Homilies 15.1–15.5

On Psalm 5. Homily 1. “Give ear to my words, O Lord, understand my cry,” and the … You who await the blessed end of life and wish to become heirs of God, come, let us search out together the rights of the inheritance in the present psalm, as in a will. For the psalm before us is entitled: “For the end, for her who inherits.” And who is she? The Church. And why did he not say “for the heir”? Because she is always inheriting. As a queen she inherits many things: the souls of the faithful, the patriarchs, the prophets, Christ, heaven. To say “for her” belongs to an advocate, or to one who prays. In documents such as dowry deeds and wills, the whole narrative is written above, but at the end of the document the owner of the property signs himself, and the whole paper and document is of no use unless the owner signs at the end. So too, since the testament of Christ was written beforehand through the prophets, as through notaries (he himself is witness, saying, “Take a roll of paper”), and Christ wrote beforehand many gifts to the Church from the Gentiles as his heir, at the end, by his death, [he confirmed] the testament … the written gifts remained invalid until … confirmed it. And that: “I have made a covenant with my elect.” Through Hosea he said to her: “And I will betroth you to myself for ever.” When? When Paul [says], “I betrothed you to one husband as a pure virgin.” And through Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; behold, I come and will dwell in your midst, says the Lord, and many nations will flee to the Lord.” When? At the end. And through Isaiah: “The wealth of the nations of the sea.” When? At the end. And through Ezekiel: “All the choice things of Lebanon I have given to her.” When? At the end. All these the Master himself signed at the end and confirmed … For this reason, so that Christ might come into the world and himself, through the Gospel, sign and fulfil the promises made to the heiress through the prophets, the prophets pray, “For the end, for her who inherits.” “I did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfil.” “Christ is the fulfilment of the law for righteousness.” And many look at the signature at the end of a letter before its beginning. For whom is the signature at the end? “For her who inherits.” Hence, since he had to sign at the end, when he was about to suffer he took a reed in his right hand, a symbol of signing; and he put on purple, to show the heiress that the one signing is a king and not a private person; and the title was set up on the cross in place of the paper … as to the heir: “Do you want me, O Church, to read you the signature? Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. For today I die, and you enter the pastures of the inheritance.” As he showed the cross, which was a shame, to be a glory (“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”), so he wrote the rest with the reed: release and sentence. “For the end, for her who inherits, a psalm of David.” This is a prophecy of what was done at the death of Christ, when Christ, dying, left us the cross as a weapon and a crown. Therefore he said at the end of the psalm: “Lord, you have crowned us as with a shield of favour,” giving the seal of the cross on the forehead.

… For the cross is a weapon and a crown: a weapon because of those who make war, a crown because of those who conquer; a weapon for those who suffer hardship together as soldiers, a crown for those who reign together. Since, then, the inheritance is fine (for it was the kingdom of heaven), and the heiress is fine too (for it was the Church from the Gentiles: “You are all fair, my neighbour, and there is no blemish in you”), therefore he says: “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” But the Jew claims the psalm “for her who inherits” as his own, saying: “God made covenants with me.” Is the testator the slave of his own testament? If someone is ungrateful among his heirs, he changes his testament and makes the heirs void. And that, being displeased with the Jews, he changed the first covenant and wrote another, a new one, he says through Jeremiah the prophet: “Behold, I make a new covenant with the house of Israel” (but not all who are from Israel [are Israel]), “not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers when they came out of Egypt.” And he adds: “Because they did not abide in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.” If you are among the disregarded, you are not the heir. Let us see, then, what the testator says about the heir: “I wish and command that this man, who has pleased me in all things, be my heir, even if he is a stranger.” And if he has sons who have grieved him, he sets out in writing the charges against them, and makes them disinherited. Let the testament be brought out, Jew. You received it not as your own testament, but as a deposit; for an heir never receives the testament while the testator is alive. If he does receive it, he makes the testament suspect, and it is contested by the disinherited. Since, then, you received the testament as its keeper, bring it out, and let us see what the testator says about you before the witnesses. “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: I begot sons and raised them up, but they rejected me.” And so that you may not think this is said about someone else, …

… God will repay him with greater things; and so that … the small tokens of friendship from us … I wish to be given to him … “[The ox knows its owner, and the donkey] its master's manger; but Israel did not know me, and the people did not understand me.” Are you the heir? And what thanks does he write about the Gentiles? “A people whom I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me.” About you he says: “Because of you my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles.” And about the Gentiles: “For from the risings to the settings my name has been glorified among the Gentiles.” About the people and the synagogue he says: “Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” “I have forsaken my house, I have left my inheritance.” And why did you leave your inheritance? Because “my inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest.” What did it do? “It raised its voice against me.” Saying what? “Away, away, crucify him.” And about the Gentiles: “You have given an inheritance to those who fear your name.” That is why he took the book of Isaiah and read it as a testament. For he took the roll, and having read it, signed it: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled.” Tell me, Jew, does it say “At the beginning, for her who inherits”, and not “For the end”? Let us see: did you inherit at the end? Were you not cast out of the city? Did you not lose the temple? Were you not scattered everywhere? Are you not a slave of the Romans? Have you not been cast out of the inheritance ever since you stretched out your hands against the heir? You at the beginning … mighty kings, and gave their land as an inheritance … The Gentiles at the end inherited the kingdom of heaven: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” You heard yourself called daughter of Babylon: “Wretched daughter of Babylon.” And the Gentile [Church] became the daughter of God in your place: “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear.” “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” My words: pure and unclouded, guileless, true and holy, with no taste of blasphemy or babbling, worthy of your love for mankind. My words: above all human understanding, higher than every tongue of angels, stronger than every intercession of the saints, more precious than every prayer of the righteous, brighter than the sun, more pleasing than incense, sweeter than honey to the faithful. “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” And why did he not say “my word”, but “my words”? Because a discourse includes many words under it, and words are parts … ; a discourse is a heap and summary of words, and words are the drops and tastes of the discourse. As many drops make up rain, yet rain is not likened to a drop, so many words make up a discourse, and a discourse is divided into nouns and verbs; words can be called discourses, but words are not discourses. The prophet, then, asking God to consent to a detailed examination of his words, to read every expression precisely, and to grant what is asked in response to what is read, did not say “Give ear to my word”, but “Give ear to my words, O Lord”; that is, read precisely each expression of my prayer. Do not look at the paper all at once; for my petition does not contain only one petition.

Since each expression has its own plea (for the one entreated is rich and powerful): “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” When we unfold a petition before a judge, if the paper contains many heads, we entreat him: “Master, read the paper word by word for me too; there are many requests; do not think the document a single story.” So the prophet, asking God to consent to examine in detail the things he requests, says: “Give ear to my words, O Lord; understand my cry.” O the love of God for mankind! “Understand” means “perceive”: “Understand, you senseless among the people; and you fools, be wise at last.” We, when speaking to a wise man, do not dare to say, “Perceive what I am saying,” lest he be thought negligent or slow-witted. But to God, who knows our thoughts even before we have them, the prophet said, “Understand, perceive.” But as, in saying “give ear”, he surely did not think that God had ears perceptible to the senses, so in saying to God “understand” he did not speak as to one who must be taught and is ignorant, but as to one who knows our requests ineffably, more sharply than thought, before we ask. Or else, since the righteous man was speaking to God in his mind, and his intense prayer was a cry to him, and he spoke without speaking and cried out without a voice; and since no man perceives the unspoken cry of the soul, but God alone; for this reason he said to the only one who hears those who do not speak: “Understand my cry.” “For you alone,” he says, “know the hearts of men,” as Solomon said … “Understand” means “will to know my affairs.” For this is what he adds, saying: “Attend to the voice of my petition.” And yet a voice is not something one looks at. But a voice, when it is uttered without being written, needs hearing; when it is written on paper and brought to the king, then, speaking as it does through letters, it needs eyes. For a ruler often reads without speaking, and sees the paper as a suppliant and the written words as pitiable supplications, and the words he would have brought into his mind through the gate of hearing he brings in through the more honourable doors of the eyes. “Attend to the voice of my petition.” As you see, so you hear; and as you hear, so you see; for the Divine is without organs, without parts and simple. And since he mentioned a petition, and no ruler receives a written petition, but only a king, he therefore confesses the dignity of the one entreated: “My King.” For you reign over both the advocate and the one for whom he pleads. And having called him King, so that he might not be thought to be calling on a man, he confesses the might and the existence of the King. He anticipates Thomas in confessing the truth. For Thomas said: “My Lord and my God”; and he was not content with saying only “My Lord”, since a man too has been thought worthy of this title. Sarah said of Abraham, “My lord is old”; likewise Jacob said to the profane Esau, “My lord knows that the children are tender”; but none of the saints ever said “my God” [to a man]. Since, then, “my lord” has been said to men, not only to holy ones but even to the profane, but no man ever heard “God” from any of the saints, Thomas, to show that he called Christ Lord not as a man but confessed him as God, did not say simply “My Lord”, but “My Lord and my God”: my Lord, as the one who bought me with his own blood when I had been sold to sin; my God, as the one who granted me forgiveness of sins, for no one can forgive sins but God alone. “My Lord and my God” means “my master and my creator”. For being master belongs to many; but creating belongs to God alone.

The prophet too, then, confessed this before Thomas. For having called the one he entreats King, … God is the avenger in all things, being himself wholly eye, and nothing done in the world escapes him … wholly to see and wholly to hear … to entreat God, therefore he says: “My King and my God.” I am not ruled by sin: “my King.” I do not have my belly as god, but your dignity: “and my God.” Not now only, nor for a short time, nor only in need, but always and even without need I will come to you. “For to you I will pray”: not [“to God”], but “to you”, to show nearness to God. “In the morning you will hear my voice.” What are you saying, prophet? Does he not hear at midday? And how did you say elsewhere, “Evening and morning and midday I will tell and declare, and he will hear my voice”? “But,” he says, “when I bring intercessions for myself or for those with me, then I entreat God at every hour: ‘I will bless the Lord at all times.’ But since I am now interceding for the heiress, the Church from the Gentiles, and she is brought into the inheritance when the Heir of the Father rises in the morning and shows her to be his co-heir, therefore, asking for the Church the promise of the morning, I say: ‘In the morning you will hear my voice.’” Then Mary too, standing in the place of the Church, [came] to the tomb as to a bridal chamber, seeking the bridegroom. And “in the morning” can also be taken of God's swift and most ready help: “Let us press on to know the Lord; we shall find him ready as the dawn; and he will come to us as the early and the late rain to the earth.” For to him be glory and might, now and always and to the endless ages of ages. Amen.