On the Complaints of Job and David

Divine Scripture shows in many places that we must undergo many disturbances in this life, and that many consolations are at hand, by which a mind capable of vigor and conscious of what is right ought to swallow up the troubles of the present and look to the things that hold lasting delight. For the consolations outweigh the disturbances, because they bring both calm in the present and hope of the future. Hence the apostle Paul too says: “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come”: not worthy, that is, in comparison with the consolation, not in respect of the fruit of redemption.

For whose life on earth is so illustrious that it could equal that heavenly glory? What is more sublime than Paul, who underwent so many dangers and swallowed so much pain and weakness? In the sufferings he underwent for the name of Christ he died daily, as he himself says, and he judged that he suffered nothing unworthy in this time compared with the hope and expectation of so great a glory. Elijah endured famine, plots, the terrors of death, the bitterness of labors; and yet he alone, brought down from heaven to earth by fiery chariots and fiery horses and carried back from earth to heaven, hid every merit of this warfare and raised the grace of the devout ascender beyond all things human. And what shall I say of Peter? Judging his cross unworthy of the reward to come, he asked to be hung with his feet upward, so as to add something to his suffering, and he was not afraid to heap up its torments for himself.

Not without reason, then, did holy David testify, in the rest of his work but especially in the forty-first psalm, that he was hastening to that glory, saying: “When shall I come and appear before the face of God?” In that psalm he clearly expressed both the disturbances of human frailty and the consolations from the Lord. In it he also remonstrates with God on our behalf, that, forgetful of his work, forgetful of the generosity and grace bestowed on man, he has forsaken the one he had undertaken to protect and adorn, and has cast him off, weak and shipwrecked, to be worn down by various infirmities. Holy Job had done the same before him, but David more temperately, Job more vehemently. It is my intention, then, to consider the remonstrances of both, because in them the form of human life is expressed, its case is pleaded, its prerogative shaped. So we must look at them in their order.

So Job, having lost his children and all his possessions except his wife, who alone had been kept to tempt him, and covered besides with a grievous ulcer, when he saw that his friends had come not to console but to aggravate and heap up his pain, perceived that the adversary had been given power by the Lord to tempt him. And although he felt the arrows of the Lord in his body, by which he said he was pierced, yet like a good athlete who would not yield to pain or refuse the hardships of the contest, he added: “Let the Lord begin and wound me, but in the end let him not destroy me. For what is my strength, that I endure? Or what is my time, that my soul should bear it? Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of bronze? Or did I not trust in him? But help has departed from me, and his visitation has despised me.”

“Is not man’s life on earth a trial, and his life like that of a daily hireling, or like a servant fearing his master, who hides himself under a shadow, or like a hireling awaiting his wages? So I too have waited empty months, and nights of pains have been given me. If I lie down, I say: When will it be day? If I rise, again: When will it be evening? I am full of pains from evening until morning. My body ferments in the rottenness of worms; I dissolve clods of earth, scraping the pus of my sores. My life is lighter than a tale; it perishes in empty hope. I will say: My bed will comfort me. You terrify me in dreams and strike me down in visions.”

How wretched is man’s condition, which like a hireling labors for others, is in need for itself, and cannot sustain itself except by another’s mercy! Daily under dread, under fear, enduring heavy servitude, and, so as not to be caught by its master, it thinks that, wandering and fugitive, it can hide under some shadow of this world. Consider that man of whom Sirach says in Ecclesiasticus: “Every man who transgresses on his bed, despising and saying in his soul: Who sees me? Darkness surrounds me and walls. Whom do I fear?” Does he not seem to you truly a hireling, who has squandered … like that young man in the Gospel, of whom we read … the portion of the property received from his father, and needy and destitute, to relieve his hunger, began to feed another’s flocks, so as to earn his keep by wages? But that young man nevertheless turned at last, because he returned to his father and did not suppress his sins but confessed them; whereas this man, who thinks he is not seen by him who sees all things and supposes that his misdeeds can be hidden by darkness, holds up a shadow, but believes in vain that he lies hidden, since the eye of the Lord, brighter than the sun, detects all hidden things, lights up dark things, penetrates the conscience of the inmost heart, and descends into the heights and depths. Vain, then, is he who thinks himself safe in darkness, since he cannot avoid the light which shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So he is caught like a runaway and a bad hireling, and recognized before he hides himself, because all things are known to the Lord before he seeks them, not only what has been done but also what will be.

So he perishes in empty hope who thinks he can hide his crime: that is a tale, not the truth. Indeed the tale of sinners is hateful, bearing not fruit but groaning. “For the narrative of a fool is a burden on the way.” For what else is sin but a burden, which weighs down the traveller of this world, pressed under the heavy load of transgression? If he did not wish to lie under the burden, he should have listened to the one who says: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.”

What is more miserable than when the very bed given for common rest inflicts a grievous wound? For then we usually recall what we have done, and the inner conscience is pierced by the goads of its own deeds. Hence Scripture says to them: “What you say in your hearts, be pierced on your beds.” It is indeed the remedy of what is owed, but still it has wounded the conscience. But suppose sleep sometimes creeps upon the weary: we are terrified by dreams, harassed by visions, so that it is no longer rest but punishment. For so the riches of the world pass away like the dream of one who wakes. Someone has risen from the sleep of this body and possessed nothing, and lost the very thing he believed he had.

Set before me now that rich man who amassed daily gains and various profits and was harassed by his desires, suddenly coming to his senses and considering within himself that when he dies he will not take everything with him, nor will the glory of his house go down with him, and that what he possesses in this life holds some pleasure, but not for the future, and opening his eyes to heavenly things. Does he not seem to you like one who drank in his sleep and thought he had drunk, and feasted in his sleep and thought he had feasted, but opened his eyes and recognized that his soul had hoped in vain and still hungers and still thirsts? For avarice has no measure and is not filled by seizing, but is spurred on and is the more needy the more it has acquired. So this man too has risen, and the dream is vain.

But let us hear him speaking again. His friends, who had come to console him, were pressing upon him and, like enemies, urging him with bitter words. For there is one kind of solace for those placed in hardship and bitterness: to be free of fault, so that they do not seem to be suffering their adversities as the price of transgression. This too they were eager to take from the holy man, so that he would seem to be himself the author of his hardship, as one who had incurred the Lord’s offense by grave sins and was suffering for his impieties. They described the punishments of the wicked, who sow vices and reap sorrows for themselves, who perish by the command of God and die by the breath of his anger; who blows upon houses of clay for those who dwell in them and they dry up; who frustrates the thoughts of the crafty and stops the mouth of the unjust. What they asserted was true of the Lord’s power, but not fitting to the merits of so great a man. To these, then, he answered: “In truth I know that it is so.”

“For how can a mortal be just before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him in judgment, he will not hear him, so as not to answer one word of his with a thousand. For he is wise in understanding and strong and great. Who is so hard as to be able to stand in his sight? He makes the mountains grow old, and they do not know it, and overturns them in his anger; he shakes the world from its foundations, and its pillars are moved; he speaks to the sun, and it does not rise, and he seals up against the stars; he alone stretches out the heaven and walks as on a pavement upon the sea; he makes the Pleiades and Hesperus and the north and the chambers of the south; he does great and unsearchable things, glorious and immense, without number. If he passes by me, I shall not see him; and if he goes past me, even so I shall not know it.” With how much more vehement a trumpet did he sound forth the Lord’s power? But in it is the help of the just, not their ruin. Indeed, his might seems to be expressed, but even more the mysteries of our redemption are declared.

For who are the mountains he made to grow old but Moses, Aaron, Joshua son of Nun, Gideon, the prophets, all the books of the Old Testament? The Lord Jesus came; he brought a new testament, and that which was old became old. The Christian was renewed, the Jew grew old; grace was renewed, the letter grew old. He overturned the mountains and turned them about. For he overturned and undermined the understanding according to the letter and established spiritual understanding. So that carnal understanding of the law vanished; it became spiritual. Hence the apostle says: “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.” But even he who was carnal became spiritual, as he himself asserted, saying: “For I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” These mountains, then, Jesus made to grow old, and the Jews do not know it. For had they known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty, never would they still follow Jewish follies. So they are the ones who do not know. Hence in the Gospel the Lord Jesus says: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

But they are not excused because they do not know, since they refuse to know what they ought to have recognized. Certainly we do not begrudge them, if they follow the Lord’s sentence; for a sentence usually absolves past things, not future. But not even he is free of crime who crucified the author of his salvation and afterwards did not ask for pardon. Suppose he did not know before whom he was persecuting: yet when he was placed on the cross he ought to have recognized him as the Lord of all the elements, under whom all the elements trembled: the sky was darkened, the sun fled, the earth split, the tombs of the dead opened, the dead received again the company of the living. Hence the centurion too said: “Truly this was the Son of God.” The centurion recognizes one not his own, the Levite does not recognize his own; the Gentile reveres, the Hebrew abjures. Not without reason, then, were the pillars of the world shaken, when the chief priests did not believe; but the old ones were shaken so that the new might be made firm, as he himself deigned to say: “I have made firm its pillars.” Hear which pillars he made firm: “Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave the right hand of fellowship to me and Barnabas.”

How then do they plead that they did not know, some of whom saw, and others learned, that the sun withdrew before the day’s course was complete and came out again before the space of night had passed, making night in day and day in night? Surely they ought to have understood that the sun withdrew at command and came out at command. For the Lord had foretold that he would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; the sun learned this and kept the precept. So it was in doubt, saying: “What shall I do? I rise, and it is day; I set, and it is night. If I keep my course, I shall delay the world’s salvation. Let us hasten to our own redemption too; I too ought to hasten to new life; for by the benefit of the cross, by which all things are renewed, there will be a new sun and a new heaven. I hasten, then, so that I may see that Sun of righteousness enlightening the souls of all. But what shall I do? He wants the resurrection to take place after three days. I have found what to do, so that I may make no delay and yet keep the number of the days. I will not make a whole day and a whole night. I will shorten the hours, so that the Lord Jesus may be among the dead for three days and nights, yet rise from the dead sooner than the intervals of three days and nights allow. I will shorten the hours, then, when he has mounted the cross. From the sixth hour let it at once be night, so that I may not see the Lord’s passion but flee the spectacle of a parricidal persecution. I will set, and there will be a night of three hours; I will come out and renew the day, so that it may be of three hours: the first day is run through; the second night will follow in its own space; likewise the day will follow; the third night will begin; the Lord will rise in the night, and there will be day in the light of the one rising, so that this may be fulfilled: ‘And the night will be lit up like the day.’ This is that great day which Abraham saw and rejoiced, of which David too said: ‘This is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it,’ in which I shall take part not by the service of labor but by the fruit of exultation.”

The Lord himself, then, will lead the day, and before the end of the world the light of the world will be seen, which enlightens every man coming into this world. He is the Lord who seals and numbers the multitude of the stars; he is the one who alone stretches out the heaven, who walked as on a pavement upon the sea, when Peter saw him walking and said: “Lord, bid me come to you on the waters.” And the Lord bade him, but he faltered, and had the Lord not stretched out his right hand to him, he would have sunk in the waves and perished. The flesh faltered, the right hand saved. And he said to him: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” So it was faith that walked in the apostle, not flesh. Indeed faith faltered, and the flesh had begun to feel shipwreck. This is said not improperly, because the flesh is the ship of the soul, as it is written: “Those who go down to the sea in ships,” and elsewhere: “There pains as of a woman in labor. With a vehement wind you will shatter the ships of Tarshish.” For our souls, when they are in labor with the Word, bring forth pains; but she who has given birth no longer remembers the sorrow for joy, because a man is born to her, who redeemed the world. The ships of Tarshish, then, that is, spiritual ships, which brought Solomon gold and silver, are our bodies, which have a treasure in earthen vessels, as the apostle said; or because here too they are shattered in doubtful childbirth, according to what is said: “Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing!” (for when the soul is shaken, the flesh is tossed); or they will be stirred by the vehement Spirit poured in, when at the completion of time they must rise, according to what is written: “Come, Spirit, and breathe into these dead, and they will live.” Hence Job himself says further on: “For I know that he is eternal and mighty who will loose me on the earth, to raise up my skin, which has endured these things.” They are shattered, then, because they are raised to judgment. But there is a good shattering; for “a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise,” and elsewhere: “Heal its breaches.” But to Jehoshaphat too it was said: “They were shattered so as not to go to Tarshish,” because he had joined himself with a sacrilegious man. Shattering, then, signifies both things, because both are in the day of judgment, when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The prophet David too signifies this, saying: “There pains of a woman in labor. As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God.” For he includes both the pain and the joy to come: pain at the judgment, joy at the acquittal.

But let us return to the course of the remonstrance before us. “He has made many breaches in me,” he says. “He does not let me breathe; he has filled me with bitterness; and because he is mighty in strength, no one can resist his judgment. If I am just in heart, my tongue goes astray. Wrath destroys the great and mighty. The wicked are in grievous death, but the just are mocked; for they have been given into the hands of the wicked.” Look at each point. To the mighty their own wrath is grievous, to the wicked their wickedness, to the just the infirmity of their condition. So nothing is free from danger. A man’s strength and greatness is deceived by its own power; wickedness is afflicted; virtue is mocked. The one falls because he can do more; the other is afflicted because he can do nothing. It is a fault of our condition, because our life is swifter than a runner; it has passed and seen nothing. Like the track of a ship, or of an eagle flying in search of food, so too the life of man passes. What we say we forget, and no mark of our passing is detected except what is full of sorrow and groaning. “I am shaken,” he says, “in all my limbs. Would that there were a mediator for us, both to reprove and to judge between us both.”

“I will say to the Lord: Why do you judge me so? Is it good for you that I should be unjust, because you have rejected the works of your hands and attended to the counsel of the wicked? Do you see as a mortal sees? Or is your life like a man’s, or your years like a man’s, that you have sought out my iniquities and searched out my sins? For you know that I have not acted impiously; but who is there to deliver from your hands?” Great faith, great authority of conscience, to summon God as witness of one’s own mind! He does not deny what belongs to our condition; he repels what belongs to impiety; he confesses what belongs to weakness. To have sinned belongs to our condition, because no one is free from falling; to act impiously belongs not to our condition but to faithlessness and is the poison of a most wicked mind. The just man does not acknowledge this; but man’s acquittal lies in God’s mercy, not in man’s power.

“Your hands,” he says, “formed me; afterwards you turned and struck me. Remember that you made me of clay and will return me to the earth. Did you not milk me like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, you knit me together with bones and sinews; you put life and mercy in me, and your visitation guarded my spirit.” What a lament of the holy man for our common weakness, what authority in his plea, that God made man with his own hands! The fault is excused by the plea of weakness; grace is commended by the privilege of an eternal work and the condescension of heavenly protection. On this passage David too spoke most beautifully, saying: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you visit him?”

“Having these things in you,” he says, “I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible to you. For if I sin, you will guard me; but you have not made me spotless from iniquity. If I am wicked, woe to me! If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion. I am hunted like a lion for the slaughter.” See three things: “If I sin,” he says, “you will guard me.” And so, O man, confess your sin, that you may obtain pardon. Tell your iniquities, that you may be justified. Why do you blush to confess those in which you were born? It is a crime of one who denies, not of one who confesses, to deny that you were born. Would that you kept what you received! Why do you think you have what you did not receive? So let the sinner confess, let the wicked groan, let the just not lift himself up and exalt himself, lest through arrogance he lose the fruit of righteousness.

And he says beautifully: “If I am just, I cannot lift myself up; for I am full of confusion.” For the just man pays more attention to his frailty than to … The wise man recognizes it, the foolish does not. Indeed the wise man is pierced by his falls, the fool delights in them; the just man is his own accuser, the unjust his own defender; the just man wishes to forestall his accuser by confessing his sin, the unjust desires to hide his sin. The one comes forward at the beginning of his speech to reveal his error; the other, with his many words, lulls the accusation to sleep so as not to reveal his error.

Adding again, he says: “Why have you written bitter things against me and laid upon me the sins of my youth?” Beautifully he seized on that age for his complaint, which is usually more slippery toward vice. For childhood has innocence, old age prudence, and young manhood, which borders on adolescence, a regard for good reputation and shame at offending; adolescence alone is weak in strength, infirm in counsel, hot with vice, disdainful of advisers, enticed by delights. In so great, so rugged and stormy a whirlwind of this world, why are such frequent shipwrecks charged to an improvident age? Hence David splendidly asked pardon of the Lord for that whole period of his life, saying: “Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance,” because then above all the heat of the body boils and is set aflame by the surge of steaming blood.

But let us hear him again. “Mortal man, born of woman,” he says, “is short of life and full of wrath; like a flower he bloomed and fell, and he departs like a shadow and does not stay. Is not an account required even of him, and have you made him enter into judgment in your sight? Who is clean from filth? No one, even if his life on earth be of one day.” Truly a pitiable condition, that he is compelled to render an account of his sin, which he cannot avoid, to enter into judgment, to come into the sight of the almighty Lord, to set out the grounds of his deeds, which he has run through in so many ages of his life, since no one can be clean from sin, so that from the very cradle fault creeps upon infancy before there is any sense of error. And how pitiable this too, that his life is short, its enticement sweet, its hardship manifold, its wrath daily. And so in a slight delight there is lasting bitterness.

“There is hope for a tree,” he says; “for if it is cut down, it will grow green again, and if its branch has died on the rock, it will flower at the scent of water and produce a harvest like a young plant. But a man, when he dies, is gone; and mortal man, when he falls, is no more. For the sea rages only for a time.” We have looked at the course of the prophetic speech, drawn from the two lower elements, earth and sea, which are subject to every injury and frequent storms. How strong an argument he has expressed of our hardship! The shrubs of the earth and the leafy trees, he says, even when they have died, rise again for the uses of life. The sea too usually rages only by turns of the seasons. But our flesh is always in turmoil and is a storm to itself, and never has a holiday from the motions of storms and pitiable shipwrecks.

“But when he has fallen asleep, he will not rise until the heaven is not sewn together.” This seems to declare: until the heaven is renewed; for there will be a new heaven and a new earth, as it is written. For what is sewn is old, and what is old will be changed. Indeed, hear him who says: “In the beginning you founded the earth, O Lord, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed.” We can also add this, that what is old is sewn, what is new is gathered. “From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and the forceful seize it.” So the synagogue was sewing it in a few; the church gathers it in thousands. Or because now the heaven seems sewn together with clouds and mist and nocturnal darkness and the saffron blush of the rising day, often woven of varied and many-colored appearance; but then there will be no more night, and they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord will shine on them, as John said. Or because “woe to those who sew pillows to overturn the souls of the people.”

To the prophet lamenting the misery of our frailty, which would have no rest in this life and would lose everything by the sudden onset of death, the Holy Spirit poured in the knowledge that men would not rise until he came who would not sew old things to new nor put a new garment onto an old garment, but would make all things new, as he himself said: “Behold, I will make new things.” For he is the resurrection, the firstborn from the dead, in whom we have all received the prerogative of the resurrection to come; yet he alone so far has risen by an everlasting resurrection.

Having heard, then, what God had spoken in him, and having learned through the Holy Spirit that the Son of God would not only come to earth but would also descend to the underworld to raise the dead (which was indeed done then as a testimony to those present and an example to those to come), he turned to the Lord and said: “Would that you kept me in the underworld and hid me until your wrath ceases, and set a time for me in which you remember me! For if a man dies, he will live, completing the days of his life. I will wait until I come to be again. Then you will call me, and I will answer you; do not despise the works of your hands. You have numbered my devices, and nothing of my sins will escape you. You have sealed up my iniquities in a bag and marked whatever I passed over unknowing.” How sweet is this passage, which confirms us concerning the resurrection, and how it seems to agree with the Lord’s word which we read in the Gospel, where he says: “Then they will begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us, and to the hills: Cover us.” For at the end of the age there will be the wrath of the Lord. Rightly, then, does the holy man prefer to rise to judgment rather than to a time of divine anger, which is terrible even to the innocent.

At the same time he is understood to prophesy, by saying, “You will set me a time in which you remember me,” that he would be raised at the Lord’s passion, as is shown at the end of this book. Yet he does not cease to lament, and the more he understands that resurrection is set before him, the more he desires to flee this life, seeing himself handed over into the hands of adversaries, cast into the power of the wicked, his very friends turned into enemies, who, when they ought to have consoled him, brought ruin upon ruin. Yet, mindful of his pure conscience and clean prayer, he says: “O earth, do not cover the blood of my flesh,” so that his prayer may be directed like incense to the Lord and not linger on the earth. For the prayer of a saint pierces the clouds. But the prayer of a sinner the earth, opening its mouth, hides in the blood of the flesh, as was said by God to Cain the fratricide: “Cursed are you from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand, when you till the earth.”

So the holy man tearfully laments the times of this life. “I perish,” he says, “and am carried about by the wind; I pray for burial and do not obtain it. I pray in my distress. And what shall I do? My days have passed in horror; the joints of my heart are broken.” Yet nowhere does he detract from the judgment of God; for he knows that the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God is profound, and his judgments inscrutable and his ways unsearchable.

“The sons of the proud,” he says, “have not trodden them, nor has the lion passed through them.” For who could grasp his ways, who has penetrated hidden secrets? “Whence,” he says, “has wisdom been found, or what is the place of understanding? Mortal man does not know its way, nor has it been found among men. The abyss said: It is not in me; and the sea said: It is not with me.” It is not permitted you, O man, to know the heights of wisdom; therefore it is written for you: “Do not be high-minded, but fear.” Why do you curiously desire to search out what it is not expedient for you to know nor given you to learn? Paul heard certain secrets of wisdom which he was forbidden to make known to others, and therefore he was caught up into paradise, caught up as far as the third heaven, to hear things he could not hear while placed on earth. If a man was not allowed to speak what he heard, how does one inquire into what he has not heard? You are not permitted to know the counsels of the emperor here on earth, and do you wish to know divine things? You are not permitted to search too curiously into what is done on earth, and do you curiously ask what is done above the heaven? Why do you argue about where wisdom was born? Man does not know its way, nor has perfect wisdom been found among men: not in Moses, not in Aaron, not in Joshua son of Nun, not in David himself, who said: “The uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me,” for he himself said later: “I became like a beast before you.” To know the height of wisdom is above you, O man; it is enough for you to believe. “For if you do not believe,” he says, “neither will you understand.” You cannot know the abyss, you cannot grasp the abyss; how will you grasp the height of wisdom? The abyss said: “It is not in me”; and can you say that wisdom is in you?

The abyss said, then, “It is not in me,” because the Lord himself said: “You will not leave my soul in hell.” And the apostle said: “Who will descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up from the dead.” So if the abyss is asked: Where is wisdom? it answers: It is not in me, because he has risen. If the sea is asked: Where is wisdom? it says: It is not with me, because he trod on me and my waves could not trouble him. You too, then, placed in the strait of this world, do not seek that perfect wisdom of God in this world, because the world did not know it. But if you wish to find it, tread on the waves of this world, as Peter trod, and walk on the waters of this age. Wisdom will stretch out its right hand to you, as it stretched it out to Peter, because there was no one whom the wave of this world did not trouble. It troubled Abraham, it troubled Moses, it troubled Peter. Moses crossed through the sea and led an army on foot through the sea, but first he himself was troubled. Peter trod on the waters, but he had sunk in body, because he limped with the footstep of weaker faith. So do not seek wisdom in the sea, because the Lord Jesus did not say that he would be with the sea, but with his apostles, so that they might know him in some part, to whom he said: “Behold, I am with you until the end of the world.” Blessed are those with whom he is: would that he were with us too; but with us is the sea. Peter was with Christ, because he too trod on the sea; to us gold and silver are dear. But wisdom is above gold, not in gold. Therefore one who desired to have wisdom said: “Silver and gold I have not, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk.” Because he had no gold, he had in the name of Christ the grace of devout working. Therefore it is said to you too: “Draw wisdom into your inmost parts.” “It was hidden,” he says, “from every man, and concealed from the birds of heaven.” Neither men knew where it was nor angels, for they are the birds of heaven, of whom it is said: “And I saw an angel flying through heaven.”

No one could know wisdom, because “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” He revealed it, then, to John, with whom wisdom was, and therefore John said not what was his own but what wisdom poured into him: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Destruction does not know wisdom, malice does not know it. For destruction could not hold it, which said: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Malice does not know it, because it said: “The wicked will seek me and will not find me.” They can say: “We have heard of its glory.” God alone is the one who knows it. “Because God,” he says, “established its way well, he knows its place.” What the dwelling of wisdom is, hear from its disciple, saying: “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” For the Son knew the Father, because he himself says: “As the Father knows me, I also know the Father.” Equal is the measure of knowledge where there is unity of power. So the Father, who knows all things, the balance of the winds, the measure of the waters, himself saw wisdom and declared it through his prophets, because the Father declared wisdom and searched it out, just as the Son too declared the Father, whom nothing escapes, and said: O man, why do you wish to know the depths of wisdom, which are above you? “To fear God is wisdom, and to abstain from evil is discipline.”

Our earlier discussion was on the remonstrance of the saints: that the human condition is frail and feeble and has firmness nowhere except in heavenly protection. Today we must take up this: that the common run of men, and many even of the prudent, are greatly disturbed when they see the unjust abounding in prosperity and the just often afflicted in this world. And truly this is slippery ground, on which even the saints could hardly keep the footing of a true opinion. Indeed David himself was troubled, who had said above: “The hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me.” Yet he afterwards steadied himself and searched out the way of perfect reasoning. Holy Job too wrestled in discourse over this opinion with those three old friends who had come to console him. Let us bring forward the discussions of both, then. For they are worthy to give us a lesson in living, since, placed in adversity, they merited to please God the more. Let us hear both, then, in their order.

Eliphaz king of the Temanites, Bildad tyrant of the Sauchaeans, and Zophar king of the Minaeans had rebuked holy Job vehemently, on the ground that he was suffering so great a punishment because of his sins. For with feeble understanding they did not notice that the Lord had given him over to be tempted, so that Christ’s athlete, trained by temptations, might come to the crown with greater glory. Not seeing so great a mystery of wisdom, then, and fearing with narrow heart lest they seem to accuse God of injustice for allowing an innocent man to be afflicted with punishments, they turned the grounds of punishment back upon holy Job. They said that the whole life of the wicked is in anxiety, and riches unjustly gathered will be vomited up; that whatever grievous things a man suffers on earth he suffers for his sins; that even if he is in prosperity, his good fortune cannot be made to last but vanishes quickly like a dream, so that his place is not found; that the joy of the wicked is a heavier ruin, and that therefore holy Job too had been changed from prosperity to adversity and had fallen, at the price of his offences, from the highest to the lowest; that he who asserted his innocence was slipping, since such is the portion of the wicked that the indignation coming upon him from the Lord snows sorrows upon him and destruction engulfs his house.

Holy Job heard these things and, like a strong athlete, sitting on the dunghill amid so many weals and the cruel pains of his wound, his whole body covered with dreadful sores, he spoke mysteries; he gave himself not to seeking remedies for his own sickness but to sacred discourse. So the words of the sick man were stronger than those of the men who were not sick. For they spoke of justice, but not according to knowledge; they preached God’s judgments, the punishments of the guilty, the rewards of the saints, but they did not know how to distinguish the guilty from the just. Indeed, the one whom the Lord God pronounced just they condemned for injustice and charged with iniquity. So they did not know what suited each case. But the holy man Job discerned by the Spirit how he ought to speak to each; so he was stronger than those who seemed sound and unharmed. And why do I say he was found stronger than the others? He was found stronger than himself; for Job sick was stronger than he had been healthy, according to what is written: that power is made perfect in weakness. So Job too, when he was weak, was then stronger. For he was not sick in mind, even though he suffered in body, because his soul was not in the flesh, to whose passions it did not cling, but in the spirit, with whose power it had clothed itself.

Therefore he spoke not the groans of the flesh and the weaknesses of the body but the voices of the spirit, with which to press, not to yield. And at first more gently, to make them ashamed, because they pressed the just man unjustly, saying that he was suffering less punishment than his sins deserved, and, sinners themselves, they did not blush to accuse the innocent falsely. “Suppose,” he says, “that I have erred, and that the misleader who pours errors into men’s minds dwells with me, so that I speak words I ought not, as you say, and my words go astray and my speech is not uttered fittingly: why do you leap upon me and revile me, not considering that this temptation has come to me from the Lord, who has thought fit to hedge me in with a kind of rampart of troubles? I am exercised by adversities, surrounded on every side by labors and dangers; and you insult me still, wishing to crush one whom you ought to help. Behold, I laugh at reproaches and will not speak or answer your revilings. For it is not you who judge; he who judges me is the Lord, and the time of his judgment has not yet come. What need is there to cry out before the judgment?” It is good to be silent while the judge is awaited; it is good not to return insult for insult, lest we too be numbered among the slanderers.

Let us imitate this man, then, who refuted his revilers by his silence. For he showed the strength of his mind, which insults did not move, and he made plain the innocence of his conscience, since he did not recognize the charges but laughed at them as foreign to himself. But we, as though something were being charged against us, make it worse while we try to clear ourselves; while we desire to avenge ourselves, we confess. For Scripture says that you should turn aside the word of disgrace and take away your garment; for the insolent man passes by. Let us be silent, then, so that he may pass by, lest, provoked, he burn our garment; for it is written: “Do not kindle the coals of a sinner, lest you be burned in the fire of his flame.” For this reason the saint is silent even though a slave is insolent; even though a poor man reviles, the just man is silent; even though a sinner hurls reproaches, the just man laughs; even though a weak man curses, the just man blesses. David was silent when Gera son of Shimei cursed him; Job laughed.

Paul blessed, as he himself says: “We are cursed, and we bless.” For by divine teaching the advance of human virtue had grown, because he had now come who would make the weak stronger, and Paul had heard him say: “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you.” What he said in word he proved by example. Indeed, placed on the cross, he said of his persecutors who reviled him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” so that he prayed for those who slandered him, whom he himself could forgive. Job, then, laughed, because Christ had not yet come, to whom alone the prerogative of the great virtues was reserved; for he is the beginning of the virtues, as he said: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.”

And laughing he was silent. He teaches why one must be silent: “I will cry out, and there is no judgment yet. He himself,” he says, “has willed that I suffer these things. Shut in as by walls of temptations, I cannot flee until it pleases God to pull down the heights of my temptations. For now if I cry out, there is no judgment yet.” I am still in the contest, I am still wrestling, a struggle still remains for me; for the crown has not yet come out; and no one is crowned unless he has competed lawfully.

A third contest was owed him. He had lost all his possessions, that is, his property with his children; his flesh suffered wounds; it remained for him to overcome the temptations of words. No small contest! Adam was deceived by speech, Samson conquered by a word; for nothing so pierces the soul as painted speech, and again nothing bites so much as harsher speech. Many who have overcome the torments applied to them have not endured harsh words. Job toiled, but he endured, and carried the burdens of words along with those of wounds. His referee saw him; from the cloud and the whirlwind he gave a hand to the struggler, pronounced that his opponents had fallen heavily, declared him the victor, and conferred the crown.

What is finer than to laugh when we are cursed? For we ought to rejoice if things foreign to us are said. First, because the enemy, wishing to say something against us by which to fasten a charge, did not find what is true but composed falsehoods instead of truths. Then, because the Lord himself said in the Gospel of such accusation falsely brought against the innocent for righteousness’ sake: “Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in heaven.” So one who recognizes the charge ought to be silent, lest he aggravate the wound and the scar be torn open; and one who does not recognize it ought to be silent too, for he hears another’s crime, not his own. If he answers, he makes it his own; if he is silent, he turns it back and wounds the reviler. One who relies on the reward mentioned ought also to be silent; for he suffers no prejudgment who is not under judgment. And even if there is prejudgment in the world, there will not be in the judgment of God. Indeed, so that you may know that insult does not prejudge a good conscience, hear holy Job, a weightier witness than if he had held the rule of the Roman world: “Now I will be silent and give up; if now there is prejudgment against me, then I shall not hide from your face.”

These things, then, he answered more sparingly at the outset, to remind them of God’s judgment and, like a good physician, to bring them to their senses, called back from insolence and fury. But after he noticed that they persisted in insults, he answered with more and stronger things, and struck with a heavier fist those who were stoning an innocent man with the rocks of their words. “Hear,” he says, “hear my words; let it not be for me to seek consolation from you. Bear with me, for I will speak stronger things; the weight of my words will be heavy.” I too will speak according to your opinion: that many in this world abound in the successes of prosperity and others are weighed down and placed in hardship, and this seems to be dealt out according to the deserts of sins. Even if I say so, do not laugh as though I had come round to you. Even if I am a sinner, I am not answerable to a man, because he who judges and claims power over me is himself under sin. Or if I am judged as a man, that is common to all. I ought not to be rebuked: it is the weakness of our condition, not a special wickedness.

“But tell me: if I suffer this because of my sin, as you object, why do the wicked live, and not only live but are filled with riches and multiply their fruits, and also enjoy their children, and their houses abound?” These things are evidently good in appearance, but by a deeper mystery you will find that what are thought goods are not goods, and what are thought evils are judged better than they.

“They have grown old,” he says, “in riches.” He said πεπαλαίωνται (“they have grown old”), so that what seems to be meant is not so much the lasting possession of riches as the aged vexation of plenty, as Ecclesiastes saw riches kept to the harm of their owner, which perish amid the greatest distraction and anxiety. For what is left behind here perishes and cannot benefit the dead. So the dead man had anxiety from them and could not find rest, he who left behind something to blush at and took nothing with him to hold; far unlike him of whom it is written: “Blessed is the man who has filled his desire from these; he will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” He whose inheritance is the Lord and whose reward is from the childbirth of the Virgin Mary is proclaimed at his departure with the praises of wisdom, since he had nothing to blush at who desired none of the things of the world, but, having laid aside the spoils of the old man, wounded the adversary with the weapon of self-restraint, so that the adversary, lamed by his wound and confounded by admiration of his virtues, could not cry out against him at the end of this life. You have it, then, that the man who has grown old in the desire of money is not praiseworthy, but the one renewed in the reception of grace.

Let us look at another point: “Their seed,” he says, “is according to the soul,” that is, they are not counted among the just. For the just sow in the Spirit and from the Spirit will reap eternal life; but those who sow according to the soul cannot reap spiritual things, because the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are folly to him, and he cannot know the things of the Spirit, and therefore he is not filled with spiritual things but is judged.

“Their children are in sight,” that is, what they do they do in order to be seen by men, not because, being good, they take thought to choose what will be approved at the coming judgment. Scripture often means works by children, since our posterity is richer in good deeds than in children. Hence Hezekiah too, freed from a grave illness, said: “From this day I will make children, who will proclaim your righteousness, O Lord of my salvation, and I will not cease blessing you with the psaltery all the days of my life”; for good is the posterity of devotion and faith, which did not know how to yield to captivity, which Hezekiah’s sons endured.

And he added, saying that “there is no fear for them, there is no scourge from the Lord.” But the just man says: “For I have been scourged all day long,” and he wishes to be scourged so that he may be received by the Lord, and he wishes to fear God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Nor does he think it blessedness if his heifer does not miscarry, as fools think. For what is signified by the ox but the labor of rural cultivation, which always comes round in a circle and never ceases, but when it seems completed is called back to its beginning? These are they who cultivate Sodom and Gomorrah. So those who cultivate Egypt and turn over the clods of earth with a kind of plough of a solid mind bring forth labor for themselves and reap sorrows. Therefore their heifer does not miscarry but gives birth, so that their labor may be increased, and all they have conceived they bring forth without the fear of God. But the just glory far otherwise; for they glory not in abundance of riches nor in the birth of cattle but in the Lord, saying: “From your fear we have conceived in the womb and brought forth the spirit of salvation.” Of the just, then, it is said that they have brought forth the spirit of salvation, which they received from the fear of God, not from the malice of this world, of which we read: “Behold, he has travailed with injustice, conceived labor, and brought forth iniquity.” Better, then, is the miscarriage than the birth of worldly men. Indeed of the man who came into this world and endured the vanity and darkness of this world through a long life, Ecclesiastes declared that a miscarriage is better than he. For it has more rest than he, because it has not experienced the vicissitudes of the world, in which, even if one lives a thousand years, he cannot see what is good. To have escaped these things, then, is more a matter of grace than to have undergone them.

But perhaps what he added may trouble you: that “they remain like everlasting sheep, and their children play, taking up psaltery and harp, and delight in the sound of the psalm. They have ended their life in good things, and slept in the rest of the underworld.” Distinguish these things, and since you are spiritual, judge. The wicked are like the everlasting, not everlasting, because they cannot receive eternity from one who is not eternal. He cannot give what he does not have, nor can he enlighten who does not possess light; but he transforms himself into an angel of light so as to deceive unbelievers. He transforms himself by the pretense of false light, not by the splendor of everlasting brightness. Hence the Savior too says: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.” He is not lightning, but like lightning. Consider some heretic intent on bodily abstinence and the knowledge of heavenly mysteries: he is thought to be like one everlasting, but he does not have the wages of eternal life, because one who does not have the truth of faith has a false imitation. His little ones play, like her who, when she has grown wanton, wishes to marry. She has grown wanton in psaltery and harp, that is, in the sound of the voice, not in the depth of the mysteries, so that it resounded on the lips but did not reach the heart.

Such men, then, have ended their life in the goods of the world, this life, that is, which they were living, not the one whose reward they hoped for; and therefore they slept in the rest of the underworld, not in heavenly rest. But let us pray rather to undergo labor here, so that in the kingdom of heaven we may be found worthy to obtain the consolation of eternal rest. For abundance of prosperity is a great enticement to sin: it lifts one up into pride and pours in forgetfulness of the Creator. Consider that rich man in the Gospel reclining on scarlet and purple, from whose table the just poor man Lazarus gathered crumbs: does not that rich man seem to you to say to God: “Depart from me; I do not wish to know your ways”? And truly such men do not wish to know the ways of the Lord; for if they wished, they would know them; but because they are full of labor, they are shunned and avoided by the lost. So like a drunkard he does not recognize the author of salvation. Then, turning to his drinking companions, he says: “Let us eat and drink. What does it profit if we serve him? Or what use is it if we keep his commands?” So speaks one drunk with the abundance of worldly things, because the deserts of crimes are not repaid at once in this world; for he was lolling at ease because everything was at hand for his pleasure, and, conscious of his impiety, whose punishment was put off, he thought that God did not see the crimes of the wicked.

To this opinion of his, then, holy Job replied: Do not be secure and careless, thinking that the Lord’s scourges do not come to you in this very world. “The lamp of the wicked too is put out.” It shines for a time; it does not have eternal light. And though the world favors them, because they do the will of him who holds rule in the world, a reversal of fortune usually comes, and sorrows from heavenly wrath and indignation, so that they are winnowed like chaff by the wind. The unjust are winnowed like chaff, the just like wheat. Indeed, hear the Lord saying to Peter: “Behold, Satan has demanded to winnow you like wheat; but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Those fail who are winnowed like chaff; he does not fail who is like that grain which fell and rose again, heaped with the increase of many fruits. Therefore the prophet says: “Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble in the harvest!” So impiety is compared to stubble, which is quickly burned up, and to dust. Therefore, after he said: “They will be like chaff before the wind,” he added a little verse at once, saying: “or like dust which the wind has carried away.” Indeed, so that you may know that the wicked man quickly crumbles and vanishes like dust, you have it said in the first psalm: “Not so the wicked, not so”; that is, not like the just, but “like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth.”

And he makes a distinction between the just and the wicked. “The one,” he says, “dies in the power of his simplicity, wholly in abundance and favor; his inward parts are full of fat, their marrow overflows. But the other finishes the course of this life in bitterness of soul and comes to his end having feasted on nothing good.” What worthy recompense can be given him for his deserts? He is brought into the tombs and keeps watch in his own grave. Not even this is a small punishment: not to have the rest of death, to be carried not to the land of the living but to the tombs of the dead. For he who lives is not sought among the dead but enjoys eternal life in Abraham’s bosom. And therefore those two men in shining garments said to the women: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Then he lists the crimes of the wicked: that they have crossed boundaries and seized the flock with the shepherd, led away the orphan’s beast of burden, taken the widow’s ox in pledge, reaped a field not their own; that the weak have worked in their vineyards without wages or food; that they have stripped off the clothing of many and made them sleep naked, taking away the covering of their life. They were drenched by the rains of the mountains, and because they lacked shelter they covered themselves with the rock. Orphans were snatched from their mothers’ breasts; those who had fallen and ought rather to have been lifted up were crushed. The hungry were cheated of food; the soul of little children groaned grievously.

Could he be ignorant of these things whom nothing escapes? “Hell is naked in his sight,” and there is no covering for the most wicked, because they cannot lie hidden. “He stretches out the north over nothing, he hangs the earth upon nothing, binding up the water in his clouds, and the cloud is not torn beneath him. The pillars of heaven have leapt apart and trembled at his rebuke. By his power he has calmed the sea, and by his discipline he has laid low the whale of the sea. The bars of heaven dread him; by his command he has slain the transgressing dragon. The power of his thunder, who understands it?” In such great crimes, then, what hope has the wicked man? Will he be saved if he trusts in the Lord? “I will tell you,” he says, “what is in the hand of the Lord, and cease adding empty things to empty things.”

And he describes how pitiable is the portion of the wicked: that even if they have many children, they are without posterity, since they lack the succession of good merits; for that is true posterity which is not on earth but in heaven. For such men, then, the inheritance is want and death the succession. When they have heaped up riches they will beg, because when they are dead they will be in need, since they cannot find rest. No one will pity their widows, but they will remain deserted and bereft of all the comfort of a husband. Even if money is gathered like earth and gold prepared like clay, their substance will be empty like a spider’s web, and the whole patrimony of their name will be consumed as by moths. The rich man sleeping will add nothing; he has opened his eyes, and he is no more. He remains in pains. So all the things in this world are nothing. Gold is in the mines, silver is in the mines: it is dug out of the mine and returns to the mine. For what else is the mind of the miser but a mine? It holds whatever it has received as if buried, and hides it in the veins and hiding places of the earth, because it does not know how to use it. Gold is brought out of the mines every day: who has ever been able to bring anything out of a miser?

Since, then, the empty hunger for gold profits nothing, because whatever it has gathered slips away, pitiable indeed are those who have deserted the just way and forgotten it, the way to which precious stones are by no means to be compared: hard to search out, impassable to the proud, closed to the boastful, level for the humble, open to the wise. And therefore we ought to seek wisdom, so that we may walk on the just way, by which that adversary, like a lion ravening and roaring, who runs through this world, could not pass. But let one who wishes to search out wisdom not seek it in the abyss, as the philosophers do, who think that they themselves by their own talent can know its depths; let him not seek it in the sea (for where there is tempest, where there is a storm of wind, wisdom cannot be); but let him seek it where there is tranquillity of mind and peace, which is above all understanding.

The remonstrance of holy Job has been gone through; now let us take up that remonstrance which we have found in the psalms. David himself, indeed, in many places did not keep silent about the vanity of the world, and often asserted that the things thought good in this world are empty, and especially in the thirty-eighth psalm, in which he says: “Yet all things are vanity, every man living. Although man walks in the image of God, yet he is disquieted in vain; he lays up treasure and does not know for whom he gathers it”; and elsewhere: “How long shall sinners, O Lord, how long shall sinners boast?” For they have a shadowy glory here; when they have left the world, they cannot find the fruit of consolation. Yet the same David inserted Psalm 72, in which, under the name of Asaph, he declares that at first he came near to falling, so that he was gripped by no small pain, when he saw sinners abounding in riches in this world and overflowing with prosperity, while he, who had justified his heart, was in afflictions and hardships; and that he incurred no small offence at the beginning, but afterwards, corrected by the Lord’s scourges and enlightened by the grace of divine knowledge, learned the course of the true teaching.

Nowhere, however, do I find that holy Asaph was troubled by any adversities, whereas holy David endured very many grievous things full of dangers; for he speaks of his own labors, and so the psalm is inscribed, as the title teaches, not as “of holy Asaph” but as “to holy Asaph.” This is shown more plainly from the Greek psalter, so that David seems to have given this Asaph too, as well as others, the psalm he himself had written, to be sung. But because it is written in that very title that the psalms of David had ended (yet how did they end, when, after these ten psalms have been gone through, the inscription of the titles afterwards includes psalms of David up to the very end?), let us therefore set aside a definition of this kind and consider the course of the psalm, and make our beginning from the first verse of the prophet’s remonstrance.

“How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” The progress of amendment shines out at the beginning. For no one can truly confess that God is good except one who recognizes his goodness not from the successes of his own advantages but from the depth of heavenly mysteries and the height of the divine plan; and it must be weighed not by the appearance of present things but by the benefit of future ones. So God is always good to the just man; both when he is tormented by bodily pains and when he is afflicted by the bitterness of punishments, he always says: “If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not bear evil things?” He rejoices to be crushed here, so that he may find consolation in the future, knowing that one who has received good things in this life has his reward. He cannot hope for future rewards who has not wrestled, has not been trained in the struggle of various battles. But one who is afflicted in this world, whether justly or unjustly, rejoices, either because he pays here the price of his offences or because he knows that there is richer grace with the Lord if he suffers bitter things unjustly for his name or for some good work, according to what is written: that “there is no glory if you are punished for sinning and endure it; but if you do good and suffer, this is grace with God. For to this you have been called, because Christ too died for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his footsteps, who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was cursed, did not curse in return; when he suffered, did not threaten.” So the just man, even if he is on the rack, is always just, because he justifies God and says he endures less than his sins deserve; he is always wise; for true and perfect wisdom is not taken away by the torments of the rack; he does not lose what he is, because he casts out fear by the zeal and purpose of love. He knows how to say, as a wise man, that what we endure in this body is unworthy of the reward of the glory to come, and all the sufferings of this time cannot equal the reward that will follow. So God is always good to him, who knows at what time he will reap. And therefore, like a good farmer, he ploughs his field here with the share of a rather strict abstinence; here he roots out with the sickle of the virtues, which prunes vices; here he dungs it, humbling himself even to the earth, knowing that God raises the needy from the earth and lifts up the poor from the dunghill. Indeed, had the apostle Paul not counted things as dung, he could never have gained Christ for himself. Here he guards his fruits, so that he may store them securely there. So God is always good to him, because he always hopes for good things from God.

Take another point. “How good,” he says, “is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” Is God not good, then, to all? He is indeed good to all, because he is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful. And therefore the Lord Jesus came to save what was lost; for he came to take away the sin of the world and to heal our wounds. But because not all seek medicine, but many flee it lest the force of the ulcer be stung by the remedies, he heals the willing; he does not constrain the unwilling. Those, then, receive health who seek medicine; but those who reject the physician and do not seek him cannot feel the physician’s goodness, which they do not experience. And one who is treated is also healed, and so the physician is good to those he has healed. To those, then, God is good to whom he has forgiven sins; but how can one who has an incurable sin in the ulcer of his mind think the physician good, whom he flees? So the apostle explained beautifully, as we said before, that God is good to all, since he wills all men to be saved; and especially to the faithful is the prerogative of divine goodness kept, whom both God’s will and his grace help. But the psalmist, in saying, “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!”, referred it to the judgment of those who do not know how to think otherwise of God than that he is good toward all things and in all things.

Indeed in what follows he himself explains what he meant, saying: “But my feet were almost moved, my steps had well-nigh slipped, because I was envious of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners.” He surely means not the feet and steps of the body, but the direction and step of the mind, of which he says elsewhere: “Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of sinners move me.” Therefore we must always ask that the Lord direct the footsteps of our souls, lest they slip and, spilled on a kind of slippery ground of error, be unable to keep their stability. The cause of the slip, however, is that he was envious of the peace of sinners. But we ought to emulate what is good, not what is full of disgrace, as the apostle Paul too expressed, saying: “It is good to be zealous for good always”; and let it not move you that he placed peace in evil.

Indeed in the Gospel too you have it that there is a peace which Christ rejected, as he himself says: “My peace I leave you, my peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” For there is a peace that has no stumbling block, and one that has. That which comes from love has no stumbling block; that which comes from pretense has. Therefore the prophet too says: “Peace, peace; and where is peace?” Let us flee the peace of sinners, then; for they conspire against the innocent, they come together to crush the just man, to destroy the widow or to assault her chastity.

And therefore “there is no reclining at their death”: not “declining,” as many Latin manuscripts have it, but “reclining.” For when we labor and are bent over some work and stoop down, we are accustomed to lean back; but sinners, that is, of grave offences, and above all the wicked, cannot lean back, of whom it was said: “And bow down their back always.” For those who have not cleaved to Christ do not raise themselves to heavenly things. And therefore those whose death is very evil do not rise with him either, as it is written: “The death of sinners is very evil.” But one who dies with Christ and is buried with him not only reclines but is also raised again. Of him that saying fits beautifully: “You have turned all his bed in his sickness,” especially if he is a martyr, whose sickness is dissolved by his suffering, his death by resurrection.

We have seen that rich man who, clothed in purple and fine linen, reclined in this world and feasted splendidly every day, from whose table poor Lazarus gathered what fell; how, placed in torments in the underworld, he could not lean back, but with difficulty lifted not his whole self but only his eyes to Abraham, asking him to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. So there was no reclining for his death, nor firmness in his stroke. For scourges are of no use after death.

And therefore David, while he was in the life of this body, prepared himself for scourges, so that the Lord might receive him chastened. Consider for me again holy Job, who was covered with sores and shaken in all his limbs and full of pains in his whole body, dissolving the clods of earth with the pus and fluid of his wounds: how, when he could not lean back while placed in this body, he found the rest of death. And therefore, conscious of himself, he said: “Death is rest to a man.” So he was not moved in his stroke, nor did he waver through a slip of his tongue, he who in all these things did not sin with his lips, as Scripture testifies; rather he found firmness in his stroke, by which he was strengthened in Christ. So both Job and David, because they were scourged here, had firmness in their stroke; for the Father scourges the son whom he receives. But those who are not scourged here are not received there as sons. And therefore “they are not in the labors of men, and they will not be scourged with men,” so that they may be scourged for ever with the devil.

“Therefore,” he says, “their pride held them fast; they were covered with their iniquity and impiety.” Iniquity is a bad garment; if anyone wishes to hold it on us, we ought to give it up, lest he begin to come into judgment with us. And if anyone tries to take away the spiritual tunic we have received, give up the cloak of iniquity, put on the covering of faith and patience, with which David covered himself in fasting, so as not to lose the coverings of virtue. Fasting itself is a covering. Indeed, had fasting sobriety not covered holy Joseph, the adulteress’s wantonness would have stripped him. Had Adam wished to cover himself with this fasting, he would not have been made naked. But because he tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil against the heavenly prohibition, and broke the commanded fast with the food of incontinence, he knew that he was naked. Had he fasted, he would both have kept the garments of faith and not have seen himself uncovered. Let us not clothe ourselves, then, with iniquity and impiety, lest it be said of any of us: “And he clothed himself with cursing.”

Adam too clothed himself badly, who, while he sought coverings of leaves, received the sentence of the curse. The Jews clothed themselves with cursing, of whom it is written: “Their iniquity came forth as from fat; they passed into the disposition of the heart.” For from adeps (“fat”) comes adipalis, that is, “fat.” For just as the soul fed on good things and filled with virtues is filled as with fat and richness, as it is written, so iniquity that comes forth as from fat signifies not a thin and slight iniquity but one full of vices. Indeed, they did not fall into error by some chance slip, but passed into sacrilege by counsel and design.

“They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue has passed over the earth.” What it is to set one’s mouth against heaven, that younger of the brothers teaches us, who returning to his father said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Those set their mouth against heaven who think that the authorship of their crimes is brought upon them by a kind of necessity of their birth. These are wont to spare neither heaven nor earth, so as to think that man’s life is governed by a kind of course of the stars. They leave nothing to providence, nothing to good morals. Would that these too had returned like that one of the two young men: the good Lord would not have denied the remedy. And yet, even if they themselves do not wish to be healed, the Lord reserves the grace of return, so that those in Israel who were driven out by the blindness of their own heart may return through the fullness of the church, and may not spend empty days of this life but have them full of good working and faith, when the Lord has filled them with spiritual grace. Hear how they return: “Because blindness has happened in part to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.” But because the mystery had to be fulfilled, that God should shut up all things in unbelief, that is, refute and convict them (for when two contend, if one prevails, it is said: he has shut up the other), and therefore through his mercy, so that the world might become subject to God, the people did indeed return in its heirs, but was led astray by the error of a late crime, so as not to believe that God foreknows hidden things. But the Lord has reserved for them the grace of future salvation, so that they may at some time be redeemed, saying: “Therefore my people will return here.” What is “here”? That is, to me, to my equity and justice, to my worship.

“And it will fill up the days of its life.” This you will surely take to mean that the people is indeed redeemed, that is, the one that has believed. In it, even if those who have not believed are not redeemed, yet the prerogative of redemption is bestowed on the people of God.

These, then, placed in error, said: “How did God know? And is there all knowledge in the Most High?” For they think there is no knowledge in God, because sinners abound in worldly prosperity. And he brings them in speaking further: “Behold, these sinners, abounding in the world, have obtained riches.” You have this expressed more plainly in the Gospel, where Simon the Pharisee, seeing that the sinful woman came into his house and poured ointment on Christ’s feet, said within himself: “This man, if he were a prophet, would surely know what sort of woman this is who touches him, that she is a sinner.” But God’s patience does not prejudge the truth, and his foreknowledge and providence are proved all the more by the fact that one living in sin abounds in the success of worldly prosperity. The stronger man sees this and laughs; the incautious is led astray and moved.

Indeed the psalmist says that he said: “Then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent”; that is: I see them abounding, I see everything prospering for them, while I am crushed and harassed by many temptations. So in vain have I given myself to innocence and applied myself to the pursuit of a sober way of life. And beautifully he says: “I washed my hands among the innocent,” so that he might seem not to claim for himself the height of innocence but to offer diligent effort. Meanwhile he testifies that such a speech did not go out from him unpunished.

For he recalls that he was scourged all day long because he had said that he had justified his heart to the Lord in vain; but after the scourges there followed at once the correction of the wrong opinion. “For at once,” he says, “my reproof was in the mornings,” that is, in the open and clear; for the light of truth, laying hold of him, did not allow him to hold what he had said. “So the light of truth poured into my mind refuted and convicted me, because I did not speak rightly: In vain have I justified my heart. For I spoke those words as one placed in darkness; and as I recalled them my heart was pierced, and when my heart was pierced my affection was enlightened, so that there came to be in my heart a flaming fire, which made in me the spiritual beginning of the day. Enlightened, then, as the day dawned for me, and placed as it were in many mornings, I understood that I had been made outside the order of the generation of the children of God, since, though at first I had believed that the maker of the world, providing for the human race, had made all things, whether sad or little pleasing, for our benefit, afterwards, troubled by wrong opinions, I lost so good a judgment.”

So I conferred with my heart and said to myself: “If I say thus, that in vain have I justified my heart,” the voice of God met me, saying: “Behold, to the generation of your children, which I have arranged”; that is: behold, you find in the Scriptures that I have arranged, O Adam, for the generation of your children, that riches come to the wicked by chance, not through any merit. Nor are the gains of treasure the rewards of virtue, so that, on the contrary, poverty is not the punishment of sin; but these things come without distinction, rolled along like a river in a kind of flood of the world.

“And I thought,” and I seemed to myself to recognize, that this was true, that this agreed and accorded with divine providence, and that I had been troubled in vain over things on which I ought not to have dwelt.

And so, because I seemed to myself to have grasped the true judgment and attained knowledge of the matter itself, I said to myself: “This is a labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God and understand the last things”; that is: only this labor remains for me, to enter into the sanctuary of God, where the cherubim are, that is, the depth of knowledge, and not to labor among uncertainties and opinions; for the narrative of a fool is like a burden on the way. Therefore let us enter the inner shrine of sacred knowledge and the inmost recesses of truth, so that there may be no labor in us; for wisdom leads us away from the sense of labor. Indeed, “there is no labor in Jacob”; the cause of labor is ignorance, since one who does not know that rewards are stored up for the just is not refreshed from his labors but rather is bent and broken by the labor of his imprudence. Let us enter, then, the sanctuary of God, where the cherubim are, in whom is the remembrance of sacred knowledge and of that true and eternal light.

In that lampstand the image shines by which we may understand the last things. For the saint knows at the last and attains perfect wisdom with the advance of age, saying: “Make known to me, O Lord, my end and the number of my days, what it is, that I may know what is lacking to me.” What is the end but that when the kingdom is handed over to God the Father, when the hidden things of wisdom are revealed? This end of our contest the prophet sought, desiring to know what was lacking to his perfection; for the end of our training and studies is perfection.

This, then, is the first account of true knowledge: that the things of the world happen by chance. The second is this: that “because of their evasions you have set for them” flowing successes of worldly advantages and an abundance of riches, so that they might not plead that through poverty and the bitterness of some sorrow and mourning they were less devout, and were driven by the necessity of want into the guilt of robbery and the pursuit of plunder. For they were not enriched with wealth or raised up with honors for tranquillity of life and the enjoyment of gladness, but so that, their complaint being excluded, their hardship might be heaped up.

Such men, then, are cast down while they are lifted up. For it is not grace but ruin where neither is the use of the gift kept for long and the excuse for sinning is taken away. For what complaint is weightier than that divine one which you have in the book of the prophet Micah: “My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I grieved you, or how have I troubled you? Answer me. Did I not bring you out of the land of Egypt and free you from the house of slavery?” See how the wicked are cast down while they are lifted up: their complaint is excluded, their punishment heaped up. For, invited by heavenly benefits, they ought not to have deserted the giver of security and prosperity in life, whom they ought rather to have obeyed. But as the justice of God is great, so also is his punishment severe. For when does the wicked man usually last? Of him you have it written elsewhere too: “I saw the wicked man exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found.” Incredible is the swiftness of his extinction. You see a wicked man suddenly powerful in this world: while you pass by, he is no more. How great is a shadow on the earth, and how short-lived! Move your footstep, and the shadow has passed. Or if something here troubles you, lift the footstep of your mind to the things to come, and you will find that the wicked man whom you believed to exist here will not exist there; for he who is nothing does not exist. Indeed the Lord knows those who are his; but those who are not, he does not acknowledge, because they did not acknowledge him who is.

Of these, then, he says here too: “They have failed and perished because of their iniquity, like the dream of one who wakes”; that is: so the wicked fail and vanish like the dream of one first waking from sleep, because they are in darkness and have walked in darkness, and no trace of any good work of theirs remains, but they are like those who see a dream. And one who dreams dreams in the night, and night is in darkness. The children of darkness are deprived of the Sun of righteousness and the splendor of virtue, always sleeping and not watching, of whom it is well said: “They have slept their sleep and found nothing.” For when their souls are separated from the body, as if released from the sleep of the body, they will find nothing, hold nothing, and lose what they thought they held, since the foolish and senseless man, though he has overflowed with riches, will leave his riches to strangers, nor will the glory of his house go down with him to the underworld.

What follows also shows how his image is not found but perishes, since his image is not found in the city of the Lord, that heavenly Jerusalem. For the Lord painted us in his image and likeness, as he himself teaches, saying: “Behold, I have painted your walls, Jerusalem.” If we act well, this heavenly image remains in us; if anyone acts badly, this image is erased in him (the image, that is, of him who came down from heaven), and the image of the earthly is in him. Hence the apostle too says: “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly.” So the images of the good endure and shine in that city of God. But if anyone has turned aside to graver sins and has not done penance, his image is abolished or cast out, as Adam was cast out and shut out of paradise. But whoever has conducted himself devoutly and honorably enters into the city of God and brings in his image, so that it may shine in that city of God. “Lord, in your city you will bring their images to nothing,” because those cannot shine in the light who have clothed themselves with works of darkness. Let us take an example from the world. See how in cities the images of good rulers endure, while the images of tyrants are destroyed.

Considering these things, then, and setting his mind on them, the holy prophet, who had been troubled before, was delighted. Hence he himself says: “For my heart was delighted and my reins were relaxed; and I was brought to nothing and did not know; and I became like a beast before you; and I am always with you.” When I recognized, he says, that God cares for and regards human affairs, my reins rested; that is: from the very great weariness of my old imprudence I rested through the knowledge of the heavenly good and grace. There are also certain reins of the soul, which are troubled in us by the labor of ignorance; these are relaxed into rest by the knowledge of heavenly doctrine and, supported as by a kind of prop of the heavenly precepts, are refreshed. Then, he says, I understood that I was wearying myself in vain, since I did not know what is true. “And I became like a beast.”

Beautifully he added “before you”; for in comparison with heavenly beings, what is man but an irrational beast? For the stars too, though bright, vanish at the rising of the sun. And Moses says: “I have not been fit since yesterday, since you began to speak with your servant”; and, he says, “I am weak of voice and slow of speech.” So, then, man too, I will not say in comparison with Christ, but in comparison with the angels, seems to be a dumb beast. But let no one despair, because “men and beasts the Lord will save.” And therefore, because I have learned not from myself but from you, I will cleave to you always, so that I may cease to be a beast, and you may say to me: “But you, stand here with me.” For man, surrounded by the grace of God, begins to be a man, who through imprudence displayed insensibility and the ignorance of a beast; for man is proved by this, if he is capable of reason and grace. And so he rejoices that he has been separated from the dumb animals and admitted to the company of men, whom God visits and protects. For what is man but that the Lord is mindful of him, or that he is visited by the Lord?

Hence, as one visited by him, he says: “You have held my right hand, and in your will you have led me, and with glory you have taken me up.” So we have received it, and so it agrees with the Greek. For the Greek said: ἐκράτησας τῆς χειρός, that is, “you have held the hand,” τῆς δεξιᾶς μου, “my right.” He is well directed whose right hand God holds with his own hand. He can say: “The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved.” Had Adam been willing to have the Lord at his right hand, he would not have been deceived by the serpent. But because he forgot God’s command and fulfilled the serpent’s will, the devil held his hand and made it stretch out to the tree of the knowledge of evil and good, so that he might pluck what was forbidden. In him a prejudgment was made against all, and the adversary began to stand at the right hand of all. Hence came forth too that form of curse against Judas: “And let the devil stand at his right hand.” If that curse is grievous, this blessing is the greatest, by which the bonds of the hard curse are loosed. Therefore the Lord Jesus set the devil at his right hand, as we read in the book of Zechariah; for he had taken up the cause and place of man. He stood there, then, where Adam’s inheritance stood. Like a good athlete he allowed him to stand at his right hand, so as to drive him back, saying: “Get behind, Satan.” And so the adversary, thrown from his place, withdrew; but to you, lest the devil stand at your right hand, he says: “Come, follow me.” Foreseeing, then, the coming of the Lord, who came down from heaven to free us from the power of the adversary, David says: “The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved.” But one at whose right hand the devil was, was moved. Rightly, then, he says here too: “You have held my right hand,” that is: so that I can no longer sin, so that I, who before was tossing with slippery step, may stand on a faithful footing. How well the apostle said this, when the Lord saw him troubled and, stretching out his right hand, did not let him falter but made him firm with fearless step! Freed, what else did Peter say but these prophetic verses: “You have held my right hand, and in your will you have led me, and with glory you have taken me up”? What is the right hand but the active power of the soul? If it is directed by the Lord’s will, it desires nothing else, seeks nothing, asks for no riches of this world, no aids.

Therefore the saint says: “For what remains for me in heaven? And what have I wished from you on earth?” That is: you are my portion; you suffice me for all things; I have sought nothing else but to have you as my share; I have subjected myself to no heavenly creature, as the Gentiles do; I have coveted no riches of this world and no enticements of pleasures. I need nothing, I who have been taken up by you, nor is there anything left in the heavens that I should seek further. Having nothing, I have all things, because I have Christ, whom the Most High Father did not spare, but delivered him up for us all; how then has he not given us all things with him? as the apostle said; for all things are in Christ, through whom are all things and in whom all things hold together. Having all things in him, then, I seek no other reward, because he himself is the reward of all. And therefore he said to the perfect man: “Take up your cross and follow me.” One who follows him is not led to perfection by a reward, but is brought by perfection to the reward. For the imitators of Christ are so not for hope of good but for love of virtue; for Christ is good by nature, not from desire of reward. He suffered because it delighted him to do good, not because he sought an increase of glory from his passion. Therefore one who desires to imitate him works for what profits others, not himself. Hence not without reason he fails for himself, but grows strong for others by the increase of virtue.

And fittingly he says: “My heart and my flesh have failed, O God of my heart.” For everlasting things cannot succeed unless earthly things have failed. The flesh fails, then, when carnal things are put to death; they fail too who carry about the dying of Jesus Christ in their flesh; for the death of Christ works in them, so that every enticement of errors may die. From this it is gathered that the heart of man too fails when the evil thoughts that come from the heart are put to death, so that forgetfulness may hide all earthly things and God may become the God of the heart of those who, blessed in the pure of heart, are found worthy to see God, so that they draw near to you and do not separate themselves. For God draws near; he does not repel those who draw near; for he wishes to be the cause of salvation to all, not of death. Indeed he repels no one except one who thinks he should separate himself from his sight. “For behold,” he says, “those who go far from you will perish.”

For each one by his works either joins himself to your love or separates himself from it; for one who does things in the knowledge of which he fears to be caught flees God, like the man who, covered by walls and surrounded by darkness, thinks he is not seen by the Lord God; but he is seen, when it is said: “You have destroyed all who commit fornication away from you.” For just as a woman who commits fornication does not cleave to her husband and is not one flesh or one spirit with her husband, but divides and separates herself by fornicating, so every soul that does not cleave to God, but, serving the empty worship of idols, commits fornication, divides itself by the perversity of sacrilege and becomes far from the Lord, though it ought to be near; and one who is separated from the Lord perishes.

Hence the saint, who dreads the judgment of God, wishes always to cleave to Christ and to put his hope in him, so that he may praise the Lord, to whom be honor, glory, everlastingness from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

Many indeed have lamented the weakness of human frailty, but holy Job and holy David more excellently than the rest: the former direct, vehement, keen, and, as if exasperated by grievous pains, on a higher buskin; the latter gentle, calm, and mild, with a softer feeling, so that he truly imitated the disposition of the deer, which he had set before himself to imitate. And do not be troubled if I seem to praise so great a prophet by the likeness of a wild animal, since you have read what was said to the apostles: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.”

But although likenesses of this kind are supported by devout examples, and the nature of deer is innocent and gentle, I think that the deer set before the prophet for imitation in this passage is the one of whom Solomon, the defender of his father’s mind, said in the Proverbs: “Let the deer of friendship and the foal of your graces converse with you.” For the true Son of God expressed in himself the nature which he himself gave to living creatures. He came into this world like a deer and joined himself with wonderful simplicity to those by whom snares were being prepared for him. For the simplicity of such deer is said to be such that, when they see themselves hunted, they attach themselves to those horsemen who, appointed to serve the deceit, lead them on by a show of flight and a pretense of companionship right up to the nets. So, then, the Lord, as though unaware of danger and unforeseeing, mingled with the Jews who were laying a trap for him, and took into his company Judas the betrayer, by whose deadly pretense he came even to the snares of the cross and the nets of the passion. Hence, turning to him, he said: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” And in this way he came to the nets of the synagogue and willingly put them on; but he was not entangled or bound, he who set all free.

Indeed he stood out above the nets. And because his own had not received him, he called the church and conferred his grace upon her, as the most holy church herself declares in the Song of Songs, saying: “I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and the strengths of the field, if you will stir up and stir up again love until it pleases.” She asks, then, in the scent of the field, which holy Jacob smelled, that is, by that faith, that devotion, that her bridegroom be roused by the daughters of Jerusalem, so that he may hasten to his bride, and that his love be roused in her, or even that he himself be roused, because love is the bridegroom. For “God is love,” as John said. But he did not allow himself to be roused by others, he who was hastening of his own accord; coming out of his chamber, he exulted like a giant to run his course. The bride saw him and heard the voice of the one coming, and suddenly turning she said: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills”; for he leaps the greater ones and bounds over the lesser, so as not to suffer hindrances to his devoted haste. “My kinsman,” she says, “is like a roe or a young stag upon the mountains of Bethel.” Good is the stag whose mountain is the house of God, to which he ran with such speed that he anticipated the prayers and desires of the bride. Indeed, the one she had seen coming from afar she suddenly knew to be present with her; hence she says: “Behold, he is behind our wall, looking through the windows, standing out above the nets. My kinsman answered and said to me: Arise, come, my near one, my beautiful one, my dove, for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone; it has departed by itself; the flowers have appeared in the land.” The winter is the synagogue, the rain the Jewish people, who could not see the sun; the flowers are the apostles. And he added: “The time of pruning has come; the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.” That harvest is the faith of the church; the voice of the turtledove is chastity.

Not only in these … but Christ also took on the likeness of the stag, because, coming to earth, he trampled that serpent the devil without any harm to himself; he offered him his heel but did not feel his poison. Hence it was said to him: “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk.” Let us too, then, be stags, so that we may walk upon serpents. We shall be stags if we follow the voice of Christ, which prepares the stags and makes them not fear the bites of serpents, and if any have perhaps been wounded, takes away their pain by loosing their offence. Of these stags the Lord says to Job: “Have you watched over the birth of the hinds? Have you numbered their months full of birth, and loosed their birth pangs, or reared their young so that they do not fear?” Hear how the young of such hinds do not fear. Let Isaiah teach you, saying: “And the little child will put his hand into the den of asps, and they will not harm him.” And so that you may recognize that it seems to signify the children of the church, he added: “Will you send forth their offspring? Their young will break forth and be multiplied in generation; they will go out and will not return back.” For no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Rightly, then, the Lord became a stag, so that the voice of the Lord might prepare such stags for himself, of whom he says: “In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will take up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them.” For the holy apostles took up serpents when by the breath of their mouth they drew spiritual wickedness out of the hiding places of bodies, and they did not feel the deadly poisons. Indeed, when a viper leaping from the brushwood had bitten Paul, the barbarians, seeing the viper hanging from his hand, thought he would suddenly die. But he stood undaunted; he was neither moved by the wound nor infused with the poison. Hence, seeing him not as one born by the condition of man but as one brought forth by the grace of God, they thought him above men. See the stag drawing vipers out of their hiding places by the divine Spirit that was in his nostrils, as Job said. “Paul,” it says, “turned in the Spirit and, looking back with grief at the python, said: I command you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to come out of her at once. And it came out that same hour.” See the stag when he comes to baptism and, washed by the stream of the sacred font, casts off all the poisons of persecution. See the stag, the Lord Jesus, when he came to John the Baptist, and to John, who said to him, “I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”, he answered: “Let it be so now.” And with these words, thirsting for the salvation of all, he went down into the waters with all eagerness. But enough: at the beginning of our discourse, as at the beginning of the year according to popular custom, the stag has played with us. Let us go on to the rest.

David, as I said, remonstrates, saying to the Lord: “As the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul has thirsted for the living God. When shall I come and appear before the face of God?” The saint is aflame and cannot contain himself (for the greatness of the mind is greater than the size of any body), and in his mind, free from care, he desires to fly from earth to heavenly things, as elsewhere he himself says: “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” For here are snares, by which the just man, even if he is not entangled, is nevertheless hindered; here are sorrows and anxieties, there gladness, where grace is; here, finally, are the chains of the body, which Paul was eager to loose, so that, stripped of all hindrances, he might stand free before the Lord. This, then, is what David’s soul thirsted for: to see God no longer by faith but face to face, and not only to be away from the body but to be released from the body; for “to depart and be with Christ is far better,” because to the just man “to die is gain.” And it is a great gain to be without sin, not to be moved by the enticements of offences. For who is clean from filth, when not even the life of one day of man on earth is without the contagion of offences? So by living we contract losses of innocence; by death we gain the end of error. Gain, then, is acquired by death; but by the use of life, as for wretched debtors, the interest of a usurious debt increases to their guilt. And well does the soul thirst which hastens to the spring, not of this water, but of eternal life, of which he said above: “For with you is the spring of life, and in your light we shall see light.” Rightly, then, David was hastening to arrive and appear before the face of God, whose countenance is light, because he enlightens all whom the Lord beholds.

“My tears,” he says, “have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily: Where is your God?” Rightly are tears bread there where one hungers for righteousness. For “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” There are, then, tears that are bread and strengthen the heart of man. To this discussion that saying of Ecclesiastes too is fitting: “Cast your bread upon the face of the water,” because there is heavenly bread where there is the water of grace, since those rightly receive the substance of the Word and the nourishment of mystical reason from whose belly flow rivers of living water. Likewise also there is this living bread where there is the water of tears and the weeping of repentance. For so it is written: “In weeping they went out, and in consolation I will bring them back.”

Blessed, then, are those whose tears are bread, who have deserved to laugh, because “blessed are you who weep.” “Remembering these things,” he says, “I poured out my soul upon me.” The saint gathers himself from the things that are outside and pours out his soul upon himself, so that the soul poured out over the body may hide the weakness of the flesh, cover the appetite of the body, and set forth everywhere the virtue of the soul and mind. Hence later he says too: “I will pour out my prayer in his sight.” Where prayer is poured out, there sins are covered. But of what things does he say he is mindful? Of those surely that he desired, that he might come and appear in the sight of God, that he might see that eternal court of his, in which he walked about in spirit and delighted in an entry taken for granted.

“For I will go into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God, with the voice of exultation and praise, the sound of one feasting.” Not without reason did he weep, since he was dwelling on earth, to whom heavenly tabernacles were owed and for whom the entrance of a mighty court was waiting. Indeed, he preferred that court alone to all the riches of his kingdom, as he himself testified elsewhere, saying: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and that I may see the delight of the Lord.” The delight of the Lord is in the church. The church is the image of heavenly things; for after the shadow passed, the image followed. The shadow is the synagogue: in the shadow is the law, in the Gospel the truth. Therefore in the light of the Gospel the image of the truth shines. So the prophet wept because good things full of grace and filled with gladness were being deferred.

Indeed later he says too: “Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!” And therefore he remonstrated with the Lord, because he was hastening to better things. Yet in these very afflictions of the world there was great consolation for the present and hope for the future. For who would not lift up his mind, who could hope that those blessed companionships were reserved for him in the heavenly tabernacle? But because to our weak condition future things are often a weariness and present things a vexation, therefore the soul of the holy prophet too was troubled when the waves of the body rose up.

I do not want you to wonder that the prophet says his soul was troubled, since the Lord Jesus himself said: “Now my soul is troubled.” For he who took up our infirmities took up our feeling too, in which he was sorrowful even unto death, not because of death; for a voluntary death could not have had sadness, in which there was to be the gladness of all, the refreshment of all. Of it he said elsewhere too: “And I arose and saw, and my sleep became sweet to me.” Good is the sleep that made the hungry not hunger, the thirsty not thirst, for whom he prepared the sweetness of the sacraments. How then was his soul troubled by fear, he who made the souls of others not fear? He was sorrowful even unto death, then, until grace was accomplished. This is proved by his own testimony, saying of his death: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!”

So David, troubled by the slippery windings of this world, says: “Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I will praise him, the salvation of my countenance and my God.” So when we are anxious and troubled, let hope strengthen us by the expectation of things to come. Look at each point. “Hope, for I will praise,” he says; not “I praise,” but “I will praise”; that is: I will praise better then, when with unveiled face, beholding the glory of God, I shall be refashioned into the same image.

Suddenly, while consoling himself, he turned back to himself and said: “My soul is troubled within me”; that is: I who ought to strengthen others am myself troubled; and because I have no firmness from myself, let us take it from the Author.

“Therefore,” he says, “I will remember you, O Lord, from the land of the Jordan and of Hermon.” He is mindful from the land of the Jordan, in which grace heaps up the memory of devotion. Into the Jordan Naaman the Syrian went down and was made clean of leprosy. In the Jordan Christ was baptized, when he instituted the form of the saving washing. The name Jordan signifies “descent,” the descent which the Lord Jesus made, who cleansed the neighbors of the river Jordan from the contagion of offences. This river comes out of Egypt and divides the land of promise. So one who is troubled, if he takes good counsel, comes out of Egypt and follows the way of light; for they have interpreted Hermon as “the way of the lamp.” Come out first, then, from Egypt, if you wish to see the light of Christ. The Canaanite woman came out from the borders of the Gentiles and found Christ, to whom she said: “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” Moses came out of Egypt and was made a prophet and sent back to the people, to free their souls from the land of affliction. And the lamp of Christ is in the body. This lamp shows you the way. Hence the saint too says: “Your word is a lamp to my feet,” a lamp because it has enlightened the souls of all and shown the way in darkness. The Gospel is the way of the lamp; it shines in the shadow, that is, in the world. Hence elsewhere too you have: “They will be made white as snow in Zalmon,” that is, in the overshadowing.

Christ is also the Jordan that divides the land. Hear how he divides: “And a sword will pierce through your own soul, to reveal the thoughts of many hearts,” because he is the divider of our souls, who goes down into the inmost secrets of the heart and detects the thoughts of minds. This sword is the living Word of God. Indeed in Hebrews you read thus: “For the word of God is living and strong and sharper than any sharpest sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.” This is the spring of Siloam, which means “sent,” since Christ said that he was sent by the Father. There is also that division which is gathered from the fact that tribes of the Jews lived on both banks of the Jordan; since the Son of Man, who came down from heaven in later times, that true Jordan, that true divider of earthly and heavenly things, gave the fathers a divided possession: one to be possessed on earth, the other to be kept for the merits of the future life. Both of these belong to Christ alone: whether to divide heavenly things or to detect hidden things; for he who detects hidden things divides inward things, which is surely the mark of divinity. Indeed you have it written that God said: “I will rejoice and divide Shechem.” This is that magnificent portion which Jacob assigned to his son Joseph as more excellent than all. Hence he says: “But I give you Shechem, a magnificent portion above your brothers, which I took from the hands of the Amorites with my sword and bow.” That division was owed to the Lord alone, which is comprehended by the Word, that is, by that spiritual sword of the true Solomon. What does “alone” mean? The Father without Christ, or Christ without the Father? By no means. When I say the Father alone, I do not separate the Son, because the Son is in the bosom and secret of the Father. When I say the Son alone, I join the Father too, as the Son too joined him, saying: “Behold, the hour comes when you will leave me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” So the Father too is called “blessed and only mighty” in such a way that the Son, who is always in the Father, is not separated from him. Indeed John says splendidly: “In the beginning was the Word”; but he was not without the Father. And God the Father was, but he was not without the Word, because “the Word was with God.”

This Shechem is the church; for Solomon chose her, whose hidden affection he distinguished. This Shechem is Mary, whose soul the sword of God pierces and divides. This Shechem is “ascending,” as the interpretation has it. Who the ascending one is, hear him saying of the church: “Who is she that goes up made white, leaning on her brother?” This is the active one, which in Greek is called ἐναργής, because she shines by faith and works. To her children it is said: “Let your works shine before my Father who is in heaven.”

David, then, is mindful of God from the land of the Jordan and Hermon, “from the little mountain.” Who is this little mountain? Let us consider whether perhaps the divinity of Christ is the great mountain. Indeed, “I fill heaven and earth,” says the Lord. If, then, the divinity of Christ is a great mountain, surely his incarnation is a small mountain. Christ, then, is both, the great mountain and the lesser: great indeed, because “great is the Lord and great his power”; lesser, because it is written: “You made him a little less than the angels.” Hence Isaiah says: “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty.” Yet the same became both lesser from great and great from lesser: lesser from great, because, “though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and took the form of a servant”; and great from lesser, because Daniel says: “And the stone which struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” If you ask what this stone is, recognize it: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” Yet the same, even when he seemed small, was great. Isaiah agrees with this, saying: “A child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose beginning is upon his shoulders, and he is called the angel of great counsel.” All for your sake is Christ: a stone for your sake, that you may be built up; a mountain for your sake, that you may ascend. Ascend, then, upon the mountain, you who seek heavenly things. For this he bowed the heaven, that you might be nearer; for this he rose to the summit of the mountain, that he might lift you up.

Not without reason, then, did deep call to deep, so that this mountain might become small, of which the prophet says: “Deep calls to deep at the voice of your cataracts.” The Old Testament did not prevail for the redemption of this world; it called upon the New Testament and summoned it as if to its aid. The law cried out, announcing the Gospel. For it was half-full, and therefore it was necessary that he should come who would fulfill the law. For “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” he who came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. Hear how the law is a deep: “Your judgments are like the great deep.” At the same time understand from this that both are the testament of one wisdom, which he came to fulfill as his own. By the cataracts we understand the depths of the words and the force of the heavenly speech, which have flowed to us like rain from heaven. So Christ and divine Scripture are the remedy of all weariness and the one refuge in temptations.

Indeed, when David noticed that the swellings of the world’s waves were coming over him (and we must undergo very many of them on the sea of this life), mindful of the Lord’s mercies, which he promised in countless oracles, he turned to prayer and remonstrated with God, knowing that his mercy is commanded in the light, that is, in the law, because “your precepts are light,” but in temptations it is shown as in the darkness of night. Hence, like a traveller who desires to return home and reach the place he is making for, but is wearied by the rough road of this life, he summons a guide and begs for relief.

“With me,” he says, “is prayer to the God of my life; I will say to God: You are my upholder.” Rightly he seeks help already known to him and appeals to the author of the promise and the provider of a customary gift, so that in coming to help, if the merit of the man gives offence, the divine precedent may not. Someone says: “When did God uphold him?” To establish this, come with me to the beginning of sacred Scripture; see how the Lord shaped man from clay with his own hands. Hence this same man says later: “Your hands made me and formed me.” Like a potter, God wrought the fabric of human flesh. And to Jeremiah it is said: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words.” It often happens to a potter that, while a vessel is being shaped, it falls from his hands and he gathers the clay again to remake the vessel. Indeed Jeremiah too says: “I went down and saw how the vessel which he was making fell in his hands.” And again he says: “He made another vessel as it pleased him.” Rightly, then, he is called upholder, because he himself took us up in his hands, he himself formed us. Those are the vessels of a human potter, some for honor, some for dishonor. We are all earthen vessels: even if one is a king, he is an earthen vessel; even if an apostle, he is a vessel. Hence Paul too says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”; and the prophet says of a king: “Jeconiah has been despised like a vessel for which there is no use.” And he added: “Earth, hear the word of the Lord: write this man down as disowned.” As by a father’s right, our God is wont to disown degenerate sons; therefore the earth too writes down those who are sons of the earth. Hence, when the Jews were accusing the adulteress, the Lord Jesus wrote with his finger on the earth. But the just are not written in the earth, as we read; to them it is said: “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

So the Lord upheld us when he fashioned us; he upholds us also when he commands us to be born. Hence the just man says: “You upheld me from my mother’s womb.” Of what mother? “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Those whom he forms he also upholds; he upholds them also as they come forth: “and before you came out of your mother’s womb, I sanctified you.” He is an upholder who has taken up with his hands, as the maker of the human race is called upholder, and who has taken up by his visitation, so as to protect. Hence the prophet himself says elsewhere: “He who dwells in the help of the Most High will say to the Lord: You are my upholder and my refuge.” The first upholding is of working, the second of defence. Indeed, hear Moses saying: “Spreading out his wings, he took them and bore them upon his shoulders,” as the eagle takes them up, which is wont to test its young, so as to keep and rear those in whom it has noticed the character of a true birth and the grace of an uncorrupted nature confirmed, or to cast out those in whom it has detected, at a still tender age, the weakness of a degenerate origin.

“Why have you forgotten me, and why have you cast me off?” God does not forget (for it is impossible that he should forget, to whom all things made and to come are present), but our sins infuse in him a reason for forgetting, so that he blots out those whom he has known to be unworthy of his visitation; for “the Lord knows those who are his.” Yet to those who work iniquity he says: “I do not know you.” Who, then, can say to God: “Why have you forgotten me?” Yet this is common to the saints and to us weak ones. The saint says it as one conscious of his merit, and yet the holier he is, the humbler. But if the saint says it with difficulty, what shall I, a sinner, say, unless I refer it to this: why have you forgotten your work, why have you forgotten your visitation, finally why have you forgotten my weakness? For “what is man but that you visit him?” Do not, then, forget the weak. Remember, O Lord, that you made me weak; remember that you fashioned me of dust. How shall I be able to stand unless you always attend to strengthening this clay, so that my firmness may come forth from your face? When you turn away your face, all things will be troubled; if you look on me, woe is me. You have nothing to look at in me but the contagion of offences; it is not useful either to be forsaken or to be seen, because while we are seen we give offence. We can, however, reckon that he does not cast off those he sees, because he cleanses those he looks upon. A fire burns before him, to burn up crime.

It is good for us, then, not to be cast off. Therefore David complains, because he believed he had been cast off, who before had been upheld. Indeed later he said: “In you I have been strengthened from the womb.” But above too we have written: “Upon you I was cast from the womb; from my mother’s belly you are my God.” It is good even to be cast, but upon God. Indeed this is said in the twenty-first psalm in the person of Christ, who was truly cast from the womb of the Virgin upon the Father; for earthly things did not receive him when he died. Hence, placed on the cross, as he gave up his spirit, he said to the Father: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Let no one, then, add “Lord,” as the psalm singers do, which I have found neither in my Latin manuscript nor in the Greek nor in the Gospel, which is clearer. Indeed above he had said: “Father, forgive them this sin,” and therefore he commended his spirit into his hands as to a Father, in whose bosom the Son always is. Although, even if they add that he said “Lord,” let them consider that he speaks thus as a man placed in death.

So he was cast from the womb upon the Father, “from his mother’s belly”; that is, he defined that the womb which cast him forth is his mother’s belly. But the Father says: “From the womb before the morning star I begot you.” The Father surely did not cast forth the Son, from whom the Son never went out, as he himself says: “I was delivered up and did not go out.” He did not cast forth him to whom he is joined by the unity of the same substance. It can therefore also be read thus: “Upon you I was cast from the womb, from my mother’s belly,” so that there follows: “You are my God; do not depart from me.” It can also be read thus: “From my mother’s belly you are my God,” since even placed in the womb I never withdrew from you; I was with you, I who, like Jonah placed in the belly of the whale, was entreating you for the people. And truly from his mother’s belly he was with God, according to what is written: “For before the child knew good or evil, he chose what is good,” and: “Before he could call father or mother, he plundered the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria,” so that, the Gentiles called forth, he might gain a kingdom for the Father by the worship of devout piety.

Let us look at the rest. “Why,” he says, “have you cast me off, and why do I go about sad while the enemy afflicts me, breaks my bones? Those who trouble me have reproached me, while it is said to me daily: Where is your God? Why are you sad, my soul?” and the rest. The first remonstrance contained a complaint that the good things whose fruit was already desired were being put off. The second remonstrance: that the coming of Christ, awaited by the wise, was being delayed, the coming which the law had announced, which the prophets promised; and the hearts of the just burned the more impatiently because they had learned that he would come for the redemption of all … also of all, to whom he would open the way of virtue by the path of the Gospel and show the paths of good works, as he himself said in Proverbs: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.” Therefore it was said to him: “Where is your God?” because Christ had not yet come but was hoped for. The devil raged, then, to crush those whom he knew would believe at the Lord’s coming, and he afflicted them with various deaths. David remonstrates, then, to rouse the one who delays by a prophetic complaint, to urge him to hasten, to remind him to help. We have a likeness of this remonstrance later too, where the same prophet says: “O God, why have you cast us off for ever?” And there he openly and tearfully lamented that he had forgotten his congregation and cast away the rod of his inheritance, and that his enemies had risen against the people of God, of whom he says: “And those who hate you have boasted in the midst of your feast.” Perhaps this little verse would seem to point to the Assyrians, who triumphed over the people of the Jews, were it not followed by: “They set up their signs as signs, and I did not know them.” There are always standards in war, which usually go before those about to fight and lead the column of soldiers. Each unit or legion follows its own standards; and if they have been scattered in the tumult of battle, they return to where they see their standards, however far off they are. Each commander sets up these standards and prescribes that they be followed. But there are also other standards which a victorious enemy imposes and decrees to be observed as by captives; but the faithful soldier follows his own standards and does not recognize others’.

Let us consider more attentively and carefully what these foreign signs are. Christ has set his sign on the foreheads of each; there too the Antichrist sets his signs, so as to recognize his own. But the one who is a Jew in secret, the true confessor, says to him: “They set up their signs as signs, and I did not know them.” The devil and his ministers set them up, but I did not know them, because I did not consent to his arts, did not yield to his commands. The Assyrian Nebuchadnezzar set signs on the Hebrew youths: he changed their names and ordered them to worship his image, to depart from the solemnities of their fathers, and, putting aside God’s law, to follow Chaldean rites. The king decreed this, but Daniel resolved in his heart to avoid the defilements of the king’s table. Rightly, then, it fits him to say that he did not know foreign signs. It was ordered that the Hebrew youths should worship the king’s image; they answered him: “We do not worship your image.” Fittingly, then, each of them said: “They set up their signs as signs, and I did not know them,” that is, I did not experience them, I did not accept them with any consent, I did not take them into myself by any fellowship. Hence of the Son of God too we read that he did not know sin. And elsewhere you have: “Whoever keeps the commandment does not know an evil word,” since it is quite clear that it is not knowledge of wickedness but criminal fellowship that is meant. David himself too later says: “The wicked who turned away from me I did not know.” And he declares where the adversaries wished to set these signs: “As on a way above the summit. As in a forest of trees they cut down its doors together with axes; with hatchet and adze they brought it down.” What does this mean but to show that our faith ought not to be as on a way, lest the birds of heaven come and carry it off, as the word which you read in the Gospel should not be sown along ways and paths?

So the adversaries, wishing to root out the faith of this saint, since they did not see their signs in his heart, tried to place them as on a way, that is, in a thoroughfare; but the heart is at the summit, because the eyes of the wise man are in his head. And they set up signs as in a forest of trees, which are quickly burned by fire or cut down with axes; for fire goes out of the forest and burns even the cedars of Lebanon. And they thought they should do this so as to defile the tabernacle of the divine name which is in us. For just as we are the temple of God, so we are also the tabernacle of God, in which the feasts of the Lord are celebrated. So you, O man, guard your summit, so that you may shatter the heads of the enemies, the crown of the hair of those who walk about (for they walk about in superfluous things, not in holy ones; in the crown of the hair, not in the crown of devotion and faith); and if the spirit of one who has power rises up against you, as you have it in Ecclesiastes, do not leave your place. For Christ has set you higher, whom he made in the image of God. Hold, then, the higher place of faith and piety, which you received from Christ, so that, made higher, you may easily repel the wicked spirit rising from below, that is, from earthly and worldly things, and not receive his signs in your breast. Let him not occupy the porches of your soul or the entrances of your mind, and, as in a forest of trees, ravage with his fires what is frail and perishable, or cut down the doors of your heart with his axes. Let there be in us, then, not a forest but a vineyard; let the door of our mouth and heart be shut more carefully, lest the enemy enter. He quickly splits the door if he finds it open; but Christ knocks, he does not break down, he who has strengthened, O Jerusalem, the bars of your gates. Christ knocks with his hand that you may open; the adversary cuts it down with axes; and therefore it is written that neither axe nor hammer should enter the house of God. Pride and deceit ought to be outside, not inside; for outside are battles, inside is peace, which is above all understanding. Let your soul not be cut by iron, but as iron passed through the soul of Joseph, so let it pass through yours, lest your ruling part, like a kind of tabernacle of the Word, be torn down at the very beginning of faith and at the entrance of spiritual teaching. For, founded by use and exercise, it remains immovable and gives no place to him who, transforming himself as it were into an angel of light, tries to climb to the summit. If he does not see his signs in us, he cannot have authority to resist. So, lest the enemy afflict us, lest he break our bones, let us not fail to persevere in Christ, so that he may say of us: “They have been with me three days now, and I do not wish to send them away fasting, lest they faint on the way.” Blessed is he to whom he himself has given firmness of heart, so that he cannot fail while placed on the path of this life. He does not fail who hopes in the Lord and praises him with inmost affection, since even that horseman whose horse’s heel the serpent bit, though he fell backward, was nevertheless not deceived, because he waited for salvation from the Lord.

There is also a third remonstrance: that, placed among men who practice wickedness, he desires that his cause be separated from their contagion. Many think this should be referred to the Lord Jesus, on the ground that it belongs to him alone not to fear judgment, who conquers when he is judged. For he has judgment from an unjust man, into which Christ willingly enters, as you have it written: “My people, what have I done to you, or how have I grieved you?” But since the Father has given him all judgment, surely not as to one weak but as to a Son, what judgment can he himself undergo? If they think the Son must undergo the Father’s judgment, the Father surely judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. The Father honors the Son, and do you sit in judgment? We have set this down lest anyone think that, as if from fear of the question, we are substituting the person of the prophet in place of the Lord, since holy David, foreseeing in the Spirit that the Jews would rise against the Lord in his passion, does not fear the judgment of his own faith, and asks also that his cause be distinguished from the nation of the persecutors, lest the lineage of the whole Jewish race be entangled with the evil heirs of his race and posterity.

Not without reason, then, is he troubled, who sees that his struggle is against flesh and blood, and that within himself there is a grievous shipwreck, a tempest in his own body, which he cannot bear unless heavenly help supports him; for no enemy is more grievous to a man than those of his own household. And what is so much of one’s household as a man to himself and the weakness of his own flesh? And therefore the prophet hastens and prays with all his heart that Christ may come, the strength of all, who would take up all infirmities and make both one, and, removing the wall, dissolve the enmities of mind and flesh fighting against each other, which divided the inner affection so that it could not come into harmony. So, because there was a battle within himself, and another from his neighbors, who, forgetful of law and equity, were preparing snares of fraud and ambushes, and the hoped-for remedy was deferred, he thought himself cast off, as though the one who had promised to be his remedy refused to come; and, as if called back from the hope of dawning day into the depths of darkness, he prayed that the light might shine to drive away the squalor of this world, that the eternal truth might be present to abolish the deceitful image of this world.

God was present to his prayers, who is wont to stand by unexpectedly and to show himself to those who do not ask for him, as he himself says: “I have become manifest to those who did not seek me”; and, assenting to his devout prayers, he anticipated the course of his petitions with swift fulfillment, and suddenly in the Spirit led the holy prophet into the church and into his tabernacles, and set before his eyes the sacred altar, on which there was to be the redemption of the whole world and the remission of the sins of all throughout the whole world.

Seeing, then, in the Spirit that sweetness of the heavenly sacraments, that table which drives back the snares of those who would crush, as he himself said above: “You have prepared a table before me against those who trouble me,” he says: “And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who gladdens my youth.” Beautifully he said, like Adam: “And I will go in.” For we had been cast out of the Lord’s paradise, from the time when Adam, conscious of his sin, turned away from the face of the Lord. Fittingly too he added: “And I will go in to the altar of God,” as though returning into the sight of God. For he had turned away from our gifts when he did not approve the gifts of Cain the fratricide. Cain lay hidden, estranged from the Lord’s sight; with the savage force of a raging mind, because the Lord had regarded his brother’s gifts, he left his heirs under offence. Abel was slain not for himself, whose blood also cried to the Lord, but he was slain for all of us. Almost no one’s sacrifice was any longer approved, because “there was none who did good, not even one,” since neither faith toward God nor affection toward a brother’s kinship was kept. The Lord Jesus came to raise up Adam; Abel too was raised up, whose gifts pleased God. The Lord Jesus offered himself, that is, the firstfruits of his body, in the sprinkling of blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel spoke on the earth. God regarded his gifts, from which time he left to good heirs the grace of divine reconciliation. Rightly, then, holy David, as in the person of reconciled man, says: “And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who gladdens my youth.”

Let us establish this passage, if we can, by the example of another prophet too: how the Lord first turned away from man’s sacrifices and afterwards was reconciled to him. We have it written in the book of Isaiah, God saying: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I am full”; that is: I abound in my own, I do not seek yours; “burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs, and the blood of bulls and goats, I do not want; do not come thus into my sight.” And yet Abel had offered a sacrifice from the young of the flock, in which he had pleased God. But he who was awaiting the truth of the sacrifice did not require the type; for the saving passion of the Lord was awaited. “For who,” he says, “has required these things from your hands? You shall not continue to tread my courts.” And further on: “When you stretch out your hands to me, I will turn my face from you. But wash, be clean, take away wickedness from your souls. Judge for the orphan and justify the widow, and come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” It is clear, then, that the Lord first turned away from man’s sacrifices and afterwards was reconciled, so as to deign to look upon our sacrifices.

Therefore one who enters into the Lord’s mercy enters securely. Indeed it is said to the good servant: “Enter into the joy of your lord,” but of the wicked servant it is said: “Take him into the outer darkness.” Therefore Adam too was cast out of the heavenly homeland and that seat of paradise and banished to the island of sin. Rightly, then, Scripture says: “Be renewed, you islands,” because we are surrounded by the waves of sins like islands in the strait of this world. These islands, then, have been renewed by the Lord’s coming through the remission of sins; that is, men placed in the middle of the waters in the washing like islands were beaten by the masses of the waves, like islands, by the sounding waves of sins dashing back, like islands on which before, as on rocks of deceit, the simple suffered frequent shipwrecks, because there was guile in the heart and flattery in the mouth. But after the Lord Jesus, in whom there is no guile, came into this world, he calmed the depths of human minds by the exposition of heavenly teaching and poured tranquillity back into the affections of each, taking away the hedge of discord; and as it were the aids of harbors began to be available to those approaching, so that each may anchor the ship of his rest in the affection of his neighbor or brother and cling to a kind of shore in the retreat of a devout mind.

Not without reason, then, does David, as one renewed, cry out: “And I will go in to the altar of my God, to God who gladdens my youth,” so that he who had said above that he had grown old among his enemies, as we read in the sixth psalm, here says that his youth has been renewed from the aged old age of human downfall. For we are renewed through the regeneration of the washing, we are renewed through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we shall be renewed also through the resurrection, as he says later: “Your youth will be renewed like the eagle’s.” Hear how we are renewed: “You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; you will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.” And in Isaiah he says: “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” Rightly is he renewed who is changed from the darkness of sins into the light of virtues and grace, so that he who before was filthy with foul pollution may shine above snow with exceedingly white brightness.

“I will praise you on the lyre, my God.” Our soul has its lyre; for Paul would not say, “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the mind also,” unless he had a lyre that resounded with the plectrum of the Holy Spirit. Our flesh is a lyre when it dies to sin so as to live to God; it is a lyre when it receives the sevenfold Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. For the tortoise, while it lives, is sunk in mud; when it has died, its shell is fitted for the use of singing and the grace of a devout discipline, so as to sound the differences of seven notes in modulated measures. Likewise our flesh, if it lives in bodily enticements, lives in a kind of mire and abyss of pleasures; if it dies to luxury and incontinence, then it takes up true life, then it begins to give forth the sweet melody of good works. Sweet is the sound of chastity, sweet the sound of those who fear God. Indeed “their sound has gone out into all the earth.” Sweet is the sound of faith, which is proclaimed, as it is written, in the whole world. Let this sound go out from us to God, as it went out also from the Thessalonians, so that even when not singing we may sing, and proclaim the Lord by the harmony of good works, to whom be honor, glory, everlastingness from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.