The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^2. Let then our Lord speak; let Christ with us, whole Christ, speak. “Lord, hear my prayer, receive with Your ears my entreaty”. “Hear” and “receive with ears” are the same thing. It is repetition, it is confirmation. “In Your truth hear me, in Your righteousness.” Take it not without emphasis when it is said, “in Your righteousness.” For it is a commendation of grace, that none of us think his righteousness his own. For this is the righteousness of God, which God has given you to possess. For what says the Apostle of them, who would boast of their own righteousness? Speaking of the Jews, he says, “they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”...You are perverse, because you impute what you have done ill to God, what well to yourself: you will be right, when you impute what you have done ill to yourself, what well to God....Behold, “in Your righteousness hear me.” For when I look upon myself, nought else do I find my own, save sin.

3. “And enter not into judgment with Your servant”. Who are willing to enter into judgment with Him, save they who, “being ignorant of the righteousness of God, go about to establish their own?” “Wherefore have we fasted, and You have not seen; wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and You take no knowledge?” As though they would say, “We have done what You have commanded, why do You not render to us what You have promised?” God answers you: I will give to you to receive what I have promised: I have given you that you should do that whereby you may receive. Finally, to such proud ones the Prophet speaks; “Wherefore will you plead with Me? You have all transgressed against Me, says the Lord.” Why will you enter into judgment with Me, and recount your own righteousnesses?...“For before You every one living shall not be justified.” “Every one living;” living, that is, here, living in the flesh, living in expectation of death; born a man; deriving his life of man; sprung from Adam, a living Adam; every one thus living may perhaps be justified before himself, but not before You. How before himself? By pleasing himself, displeasing You. Enter not then into judgment with me, O Lord my God. How straight soever I seem to myself, You bring forth a standard from Your store-house, Thou fittest me to it, and I am found crooked. Well is it said, “with Your servant.” It is unworthy of You to enter into judgment with Your servant, or even with Your friend....What of the Apostles themselves?...That ye may perceive it at once, they learned to pray what we pray: to them was given the pattern of prayer by the heavenly Counsellor. “After this manner,” says He, “pray ye.” And having set down certain things first, He laid down this too to be said by the leaders of the sheep, the chief members of the Shepherd and Gatherer of the one flock; even they learned to say, “Forgive us our debts.” They said not, “Thanks be to You, who hast forgiven us our debts, as we too forgive our debtors,” but, “Forgive, as we forgive.” But surely the faithful prayed then, surely the Apostles prayed then, for this Lord's Prayer was given rather to the faithful. If those debts only were meant which are forgiven by Baptism, it would befit catechumens rather to say, “Forgive us our debts.” Let the Apostles then say, yea let them say, “Forgive us our debts.” And when it is said to them, “Wherefore say ye this? What are your debts?” let them answer, “for in Your sight every one living shall not be justified.”

4. “For the enemy has persecuted my soul: he has humbled my life on the earth”. Here we speak, here our Head speaks for us. Manifestly both the devil persecuted the Soul of Christ and Judas the Soul of his Master: and now too the same devil remains to persecute the Body of Christ, and one Judas succeeds another. There lacks not then of whom the Body too may say, “For the enemy has persecuted my soul.” For what does each one who persecutes us endeavour save to make us abandon our heavenly hope, and savour of the earth, yield to our persecutor, and love earthly things? “They have laid me in dark places, as the dead of the world.” This ye hear more readily from the Head; this ye perceive more readily in the Head. For He died indeed for us, yet was He not one of the “dead of the world.” For who are the “dead of the world”? And how was not He one of the “dead of the world”? “The dead of the world” are those who have died of their own desert, receiving the reward of iniquity, deriving death from the sin transmissed to them; according as it is said, “For I was conceived in iniquity.”...In dying, says He, I do the will of My Father, but I am not deserving of death. Nought have I done wherefore I should die, yet is it My own doing that I die, that by the death of an innocent One, they may be freed who had wherefore they should die. “They set me in places,” as though in Hades, as though in the tomb, as though in His very Passion, “as the dead of the world.”

5. “And My Spirit within me,” says He, “suffered weariness”. Remember, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” Here we see one voice. Do we not see plainly the transition from the Head to the members, from the members to the Head?...