am in labour until Christ is formed in you.” Christ, then, is formed not in a

bodily womb but in a certain womb of the soul. In this womb the apostle begot, as it is written: “I have begotten you through the gospel.” Therefore some have “in the midst of the heart”, others “in the midst of the belly”, so that you may understand the womb of the inner man, which is taken to be in the midst of the heart, in which we keep the precepts of the natural law, which is not only kept but also done in our hearts. Hence also it is written that not only the hearers of the law are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

For there are those who by nature do what belongs to the law, like the gentiles, who do not hear the law and are a law to themselves, who keep precepts of the law that are unknown to them. Here, then, Christ, as the gatherer of the gentile people, has taken on our person, to say that he does the law in the midst of his heart. For the people of the nations fulfilled the law it had not heard, so as to acknowledge Christ, whom the people of the Jews, which had received the law, did not receive and did not think should be acknowledged, because it is written: “The ox knew its owner and the ass its master’s crib;

but Israel has not known me.” This, then, is the belly of believers, in which the Holy Spirit works and which he is accustomed to fill with spiritual seed, as the Lord Jesus testifies in the gospel, saying: “He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his belly.” From that river come these rivers, of which we read: “The rush of the river gladdens the city of God.” Of those, then, from whom such spiritual rivers flow it is well said: “The rivers have lifted up, Lord, the rivers have lifted up their voice from the voice of spiritual waters”, which praise God above the heavens.

He who has lifted up his voice can say: “I have well announced your righteousness in the great church.” Why did he add “great”, unless because before it was not great? Which church is great, unless the one gathered from all parts of the whole world,

when peoples of the nations were called from east and west, north and south? Yet where do we read elsewhere of the great church? “I will confess to you, Lord, in the great church; among a weighty people I will praise you.” There, then, is the great church, where the people is weighty, that is, not restless and fickle, like the people that “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play”. A weighty people is one that keeps faith with its God and is not changed by any levity, nor wavers and fluctuates, but is founded in Christ by love, so that it can say: “For I am confident that neither death nor sword nor tribulation can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.”

He who preaches in the great church does not hide the righteousness of God in his heart, but raises his voice with strength and announces Christ. He is not afraid to preach him before the people; he is not ashamed of his cross, but glories in that passion of the Lord. He does not follow the letter of the law, but digs out the deep mysteries by which to reveal the glory of the Lord Jesus, whom the law signified would come to the church that is to be gathered and is great. Righteousness, then, is faith. Finally, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” “See, I will not restrain my lips. Lord, you have known.” So too elsewhere: “You have known my sitting down and my rising up.”

To the Father he says: “My righteousness I have not hidden in my heart; your truth and your salvation I have spoken.” This whole psalm is from the person of Christ. Therefore he says “my righteousness”, though a man too may say “his righteousness” without arrogance, if he believes God and confesses that his faith is reckoned to him for righteousness. He loves truth and mercy who preaches the true faith and forgives sins. For Christ came for this: to establish faith and to grant forgiveness of sins.

And since we have said that this whole psalm is from the person of the Saviour, lest the Apollinarians perhaps say: “See, he said: you have prepared a body for me”, not a soul as well, let them hear him saying in the later part of this psalm: “Let them be confounded and put to shame together who seek my soul, to take it away.”

These are the things in this psalm that we judged (difficult). The rest we reckoned plain and easy and in no need of interpretation; if they come up for treatment in another psalm in which they seem to be repeated, we will go through them more properly, with the favour of the Lord Jesus, to whom be praise, honour, glory and everlastingness from the ages, now and always and for all ages of ages. Amen.

In good order, he who in the preceding psalm said, “See, I come,” in this one has now come and suffers. And therefore it is entitled the fortieth psalm, because the Lord Jesus fasted forty days, so as to complete by that number the perfection of the man who had perished. For as man had lost grace through craving for the forbidden fruit, so it was fitting that his virtue should be restored through fasting, so that the one who had perished in Adam might be restored in Christ. Therefore, then, “to the end”, because he himself is the end of our hope; to him we direct our efforts, to him

we bring our prayers, because he is the fullness, he is the consummation of all things, he is the sum of all virtues. Therefore “to David himself”, as to him who alone of all took on our sins in his flesh, who alone, the Lamb of God, took away the sin of the whole world, who alone blotted out the handwriting of the decree by the shedding of his blood and took it out of the way and nailed it to the cross; as to Wisdom, knowing how to undo the ancient sin of the world; as to Redemption, how to renew man from guilt; as to Sanctification, how to sanctify him for grace. This, then, is the title; this the beginning.

“Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor.” Open your ears, you who are beginning to know the mysteries of the Lord’s passion. That is why it is said to you: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” That is why in the gospel the Lord touched the ears and lips of that deaf and dumb man, so that he might know what he was hearing in the mystery, and also what he should speak and when he should speak. For it is not idly written: “The Lord has given me a tongue of instruction, that I may know when I ought to speak a word.” You must know, then, what you hear, know what you ought to say, know also when you ought to speak.

Hear him, then, saying: “Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor.” Blessed indeed is he who has compassion on the poor man, who takes his needs to heart, who knows what evil want brings to the needy; but what does this opening mean in the Lord’s passion? It is true indeed that he suffered for the sake of the poor; and yet he himself rebuked Judas when he said of that ointment which Mary had poured on the feet of Christ: “This could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor.”

The other apostles had felt the same, but with a different disposition: he out of avarice, they out of mercy; for Judas was looking to his thieving, the disciples were concerned for the feeding of the poor. To them in common he replied: “Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial; for the poor you always have with you, but me you do not always have.”

So another must be understood here as the blessed man who understands concerning the poor. Here he speaks of faith, elsewhere of mercy; faith, then, comes first, mercy second. With faith mercy is precious; without faith it is bare, without faith unstable; for faith is the firm foundation of all virtues. Blessed, then, is he who understands concerning the want and poverty of Christ, who for our sake became poor, though he was rich: rich in the kingdom, poor in the flesh, because he took on this flesh of the poor. For we had become exceedingly poor, we who through the serpent’s fraud lost the precious spoils of virtues, shut out of paradise, cast out of our homeland,

banished into exile, stripped even of the covering of the body, which before the hedges of the virtues had protected and afterwards our offences laid bare. If, then, he was needy and poor in the flesh, surely he was needy and poor in the passion of that flesh. So he suffered not in his riches but in our poverty. And therefore it was not the fullness of the Godhead which dwells in him bodily, as Scripture testifies, but the flesh that suffered. Understand this, pursue this, hold this, so that it may not be said to you:

“He would not understand concerning the beggar and the poor.” For if you doubt here, certainly in that psalm which is spoken in the person of the Saviour against the betrayal of Judas you will not be able to doubt that verse in which he says: “And he persecuted the poor man and the beggar.” Understand, then, the poverty of Christ, that you may be rich; understand his weakness, that you may receive health; understand his cross, that you may not be ashamed; understand his wound, that you may heal your wounds; understand his death, that you may gain eternal life; understand his burial, that you may find resurrection.

But perhaps you say: How is Christ rich in poverty? Though my own wit may fail, yet the help of the divine readings does not fail, since the apostle has said: “For the Lord Jesus became poor, though he was rich, that by his want you might be made rich.” What, then, is this poverty that makes men rich? Let us consider it; let us turn our attention to that venerable mystery itself. What can be purer or simpler than it?

No one is drenched in a bull’s blood, as the rites of the gentiles are said to require; the sinner is not washed with the gore of goats and rams — for he is not purified; the flesh is washed, the guilt is not washed away — but: “Go out,” he says, “water, with delight from the fountains of salvation”, and a heavenly table is prepared in your sight, and the cup that inebriates, how excellent it is! These are the riches of simplicity, in which is the precious poverty of Christ. There is also a good poverty in conduct, and so the Lord said:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit”; and in the psalms we find that the Lord will save the humble in spirit. There is also an abundant poverty in a slender contribution, if faith abounds. Hence the apostle says: “And their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their simplicity.”

And that we may understand from other sayings of his as well that he called himself poor, we have it written elsewhere: “I am poor and in sorrow”, that is, because he grieves for us, as we read; for he had nothing in himself to grieve over. As, then, he grieves for us, as Isaiah, who saw him in the Spirit, explained, so surely it was for us that he was sad, according to which he called his soul sorrowful even to death, yet not because of death; and he called the flesh weak which was subject to the weakness of death, so that he might break the sting of death, and so free us on the day of judgment, which not lightly he called evil.

For so he added: “In the evil day the Lord will deliver him”, since that day seems bitter which assigns many to punishment. For the way of virtue is narrow, that of sin broad; therefore fewer walk in virtue, more are engaged in wickedness. So it comes about that the number of those who will receive the rewards of recompense is smaller than of those who, as the price of grave sins, will carry away the adverse lot of judgment. As one grieving, then, he called the day of judgment evil. For if the angels rejoice at the absolution of one sinner, how much more will men

be grieved at the condemnation of so many men! And rightly he grieves for that sheep which he carried back on his shoulders and called back, as it strayed, to his fold. The Son of God speaks with our feeling, because the day of judgment is bitter to us, and we fear it. To all it seems evil, because it is full of terror, the day on which God judges not only the public acts of man but also his hidden ones, on which each is compelled to lay open what he did or what he thought. And therefore many are condemned, few are crowned. But even those who are crowned will grieve;

for the righteous will be crowned, and the righteous man regards his brother’s misery as though it were his own. And who am I to judge of that day on which man will be set among the councils of the angels? Let us hear the sentence of the Lord himself: “The hour will come,” he says, “in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of Man, and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Those, then, who have done evil will be judged, and therefore the day is called evil and harsh by the Judge himself, so that you may know that he who had compassion in the prophets has compassion on us in the gospel.

But we can also take “in the evil day” in this way, that is, in an evil time; for the world is set in evil, and therefore the days of this world are evil, and the day has enough evil of its own. It is no small thing that we should be delivered here from the snares of the sinner. He who has been free from crime here will be free from punishment there, and will not have to undergo the severity of judgment.

And therefore there is need of vows and daily prayers and of the advocacy of the chief of priests, of whom John the evangelist says: “We have an advocate with the Father, the Lord Jesus, and he is the propitiation for our sins.” This our advocate, then, and propitiation for the sins of the whole world prays for him who understands and believes in Christ, and says: “The Lord preserve him and give him life and make him blessed.” May he preserve him from dangers, give him life as one set in the darkness of death, deign to make him blessed by the addition of good works.

“And may he cleanse his life on earth,” he says. Rightly he added “on earth”, because unless he has been cleansed here, he cannot be clean there. Or certainly in this way: “may he cleanse on earth”; for how is anyone clean in mud, when earth smears him? So the hand of the Lord is needed, which made the body from earth, that it may deign itself to cleanse it.

“And may he not deliver him into the hands of his enemy.” Who is the enemy but that lion who goes about roaring, seeking whom he may devour? Other Greek copies have: “And may he not deliver him into the souls of his enemies.” It has put “souls” for “hands”, because the souls of enemies lie in wait for the good and try to overthrow the righteous by their designs. “Souls” is also used for men: “All the seventy souls who went down into Egypt.” Therefore David too preferred to commit himself to the power of God rather than to the snares of enemies, who would not know how to spare of their own will.

There follows: “May the Lord bring him help upon the bed of his pain; you have turned all his bedding in his sickness.” What is the bed of pain but the flesh of weakness? And rightly the bed of pain, because it is the body of death, from which the apostle prays to be freed, so that he may rise as though from a tomb, in which the sick soul lies and reclines as on a little bed. Symmachus said “bed of misery”, Aquila “pallet of misery”; the Seventy thought more expressly that it should be called “bed of pain”.

These verses, then, should be used with those who are long held by bodily sickness, that they may have the medicine of God by which they may be found worthy to be healed. The bed of the soul, then, is the weak flesh, with whose sickness our soul suffers; and if it has the Lord as helper, he says to it: “Rise, take up your bed and go into your house.”

Strengthened by this word of God, he who was sick rises and takes up the bed on which he lay and returns to his former state of health. This is to go back into his house, so as to dwell in the home of the most robust health. He who dwells rules; he who rules has the grace of virtue supporting him. But the Lord also turns all the bedding in the sickness of the one who languishes, to whom he deigns to be present. What is turned changes its state, either from health to sickness or from sickness to health. So the one who is sick here turns himself toward the remedy of health.

So, then, the Lord Jesus, though he was wounded for our sins, yet did not remain in that weakness, but turned himself for the better, for the salvation of all. And so weakness was undone by his passion, death by his resurrection. As, then, he turned himself for the redemption of the peoples and did not feel the sting of death or the weakness of the wound,

so he turns toward life the one who believes in him, even when gravely ill, to free him from death. “All the bedding”, then: that is, he turned the weakness of all men in his own weakness. For he took on the weaknesses of all in his flesh, raised himself onto the cross, and turned the weaknesses of all in the weakness of his own body. Hence Isaiah says: “By his bruise we are healed.” Wrestlers have this practice: they put themselves under those with whom they are engaged and wrestling, so that they seem able to be pinned, and suddenly, when they are thought to be overcome and thrown, they turn themselves by a certain art so as to throw off the one on top; the one who was being carried falls, and the one who was carrying is found on top, so as to lay low the one pressing on him.

So in the spiritual wrestling-school the Lord Jesus, taking up our burdens, put himself underneath in that bout of his passion, and in the guise of weakness, so that the adversary might judge him a man like the rest whom he could easily pin, he laid aside the arms of divinity and took up the covering of humanity. Sure of victory, the tempter came closer and wished to wound him in the rib with the soldier’s spear, thinking that he too, like Adam, could be laid low through a rib.

But the Lord Jesus, wounded in the side, brought forth life from the wound, made void all sin, cast down the adversary, from whom he snatched the death of the thief; and in that death, in that burial of his body, when he was thought pinned and thrown, he turned himself by his own power: the adversary fell, the Lord rose again.

There follows: “I said: Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” This can also be said in the person of King David, who, seeing in the Spirit so great a victory and grace of Christ, asks that in that forgiveness of all sins he may have mercy on him too; since he himself, even if as king he was not held by human laws, yet knows that he is answerable to God for his sins. He confesses his sin, then, that he may receive forgiveness and find the gift of the general pardon. It can also be expressed in the person of the Saviour, who asks God’s mercy for us and said that he had sinned because he was made sin for us.

At the same time he teaches us that, when we are set in some contest against the enemies of God, we should implore God’s help and ourselves confess our sins, and most of all when we are pressed hard and crushed, we should prostrate ourselves with grief and bitterness, lest we seem to have kept silent, so that medicine may be brought the sooner to our wounds and, healed, we may resist the adversary. For how can a wounded man join battle? From this we learn that we are wounded by the stings of our sins. A wound seeks a physician; the physician demands confession.

From here too the Saviour begins to lay open more and more the mystery of his passion, which without doubt agrees with the gospel. For the Jews cursed him, sought his death, laid snares, pressed him, unable to bear the glory of his work, which grew daily. This, then, the prophecy announces, which was fulfilled in the gospel: “My enemies spoke evil against me: When will he die, and his name perish?”

Fools, who believed that the author of life could die! But the church was destroying their hopes, believing that even when dead according to the condition of the body he was increasing his name. And therefore it sang to him, saying: “I will remember your name in generation and generation”; it repeated: “Your name is ointment poured out.”

Let those be warned who presume that you can die; I shall not die, I who have known you as the arbiter of life, the author of salvation. For we know that at the time of the passion and resurrection the disciples were gathered in prayer, when Magdalene announced to them that the Lord had risen, and when, with the door shut, the Lord showed himself to them in the body of the resurrection, when Thomas saw his wounds and believed.

The Jews, then, mocked him as one dead, but the Lord was revealing himself alive to the apostles. When the Jews said: “See, the whole world has gone after him”, when they said that he was leading the people astray by his wonderful works, what else were they saying but: “When will he die, and his name perish?” And therefore at his passion they cried out: “Away, away with such a man from the earth; let him be crucified, let him be crucified.” What they asked for came about: he was taken up from the earth, he rose, he ascended to heaven and restored his kingdom from us to the seats of paradise.

A clear prophecy about Judas the traitor too is added in the verses that follow: “And he came in to see; he spoke vain things; his heart gathered iniquity to itself. And he went out and spoke.” So we find it divided in the Greek copies. Judas, then, came in seeking to betray the Saviour, to see what he was doing or what he was saying, so as to catch him in his words and report to the Jews; but he who understood nothing found nothing.

Scripture rightly says it, because the one who had withdrawn from his teaching and abandoned his instructions was not inside with Jesus. He wanted to enter but could not penetrate, because his faithlessness shut him out; for “every unchaste or covetous or unclean person, which is the service of idols, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” So not only was he trying to come in and did not come in, but he also wished to see and did not see. Finally, Jesus spoke in parables, but Judas did not hear.

Finally, he did not see the divine mysteries; for not all hear the word of God who think they hear. For if all heard, Jesus would not say: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And therefore, because he did not hear and could not see, he spoke vain things instead of true, and thought that he was deceiving Jesus when he said: “This could have been sold and given to the poor”, though he was providing for his thieving, not for the poor; calling him rabbi and teacher, from whose teaching he was straying, and whose heart, into which he had entered, the devil was gathering to himself and increasing its iniquities.

For he was unjust to himself, wicked to himself, sinning against himself, he who was devising within himself a deceit that could not be hidden. For Jesus was not deceived, who was betrayed willingly and testified: “One of you will betray me.” Finally Judas confessed, saying: “Is it I, Rabbi?” And the Lord said: “You have said it.” Not even so did Judas understand that he was known; for if he had understood, he would not have betrayed him.

But nonetheless “he went out and spoke”. A fitting verse against those who betray anyone’s secret. Beautifully he says: “He went out”; for outside are the wolves, outside the robbers. Inside is Moses in the cloud with Jesus, outside the Jews; inside is Zechariah the priest in the temple, outside the multitude; inside the Holy Spirit in our hearts cries to the Father, outside our adversary like a lion keeps watch for prey;

outside are the unbelievers, inside the faithful. And therefore God will judge those who are outside, but Christ will absolve those who are inside. Judas, then, went out and spoke. He went out from faith, he went out from the council and number of the apostles, he went out from Christ’s supper to the devil’s brigandage, he went out from the grace of sanctification into the snare of death, he who spoke vain things to the faithless;

he went outside, who left behind the inner mysteries of life; he went out, who did not know the inner meaning of Scripture. For if he had known it, he would have understood the one who says: “Will he who sleeps not rise again?” He would also have understood this: “But you, a man of one mind with me, my guide and my familiar friend, who always took sweet food with me; in the house of the Lord we walked in harmony.” So he did not understand this psalm, nor the hundred and eighth, nor others, nor other testimonies of the Scriptures. Of him and the other unbelievers John the evangelist rightly says: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.”

So the traitor did not remain with the apostles, he who went outside and whispered with the faithless. Divine Scripture used that word to show that faithlessness is without authority, since it fears that what it says will be found out. But to the faithful it is said: “Lift up your voice with strength.” See to what the apostle Judas had fallen, who had been sent to preach the faith to the gentiles with the full authority of a herald: to whisper into the ear of his master’s plotters what he feared to have heard. Did he not condemn himself by his own judgment?

But he was ashamed to have heard what he was not afraid to do; he was ashamed, because he was planning evil against the author of his life, his sanctification and his honour, and did not repay his benefits with gratitude, but returned evil for good to a good master — a thing even men of the world are accustomed to condemn; the ungrateful man was ashamed to be found out, the avaricious man was ashamed to be seen, since for money he was betraying the salvation of his author; he was ashamed to be seen as faithless.

Likewise the Jews too, who faithlessly suborned false witnesses against the teacher of the faith, to say that he had preached that the temple of God which Solomon built was to be destroyed, when he had signified the temple of his body: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” — they were truly outside, who were shut out from the knowledge of the heavenly word.

“An unjust word,” he says, “they set forth against me”, that is: they set forth against me an unlawful word, contrary to right and justice, making bargains over human blood, which Judas most wickedly sold and which the Jews with no lesser wickedness thought fit to buy — most vain men, as though he who sleeps would not rise again. What the “adding” is, let us consider.

It is natural to all earthly animals and to the birds of the sky and the fishes of the sea to be born and to die; to man, whom God had made more precious than the other animals of the earth, he gave this grace above all, that when dead he should live again. This is called the “adding” for the renewal of the former life. So too, when the Lord had decreed for King Hezekiah that he had completed the time of his life, and had commanded him through Isaiah to set his house in order, because he was going to die, and he had prayed to the Lord and wept with great weeping, the Lord took pity and sent word to him:

“See, I add fifteen years to your time.” And elsewhere holy David says: “Days upon days of the king; you will add to his years.” Something, then, is found that may be added to man; but nothing can be added to God, because it is written: “There is no adding or taking away” in him in whom all things are perfect and full. Even if Christ rose again, he certainly rose in what he had assumed, in which nothing could either go from or come to the fullness of his Godhead. For God is incorporeal and

immortal, whose highest nature and fullness of powers is marked without any addition of flesh. But the flesh in Christ belongs to the dispensation, which he took on by the title of compassion and by the right of mercy, to redeem it as a captive, to wash it when defiled, to raise it when dead. And beautifully he says: “Will he who sleeps not add so as to rise again?” He did not say “will it not be added”, but “will he not add so as to rise again”, because the Son of God raised himself, as we said above that he said to the Jews:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The flesh received the adding, as taken from man, assumed from the Virgin; but as God he himself worked the adding, who rose by his own power, so that he was the worker of his own resurrection. When you read that both the Father raised the Son and the Son raised himself, recognize that that work was of divine power, because the Father and the Son have one power, a common work, since the substance of the Trinity is one and the same.

“But why do I accuse the others?” says the Lord Jesus. “What wonder if the people did not know me and condemned me to the cross, when my apostle demanded the price of betrayal, when my table companion sold my death?” “For the man of my peace, in whom I hoped, who ate my bread, has magnified his tripping up against me.” Some think that Judas is to be excused, because he paid back the money which he had received as the price of the sale.

But see, he is condemned beyond the unbelief of the Jews; for from him to whom more has been given, more is required. “Why,” he says, “should I complain of the others? The man of my peace, to whom I had given my peace, to whom I had wished to leave my peace, led the persecutors and betrayed me, and deceived me, in whom I hoped.” Was he ignorant that he would be his betrayer, of whom he had foretold: “One of you will betray me”?

Certainly not. But to condemn him the more, he said that he had hoped in his faithfulness. Aquila said “I had trusted”, Symmachus put “I was trusting”. For we weigh more heavily against the one in whom we say we had very much hope or confidence, if afterwards he has disappointed our hope and opinion.

At the same time he shows how great is the power of divine sanctification, which shuts out malice and corrects a depraved character, if the pattern of a better purpose comes in. How many we know to have been converted! Zacchaeus, that tax collector, intent on gain with an avaricious disposition, was changed; afterwards he paid for his error by fourfold restitution, condemned avarice in himself, forswore the gains of his former time, made it up to the poor if the one he had exacted from was not there.

The thief himself changed his wickedness with a better purpose, recognized Christ on the cross, confessed the Son of God, and called him king with his own voice. At a time when many of the righteous were wavering, and the apostles themselves certainly lay hidden, the executioner himself, the centurion, did not deny him. Why do I speak of the time of the gospel?

Rahab was a harlot, who fed herself on the wages of faithlessness and intemperance. Yet when she saw the spies whom Jesus son of Nave had sent, she put on faith, kept righteousness when danger threatened, and did not betray those she had received, but protected them with faithful kindness. Therefore, then, he says that he had hoped, as though he had rightly presumed that the apostle would put off his former ways and follow better ones,

and that he who had received the office of sanctifying others would himself keep the grace of holiness in himself and cleave to the duties of sincerity. Rightly he says “I hoped”, because he gave man the power to choose what he will follow. “I have set before you,” he says, “good and evil.” If you choose evil, it is not nature that sins but the disposition of the one choosing. If every man who chooses evil is condemned, what shall we say of Judas, who betrayed him to whom he was joined in the sweetness of the shared table?

“He who ate my bread,” he says, “has magnified his tripping up against me.” Why did he add “my bread”? He could have said “he who ate bread with me”, unless you are to understand that food which is Christ’s own, that is, the nourishment of the heavenly word; for man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Finally elsewhere he says: “You who always took sweet food with me.” We rightly use these verses against those who have thought that those with whom they are seen to have feasted may be killed. The gentiles are said to observe this, enemies very often, even robbers: that they spare those with whom they recline at table. They grow gentle through the very fellowship of food. Hence, because of such a feeling

of the grace of the shared table, if we consider the words, he did not idly say “sweet food”. For how are foods sweet which quickly spoil? But see whether by sweet food he did not mean the words of life; for no bitterness spoils these foods, no corruption of death defiles them. That is why he also said “always”. For no one can always be eating, but we can always cleave to the word of God, nights and days, if we meditate on the law of God day and night.

And what is “has magnified”? The Greek said emegalynen, that is, “has made great”. The Lord explained to us both words that might trouble us, saying in the gospel: “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” Let us consider where this expression is taken from. “We were,” he says, “unbelieving, going astray, serving desires and pleasures.” Let us confess our error, that we may be washed. I too as a boy saw an athlete who, when he had thrown his opponent, struck his forehead with his heel, which was a sign that he was insulting the vanquished.

That is what he says: “He has magnified his tripping up against me”, by which word he declared the boasting of one who insults. Judas, then, also lifted his heel against Christ when he betrayed him, but he did not lift it with impunity. Adam still lifts the heel that was wounded by the serpent. And surely Christ had washed his feet; he had heard him saying: “He who has been washed needs only to wash his feet, but is clean all over.” But what grace had washed, faithlessness had defiled. Judas, then, lifted his heel to his own wounding. Truly he did not hold to the head, who lifted his heel against Christ.

Adam lifted it against himself, this man against Christ, and therefore the serpent wounded him more gravely than the rest. He lifted his heel who offered the deceitful kiss by which to trip up his author, and therefore it is written in the prophet: “He has magnified his tripping up against me.” Esau too said of his brother: “He has tripped me up twice now.” He who trips up uses a trick to throw or wound his opponent. Therefore Judas too is said to have tripped him up, because by his kiss he inflicted a wound, and by it showed the persecutors the sign for seizing the Saviour.

He tripped him up, then, like a serpent, which pours in poison with its mouth and wounds the heel with its tooth; for here too he wounded not the divinity of Christ but the lowest part of the body, the heel. Judas also lifted his heel like an insolent and proud wrestler, with which to strike the Saviour’s head. But he could not strike the head of Christ, because the head of Christ is God. Indeed he bound his own head with the knot of a shameful noose, so as to take from himself the remedy of salvation.

See whether you can piously apply here what the holy patriarch Jacob said in Genesis when he prophesied about his sons: “Dan will judge his people like one tribe in Israel”, and: “Let Dan be like a serpent sitting in the way and in the path, biting the horse’s heel, and

the rider will fall backward, awaiting salvation from the Lord.” We read indeed that Samson of the tribe of Dan was a judge in Israel; but here another is signified as to come, who, coming forth from that tribe, will afflict the people with the torments of sacrilegious impiety: that Antichrist

who will sit in the temple as though he were God — truly judgment, as the interpretation has it; for Dan means “judgment”. And beautifully he said that he will judge his people, he who will become liable to everlasting punishment; for he who does not believe has already been judged, but he who believes will not be judged, because he believes in the Son of God, the redeemer of his soul. And therefore, as one free of judgment, he says: “He who judges me is the Lord.” He is to judge, then, the people of impiety, not the people of faith; for those are judged who fall in the ruin of faithlessness, not those who rise in the freedom of faith.

He will sit, then, in the way and lie in wait in the path like a serpent, to wound those who pass by and to bite the heel of our horse; for he will not be able to wound the soul of the faithful. And in what way will he sit, and in what path, unless those from which Christ the Lord, as we read, called the people of the nations to his supper, saying: “Go out into the ways and along the hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled”?

And since likewise Judas is read to have magnified his tripping up against Christ, he himself seems to be signified in this place, as one who was to bite the heel of the horse on which Christ the Lord was carried. Hence it was said: “Your horsemanship is salvation”, because his flesh was to take up the sin of the whole world, so that salvation might follow instead of destruction and eternal life instead of death.

So the horse was wounded, not the horse that is vain for safety; the horse was wounded that took up the sins of the whole world and bore our burdens and was not wearied; the horse was wounded that did not know how to neigh in the frenzy of lust. And therefore perhaps to John the evangelist heaven was shown opened and a white horse, on which sat one with diadems on his head and on his thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords. He was white who was spotless, who had known no defilements of sin. For if lust is dark, rightly holiness shines and gleams.

This horse, then, was wounded but not slowed. Finally, with that very wound he rose from the tomb, ran to heaven above all angels and archangels, found swifter than all the cavalry of the heavenly army, above even those horses of fire by which Elijah was carried off. And rightly swifter, who ascended above all the heavens and above the heaven of heavens to the seat of God almighty and sits there, as Scripture has taught us, saying: “From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power.”

This horse, then, was shown beforehand in a figure too, in the time of the Maccabees, on which sat that leader of the heavenly army, gleaming in golden armour, who threw down and struck Heliodorus, the plunderer of the widows’ deposit and of the other things that had been entrusted to sacred keeping, and afterwards, entreated by the prayers of Onias the priest,

restored him to the use of life. Hence truly golden armour gleamed on him, because he alone sat this horse and conquered, the horse on which no one escaped free of guilt: not Enoch, who was carried off lest wickedness should change his heart, not Abraham, not Isaac, not Jacob, not Moses. For all are under sin, all under death. Finally, death reigned from Adam to Moses. He alone is the one who did no sin; Christ alone is he who took away the sin of the world, who said to death: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

How, then, did Judas magnify his tripping up against him, and the rider fall backward? What was in Judas was a trick; what was in Christ was willing suffering. We often see the stronger man willing to be struck, so that, being provoked, he may rise up the more fiercely and be roused more vehemently. So the serpent bit the horse’s heel and spewed out the venom of its deceit;

the rider willingly threw himself down; willingly he fell, to raise us. Yet why does Scripture say: “And the rider will fall backward”? Why backward, unless so as to guide from behind those who follow him? Peter was behind, to whom he said: “Go back behind me”; the apostles and the other disciples were behind. Therefore he fell backward, because he saves those on whom he falls. For “everyone,” he says, “who falls on this stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will cleanse him.”