Homilies on Psalms 36–38 (LXX numbering; Psalms 37–39 in English Bibles) 2.1–3.2

Since the commandment instructs us, saying, “Be subject to the Lord,” it seems necessary to examine what it is to be subject to the Lord and what it is not to be subject. For as not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, so not everyone who says he is subject to the Lord is subject to him, but he who is subject to him in fact; for true subjection to the Lord is shown not by the word of profession but by the work of subjection. What we say is understood more fully in this way. Our Lord Jesus Christ is righteousness: no one, then, who acts unrighteously is subject to Christ, who is righteousness. Christ is truth: no liar is subject to Christ, who is truth, whether he speaks a lie in matters of fact or in doctrine. The Lord Jesus Christ is sanctification: no one is subject to sanctification while he is defiled and impure. The Lord Jesus Christ is peace: no quarrelsome and turbulent person is subject to Christ, who is peace; but he is subject to him who says, “With those who hated peace I was peaceable.” Hence in another psalm too the prophet says to his soul: “But be subject to God, my soul, for from him is my patience.” And the Apostle signifies great and mystical things about subjection when he says: “When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him who subjected all things to him.” Hear, then, what he says: all things must be subject to Christ, and then he himself is subject, namely with that subjection which it is fitting to understand spiritually. Meanwhile all things must be subject to Christ, so that then at last, when all things have been fulfilled and perfected through subjection, he himself, bringing back to the Father this palm of his victory, may be said to be going to be subject. Unless this is understood mystically, the inattentive doubtless take it to indicate something impious. For we must not think that the Son of God is now in no way subject to the Father, but that in the last times, when all things have been subjected to him, he too will then be subject. Rather, because he takes all that is ours into himself, and says that it is he who hungers in us, he who thirsts in us, who is naked and sick, who is a stranger and shut up in prison, and testifies that whatever has been done to one of his least ones has been done to him, it follows fittingly and rightly that when each of us is fully and perfectly subject to God, so as to obey without any disobedience at all, he declares that he himself is subject. What we say is understood more fully in another way too. If some member of our body is in pain, though our soul is unharmed and all our other members are healthy, yet because the whole person is afflicted by the pain of one member, we do not say that we are healthy, but that we are unwell. For example, we say, “That man is not well.” Why? Because his feet hurt, or his kidneys, or his stomach. No one says that he is well if his stomach hurts; he is not well because his stomach hurts. If you have understood the example, let us now return to our subject. The Apostle says that we are the body of Christ and members in part. Christ, then, whose body is the whole human race, or perhaps even the whole of creation, and of whom each of us is a member in part: if one of us who are called his members is sick and suffers from some disease of sin, that is, if he is branded with the stain of some sin and is not subject to God, then he whose members are not subject to God is rightly said not yet to be subject. But when he has all those who are called his body and members healthy, so that they suffer from no disease of disobedience, when all the members are healthy and subject to God, he rightly says that he is subject, since we, his members, obey God in all things. If you want to examine yourself and see whether you are already subject to God or still remain disobedient, examine yourself in this way: if there is nothing in you contrary to God, you are subject to him. I mean “contrary” in this sense. God is love: if there is no hatred in you, you have nothing contrary to God. God is truth: see that there is no lie in you, which is contrary to truth. For if there is a lie in you, you are subject not to God but to him who is the father of lies. And if there is unrighteousness in you, you are subject to the father of unrighteousness rather than to God, who is righteousness. If you discover the other vices in yourself, know that for so long you are subject not to God but to the devil. For it is certain that at the time of sexual immorality we are subject to the spirit of sexual immorality, opposing the spirit of chastity; and at the time of anger or fury we obey the spirit of anger, resisting the spirit of gentleness. Seeing, then, that our whole life is a kind of contest of obedience, either to Christ or to those who oppose Christ, let us try, through prayer and the devout discipline of learning, to bring it about that we are never found obeying the devil or his malice, but that every act of ours, every word, and every thought is found in subjection to Christ. But perhaps you say: “What use is it if I am subject now, when I have already sinned before and been overtaken by offenses?” Doubtless when we sinned we were not subject to God, but when we ceased from offenses we made a beginning of subjection. When, then, subject to the fear of God, we cease to sin, we also receive confidence to ask pardon for former offenses. But as long as we remain in offenses, we ask pardon for them in vain. Hence I remember having often said to you that we ask worthily for pardon of our offenses when, placed far from sin, we can say: “Do not remember our former iniquities.” It did not say “those we are doing,” but “those we once did.” Be subject, then, to the Lord, and, being subject, do not sin. Then entreat him for past and former offenses.

“Do not emulate him who prospers in his way, the man who does iniquity.” He describes what happens to people. For often, if we see an unrighteous man enjoying prosperity and placed in the happiness of life such people lead, we are scandalized, incur danger to our faith, and complain in our heart against divine Providence, saying: “What use is it to act righteously? See, the righteous are afflicted, while this unrighteous man fares well. He is unrighteous, and yet he has reached the greatest riches and climbed to the lofty summit of honors and powers; perhaps it is better to be unrighteous than righteous.” Weak and frail souls, even if they do not utter these things with their mouths, say them in their hearts when they see the wicked faring prosperously in their way. And so the medicine of this commandment comes to our aid, so that when we see these things we do not emulate, that is, do not irritate the Lord against us by saying such things in our hearts. Rather we ought to reflect that the present age belongs to those who have no hope of future blessedness. So let us patiently bear that they fare prosperously and receive their good things in their life, until our age also comes, to which we have been invited and whose goods have been promised to us, to which we look and in which we hope, whose goods do not pass like a shadow, as in this age, but remain for ever. It is impossible to obtain good things both in the present age and in the future. For it must be said to one, “You received good things in your life,” and to the other, “you received bad things”; and one receives good things in exchange for bad, the other bad in exchange for good, as that rich man and Lazarus are an example. Therefore: “Do not emulate him who prospers in his way, the man who does iniquity.”

After this he warns against a vice by which almost all of us are troubled, and I do not know whether anyone, anywhere, is found so perfect as to be free of this disease. “Cease,” he says, “from anger, and forsake indignation.” There are many vices that many people avoid easily. For example, the evil of unchastity: if someone has applied himself earnestly to continence, he has cast off unchastity. Some have also subdued avarice, so that, though they are not perfect in other respects, they seem to avoid this evil and some others. But anger is a hard and sharp vice; it inflames and stirs up even those who seem to be wise. Hence Solomon too says in Proverbs: “Anger destroys even the prudent.” That is, do not wonder, he says, if anger inflames a fool, a wicked man, or an unbeliever, for anger often stirs up even good and prudent men. This sin, then, is also one of those that bring wood, hay, and stubble to the building; and, as it is written, such materials must be tested by fire, so that we remain in the fire until the wood of anger in us is consumed, and the hay of indignation, and the stubble of words, namely those we have uttered when stirred up by such vices. Therefore “cease from anger, and forsake indignation”: that is, do not gratify your feelings when you have been moved to anger, but cease, forsake, despise it. We, however, though we receive these commandments, do the opposite when we are moved: we cease not from anger but from gentleness; we forsake not indignation but mildness. Yet let us at least begin from this to amend ourselves, and, softening anger little by little through self-control and constant meditation, let us come even to this, that we are no longer angry; and by constantly blunting the onset of indignation that is stirred up by fury, let us arrive at this, that our souls are no longer troubled by the agitation of indignation. “Do not emulate so as to act wickedly.” Do not, he says, by provoking others to rivalry in wickedness, become wicked yourself; for rivalry in evil always strives to surpass another in malice.

“For those who act wickedly will be destroyed; but those who wait for the Lord will possess the land as an inheritance.” It appears that wickedness is a species of evil distinct from the other sins. Hence here too the divine word describes the sinner as one person and the wicked man as another, just as it uses a similar distinction there, when it says: “Break the arm of the sinner and of the malicious,” that is, the wicked. And the Lord in the Gospel did not call the devil merely a sinner, but the malicious one, or the evil one, both when he teaches in the prayer, saying, “But deliver us from the evil one,” and elsewhere: “An evil man,” or a malicious one, “has done this.” Some define ponēria, that is, wickedness, as voluntary or willed malice. For it is one thing to do evil through ignorance and to be overcome by evil, and another to do evil by will and purpose; and this is wickedness. Hence the devil is rightly called by this name, ponēros, that is, malicious or wicked. And the Savior said to us in reproach: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.” And now, then, he says: “For those who act wickedly will be destroyed; but those who wait for the Lord will possess the land as an inheritance.” There is also another land, of which Scripture says that it flows with milk and honey, which the Savior promises in the Gospels to the meek, saying: “Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the land.” This land of ours, which we inhabit, is called by its proper name “dry land,” just as this sky which we look at is properly called the “firmament.” But from the name of the other heaven this firmament too received the name of heaven, as the Scripture of Genesis teaches. What, then, does this mean? In the present life we make use of this visible heaven and earth, in which we find nothing of the true heaven and the true earth except the names; but I think they are so called here so that, when these are so named, those which are true and great may come to the desire and memory of those who share their names. Who are those who will possess the land as an inheritance? “Those who wait,” it says, “for the Lord.” We wait for the Lord, because he himself is our expectation and our patience, as it is written: “And now what is my expectation? Is it not the Lord?” As, then, the Savior is wisdom and peace and righteousness, so he is also expectation, or patience. And as by participation in his righteousness we become righteous, and by participation in his wisdom wise, so by participation in his patience we become patient. He is, then, like a perennial spring from which we can draw patience, righteousness, wisdom, and all the goods of the virtues, if only we bring good, worthy, and clean vessels to the spring. He says, then: “But those who wait for the Lord will inherit.”

After this he added a mystical saying which is beyond my hearing and beyond my tongue, which exceeds my understanding. For he says, whether about all sinners or about some one sinner (for he speaks in the singular): “A little while yet, and the sinner will not be.” “A little while yet” he surely says of the time from the present to the consummation of the age, or perhaps even beyond the consummation of the age, until that avenging fire consumes the adversaries. If this happens in some way, the sinner will not be; and by what reasoning it can happen that the sinner is not, let him who can discuss and inquire. “A little while yet, and the sinner will not be; and you will seek his place, and you will not find it.” Not only will the sinner not be, but neither will the sinner’s place be. And what is the sinner’s place, if not these things that pass away? “Heaven,” he says, “and earth will pass away.” Doubtless, then, together with sin itself, which has passed away, the sinner’s place too will pass away. “Heaven,” he says, “and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Let us strive, then, to do the words of God, which do not pass away, lest we too perish with these things that pass away. For if we commit sin, which passes away, we shall doubtless be counted with the things that pass away. But if we do righteousness, which does not pass away, we too shall not pass away, but shall remain with abiding righteousness, according to what is written: “Is my hand not able to save? Or have I made my ear heavy, so as not to hear? But your sins separate between you and God.” And at the beginning of creation, not without some mystical reason, a firmament is said to have been made to separate between waters and waters, and to divide the dwelling of mortals from the seats and dwellings of the angels. From that time this dry land, which the Lord also named earth, has been assigned as a place for us sinners. But other places too are named waters, over which the Spirit of the Lord is said to be borne; and other places are named the abyss, over which darkness is said to lie. Of the waters it is said in another Scripture: “The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and were afraid.” But of the abyss it says that the abyss was troubled, doubtless because it has no peace but has darkness lying over it. And in the Gospel the demons are said to beg not to be ordered to go away into the abyss, as into a place of punishment worthy of them and of their deeds. Not only, then, will the sinner not be, but his place too, whatever it is, will be sought and will not be.

“But the meek will inherit the land.” Against the Valentinians and the other heretics, who think that my Savior says things in the Gospel that are not in the ancient writings, this verse should be brought forward, as we too learned from a certain presbyter to bring forward such texts to refute them. For see how what is said in the Gospel, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land,” was already said before by the Holy Spirit through David; or rather, Christ himself now says in the Gospels: “Blessed are the meek, for they will possess the land as an inheritance.” The prophet, indeed, adds something more than we read in the Gospel, saying: “And they will delight in the abundance of peace.” Here too the Greek uses the very word of which we spoke above, katatryphēsousin, that is, “they will luxuriate” rather than “they will delight.” So the meek will luxuriate, or delight, in the abundance of peace. If there are fleshly people, they delight in foods which will be destroyed together with their belly, as the Apostle too says: “Food is for the belly and the belly for food, but God will destroy both the one and the other.” But the saints despise and disdain these delights too; they have their delights in the abundance of peace. And the abundance of peace is said to be in the days of Christ, for so it is written: “And there will be abundance of peace in his days, until the moon is taken away.” Whoever, then, ceases from anger and forsakes indignation, whose mind is not provoked to anger and who uses no angry speech, is wholly at peace, not only outwardly but also inwardly. He neither gives way to one who provokes him to anger nor himself provokes another to anger, but has peace in himself; and among others, if any happen to disagree, he is careful to love gentleness, which is the most faithful guardian of peace and governs all things. He luxuriates … with his teeth. For as light and darkness are by nature contrary, so the sinner and the righteous man are contrary to each other. Even if you sometimes see a righteous man hated, do not hesitate to say of the one who hates the righteous man that he is a sinner. If you see one who lives well suffering persecution, do not hesitate to say of the persecutor that he is not only a sinner but wicked. The sinner, then, will watch the righteous man, and watching him will gnash his teeth at him. Whether “he will gnash with his teeth” is to be taken of bodily teeth I do not know, though it is possible that this too is done by the sinner against the righteous. When he threatens him, when he rages against him, when he is silent in voice but cries out in fury, when he lays plots against the righteous man and devises every evil against him, then what is said is fulfilled even bodily: “He will gnash his teeth at him.” But when the sinner does these things against the righteous man, “the Lord,” it says, “will laugh at him, for he foresees that his day is coming.” What day of the sinner does the Lord foresee? Doubtless that day when the sinner is sought and will not be.

“The sinners have drawn the sword, they have bent their bow, to cast down the needy and poor.” Not that sinners of every kind have a bodily sword; but let us see whether, just as there are certain arms of God, among which are said to be the breastplate of righteousness, the sword of the Spirit, and the shield of faith, so there are also arms of the devil, with which the sinful man is clothed. Let us understand contraries from contraries, then, and set up two armed soldiers, one a soldier of God, the other a soldier of the devil. If the soldier of God has the breastplate of righteousness, the soldier of the devil doubtless wears the contrary breastplate of unrighteousness. If the soldier of God gleams in the helmet of salvation, the sinner, who is the devil’s soldier, is on the contrary clad in the helmet of perdition. If the feet of Christ’s soldier are made ready for the course and the preaching of the Gospel, on the contrary the sinner’s feet run swiftly to shed blood, and his shoes, that is, his readiness, are fitted for evil. The soldier of God has a shield of faith; the soldier of the devil has a shield of unbelief. So there is a sword of the Holy Spirit in those who serve as God’s soldiers, but there is also a sword of the evil one in those who serve as soldiers of sin, and it is this sword that sinners are now said to draw. How are sinners to be thought of as drawing the sword? When they commit their iniquities shamelessly and without any veil of modesty, and neither blush nor feel reverence, nor hide and cover their wickedness as in a sheath, but with a proud and haughty spirit bare it like a sword. They likewise do what follows, that is, “they have bent their bow.” But the righteous too have a bow, and have arrows. Indeed one of their arrows is the Lord Jesus, for he himself says: “And he made me like a chosen arrow.” The righteous, then, have arrows, and sinners have them too. Speech is an arrow. The speech of the righteous man, when it reproves and corrects the sinner, pricks and pierces his heart like an arrow, so that he is turned to repentance and saved. But the speech of the sinner carries poison, and shoots and wounds the one who is not protected by the arms of God; for the words of the wicked prevail against us when we are less carefully protected by the shield of faith. “They have bent their bow, then, to cast down the needy and poor.” Sinners know that they cannot cast down the rich man, and so they do not lay snares for him; all their snares are aimed at the poor man, as it is also said elsewhere that he lies in wait like a lion in his den, lies in wait to seize the poor. And since “a man’s riches are the ransom of his life, but the poor man cannot bear threats,” let us therefore become rich in spiritual goods, that is, in all speech and in all knowledge, in good works, casting away the riches of sin, looking not to what is seen but to what is not seen; for the riches that are seen are temporary, but those not seen are eternal. And if we become rich in such riches, we cannot be wounded by the arrows of sinners; for they will be quenched by the shield of faith, through Christ our Lord and Savior, to whom be glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.

In the previous discourse we said some things about the sword and bow of sinners and about the arms of God, and that all people are armed. To what we said, “all people,” I will now add what was lacking before: all those, that is, who are already able to sin or to abstain from sins. For infants can handle neither the arms of God nor the arms of the devil. But those who in word, deed, and thought can already know what is right and avoid what is contrary to it are the ones who are said all to have arms; if they sin, they have the arms of the devil and of iniquity, but if they act rightly, they will be said to be clothed with the arms of God. Explaining, then, the words “The sinners have drawn the sword, they have bent their bow,” we said, following the Apostle, who spoke of the contrary, “and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” that the sword of sinners is the wicked spirit that is in them, which inspires them to words of blasphemy, iniquity, and shamefulness. For example, if you see Gentiles fighting one another in disputations and building up various impieties against each other with the tricks of the dialectical art, you can fittingly say that “the sinners have drawn the sword.” But I too, who am called a believer, if perhaps I have a quarrel with someone and, provoked to anger, cast off gentleness, utter furious words, and give free rein to a spirit of lies with swollen and poisonous speeches, would rightly be said to have drawn the sword like a sinner. It is best, then, first of all not even to have the sword of sin; second best is at least not to draw it but to put it back in its sheath. For if a sword is not drawn from its sheath nor used, its edge is dulled and consumed by rust, and if it is always idle it will be destroyed. And this the Lord also promises: to destroy the sword, that is, sin, so that there will no longer be a sinner. But if we anticipate this work of the word of God and, while still in this life, cause sin to die in us, so that the sword of sin is never brought forth by us at all, whether by thought, deed, or word, we shall not need the punishment of eternal fire, we shall not be condemned to the outer darkness, nor be subjected to the torments that await sinners. But if in this life we despise the words of divine Scripture that admonish us, and are unwilling to be cured or corrected by its rebukes, it is certain that the fire prepared for sinners awaits us, and we shall come to that fire in which the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. And, as I think, we must all come to that fire. Even if someone is a Paul or a Peter, he still comes to that fire. But such as these hear: “Even if you pass through fire, the flame will not burn you.” If, however, someone is a sinner like me, he will come to that fire as Peter and Paul do, but will not pass through as Peter and Paul do. And as the Hebrews came to the Red Sea, and the Egyptians came too, but the Hebrews passed through the Red Sea while the Egyptians were drowned in it, so we too, if we are Egyptians and follow Pharaoh the devil, obeying his commands, shall be drowned in that river or lake of fire, when sins are found in us, which we doubtless chose from Pharaoh’s commands. But if we are Hebrews and have been redeemed by the blood of the spotless lamb, if we do not carry with us the leaven of wickedness, we too indeed enter the river of fire; but as the water was a wall for the Hebrews on the right and on the left, so the fire too will be a wall, if we do what was said of them, that they believed God and Moses his servant, that is, his law and commandments, and if we so follow the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. We have given this admonition in repeating the explanation of how “the sinners have drawn the sword.”

But neither should we pass over idly that they are also said to have bent their bow; this we explain now not by opposition to the contrary, as we did in the other cases, but from similar passages. In the tenth psalm it is written: “The sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart.” Hence it appears that the heart of the ungodly is filled with poisoned arrows like a quiver. The arrows of the ungodly, then, are their wicked counsels and thoughts, and their mouth and lips are a kind of bow; when it is opened wide and drawn, the darts of the poisoned heart are shot. And “in the dark” is fittingly said, for such people do not walk in the day, that is, in God’s light, but walk in darkness and lurk in the obscurity of malice and ignorance. And they shoot at the upright in heart, that is, the simple, and those who know nothing of their malice. But I think this saying is spoken not so much of sinful people as of the opposing powers; for it is they who shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. Therefore let those who are upright in heart keep watch day and night, because those have prepared their arrows. He did not say, “they have shot,” but “they have prepared arrows”: they have not shot nor wounded, but are preparing to shoot. You see that we are warned before we are wounded, so that we may defend ourselves from their wounds and keep our heart with all vigilance.