'They fled from me as from a dead man and abhorred me, because I desired to confess my sins to you, because I offered myself to your scourges to be wounded, because I chose the scars of wounds above the banquets of kings and the boasting of powers. Do you alone not forsake me; do you cling to your little servant, you who raise up the needy from the earth and lift the poor from the dunghill. Upheld by your company, I shall reckon myself more thronged than those courted by surrounding peoples. My scars have indeed festered, but I still long for the scars of your stripes, which, when the wounds are healed, are drawn over, so that afterward no ulcer may appear. Good are the scars of triumphal wounds, in which the victors of this earthly battle glory:'
how much more illustrious are those wounds which are seen to be received for the faith and for the glory of your name! That is the scar which opens heaven, gains the kingdom, finds immortality. This, then, brothers, is the blessed scar, for 'blessed are they who have washed their robes in their own blood.' Thus the flesh of death began to be a robe of glory, in which Paul too, the chosen of God, was earlier in peril, unless he had asked to be set free from the body of this death, as we read. And therefore, we who are in this body of death, let us pray that that good physician, the beloved of God, may not forsake us—he whom the patriarch David besought not to depart from him. Let us commit ourselves to him, ready to be cured by whatever medicine he wills. No one tells the physician of his own body how he is to be cured.
The physician knows what medicines suit each wound, which ulcer's putrefaction must be cut away with the knife lest it creep on to the ruin of the whole body. If the physician should name the kind of medicine by which the sick man ought to be cured, and that man loathes it, the physician departs and leaves the sick man. See him who wishes to be cured acquiescing in every medical method; mark the order. First he opens his wounds to the physician and says: 'Cure me, but I beg, not in your anger, because my infirmities cannot bear harsh medicine.' The medicine of Christ is correction; for the Lord corrects whom he wishes to convert. Therefore Paul too says to the physician: 'Reprove, beseech, rebuke.'
He therefore who asks to be reproved does not refuse to be cured, but he wishes the penalty to be lightened, lest he be reproved in wrath and corrected by an impulse of anger. And mark the progression. First he asks to be reproved, then, what is greater, to be corrected. Next he not only confesses his sins, but even numbers and accuses them; for he does not wish his offences to lie hidden. For just as fevers, when they are deep within, cannot be assuaged, but when they break out give hope of ceasing, so the disease of sins, while it is covered, grows inflamed, but if it is disclosed by confessions, it evaporates. And therefore the just man is the accuser of himself at the beginning of his discourse, before the contagion of the ulcer creeps within; for the memory of offences burdens the conscience, unless medicine be sought.
And if the physician delays, the sick man ought to offer himself, that he may be cut the sooner, just as David offered himself to the scourges of the Lord, saying: 'Repay me my sins double, provided that here you take vengeance; do not forsake me, do not turn your face from me, do not disdain and shrink from the stench of my wounds. Job too, your servant, was struck with a sore from the feet even to the head, and found the remedy of his healing—though that wound was of virtue, this of error. The wounds stank which physicians could not cure. You have spoken, O Lord, the mysteries of your sacraments, you have made manifest the venom of the serpent, and by the medicine of your word alone were your servant's wounds healed, because you did not forsake him;'
'and forsake me not, O Lord, depart not from me. Men have forsaken me, because my wounds are foul to them—wounds which I thought ought to be laid open to your tenderness. They say: Depart from us, because you are a sinner; go away, lest you defile us. But you, O Lord, heal and are not defiled, you help and are not contaminated, because you are the God of salvation, O Lord, and your hand is wont not to destroy but to heal.' We have completed the psalm, together with the interpretation of the little verse which some Greek codices, but not all the Latin ones, have. For before the responsory which is nearest there is the verse: 'And they cast me out as a dead man, an abomination'—that is, those who repaid me evil for good.
'But do you forsake me not, O Lord, depart not from me'—for this follows—that is: do you not forsake me, you who have been wont to cure the dead and stinking. In short, we have this in the Gospel: for when he had come to the tomb of Lazarus and had said, 'Take away the stone,' Martha says, 'He already stinks, for it is four days.' He answered her: 'Did I not say to you, that if you believe you shall see the glory of God?' And he called Lazarus, and he came forth whole. Let us too, then, believe, that from our wounds we may obtain the medicine of salvation and the glory to come. In prayers, therefore, and in supplications, with grief and tears, penance must be exacted, that we may be counted worthy to see that glory of God.
Nor let it move you that mourning, grief, and the wasting of the body are most grievous sufferings; though they seem most grievous, yet sufferings of this kind are unworthy to be compared with the glory that is to come upon us, as the apostle Paul is witness. Let it not, then, irk us here to bring lighter things, that there we may be able to attain things full of praise and glory, carrying back everlasting rewards for temporal labors, through the Lord Jesus, to whom be praise, honor, glory, and perpetuity from the ages, both now and always, and unto all the ages of ages. Amen. EXPLANATION OF PSALM 38. Title: 'Unto the end, for Idithun; a canticle of David himself.' In the foregoing psalm the form of repentance was expressed; in this following one the form of patience is signified.
This psalm David wrote and gave to be sung to Idithun, a man trained in the Levitical and priestly disciplines, who before the ark of the Lord, most skilled in composing the sequence of psalms, used to sing them out. Therefore, because Idithun did not write this psalm, but the prophet David did, and gave it to be sung by Idithun, a man skilled in singing, the title is thus inscribed. In short, even in secular writings there were some who wrote, and others who were wont to sing on the stage either songs or comedies or tragedies. And those indeed sought the Olympic crown, whence their writings at the end attest the epinician hymn of theirs.
But David, who sought not these garlands of withering crowns, but with pious affection desired that incorruptible and unstained recompense, the inheritance of heaven, wrote a hymn not of an epinician victory, but to him who imparted victory to those believing in him, who is the end of all things that we ask for with a pious mind. For whether you seek wisdom, or strive after virtue, or after truth, or after the way and righteousness, or after resurrection, in all things Christ is to be followed by you, who is the virtue of God and his wisdom, truth, way, righteousness, resurrection. To whom, then, should you press on, except to the perfection of all things and the highest of virtues? And therefore he says to you:
'Come, follow me'—that is, that you may be counted worthy to attain to the consummation of the virtues. Therefore he who follows Christ ought, according to his ability, to imitate him, so that he may meditate within himself upon his precepts and the examples of his divine deeds. And therefore David meditated within himself upon what he held that Christ had spoken in him, so that, when certain men were troublesome to him and tried to provoke him to contention, he might put on patience and decline the zeal of contending, from which empty noise and quarrels frequently arise.
And so, when very many who envied the holy David's virtues—who believed that he could be drawn away from the purpose of gentleness and the disposition of humility—frequently assailed him, and especially when those very spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places, against which the just wage a grievous struggle, drove on the ministers of their malice to stir him up, lest amid the frequent contests of the clamorous and the tumult of disputation some word of offence should slip from him, the holy prophet resolved to keep silence. O mighty shield of well-guarded defence, O silence! O most faithful foundation of stability, in which, if anyone can stand, he cannot fear the slipperiness of the word!
For many, even strengthened with a stable heart, have nevertheless often fallen through the error of incautious, wavering speech. Seeing therefore that he was being tempted by snares of this kind and by the vain clamor of contenders, the prophet conferred silently within himself, laying upon himself the law of silence; and when he kept silence toward those insulting him and provoking him to say something—such as are wont to be the contests and speeches of the insolent: 'Answer us, if you presume on equality; you too see that you are conquered and have nothing to reply'—when he seemed to be driven almost to speech by their revilings, he called himself back, that he might speak in his heart: 'I said, I will guard my ways, that I may not offend with my tongue;'
'I set a guard upon my mouth, while the sinner stands against me'—that is: I proposed, confirmed, commanded myself, I said to my heart, 'I will guard my ways.' If I had said this to others, my word ought to stand; how much more stable ought to be what I myself have appointed for myself! If anyone deceives a stranger it is unseemly, if anyone a neighbor it is grievous; how much more grievous, then, if anyone should think himself to be defrauded by his own self of what he had promised himself, so that he should be reckoned faithless to himself by his own judgment and contemptible! To whom, then, can he seem fit who is worthless to himself? Let us therefore hold fast the constancy of our soul, lest our lips, hasty in speaking, break forth into offence. Job too overcame his plague by silence and surpassed his endurance by quietness.
The flesh is not well to be trusted; we would have lived, had Eve kept silence. Therefore that first sin came forth from speech, and that most wicked and crafty serpent first tempted us through speech. And would that either Adam had been deaf, or Eve had been struck dumb—he, that he might not hear the voice of his wife; she, that she might not speak to her husband, and through the agency of a slippery voice pour the serpent's venoms into the man! Cain also, although by parricide he violated human nature and the impious man blotted out the rights of piety, nevertheless added sacrilege to his crime through his voice, in that he denied to God the death of his slain brother. Why should I speak of individual cases?
The very people chosen by the Lord, for whom Moses in silence opened the sea, ungrateful for the heavenly benefits, murmured, whereby they incurred the divine offence. Then they rejected Moses himself, the leader of that pathless and unwonted journey, and demanded of his brother Aaron that gods be made for them which they might worship. Whence he too, considering such great perils of the voice, said: 'I will guard my ways.' What, then, these ways of a man are that must especially be guarded against, lest they incur anything of more grievous offence, so great a prophet admonishes us to consider more diligently; and Solomon too, his son, interpreter of his father's mind, admonishes us to examine more keenly, who wrote: 'Three things are impossible for me to understand, and a fourth which I do not know:'
the track of a flying eagle, and the way of a serpent upon a rock, and the paths of a ship sailing in the deep, and the ways of a man in his youth [and of an adulterous woman, who, after she has acted, washes herself and says she has done nothing wrong]. Three things, then, he said were impossible for him to understand, and a fourth which he, possessing among men the seal of wisdom, did not know—namely, the course of the ways of a man in his youth. Of those things, then, of which the recognition is either inexplicable or difficult, can the guarding be easy? Whence not without reason did David himself offer, of the offences of his youth, not a defence, but ask for oblivion: 'The sins,' he says, 'of my youth and of my ignorance remember not.'
Not without reason, then, did Solomon say that he did not know what his father—in whom was a greater grace of God—testified that he himself had been ignorant of. And perhaps he referred the sins of youth to the fervor of the flesh, but ignorance to the slip of words, which for the most part are poured out not from our deliberate judgment but by a certain impulse and run of speaking; which, the prophet recognizing to be perilous, said: 'I believed, on which account I have spoken.' Upon the foundation of virtue, then, the voice is safe; without a foundation, slippery. Therefore, as it were with a certain trumpet-blast, the chosen interpreter of the divine Scriptures cried out: 'With the heart one believes unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.' The faith of believers is the chief thing, confession the carrying out.
In what manner, then, the holy prophet David proposed, or for what cause, to guard his ways, let us hear: 'that I may not,' he says, 'offend with my tongue.' If the prophet takes this precaution, do you not? If he feared it, he in whom the grace of God spoke, do you not fear, who do not flee the words of error and delight in theatrical speeches? Do you not dread it, you for whom it is written in the Gospel that for every idle word you shall render account? If for an idle word there is peril, how much more for a criminal one! Not everything that is idle is also criminal, but everything that is unfruitful is perilous and to be rooted out; for 'every tree not bearing fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.'
When the mind is moved and stirred up by goading adversaries—clamoring, mocking, accusing—a word of agitation slips out; therefore silence is both safe and seemly, which keeps caution along with gravity. For what are our lips except certain bonds of ours? In short, by the bonds of his own lips each man is bound fast. Therefore the wise man is silent in season and considers within himself at what season he ought to speak. Of which Solomon himself excellently says: 'The lips of the wise are bound with understanding.' When, therefore, you see the wise man keeping silence amid the insolent who mock, you will say: 'This man has bound his lips with understanding'—that is, he is prudently silent, lest he be bound fast by the bonds of his own lips.
He set a guard upon his mouth, hedged his ears with thorns, applied a bar to the doors of his mouth, guards the treasure of his heart and the silver of his eloquence, that he may bring it forth tested and purged when it is fitting, lest any thief should first break into his heart, or any disturber, and drag it captive to those to whom he might sell his disgraces. Judas meditated to sell Christ, but the Lord's great grace and certain soothings of fatherly tenderness called him back, by which his fury was softened, nor would he have broken forth into the crime, had not the adversary plunged himself into his heart, because he thought to deceive Christ.
Do not doubt, then, when certain men are troublesome to you who wish to keep righteousness, that they are the ministers of that most wicked sinner who is the author of all disgraceful deeds. David saw with prophetic eyes, he recognized his figure; therefore he kept silence, lest he should do the will of him who is eager to throw the affections into confusion. He pressed down his voice, he closed his gates with silence, he held out in it patience, and the guard of his silence kept watch, lest the enemy creep in, lest from the enclosures of his mouth some wandering and incautious word go forth. Therefore stronger is the patient man who contains himself than he who captures cities. The just man is himself an enclosure to himself, himself a vigilant guard to himself. When, therefore, he held out within against himself, he spoke in his heart:
'I set a guard upon my mouth, while the sinner stands against me.' The enemy is always present, because he always lies in wait. Even if you do not see him, he is present; even if you do not feel him, he assails. If you do not see, believe him who sees: 'he stands,' he says, 'against me.' He who sees his own sin sees also the sinner mocking him in those things which he has done; but he who has foreseen the sinner can avoid the sin. David saw the sinner standing against him, when Shimei was cursing and stoning his king and crying out: 'Go forth, man of blood.' For he would not have been so headlong as to be moved neither by reverence for so great a king nor to fear his armed host, since one of his army could have killed the reviler;
but the devil had made him senseless, who was driving him on to death. Therefore David rather waged war against the author than pursued the minister. For what great thing was it to be avenged on a feeble man, whom another was urging to madness, in whose slaying the sinner would have had the effect of his own will? The devil is conquered not by the sword, but by the word of God; therefore let the tongue of man be silent, let the word of God speak. In short, Christ too kept silence when set before the judgment of Pilate, that he might give us the form of keeping silence, because the tongue of the body is prone to error, inclined to a fall. There are, however, also those who, keeping silence, speak—such as Moses, who stood thunderstruck and kept silence, to whom, as he was silent, God said:
Why do you cry out to me? Be like Susanna, who kept silent amid her perils, and the Lord heard her. Therefore even if the word of God is within you, you will be silent in the word of God, and silent you will cry out, that you may be heard by Christ. Meditate then upon the things that are Christ's, the very things upon which the prophet David meditated within himself, in whom Christ first spoke those things which David says he meditated within himself in this psalm. For thus it is written: 'But I, when they were troublesome to me in any matter, clothed myself in sackcloth and humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer shall be turned back into my own bosom.' What does 'in any matter' mean?
Because it is then above all that either an untimely word slips out or the feelings are stirred, namely when we are in some grief or sadness, or the soul sickens with indignation, or is hindered by various anxieties, or is taken up with disputes. Who then are the 'troublesome'? First understand it of the very author of sin and his angels; next, of those who choose rather to be his followers than Christ's. A wife is impelled, as Job's was; a friend, as is made plain in that same book; a son, as Absalom was; a slave, a freedman, a member of the household, for a man's enemies are even those of his own house, so that each in turn may harass him. What remedy then is there against such sicknesses of the soul, except patience, except silence?
And what is more grievous, the one who provokes you most is the one who has enjoyed your benefits, and among these the one who exasperates you all the more is the one who owes you most, so that you are the more moved by the bitterness of an ungrateful man or the unworthiness of some base person. Therefore the just man, even if his friend is insolent toward him, grieves for his friend, because his friend is thus falling, because he is being driven on by the tempter.
If he grieves for a friend, much more for a wife, for a son, if he finds them too insolent toward him; and if a brother harasses him, as Esau harassed holy Jacob, he grieves and seeks to be reconciled to his brother, or to flee from his face, as Rebecca counselled, lest his brother's wrath should find any occasion of doing harm; and if it is a neighbour or a member of the household, he grieves; and if it is a servant or a freedman or a slave, he bears it patiently, and in all these things keeps silence, that he may not answer the one by whom he sees himself being provoked. So one of his household reviles him: he grieves and keeps silent; a freedman reviles him: he keeps silent; a slave reviles him: he keeps silent. Thus is he overcome who stretches out a snare for his soul by the bait of speech.
You too, therefore, keep silent when an unworthy person reviles you; keep silent when a slave, and above all your own slave, does you insult; and say in your heart: 'I am silent, but do not you be silent, O Lord,' and add: 'Depart not from me,' as David the prophet used to say; that is: 'Do not leave me alone to those who assail me'; for he is not alone to whom God is present. Receive the testimony: 'Behold,' he says, 'the hour comes that you shall be scattered, each to his own, and shall leave me alone; yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.' The just man, therefore, keeps silence against those who are insolent toward him; the just man prays. Hear the just man praying: 'In return for loving me they slandered me, but I prayed.' The just man blesses those who curse him, as the apostles did, as Paul affirms, saying:
'We are reviled, and we bless.' The just man loves his enemies. See how, step by step through each degree, he is taught to ascend to the increase of virtues, the Lord saying: 'Love your enemies.' The just man prays for those who falsely accuse him, for this also the Lord enjoined, adding: 'Do good to those who hate you, pray for those who falsely accuse you and persecute you.' He is in all things just who keeps and observes these things: first, because he keeps silence and does not answer his enemies; next, because he prays, that is, he is not idle in affection. And he who prays prays for good things, not for whatever might harm his enemy. It is more, then, to pray than to keep silent. The just man blesses those who curse him; this is more than to pray for oneself;
for being secure about himself, he blesses the one whom he does not fear, or even the one whom he previously dreaded. The just man loves his enemy. To love is more than to bless, because the love of the mind is greater than the grace of speech. The just man does good to the one by whose hatred he is assailed; the just man prays for those who falsely accuse him. Charity is good and piety is good; both are of God and both are God, because charity is God, as John said in his epistle. Therefore both are joined together: 'Love your enemies and pray for those who falsely accuse and persecute you.'
Love is the fullness of the law, but this also is the fullness of the gospel: to pray for those who falsely accuse and persecute us, that we may ask pardon for their sins, just as by divine judgment holy Job was chosen, whose prayer should blot out the offence of those kings who falsely accused, against the just man. Therefore, whether you are weak, pray, and if you are strong, pray; if weak, you pray for yourself; if strong, you pray for your enemy. Prayer is a good shield in weakness: you pray and the Lord protects you. It is a good shield also for the one who triumphs, that you may defend your enemy, whom you could strike, lest he be slain by another and, what is greater, by Christ, who said: 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.'
This is the prayer which is turned back into the bosom of the one who entreats, bringing back the fruit of those things he wished to obtain, so that the gifts he sought from the Lord may flow back into his soul and mind, just as in the verses following this same prophet has taught you, saying: 'Thus will I bless you in my life, and in your name I will lift up my hands. Let my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness.' This bosom of the soul is the secret place of his prayer, the inner chamber of the will, and a kind of innermost receptacle of vows that flow back. Hence the just are read to rest in Abraham's bosom, because they rest in his grace, in his repose, in his calm—those who have put on a faith conformed to his and made the same will of his manifest in good works.
But perhaps someone may wonder how, when the Lord said through the mouth of David that he humbled his soul with fasting, David himself says in the verses following: 'If I was not lowly in my thoughts, but exalted my soul.' Let such a person consider that one thing pertains to the wisdom of the mind, another to the humility of the heart. The wisdom of the mind is lofty, but the wisdom of the flesh ought not to be puffed up. He humbled his soul, then, with fasting, that he might teach us to chasten the swelling of our flesh; the prophet exalted his soul through the lofty grace of God, since both 'he who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.' And not only is the proud man beaten down and the humble lifted up by a worthy recompense of merits, as is first to be understood;
but since the word of God is sharp on every side like a sword which is sharp on three sides, I think it can be understood that both he who exalts himself knows how to humble himself, and he who knows how to humble himself knows also how to exalt himself. In short, Paul shows this, saying: 'But I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.' Therefore David too, by not thinking lowly things of Christ, exalted his soul—the soul which the Arians humble and cast down—and by exalting his soul, with vigour of understanding and the grace of faith, he represented the virtue of humility with godly affection. Therefore he said: 'I was dumb and was humbled, and kept silence even from good things,' because he knew when he ought to humble himself, and knew when he ought to keep silent.
He was dumb, lest he himself should make a din with quarrelsome contention against those who chided him; he was humbled, that he might cast down the swelling of the proud, or that he might teach them by his own example how they ought to humble themselves. He kept silence from good things, because a good conscience needs no defence of words, since it rests upon its own testimony, being itself its own judge. And therefore the just man says: 'Who shall contradict, or who shall withstand me?' And Paul says: 'For with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by man's day.' Against those who falsely accuse and against sinners, the just man is content with his own judgment, but he reserves the judgment of his own merits for Christ. And therefore he added: 'He who judges me is the Lord.'
Most beautifully did he choose as judge one who is deceived by no fraud, so that nothing hidden may escape him, nor any lapse of weak condition offend him, since he knows how to pardon frailty. For everything, then, silence is useful. If you acknowledge your sin, keep silent, lest by denying you aggravate it; if you do not acknowledge it, keep silent, secure in your innocence. Other men's words cannot fasten a charge upon you which your own conscience does not admit. There follows: 'And my grief was renewed.' Still placed in a lower degree of virtue, he utters these words, namely that his grief was renewed by the casting up of old sins, which oblivion had seemed already to cover over now that they were blotted out, or which the compensation of good works had veiled. In short, in the verses following, as one stronger, he says:
'They saw me and shook their heads,' inasmuch as they threatened yet could not harm; and he added: 'Let them curse, and you will bless.' And this he speaks as one stronger, disregarding injury or shame, for whom the Lord's blessing would suffice abundantly in place of all things. Therefore in this thirty-eighth psalm, as in a kind of meditation, but not yet established in every perfection of virtue, he says that his grief was renewed. For he who is most strong knows not how to feel the hurt of a scar, nor can the stronger man fear a blow. In the very contest of boxers, the stronger usually waits to be provoked by some blow of the inferior, so that, the more fiercely offended, he may rise up;