The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^4. What then follows, since he has said, “Unto You do I lift up my eyes”?. How have you lifted up your eyes? “Behold, even as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress: even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us.” We are both servants, and a handmaiden: He is both our Master and our Mistress. What do these words mean? What do these similitudes mean? It is not wonderful if we are servants, and He our Master; but it is wonderful if we are a maiden, and He our Mistress. But not even our being a maiden is wonderful; for we are the Church: nor is it wonderful that He is our Mistress; for He is the Power and the Wisdom of God...When therefore you hear Christ, lift up your eyes to the hands of your Master; when you hear the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, lift up your eyes to the hands of your Mistress; for you are both servant and handmaiden; servant, for you are a people; handmaiden, for you are the Church. But this maiden has found great dignity with God; she has been made a wife. But until she come unto those spiritual embraces, where she may without apprehension enjoy Him whom she has loved, and for whom she has sighed in this tedious pilgrimage, she is betrothed: and has received a mighty pledge, the blood of the Spouse for whom she sighs without fear. Nor is it said unto her, Do not love; as it is sometimes said to any betrothed virgin, not as yet married: and is justly said, Do not love; when you have become a wife, then love: it is rightly said, because it is a precipitate and preposterous thing, and not a chaste desire, to love one whom she knows not whether she shall marry. For it may happen that one man may be betrothed to her, and another man marry her. But as there is no one else who can be preferred to Christ, let her love without apprehension: and before she is joined unto Him, let her love, and sigh from a distance and from her far pilgrimage...

5. “For we have been much filled with contempt”. All that will live piously according to Christ, must needs suffer reproof, must needs be despised by those who do not choose to live piously, all whose happiness is earthly. They are derided who call that happiness which they cannot see with their eyes, and it is said to them, What do you believe, madman? Do you see what you believe? Hath any one returned from the world below, and reported to you what is going on there? Behold I see and enjoy what I love. You are scorned, because thou dost hope for what you see not; and he who seems to hold what he sees, scorns you. Consider well if he does really hold it...I have my house, he has boasted himself. Thou ask, what house of his own? That which my father left me. And whence did he derive this house? My grandfather left it him. Go back even to his great grandfather, then to his great grandfather's father, and he can no longer tell their names. Are you not rather terrified by this thought, that you see many have passed through this house, and that none of them has carried it away with him to his everlasting home? Your father left it: he passed through it: thus thou also wilt pass by. If therefore you have a mere passing stay in your house, it is an inn for passing guests, not an habitation for permanent abode. Yet since we hope for those things which are to come, and sigh for future happiness, and since it has not yet appeared what we shall be, although we are already “sons of God;” for “our life is hidden with Christ in God:” “we are utterly despised,” by those who seek or enjoy happiness in this world.

6. “Our soul is filled exceedingly; a reproach to the wealthy, and a contempt to the proud”. We were asking who were “the wealthy:” he has expounded to you, in that he has said, “the proud.” “Reproach” and “contempt” are the same: and “wealthy” is the same with “proud.” It is a repetition of the sentence, “a reproach to the wealthy, and a contempt to the proud.” Why are the proud wealthy? Because they wish to be happy here. Why? Since they themselves too are miserable, are they wealthy? But perhaps when they are miserable, they do not mock us. Listen, my beloved. Then perchance they mock when they are happy, when they boast themselves in the pomp of their riches! When they boast themselves in the inflated state of false honours: then they mock us, and seem to say, Behold, it is well with me: I enjoy the good things before me: let those who promise what they cannot show depart from me: what I see, I hold; what I see, I enjoy; may I fare well in this life. Be thou more secure; for Christ has risen again, and has taught you what He will give in another life: be assured that He gives it. But that man mocks you, because he holds what he has. Bear with his mockeries, and you will laugh at his groans: for afterwards there will come a season when these very persons will say, “This was he whom we had sometimes in derision.”...