Expositions on the Book of Psalms
PSALMS. 401
Psatm LXXXIV.] ON THE self to receive God: that which thou shalt have for ever, desire thou fora long time. . . . 4. Wherefore, most beloved, as each can, make vows, and perform to the Lord God! what each can: let no one look back, no one delight himself with his former interests, no one turn away from that which is before to that which is behind: let him run until he arrive: for we run not with the feet but with the desire. But let no one in this life say that he hath arrived. For who can be so perfect as Paul?? Yet he saith, "Brethren, 1 count not myself to have attained."
mentioned, let no one while here turn from ashamed: let no one be unwilling to suffer. There is danger, lest the grape, while it fears the winepress, should be devoured by birds or by wild beasts... . 7. Thou hast heard a groan in the winepress, " My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord:" hear how it holdeth out, rejoicing in hope: " My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God." Here they have rejoiced for that cause. Whence cometh rejoicing, but of hope? Wherefore have they rejoiced? "In the living God." What has rejoiced in thee? " My heart and my flesh." Why have they rejoiced? " For," saith he, " the sparrow hath found her a house, and the turtle-dove a nest, where she may lay her young " (ver. 3). What is this? He had named two things, and he adds two figures of birds which answer to them: he had said that his heart rejoiced and his flesh, and to these two he made the sparrow and turtle-dove to correspond: the heart as the sparrow, the flesh as the dove. The sparrow hath found herself a home: my heart hath found itself a home. She tries her wings in the virtues of this life, in faith, and hope, and charity, by which she may fly unto
5. If therefore thou feelest the passions of this world, even when thou art happy, thou understandest now that thou art in the winepress.. .. If therefore the world smile upon thee with happiness, imagine thyself in the winepress, and say, " I found trouble and heaviness, and I did call upon the name of the Lord.''3 He said not, I found trouble, without meaning, of such a kind as was hidden: for some troubles are hidden from some in this world, who think they are happy while they are absent from God. " For as long as we are in the body," he saith, "we are absent from the Lord.''+ If thou wert absent from thy father, thou wouldest be unhappy: art thou absent from the Lord, and happy? 'There are thensome who think it is well with them. But those who understand, that in whatever abundance of wealth and pleasures, though all things obey their beck, though nothing troublesome creep in, nothing adverse terrify, yet that they are in a bad case as long as they are absent from the Lord ; with a most keen eye these have found trouble, and grief, and have called on the name of the Lord. Such is he who sings in this Psalm. Who is he? The Body of Christ. Who is that? You, if you will: all we, if we will: for Christ's Body is One: 3s " How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts" (ver. 1). He was in some tabernacles, that is, in winepresses: but he longed for other tabernacles, where is no pressure: in this he sighed for them, from these, he, as it were, flowed down into them by the channel of longing desire.
her home: and when she shall have come thither, she shall remain; and now the complaining voice of the sparrow, which is here, shall no longer be there. For it is the very complaining sparrow of whom in another Psalm he saith, '' Like a sparrow alone on the housetop." 5 From the housetop he flies home. Now let him be on the housetop, treading on his carnal house: he shall have a heavenly house, a perpetual home: that sparrow shall make an end of his complaints. But to the dove he hath given young, that is, to the flesh: "the dove hath found a nest, where she may lay her young." The sparrow a home, the dove a nest, and a nest too where she may lay her young. A home is chosen as for ever, a nest is framed for a time: with the heart we think upon God, as if the sparrow flew to her home: with the flesh we do good works. For ye see how many good works are done by the flesh of the saints; for by this we work the things we are commanded to work, by which we are helped in this life. " Break thy bread to the hungry, and bring the poor and roofless into thy house; and if thou see one naked, clothe him:'® and other such things which are commanded us we work only through the flesh. . . . We speak, brethren, what ye know: how many seem to do good works without the Church?? how many even Pagans feed the hungry, clothe the naked, receive the
6. And what follows? "My soul longeth and faileth for the courts of the Lord" (ver. 2). It is not enough that it "longeth and faileth:" for what doth it fail? 'For the courts of the Lord." The grape when pressed hath failed: but for what? So as to be changed into wine, and to flow into the vat, and into the rest of the storeroom, to be kept there in great quiet. Here it is longed for, there it is received: here are sighs, there joy: here prayers, there praises: here groans, there rejoicing. Those things which I
5 Ps. cii. 7. 6 Isa. Iviii. 7. 7 Ed. Ben. refers to P. Lombard, //. Sent. Dist. 41, where this passage is quoted on the question, '*' Are all the works of those who are without faith evil?" [See A. N. F. vol. il. p. 517, note 4.—C.]
2 Phil. iii. 13. 4 aCor. v. 6. TPs. Ixxvi. tie ' 3 Ps. cxvi. 35 4.