Works (CSEL) 14 part 23/28

「Why do you turn away your face?」 that is: Even though you turn your face away from us, O Lord, yet the light of your countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord. We hold it in our hearts, and it shines in our inmost affection; for no one can subsist if you turn away your face. For all things wait upon you, that you may give them food in due season; when you give to them they gather, when you open your hand all things are filled with goodness. But when you turn away your face they shall be troubled. You shall take away their spirit and they shall fail and return to their dust. You shall send forth your spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Do you recognize what is the food that God supplies to men?

He himself is the food which the only-begotten Son, our Lord, feeds on according to the will of the Father, as he himself says: 「My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.」 This food is saving for us, and all the things of God are saving. You hear of certain members of God; recognize the powers: for his hand is the fullness of goodness, his face is the enlightenment of the mind. And therefore let us always hope in him, let us direct toward him our prayers and all our zeal, and let us not despair. Even if we cannot see him bodily—for neither did Moses despair, to whom it was said: 「You cannot see my face; for man shall not see my face and live,」 and he added: 「Behold, there is a place with me, you shall stand on the rock;」

「and when my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I pass; and I will take away my hand and you shall see my back parts, but my face you cannot see.」 The face of God, therefore, is not seen by man. Yet there is a place in which God may show himself to man by faith. There is this place with God, and therefore if we stand on the rock, that is, in the conscience of this flesh and the firmness of faith, even though we cannot see his fullness, yet as much as we can we shall drink in, as it were, the remnants of that light of his.

For neither did Moses see the whole fullness of his Godhead which dwells in Christ bodily, but he saw the back parts of Christ; he saw his splendor as a man, he saw the glory of his passion through which he opened to us the heavenly kingdom. But Aquila put: 「Why do you hide your face?」—yet so did the others also, which seems to agree with the words of Moses, who said: 「Show yourself to me,」 as if he said: Do not hide your face from me, but rather show it to one desiring to see. And he added: 「Do you forget,」 it says, 「our want and our tribulation?」 Of what want does the holy prophet speak, that he should come into forgetfulness of God; or what is this want, which he complains has escaped our God and Lord?

Poverty is not idle, unless perhaps that poverty which has been accustomed to have God as its protector and rewarder. For if there is a poverty to which the kingdom of heaven lies open, those men rightly judged that their poverty had fallen away from the divine senses, who lamented that their soul was humbled into the dust and said that their belly clung to the earth; but those who cling to the earth seem to be deprived of the divine blessing. Hear, then, what this poverty may be: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' If, therefore, blessed is the poverty to which heaven lies open, let us neglect these earthly riches, let us shun bodily superfluity.

Let us follow the deeds of the apostles, before whose feet each one laid down what money he had from the price of his fields, that it might be distributed to the poor. This evangelical poverty, then, these holy men had begun to practise long before, and therefore they said: 'Wilt thou forget our poverty?' This is like that apostolic saying: 'Behold, we have left all and followed thee.' Good, therefore, is the poverty that proceeds from piety and is undertaken in the exercise of the virtues. And not only their poverty, but their tribulation too they lament as having come into forgetfulness before God.

Good also are the tribulations which are proper to the righteous, who endure them not for their own deserts but for piety's sake; in these the righteous man is not worn away but enlarged, as the holy prophet declares, saying: 'In tribulation thou hast enlarged me'; and the Lord Jesus himself says: 'In tribulation I called upon the Lord, and he heard me in a broad place.' He enlarged the holy apostle Paul when he took from him the light of his eyes; for thus did he confess the Christ whom he had before denied. Therefore he merited to be a vessel of election. Finally, that you may know that the Lord Jesus enlarged Paul, hear the apostle himself saying: 'Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged.' Open then your mouth, confess Christ, for he is fullness.

Where there is fullness, there too is breadth. And like a good teacher who would wish to have disciples his equals, he exhorted us also to be enlarged, saying: 'Be ye also enlarged.' Now when God enlarges anyone in tribulation, then there comes to be a breadth of heart like the sand of the sea, innumerable. Hear what this breadth may be from the words of holy Solomon, when he was to receive wisdom from God. He asked not for riches, not for nobility, not for power, but for wisdom, and in it he found all the things that he had not even asked for. Whence Scripture says that the breadth of his heart was such, like the sand of the sea, innumerable. That you may perceive whence this breadth comes, he says of himself, having come to knowledge: 'In the breadth of thy heart write it.'

And therefore he who has wisdom, let him not keep it in secret, nor for a moment, but let him pour it forth at its going out, and let him everywhere proclaim with authority what he perceives. Symmachus, however, put 'affliction' instead of 'tribulation.' Yet whether it be affliction or tribulation, it is necessary that we abide in the Lord and not depart from him, since with the Lord as our guardian and standing by us we can bravely sustain every contest. But if we neglect the Lord and remove ourselves far from the Lord, we make for ourselves a stronger adversary. EXPLANATION OF PSALM 45. The title of this psalm is inscribed thus: 'Unto the end; for the sons of Korah, for the hidden things, a psalm of David himself.' What is 'for the hidden things'?

That he had received knowledge of hidden things through the revelation of the Lord Jesus, the holy prophet also recalls in the fiftieth psalm, saying: 'The uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest unto me.' And what those hidden things are, we are taught in the holy Gospel by the Son of God, who says that the mysteries of wisdom are hidden from the wise and revealed unto babes. These are, unless I am mistaken, the things which 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him.'

Therefore let us hide away the hidden things of wisdom in the secret of our heart, let us not rashly divulge them to any save to the partakers of the sacraments, whom the Lord has called to his grace—he who wishes to be entreated in secret, since he alone is the one who knows the hidden and secret things. Finally, the Lord Jesus himself, for the receiving of the law, willed that Moses alone—yet not without Joshua—should ascend the mountain; and in the Gospel too he revealed the glory of his resurrection to Peter, John and James alone out of the whole number of disciples. Thus he willed his mystery to be hidden, and he often admonished them not to announce easily to anyone what they had seen, lest some weaker one should meet a stumbling-block, who could not, with a wavering mind, drink in the power of the sacraments.

Finally, Peter himself knew not what he said, when he supposed that three tabernacles should be made for the Lord and his servants. Then he could not endure the splendour of the glory of the Lord transfigured; he fell to the earth; the sons of thunder, James and John, fell also, and a cloud covered them, nor could they rise until after Jesus came and touched them and bade them rise and put away their fear. They entered, then, into the cloud, that they might come to know things hidden and secret, and there they heard the voice of God saying: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.' What is 'this is my beloved Son'? It is this: 'Err not, Simon, in supposing that the Son of God is to be compared with the servants of God. This is my Son.'

Moses is not a son, Elijah is not a son, although the one opened the sea and the other closed the heaven. For by the word of the Lord each overcame the nature of the element; but they furnished a ministry, while this is he who made firm the waters, closed the heaven with drought, and when he willed loosed it into showers. Where testimony of the resurrection is admitted, let the ministries of servants give their assent; where the glory of the rising Lord is shown, the splendour of the servants is hidden. For the rising sun overspreads the very orbs of the stars, and all their lights vanish under the sun of this world. How then, beneath the eternal Sun of righteousness and that divine radiance, could the carnal stars be seen?

Where, then, are those lights which before by some miracle shone in your eyes? They are darkness, in all comparison with the eternal light. Let others hasten to please God by their own ministries; this is the only one who is the true and eternal light, in whom the Father is well pleased, or in whom I am well pleased, so that whatever he has done may be mine, and whatever I have done may rightly be believed to be the work of the Son. Hear him saying: 'I and the Father are one.' He did not say, 'I and Moses are one'; he did not say that there was any sharing of divine glory between himself and Elijah. Why do you prepare three tabernacles? This one has no tabernacle on earth, but in heaven. The apostles heard, and they fell, troubled with dread.

The Lord came and lifted them up and bade them tell no one what they had seen. To him, then, keep your hidden things, to whom David committed his hidden things, saying: 'From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord'; for the receptacles in which the hidden mysteries of piety are kept ought to be clean. And therefore it is said to you: 'Drink water from thine own vessels and from the springs of thine own wells, and let thy waters overflow in the streets,' that you may be cleansed by a watering spring. Therefore it is said to you: 'Let thy presses overflow with wine'; therefore it is said: 'In tribulation thou didst call upon me, and I delivered thee, and I heard thee in the hiding-place of the tempest, I proved thee at the water of contradiction.' For there is in tribulations a certain savage tempest within the breast, when there are 'fightings without, fears within.'

There is the water of contradiction, when our thoughts toss as it were with some surge of the sea's brine, and are calmed by no stability of resolution in the depth of the mind. Then is the tempest in the hiding-place, then the water of contradiction, which can be stilled only by the word of Christ, by which he forgives us our sins, according to what he himself deigned to say: 'Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.' Speak, Lord Jesus: thy word is medicine, thy word is light, thy word is the washing away of our defilement, thy word is a fountain; thou speakest, and guilt is washed away. And because the discourse has been drawn from the hiding-place of the tempest and from the water of contradiction, the Word of God has become all things for us.

It was made flesh, that it might preserve the flesh; it was made water, that by its grace it might temper the water of contradiction and take away the bitternesses of impiety. And therefore it is written: 'The word in a man's heart is deep water'; in one place 'word,' in another again 'counsel'; for there is good counsel where there is the good Word of God. And therefore the law says to you: 'Take heed to thyself, lest an evil word arise in thy heart,' and Jesus says: 'Why think ye evil in your hearts?' For God sent his Word to heal man, not to destroy him. This Word is medicine, not punishment. Let this Word be in your heart and in your mouth; let this Word be in the hidden places, where the devil lies in wait; let the Word enter, let the devil go forth.

For if the devil creeps in, Christ withdraws, as he withdrew from Judas after the devil had plunged himself into his heart. And so do you say: 'From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord,' lest the devil lie in wait in the hidden places, like a lion in his den. But if you piously and faithfully keep the hidden things of Christ, there will be no place for the devil to lie in wait. And therefore in the ninth psalm David, writing of the hidden sacraments of the Lord—which are the conversion of sinners, the calling of the nations, the kingdom of God, the preparation of the heart, the judgment of the poor, the refreshment of the needy—says that the adversary must first be driven out from the hidden and secret places of your breast, lest he sit in the hidden places, desiring to slay the innocent. And therefore it is said to you:

'Enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret.' Let your prayer descend there, where he may hear it who searches out hidden things; there let him discover your patience, whether in covering over an injury or in declining boastfulness; for the wise man conceals his injury. There is the hiding-place of wisdom; for 'he made darkness his hiding-place'; 'the evil shall seek me and shall not find me.' Therefore Abraham dug a well, that whoever sought water might find it; therefore Isaac dug a well; therefore the Lord Jesus sat at the well—and there was the spring of Jacob—he sat at the well, that you might seek. There the fountain was for you—Christ. He is a fountain, that the waters might overflow for those who seek, by which all the disgraces of the flesh may be washed away or its fires extinguished.

This, then, is the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God, that the evil find it not, but the good seek it and busy themselves in the zeal and meditation of acquiring it. Do you wish to know how true this is? Hear the words of Wisdom himself: 'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.' Knock, then, at the door, for Christ is the door; knock at the gate of the Word, that it may be opened to you for the uttering of the mystery of Christ, and that you may be able to find the treasures of wisdom hidden in Christ. In him is wisdom for us, in him our life is hidden, as Paul affirmed, who was caught up even unto the third heaven, that he might hear things which it is not lawful for man to speak. How great is the discipline of hidden things!

It is permitted to a man to know, and it is not permitted to speak. To know is life, to speak is death. Knowing, then, that the end of the hidden things—which in Greek is called 'skopos'—is this, and that the sum is this: that the unworthy may not lay hold of the discipline of wisdom, and that those who have the desire—yet by the merits of life and faith supporting them—labour to grasp the knowledge of the divine sacraments and sweat in daily exercises, may merit to obtain the fruit of their endeavour; let us read more diligently the ninth psalm and the forty-fifth, that we may be able with faithful mind to comprehend the wisdom hidden in mystery; for these alone bore the title concerning hidden things. But let us now set upon the psalm. 'Our God is a refuge and strength.' What is 'our'?

It is this: 'of us who believe in thee.' So also elsewhere: 'Lord, thou hast been our refuge'; 'our,' he says, who believe—not the unbelieving, but we who seek, not we who flee from the truth. For he can say this who has placed the hope of his salvation in the protection of God alone. To us, then, thou hast been a refuge, and our refuge and strength, who are of the peoples of the nations. The Jews denied thee, the Jews received thee not, and therefore thou art turned to the Gentiles; thou hast called us and been made our refuge and art our strength. Do you wish to know that it was said of us who are of the Gentiles? 'The cross of the Lord is to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to us the power of God and wisdom'; and below:

'But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God.' Surely Paul spoke not of the Jews nor of the Gentiles, but of those who, converted to the Lord Jesus, would proclaim him the author of their salvation. You have fled, then, to Christ: forsake not the foundation, abandon not your confirmer, that he who received you may himself guard you, and the holy trafficker for our souls may acknowledge his own gain. 'A helper in tribulations which have found us exceedingly.' Well does 'exceedingly' answer to both, so that it may be understood both 'in tribulations which have found us exceedingly' and 'a helper exceedingly.' For the greater the tribulations have been, the greater and more vehement are the helps necessary for us.

And therefore it generally happens that we are crowned in the heavier and harsher contests, because by tears and groanings and more frequent prayers we draw to ourselves the aid of the eternal Godhead. Whence it comes that we fear not when our earth is troubled and the mountains are removed, for 'if thou art for us, who is against us?' We cannot fear the frailties of this flesh, which is broken by fear and dread, inflamed by lusts, softened by luxury, enervated by delights, steamed by fevers, vexed by pain, made faint by anguish. Or when those mountains are removed into the heart of the sea, of which the Saviour said: 'If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall not only do this to the fig tree, but even if ye shall say to this mountain:'

'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' nothing shall be impossible to you.' This mountain cast itself into the heart of Judas and troubled his mind with a grievous tempest, agitating it with the waves of diverse passions. For just as the soul is compared to the fertility of the lands, fruitful in good works and in the fruits of devotion and faith—so that 'the smell of Jacob is as the smell of a full field'—so too the soul of him who knows not how to be quiet, and stirs up grave waves with bitter thoughts, is figured by the unrest of a stormy sea. Finally, not even with a deceitful kiss did the Lord Jesus temper the bitterness of Judas the betrayer. The betrayer received the kiss, poured in poison, inflicted death; whose sting indeed Christ blunted, but the betrayer alone did not escape.

And that he might evidently make this kind of mountain manifest to us, elsewhere too, when he had bidden a demon go out from a man, and the apostles asked for what cause they themselves had been unable to cast it out, he said: 'This kind is not cast out except by prayer and fasting,' and he added: 'If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place,' signifying with his hand what mountain it was that perfect faith could remove. For perfect faith is compared to a grain of mustard seed, the apostle saying: 'If I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, it profits me nothing.' There are also those who thus distinguish: 'and the mountains shall be carried away,' so that there follows:

'In the hearts of the sea they roared, and its waters were troubled, the mountains were shaken in his might.' Not good are the waters which roar and are troubled and cannot furnish drink; better are those which pass through, as it is written: 'Among the midst of the mountains the waters shall pass through, and all the beasts of the field shall drink, the wild asses shall take it in their thirst.' Finally, where the legion of demons sought and received power to enter into the swine, it hurled itself with great violence into the sea, and those waters were troubled by the headlong plunge of their herd. Elsewhere too the same prophet David thus set it down:

'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee and were afraid'—that is, the good powers, which by the knowledge of the heavenly Word are calm, not terrible with noise and crashing. But of the evil powers what does he say? 'And the depths were troubled; a multitude of the noise of the waters.' The depths see not God, and therefore they are ever liable to disturbances. And he explained what the depths were: 'a multitude,' he says, 'of the noise of the waters.' For that beast also, Antichrist, ascends out of the abyss, that he may make war against Elijah and Enoch and John, who for the testimony of the Lord Jesus were restored to the earth, as we read in the Apocalypse of John. To him was given a mouth speaking great things, that he might sound forth against God revilings full of fury and of sacrilege.

The waters roared, then—that is, the unclean spirits—when they were troubled, seeing the works of God, dreading at the coming of the saving Lord that judgment was drawing near to them. The waters roared and were troubled in the Lord's passion. Whence also it was said: 'Why did the nations rage, and the peoples imagine vain things?' And elsewhere Scripture says: 'Their memory perished with a noise.' The devil seeks noise, Christ silence. Finally, 'as a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth'; and elsewhere: 'He shall not cry, nor contend, neither shall any man hear his voice in the street, until he send forth judgment unto victory.' What is this victory but the victory over the serpent?

In this might of the Son of God the mountains were shaken, when the devil and his ministers saw the dead rising again. These are the mountains that are troubled; those are the mountains that are carried away into paradise, to whom it is said: 'Today shalt thou be with me in paradise'; and another, to whom it is said: 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me'; and Enoch, who was caught up, lest the malice of the world should change him. After the Lord's passion, what else ought to follow, except that a river went forth from the body of the Lord, when from his side water and blood flowed, by which he gladdened the souls of all, because by that river he washed away the sin of the whole world?

There is also a river that goes out from Eden and encircles the whole earth—the Word of God, by which the intelligible paradise is watered and every soul is called to the grace of Christ, the Word of God himself saying: 'If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. To him to whom I shall give water, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.' For out of that one Word of God flowed the streams of the four rivers—of prudence and fortitude, of temperance also and of justice. For 'to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the grace of healings in one Spirit, to another the working of powers. For all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each one as he wills.'

These are the rushings of the river, when it pours itself out by a spontaneous division into the grace of the ministries of operation and of power. By these channels, then, of the river from on high, that city in which God dwells is watered, and the tabernacle of the Most High is sanctified—every soul that is inhabited by Christ, or that body which the Virgin bore, of which the angel Gabriel said: 'And that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, the Son of the living God.' A good tabernacle, which no sins could overshadow, the admirable temple of God and the heavenly hall, which, once dissolved, could not be corrupted, but within three days rose again, raised up by him who seemed to be dead.

Nor is it a wonder, since God was in the midst of his city and was not moved—whether because the Son of God was moved by no lapse into any sin, nor tottered through the offense of any error, nor wavered at the impulse of any bodily allurement; or because the grace of God did not forsake his soul, but abode inseparably in it, in that it remained immaculate from all defilement of sin. Whence also the Son of God said to the Father: 'Neither wilt thou leave my soul in hell.' Therefore, because it lay in him not even to sin in the flesh, he said divinely: 'I am in the Father, and the Father in me'; and elsewhere: 'I was delivered up, and I went not forth.' From him surely he went not forth, to whom he afterward said: 'I have risen, and am still with thee.'

But where anyone sins more grievously, God is moved in him, so as to pass away from him. Whence to Adam sinning he appeared to be walking, and to Stephen standing, because the one fell in transgression, the other was crowned in martyrdom. And in the book of Zechariah it is thus written: 'The Lord shall walk in the commotion of the threatening of his wrath.' Likewise it was said in the Gospel to the Jews: 'Behold, your house shall be left unto you desolate'; for the Lord forsook the Jews, and at once ruin followed the synagogue. But had Christ not forsaken it, the final destruction would never have followed it. We have shown, then, what was said: 'God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.' There follows:

'God shall help her at the dawn,' by which is signified that the morning resurrection confers on us the supports of heavenly aids—the resurrection which repelled night and poured back day, as Scripture says: 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' But behold the mystery. In the evening Christ suffered; therefore also according to the law the lamb is slain toward evening. In the morning he rose; for thus it is written: 'Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came at the first light to the sepulchre, while it was yet dark, and saw the stone removed from the door.'

At the evening of the world he is slain, the light now failing, because this whole world was in darkness and would have been wrapped in greater squalors of darkness, had not Christ come to us from heaven as the eternal light, to pour back upon the human race the times of innocence. The Lord Jesus suffered, then, and by his blood forgave our sins; the light of a purer conscience shone forth, and the day of spiritual grace gleamed again; whence also the apostle says: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand.' We have awakened, therefore; let us no longer sleep; we have put on the garment of light; let us not return into the cloaks and cast-off skins of dark conversation;

to revellings and delights, which belong to the time of night, we have said farewell; we have chosen sobriety, by whose grace Jacob found the birthrights which he did not possess. In other codices too it is found: 'God helps her with his countenance.' What this also signifies, let the prophet himself teach us; for he himself said in the later verses: 'Show thy face, and we shall be saved.' The aspect of God, then, is our salvation, and in his countenance is our help. How great a power there is in it, divine Scripture declares, which not idly appended that 'God had respect unto the gifts of Abel, but unto Cain he had not respect'; and therefore Cain was grieved, because he knew that his sacrifice had displeased God, but his brother's had pleased him.