Letters 140.19–140.26

When, therefore, we are not heard for keeping or obtaining temporal goods, when we pray to God for these, he forsakes us in that he does not hear us; but he does not forsake us for the better things which he wants us to understand, prefer, and desire. Hence the psalm continues and says: "I have cried to you by day, and you will not hear, and by night" (here too "and you will not hear" is understood); but see what he adds: "and not for folly to me." He says this, then: You will not hear me crying by day, that is, in prosperity, so that I may not lose it, nor by night, that is, in adversity, so that the prosperity I have lost may return; but you will do this not for folly to me, but rather so that I may become wise as to what I ought now, through the grace of the New Testament, to expect from you, what to desire, what to ask. For I cry out that temporal goods may not be taken from me; "but you dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel." I do not want you to forsake my desire by which I seek bodily happiness; but this is in the filth of oldness, while you seek the cleanness of newness. By not hearing this desire you forsake it, because you seek love, in which to dwell; and "the love of God is poured out in our hearts," but "through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Therefore "you dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel," the praise of those who see you, because they are praised not in themselves but in you; "for what do they have that they did not receive," so that "he who glories, let him glory in the Lord"?

This is the grace of the New Testament. For in the Old Testament, when you were making known that even earthly and temporal happiness should be asked and hoped for from none but you, "our fathers hoped in you; they hoped and you delivered them; they cried to you and were saved; they hoped in you and were not put to shame." For those fathers, living among their enemies, you both filled with riches and delivered from their foes, and made to win glorious victories, and freed from various deaths. For one you put a ram in his place so that he should not be struck; another you made whole from his rotting sores and restored to him double what he had lost; another you kept unharmed and whole among hungry lions; by others, walking about amid the flames, you were praised with a grateful voice. Something of this kind the Jews expected to happen in Christ, by which they might prove whether he was truly the Son of God. In their person it is said in the book of Wisdom too: "Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there will be regard paid to his words. For if he is truly the Son of God, he will take him up and deliver him from the hands of his adversaries." "These things," it says, "they thought, and they erred; for their malice blinded them." For attending to the time of the Old Testament and to that temporal happiness of the fathers, in which God showed that even such gifts were his own to be given to them, they did not see that the time had now come when it was to be revealed in Christ that God properly gives eternal goods to the just, he who gives temporal goods to the ungodly too.

Finally, when he had said, "Our fathers hoped in you; they hoped and you delivered them; they cried to you and were saved; they hoped in you and were not put to shame," see what he added: "But I am a worm and not a man." This seems indeed to have been said simply to commend humility, to show himself in the eyes of his persecutors as something most abject and despised; but the height of the secret and the depth of the mystery are not to be despised, especially in words which are fitted to so great a Savior in the proclamation of prophecy. A most elegant sense has been given of this by earlier writers: that Christ wished to be foretold by this name because a worm is born from flesh without intercourse, as he was born of a virgin. But Job in his book, when speaking of the heavenly creatures, that even they are scarcely clean in God's sight, says: "How much more man, who is rottenness, and the son of man, a worm." He put "rottenness" for mortality, which carries the necessity of dying as if already conceived, into which man was thrust by sinning; and "the son of man, a worm," born of rottenness, as it were rotten, that is, mortal from mortality. And so he has prompted us to seek another sense in these words of the psalm, without setting aside or rejecting that one: that we should examine not only what he says, "But I am a worm," but also what he added, "and not a man," according to what I have quoted from the book of Job, as if he said: But I am the son of man and not man; not that Christ is not a man, of whom the apostle says, "One also is the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (for every son of man is a man), but this sense looks to a certain one who was a man in such a way that he was not a son of man, that is, Adam. Perhaps, then, "But I am a worm and not a man" was said thus: But I am the son of man and not man; as if it were said: But I am Christ, in whom all are made alive, not Adam, in whom all die.

And therefore learn, O men, through the grace of the New Testament, now to desire everlasting life. Why do you want so much, as something great, to be delivered from death by the Lord as our fathers were delivered, when God was making known that there is no other giver even of earthly happiness besides himself? That happiness belongs to the old man, and that oldness began from Adam. "But I am a worm and not a man": Christ, not Adam. From the old one you were old; from the new one be new: men from Adam, sons of men from Christ. For not without reason does the Lord in the Gospel most familiarly call himself the Son of Man rather than man; nor without reason does he say in another psalm, "Men and beasts you will save, O Lord, as your mercy has been multiplied, O God." For from you comes even this salvation common to men and beasts. But the new men have another, a salvation of their own, separate from the fellowship of beasts, which belongs to the New Testament; they certainly have it, for of it he goes on in the same place to say: "But the sons of men will hope under the shelter of your wings; they will be inebriated with the abundance of your house, and you will give them to drink of the torrent of your pleasure; for with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light." Certainly here too, when he had said "men" above, he said afterward "but the sons of men," as if distinguishing the sons of men from men. For in that happiness of the salvation which is common to men and beasts he wished to call them by the name which would show that they belong to that first man, with whom oldness and death began, who was a man in such a way that he was not a son of man; but on these latter, who hope for another happiness, the ineffable pleasure of the fountain of life and the light of everlasting light, he imposed the name by which their Lord, in whom such grace was revealed, wished more familiarly to be called; and he called them sons of men rather than men.

Do not think, however, that a rule of speech is being fixed to be kept by a perpetual law, so that wherever you read "men" or "sons of men" you always understand them according to this distinction; but according to the circumstances of the passage, from which the sense is drawn if it is plain, and dug out if it is hidden. So in this place of this psalm, whom would not the intent of the distinction strike, when he who had said, "Our fathers hoped in you and you delivered them; they cried to you and were saved; they hoped in you and were not put to shame," adds, "But I"? For he does not say "And I," but "But I." What then is this one who distinguishes himself so? "But I," he says, "am a worm and not a man"; as if he said: to those whom you heard and delivered you were commending that happiness which, belonging to the Old Testament, was to be granted to the old man, who began from Adam; but I am a worm, that is, a son of man, not a man like that man who was not a son of man.

And therefore I am also what follows: "the reproach of men and the outcast of the people; all who saw me mocked me, and spoke with their lips and shook their heads: He hoped in God, let him deliver him, let him save him, since he wants him." This they said with their lips, not in their heart, taunting him because it was not happening, not believing that it would happen. Yet this too happened, but as it had to happen in the Son of Man, in whom the hope of eternal life belonging to the New Testament was to be revealed, not as they expected. And because they did not see it happen, they taunted him as one overcome, belonging as they did to the Old Testament and to the man in whom all die, not to the Son of Man in whom all will be made alive. For man brought death on himself and on the son of man; but the Son of Man, dying and rising, brought life to man, "the reproach of men and the outcast of the people" even to death. For he willed to suffer this in the sight of his enemies, so that they would think him forsaken, so that the grace of the New Testament might be commended, by which we might learn to seek another happiness, which is now in faith, but later will be in sight. "For as long as we are in the body," says the apostle, "we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight"; and so now in hope, then in reality.

Finally, his resurrection, which, unlike ours, was not to be put off for long, so that from the example of his flesh we might learn what we ought to hope for in ours, he chose to show not to strangers but to his own: strangers, I mean, not by nature but by vice, which is always against nature. He died, therefore, in the sight of men, but rose in the sight of the sons of men; because death belonged to man, resurrection to the Son of Man; "for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive." So, in order to exhort his faithful by the example of his flesh to despise temporal happiness for eternal, he endured even to death his persecutors, raging and proudly mocking him as one conquered and crushed. But by raising his flesh and restoring it to the sight and touch of his disciples, and ascending into heaven while they watched, he built them up and showed them with most evident truth what they ought to expect and what to preach. But those from whom he had endured such evils even to death, boasting over him as overcome and extinguished, he left in that opinion, so that whoever of them wished to be saved with eternal salvation should believe about the resurrection of the dead one what those who saw it preached, with signs bearing witness, and for which preaching they did not hesitate to suffer similar things.

For this reason James too, one of his apostles, in his letter, when exhorting the faithful who after Christ's passion and resurrection were still held in this life, and distinguishing the dispensation of the Old and the New Testament, says: "You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord"; lest they should endure temporal evils patiently in order that what we read Job received back should be restored to them. For he was made whole from that wound and rottenness, and everything he had lost was restored to him doubled. In this the faith of the resurrection is also commended. For his sons, restored not double but in the same number, signified that those also whom he had lost would rise again; so that they too, joined to those former ones, might not be found strangers to the restoration of the double. So, that we might not hope for such a reward when we suffer temporal evils, he does not say, "You have heard of the endurance and the end of Job," but, "You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the end of the Lord"; as if he said: Endure temporal evils as Job did, but for this endurance do not hope for temporal goods, which came back to him increased, but rather for eternal goods, which went before you in the Lord. Job, then, was one of those fathers who cried out and were saved. For when he says, "But I," he indicates clearly enough with what salvation he wishes them to be understood to have been saved: the one in which he himself was certainly forsaken; not that they were strangers to eternal salvation, but that what was to be revealed in Christ was then hidden. For in the Old Testament there is a veil, which will be taken away when anyone passes over from there to Christ. When he was crucified the veil of the temple also was torn, to signify what the apostle said of the veil of the Old Testament: "since in Christ it is done away."