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What worthy reward can be rendered to him according to his deserts? He is brought into the tombs and keeps watch over his own grave-mound. Nor is this a slight punishment—to have no rest in death, to be carried not to the land of the living but to the burial-mounds of the dead. For he who lives is not sought among the dead, but plucks eternal life in Abraham's bosom. And therefore those two men in shining raiment said to the women: 'Why do you seek the living among the dead?'
Then he enumerates the crimes of the impious: that they have removed boundary-stones, and together with the shepherd have plundered the flock; that they have led off the orphan's beast of burden, taken the widow's ox in pledge, reaped a field not their own; that the weak have labored in their vineyards without wage and food; that they have stripped many and made them sleep naked, taking away the covering of their souls. They were drenched with the drippings of the mountains and, because they lacked covering, sheltered themselves against the rock. Orphans were snatched from their mothers' breasts; the fallen, who ought rather to have been lifted up, were crushed. The hungry were defrauded of food; the soul of the little infants groaned grievously. Could He, whom nothing escapes, have been ignorant of these things?
Hell is naked before Him, and there is no covering for the most wicked, because they cannot lie hidden. He stretches out the north wind over nothingness, He suspends the earth upon nothing, binding the water in His clouds, and the cloud is not torn beneath His feet. The pillars of heaven have leapt apart and trembled at His rebuke. By His power He has subdued the sea, and by His discipline He has laid low the sea-monster. The bars of heaven dread Him; by His command He has slain the rebellious dragon. Who understands the power of His thunder? Amid such great outrages, then, what hope is there for the impious 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 to add empty things to empty things.'
And he describes how wretched is the portion of the impious: that even though they have many sons, they are without posterity, for they lack the succession of good merits—for that is the true posterity which is not on earth but in heaven. To men of this kind, therefore, want is their inheritance and death their succession. Though they have heaped up riches, they will go begging, because when they are dead they will be in need who cannot find rest. No one will pity their widows; but they will remain forsaken and bereft of the solace of every companionship. Even though money be gathered like earth and gold be heaped up like mire, their substance will be empty as a spider's web, and the whole patrimony of their name will be consumed as by moths.
The rich man, while he sleeps, shall add nothing; he opens his eyes, and already he is no more. He continues in his sorrows. All things, then, which are in this world are nothing. Gold is in the mines, silver is in the mines: it is dug out of metal and returns to metal. For what else is the mind of the miser but metal? It holds, as if buried, whatever it receives and hides it in the veins of the earth and in lairs, because it knows not how to use it. From the mines gold is daily brought forth: but who has been able to draw anything from the miser? Since, then, the vain hunger for gold profits nothing—because whatever he gathers slips away—those are surely to be pitied who have forsaken the just way and forgotten it, to which precious stones are in no way to be compared.
Hard to search out, impassable to the proud, shut off from the boastful, level to the more humble, open to the wise. And therefore we ought to seek wisdom, that we may walk in the just way, by which that adversary—like a lion seizing and roaring, who runs through this world—could not pass. But he who wishes to search out wisdom, let him not seek it in the abyss like the philosophers, who imagine that they can know its depths of their own accord by their own genius; nor let him require it in the sea—for where there is tempest, where there is the squall of the wind, there wisdom cannot be—but let him seek it there where there is tranquillity of mind and peace, which is above all understanding. ON THE INTERCESSION OF DAVID.
The intercession of holy Job has been run through: now let us undertake that intercession which we find in the Psalms. David himself indeed in many places was not silent about the vanity of the age, and frequently asserted that the things reckoned good in this world are empty, and especially in the thirty-eighth Psalm, in which he says: 'Yet all is vanity, every living man. Though man walks in the image of God, yet he is vainly disquieted; he heaps up treasure and knows not for whom he gathers it.' And elsewhere: 'How long, sinners, O Lord, how long shall sinners glory?'—because here they have a shadowy glory, but when they have departed from this world they cannot find the fruit of consolation.
Yet the same David inserted Psalm 72, in which under the name of Asaph he himself testifies that it was at first his stumbling, so that he was stung by no slight grief. For when he saw sinners in this world abounding in riches and overflowing with prosperous things, while he himself, who had made his heart just, was in afflictions and hardships, and had taken no slight offense at the outset—but afterward, corrected by the Lord's scourges and enlightened by the grace of divine knowledge, had learned the order of the true tradition. Yet nowhere do I find that holy Asaph was vexed by any adversities, whereas indeed holy David endured many grievous things full of perils;
for he speaks of his own labors; wherefore also the psalm is superscribed not as 'of holy Asaph' but as 'for holy Asaph,' as the title teaches. This is made more plainly clear from the Greek Psalter, so that David is seen to have given this psalm, which he himself had written, to this Asaph also—as to others—to be sung. But because it is written in the title itself that the psalms of David have come to an end—yet how did they come to an end, when, after these ten psalms have been run through, the inscription of the titles afterward includes psalms of David right up to the very last end?—therefore, setting aside this definition, let us consider what is the sequence of the psalm and draw our beginning from the first verse of the prophetic intercession. 'How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' The advance of amendment shines forth at the beginning.
For no one can truly confess God to be good except him who acknowledges His goodness not from the successes of his own advantages, but from the depth of the heavenly mysteries and the height of the divine dispensation—a goodness to be weighed not by the appearance of present things, but by the usefulness of things to come. To the just man, therefore, God is always good, both when he is tortured with bodily sufferings and when he is afflicted with the bitterness of punishments; he always says: 'If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why do we not endure the evil ones?' Such a man rejoices to be crushed here, that in the future he may be able to find consolation, knowing that he who has received good things in this life has his reward. He will not be able to hope for future rewards who has not striven, who has not been exercised in the contest of diverse battles.
But he who, whether justly or unjustly, is afflicted in this world rejoices either because he here pays the price of his own offenses, or because he knows that there is with the Lord a more abundant grace if he suffers bitter things unjustly for His name or for some good work—according to that which is written: 'For it is no glory if, sinning, you are punished and endure it; but if, doing well and suffering, you bear it, this is grace with God. For to this you were called, because Christ also died for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow His steps—He who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not.'
Therefore the just man, even if he be on the rack, is always just, because he justifies God and says that he suffers less than his own sins; 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 by the zeal and purpose of charity he shuts fear outside. He knows, as a wise man, to say that the things we suffer in this body are unworthy of the recompense of future glory, and that all the sufferings of this present time cannot be made equal to the reward that is to come. Good, therefore, is God always to this man, who knows at what time He reaps. And so, like a good farmer, here He plows His field with a certain plowshare of stricter abstinence; here He uproots with a certain pruning-hook of the virtues that lops away vices;
here He manures by humbling himself down to the earth, knowing that God raises up the needy from the earth and lifts the poor from the dunghill. Indeed the apostle Paul, unless he had been reckoned dung, could never have gained Christ for himself: here he guards his fruits, that there he may store them up secure. And so God is always good to him, because he always hopes for what is good from God. Receive another point. 'How good,' he says, 'is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' Is God then not good to all? He indeed is good to all, because He is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful. And therefore the Lord Jesus came to save that which was lost; for He came to take away the sin of the world, to heal our wounds.
But because not all seek the remedy—rather, very many flee, lest the force of the ulcer be pricked by the medicines—therefore He heals the willing, He does not constrain the unwilling. Those, then, receive health who seek the remedy; but those who refuse the physician and do not seek the goodness of the physician, which they do not experience, cannot perceive it. He, however, who is treated is also healed, and therefore the physician is good to those whom He has healed. To these, then, God is good to whom He has forgiven sins; but he who has an incurable sin in the ulcer of his mind, how can he reckon the physician good, whom he flees? Beautifully, therefore, the apostle, as we have premised, explained that God is good both to all, who wills all men to be saved.
And especially to the faithful is the prerogative of the divine goodness reserved, to whom both the will of God and grace bring help. But the psalmist also, in saying 'How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!' referred to the judgment of those very men who know not to think otherwise of God than that He is good to all things and in all things. Then in what follows he himself sets forth what he meant, saying: 'But my feet were almost moved, my steps had nearly poured forth, because I was envious in regard to sinners, seeing the peace of sinners.' He certainly does not speak of the feet and steps of the body, but of the direction of the mind and its going, of which he says elsewhere: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of sinners move me.'
Therefore it must always be prayed that the Lord may direct the steps of our souls, lest they slip and, poured forth on some slippery patch of error, be unable to hold their own stability. The cause of the falling, however, is this: that he was envious of the peace of sinners. But we ought to be zealous for the things that are good, not those that are full of disgrace—just as the apostle Paul also expressed it, saying: 'Be zealous always for the good in what is good,' and let it not move you that he placed peace in evil. For indeed in the Gospel too you find there is a peace which Christ rejected, as He Himself says: 'My peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you: not as the world gives, do I give to you.' For there is a peace which has no stumbling-block, and there is one which has.
That which is of love has no stumbling-block; that which is of pretense has one. Therefore the prophet also says: 'Peace, peace; and where is peace?' Let us flee, then, the peace of sinners; for they conspire against the innocent, they band together to oppress the just man, to destroy the widow or to assault her chastity. And therefore there is no 'reclining' for their death, no 'declining' (as very many Latin manuscripts are written), but 'reclining.' For when we labor and bend ourselves to some work and are inclined, we are wont to recline ourselves; but sinners—of grievous offenses, that is, and especially the impious—cannot recline themselves, of whom it is said: 'And bow down their back always.' For they do not raise themselves to heavenly things who have not cleaved to Christ.
And therefore neither do they rise with Him, whose death is most evil, as it is written: 'The death of sinners is most evil.' But he who dies together with Christ and is buried with Him is not only reclined but also raised again. Concerning whom that saying beautifully fits: 'You have turned all his bed in his infirmity'—especially if he be a martyr, whose infirmity is loosed by his passion, and his death by resurrection.
We have seen that rich man who, clothed in purple and fine linen, reclined in this world and feasted sumptuously every day, from whose table poor Lazarus gathered what fell—how, placed in torments in hell, he could not recline himself, but scarcely lifted up to Abraham not his whole self but only his eyes, begging that he might send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. Therefore for him there was no reclining in death, nor any firm support in his stroke. For scourges profit nothing after death. And therefore David, while he was in the life of this body, prepared himself for the scourges, that the Lord might receive him chastened.
Consider again for me holy Job, who was steeped in ulcers and shaken in all his limbs and full of pains throughout his whole body, dissolving the clods of earth with the gore and moisture of his wounds—how, when, placed in this body, he could not recline himself, he found the rest of death. And therefore, conscious of himself, he said: 'Death is rest for a man.' He, then, was not moved in his stroke, nor did he waver by the slipperiness of his speech—he who in all those things sinned not with his lips, as Scripture testifies, but rather found the firm support of his stroke, through which he was strengthened in Christ.
Therefore both Job and David, because they were scourged here, had a firm support in their stroke, because the Father scourges the son whom He receives; but those who are not scourged here are not there received as sons. And therefore they are not in the labors of men, and with men they shall not be scourged, that forever with the devil they may be scourged. Therefore, he says, their pride has taken hold of them; they are covered with their own iniquity and impiety. An evil garment is iniquity, which if anyone wishes to keep upon us, we ought to remit it, lest it begin to come into judgment with us.
And if anyone tries to take away our spiritual tunic which we have received, send back the cloak of iniquity, take up the covering of faith and patience, with which David covered himself in fasting, lest he lose the coverings of virtue. Fasting itself is a covering. Indeed, unless fasting sobriety had clothed holy Joseph, the shamelessness of the adulteress would have stripped him. With which fasting, had Adam wished to cover himself, he would not have been made naked. But because, against the heavenly prohibition, he tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and transgressed the commanded fast by the food of incontinence, he knew himself to be naked. But had he fasted and kept the garments of faith, he would not have beheld himself uncovered.
Let us not, then, clothe ourselves with iniquity and impiety, lest it be said of any of us: 'And he clothed himself with cursing.' Adam too clothed himself ill, who, while he seeks the coverings of leaves, received the sentence of cursing. The Jews clothed themselves with cursing, of whom it is written: 'Their iniquity has come forth as if from fatness, they have passed over into the disposition of the heart.' From 'fat' is the word 'fatty' derived, that is, rich. For just as a soul fed on good things and filled with virtues is replenished as with fat and richness, as it is written, so iniquity, which proceeds as if from fatness, is signified to be not thin and slight, but full of vices. Finally, they did not fall into error by some chance slip, but by deliberation and design passed over into sacrilege.
They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue has passed over the earth. What it is to set one's mouth in heaven, that younger of the brothers teaches us, who, returning to his father, said: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.' But they set their mouth against heaven who suppose that the warrants of their crimes are conveyed to them by some necessity of their birth. These men are wont to spare neither heaven nor earth, so as to think that the life of man is governed by a certain course of the stars. They leave nothing to providence, nothing to good morals. And would that these men too had returned, like that one of the two youths: the good Lord would not have denied a remedy.
And yet, even if they themselves are unwilling to be healed, the Lord reserves the grace of return, so that those who in Israel were cast out through the blindness of their own heart may return through the fullness of the Church, and may not pass the days of this life empty, but may have them full of good work and faith, when the Lord shall have filled them with spiritual grace. But hear how they return. 'Because,' he says, 'blindness in part has befallen Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should enter in, and so all Israel should be saved.' But because the mystery had to be fulfilled, that God should conclude all under unbelief—that is, should refute and convict them—for when two contend, if one is superior, it is said:
'He has shut up that other one.' And therefore, through His mercy, that the world might become subject to God, the people indeed returned among the heirs, but, led astray by the error of their late wickedness, did not believe that God is foreknowing of hidden things. But the Lord reserved for them the grace of future salvation, that they might at some time be redeemed, saying: 'Therefore My people shall return hither.' What is 'hither'? That is, to Me, to My equity and justice, to My worship. 'And it shall fulfill the days of its life.' This indeed you will so understand, that the people may be redeemed, namely that which believes. And though those who did not believe are not redeemed therein, yet the prerogative of redemption is conferred upon the people of God. These men, then, placed in error, said: 'How does God know?'
And is there any knowledge in the Most High?' For they suppose there is no knowledge in God, because sinners abound in worldly prosperity. And he further brings them in as speaking: 'Behold, these very sinners, and abounding in the world, have obtained riches.' You have this more plainly expressed in the Gospel, where that Simon the Pharisee, seeing that that sinful woman came into his house and poured ointment over Christ's feet, said within himself: 'This man, if He were a prophet, would surely know what and what manner of woman it is who touches Him, that she is a sinner.' But the patience of God does not prejudice the truth, and His foreknowledge and providence are by this very fact the more proved—that one placed in sin abounds with the success of worldly prosperities.
At which the stronger man, seeing it, laughs. The incautious man is led astray and is moved. Then the psalmist says that he said: 'Therefore in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent'—that is: I see those men abound, I see all comforts prosper for them, but myself crushed and harassed by very many temptations. In vain, then, have I given myself to innocence and applied myself to the pursuit of a sober manner of life. And beautifully he says: 'I have washed my hands among the innocent,' so that he might be seen not to arrogate to himself the height of innocence, but to render an assiduous pursuit. Meanwhile he testifies that such a speech did not go forth from him with impunity. For he records that he was scourged the whole day, because he had said that in vain he had justified his heart to the Lord;
but after the scourges, the correction of his wrong opinion followed forthwith. 'For straightway,' 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 suffer him to feel these things which he had said. So the light of truth, poured over my mind, was refuting and convicting me, because I had not rightly said: 'In vain have I justified my heart.' For I spoke those things as though set in darkness, and as I recalled them my heart was pricked; but with my heart pricked, my affection was enlightened, so that there came to be in my heart a flaming fire which made in me the spiritual beginning of day.
And so, with the day having risen and dawned for me, and as though placed in many mornings, I understood that I had been made outside the constitution of the generation of the sons of God—I who, when I had first believed because the Maker of the world, providing for the human race, had made all things for our benefit, whether sad things or those that please little, had afterward, disturbed by wrong opinions, lost so good a judgment. So I conferred with my heart and said to myself: 'If I shall so relate, that in vain have I justified my heart'—there came to meet me the voice of God, saying: 'Behold, to the generation of your sons, which I have appointed'—that is:
behold, in the Scriptures you find that I have appointed, O you Adam, to the generation of your sons, that riches are conveyed to the impious by chance, not by any merit. Nor are the profits of treasure rewards of virtue, so that on the contrary want is not the punishment of sin; but these things come indiscriminately, which roll along like a river in a certain flux of the age. And I supposed, and seemed to myself to recognize, that this was true, that this agreed and accorded with divine providence, and that I had been disturbed in vain in those things in which I ought not to have entangled myself. And so, because I seemed to myself to have grasped the true judgment and to have attained knowledge of the matter itself, I said to myself:
'This is labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God and understand in the last things'—that is: there remains for me only the labor of entering into the sanctuary of God, where the Cherubim are, that is, the depth of knowledge, and of not laboring amid uncertainties and opinions; for the narration of a fool is like a burden on the way. Therefore let us enter the shrine of the sacred kinds of knowledge and the inner recesses of truth, that there may be no labor in us; for wisdom leads us away from the feeling of labor. Indeed there is no labor in Jacob; but the cause of labor is ignorance, since he who knows not that rewards are laid up for the just is not refreshed from his labors, but rather is bowed down and broken by the labor of his own imprudence.
Let us, then, enter the sanctuary of God, where the Cherubim are, in which is the remembrance of sacred knowledge and of that true and eternal light. In that candlestick the image shines forth, by which we may be able to understand in the last things. For the holy man knows in the end and attains perfect wisdom by 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, except that one, when the kingdom is delivered 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 discipline and studies is perfection.
This, then, is the first principle of true knowledge: that the things which are in the world happen by chance. The second is this: that, on account of their evasions, You have set for them the flowing successes of worldly advantages and an abundance of riches, lest they should plead that, on account of want and the bitterness of some grief and mourning, they were less devout, and were driven by the necessity of poverty into the fault of robbery and the zeal of plunder. For they were not enriched with riches or exalted with honors for the tranquillity of life and the enjoyment of gladness, but so that complaint might be excluded and hardship heaped up. And so such men are cast down while they are exalted.
For it is not grace, but ruin, where neither the gift of lasting enjoyment is reserved and the excuse for offending is taken away. For what is the weight of a graver complaint 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 wherein have I been troublesome to you? Answer me. Did I not lead you out of the land of Egypt and free you from the house of bondage?' Behold how the impious 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 forsaken the Giver of life's security and prosperity, whom they rather ought to have obeyed. But as the justice of God is great, so also is His vengeance severe.
For when has the impious man been wont to endure, of whom you also have it written elsewhere: 'I saw the impious highly 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 the impious man suddenly powerful in this world: while you pass by, he already is no more. How great is the shadow on the earth, yet how short-lived! Shift your step, and the shadow has passed away. Or if anything here disturbs you, lift the step of your mind to the things that are to come, and you will find the impious man not there to be, whom here you believed to be; for he is not who is nothing. Indeed the Lord has known those who are His;
but those who are not, He does not acknowledge, because they themselves have not acknowledged Him who is. Concerning these, then, here too he says: 'They have failed and perished on account of their iniquity, like the dream of one rising up'—that is: thus do the impious fail and vanish, like the dream of one rising up from sleep at first, 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 he who dreams, dreams in the night, and night is in darkness. They are sons of darkness, deprived of the Sun of justice and the splendor of virtue, always sleeping and not keeping watch, of whom it is well said: 'They have slept their sleep, and have found nothing.'
For when their souls have been separated from the body, like men loosed from the body's sleep they will find nothing, they will hold nothing, and what they thought they held they will lose; since the fool and the senseless man, when he has overflowed with riches, will leave his wealth to strangers, nor will the glory of his house go down together with him to the lower regions. What follows also shows how his image is not found but perishes, since his image is not found in that city of the Lord, the Jerusalem on high. For the Lord painted us after His own image and likeness, as He Himself teaches, saying: 'Behold, O Jerusalem, I have painted thy walls.' If we act well, that heavenly image remains in us;