Psalm LI
11“For, behold, truth Thou hast loved: uncertain and hidden things of Thy wisdom, Thou hast manifested to me” (ver. 6). That is, Thou hast not left unpunished even the sins of those whom Thou dost pardon. “Truth Thou hast loved:” so mercy Thou hast granted first, as that Thou shouldest also preserve truth. Thou pardonest one confessing, pardonest, but only if he punisheth himself: so there are preserved mercy and truth: mercy because man is set free; truth, because sin is punished. “Uncertain and hidden things of Thy wisdom Thou hast manifested to me.” What “hidden things”? What “uncertain things”? Because God pardoneth even such. Nothing is so hidden, nothing so uncertain. For this uncertainty the Ninevites repented, for they said, though after the threatenings of the Prophet, though after that cry, “Three days and Nineve shall be overthrown:” they said to themselves, Mercy must be implored; they said in this sort reasoning among themselves, “Who knoweth whether God may turn for the better His sentence, and have pity?” It was “uncertain,” when it is said, “Who knoweth?” on an uncertainty they did repent, certain mercy they earned: they prostrated them in tears, in fastings, in sackcloth and ashes they prostrated them, groaned, wept, God spared. Nineve stood: was Nineve overthrown? One way indeed it seemeth to men, and another way it seemed to God. But I think that it was fulfilled that the Prophet had foretold. Regard what Nineve was, and see how it was overthrown; overthrown in evil, builded in good; just as Saul the persecutor was overthrown, Paul the preacher builded. Who would not say that this city, in which we now are, was happily overthrown, if all those madmen, leaving their triflings, were to run together to the Church with contrite heart, and were to call upon God’s mercy for their past doings? Should we not say, Where is that Carthage? Because there is not what there was, it is overthrown: but if there is what there was not, it is builded. So is said to Jeremiah, “Behold, I will give to thee to root up, to dig under, to overthrow, to destroy,” and again, “to build, and to plant.” Thence is that voice of the Lord, “I will smite and I will heal.” He smiteth the rottenness of the deed, He healeth the pain of the wound. Physicians do thus when they cut; they smite and heal; they arm themselves in order to strike, they carry steel, and come to cure. But because great were the sins of the Ninevites, they said, “Who knoweth?” This uncertainty had God disclosed to His servant David.
For when he had said, before the Prophet standing and convicting him, “I have sinned:” straightway he heard from the Prophet, that is, from the Spirit of God which was in the Prophet, “Thy sin is put away from thee.” “Uncertain and hidden things” of His wisdom He manifested to him.
12“Thou shalt sprinkle me,” he saith, “with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed” (ver. 7). Hyssop we know to be a herb humble but healing: to the rock it is said to adhere with roots. Thence in a mystery the similitude of cleansing the heart has been taken. Do thou also take hold, with the root of thy love, on thy Rock: be humble in thy humble God, in order that thou mayest be exalted in thy glorified God. Thou shalt be sprinkled with hyssop, the humility of Christ shall cleanse thee. Despise not the herb, attend to the efficacy of the medicine. Something further I will say, which we are wont to hear from physicians, or to experience in sick persons. Hyssop, they say, is proper for purging the lungs. In the lung is wont to be noted pride: for there is inflation, there breathing. It was said of Saul the persecutor as of Saul the proud, that he was going to bind Christians, breathing slaughter: he was breathing out slaughter, breathing out blood, his lung not yet cleansed. Hear also in this place one humbled, because with hyssop purged: “Thou shalt wash me,” that is, shalt cleanse me: “and above snow I shall be whitened.” “Although,” he saith, “your sins shall have been like scarlet, like snow I will whiten.” Out of such men Christ doth present to Himself a vesture without spot and wrinkle. Further, His vesture on the mount, which shone forth like whitened snow, signified the Church cleansed from every spot of sin.
13But where is humility from hyssop? Hear what followeth: “To my hearing Thou shalt give exultation and gladness, and bones humbled shall exult” (ver. 8). I will rejoice in hearing Thee, not in speaking against Thee. Thou hast sinned, why defendest thou thyself? Thou wilt speak: suffer thou; hear, yield to divine words, lest thou be put to confusion, and be still more wounded: sin hath been committed, be it not defended: to confession let it come, not to defence. Thou engagest thyself as defender of thy sin, thou art conquered: no innocent patron hast thou engaged, thy defence is not profitable to thee. For who art thou that defendest thyself? Thou art meet to accuse thyself. Say not, either, “I have done nothing;” or, “What great thing have I done?” or, “Other men as well have done.” If in doing sin thou sayest thou hast done nothing, thou wilt be nothing, thou wilt receive nothing: God is ready to give indulgence, thou closest the door against thyself: He is ready to give, do not oppose the bar of defence, but open the bosom of confession. “To my hearing Thou shalt give exultation and gladness.”…
14“Turn Thou away Thy face from my sins, and all mine iniquities blot out” (ver. 9). For now bones humbled exult, now with hyssop cleansed, humble I have become. “Turn Thou away Thy face,” not from me, but “from my sins.” For in another place praying he saith, “Turn not away Thy face from me.” He that would not that God’s face be turned away from himself, would that God’s face be turned away from his sins. For to sin, when God turneth not Himself away, he adverteth: if he adverteth, he animadverteth. “And all mine iniquities blot out.” He is busied with that capital sin: he reckoneth on more, he would have all his iniquities to be blotted out: he relieth on the Physician’s hand, on that “great mercy,” upon which he hath called in the beginning of the Psalm: “All mine iniquities blot out.” God turneth away His face, and so blotteth out; by “turning away” His face, sins He blotteth out. By “turning towards,” He writeth them. Thou hast heard of Him blotting out by turning away, hear of Him by turning towards, doing what? “But the countenance of the Lord is upon men doing evil things, that He may destroy from the earth the remembrance of them:” He shall destroy the remembrance of them, not by “blotting out their sins.” But here he doth ask what? “Turn away Thy face from my sins.” Well he asketh. For he himself doth not turn away his face from his own sins, saying, “For my sin I acknowledge.” With reason thou askest and well askest, that God turn away from thy sin, if thou from thence dost not turn away thy face: but if thou settest thy sin at thy back, God doth there set His face. Do thou turn sin before thy face, if thou wilt that God thence turn away His face; and then safely thou askest, and He heareth.
15“A clean heart create in me, O God” (ver. 10). “Create”—he meant to say, “as it were begin something new.” But, because repentant he was praying (that had committed some sin, which before he had committed, he was more innocent), after what manner he hath said “create” he showeth. “And a right spirit renew in my inner parts.” By my doing, he saith, the uprightness of my spirit hath been made old and bowed. For he saith in another Psalm, “They have bowed my soul.” And when a man doth make himself stoop unto earthly lusts, he is “bowed” in a manner, but when he is made erect for things above, upright is his heart made, in order that God may be good to him. For, “How good is the God of Israel to the upright of heart!” Moreover, brethren, listen. Sometimes God in this world chastiseth for his sin him that He pardoneth in the world to come. For even to David himself, to whom it had been already said by the Prophet, “Thy sin is put away,” there happened certain things which God had threatened for that very sin. For his son Abessalom against him waged bloody war, and many ways humbled his father. He was walking in grief, in the tribulation of his humiliation, so resigned to God, that, ascribing to Him all that was just, he confessed that he was suffering nothing undeservedly, having now an heart upright, to which God was not displeasing. A slanderous person and one throwing in his teeth harsh curses he patiently heard, one of the soldiers on the opposite side, that were with his unnatural son. And when he was heaping curses upon the king, one of the companions of David, enraged, would have gone and smitten him; but he is kept back by David. And he is kept back how? For that he said, God sent him to curse me. Acknowledging his guilt he embraced his penance, seeking glory not his own, praising the Lord in that good which he had, praising the Lord in that which he was suffering, “blessing the Lord alway, ever His praise was in his mouth.” Such are all the upright in heart: not those crooked persons who think themselves upright and God crooked: who when they do any evil thing, rejoice; when they suffer any evil thing, blaspheme; nay, if set in tribulation and scourging, they say from their distorted heart, “O God, what have I done to Thee?” Truly it is because they have done nothing to God, for they have done all to themselves. “And an upright spirit, renew in my inner parts.”