The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^10. For when Your saints bless You, what say they? “They shall tell the glory of Your kingdom, and talk of Your Power”. How powerful is God, who has made the earth! How powerful is God, who has filled the earth with good things! How powerful is God, who has given to the animals each its own life! How powerful is God, who has given different seeds to the womb of the earth, that they might make to spring up such various shoots, such beautiful trees! How powerful, how great is God! Do thou ask, creation answers, and by its answer, as by the confession of the creature, you, O saint of God, blessest God, and “talkest of His power.”

11. “That they may make known to the sons of men Your power, and the glory of the greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom”. Your saints then commend “the glory of the greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom,” the glory of the greatness of its beauty. There is a certain “greatness of the beauty of Your kingdom:” that is, Your kingdom has beauty, and great beauty. Since whatever has beauty, has beauty from You, how great beauty has Your whole kingdom! Let not the kingdom frighten us: it has beauty also, wherewith to delight us. For what is that beauty, which the saints shall hereafter enjoy, to whom it shall be said, “Come, you blessed of My Father, enjoy the kingdom”? Whence shall they come? Whither shall they come? Behold, brethren, and, if you can, as far as you can, think of the beauty of that kingdom which is to come; whence our prayer says, “Your kingdom come.” For that kingdom we desire may come, that kingdom the saints proclaim to be coming. Observe this world: it is beautiful. How beautiful are earth, sea, air, heavens, stars. Do not all these frighten him who considers them? Is not the beauty of them so conspicuous, that it seems as though nothing more beautiful could be found? And here, in this beauty, in this fairness almost unspeakable, here worm and mice and all creeping things of the earth live with you, they live with you in all this beauty. How great is the beauty of that kingdom where none but angels live with You! There is a greatness of a certain beauty; let it be loved before it is seen, that when it is seen, it may be retained.

12. “Your kingdom.” What kingdom mean I? “a kingdom of all ages.” For the kingdom of this age too has its own beauty, but there is not in it that greatness of beauty, such as in the “kingdom of all ages.” “And Your dominion is in every generation and generation”. This is the repetition we noticed, signifying either every generation, or the generation which will be after this generation. “Faithful is the Lord in His words, and holy in all His works.” “Faithful is the Lord in His words:” for what has He promised that He has not given? “Faithful is the Lord in His words.” Hereto there are certain things which He has promised, and has not given; but let Him be believed from the things which He has given. We might well believe Him, if He only spoke: He willed not that we should believe Him speaking, but that we should have His Scriptures in our hands:...as though a kind of bond of God's, which all who pass by might read, and might keep to the path of its promise. And how great things has He already paid in accordance with that bond! Do men hesitate to believe Him concerning the Resurrection of the dead and the Life to come, which alone now remains to be paid, when, if He come to reckon with the unbelievers, the unbelievers must blush? If God say to you, You have My bond: I have promised judgment, the separation of good and bad, everlasting life for the faithful, and will you not believe? There in My bond read all that I have promised, reckon with me: verily even by counting up what I have paid, you can believe that I shall pay what still I owe. In that bond you have My only-begotten Son promised, “Whom I spared not, but gave Him up for you all:” reckon this then among what is paid. Read the bond: I promised therein that I would give by My Son the earnest of the Holy Spirit: reckon that as paid. I promised therein the blood and the crowns of the glorious Martyrs; let the White Mass remind you that My debt has been paid....He sets before the eyes of all His payment of His debts: some He has paid in the time of our ancestors, which we saw not: some He has paid in our times, which they saw not; throughout all generations He has paid what was written. And what remains? Do men not believe Him, when He has paid all this? What remains? Behold you have reckoned: all this He has paid: is He become unfaithful for the few things which remain? God forbid! Wherefore? Because “the Lord is faithful in His words, and holy in all His works.”

13. “The Lord strengthens all that are falling”. But who are “all that are falling”? All indeed fall in a general sense, but he means those who fall in a particular way. For many fall from Him, many also fall from their own imaginations. If they had evil imaginations, they fall from them, and “God strengthened all that are falling.” They who lose anything in this world, yet are holy, are as it were dishonoured in this world, from rich become poor, from honoured of low estate, yet are they God's saints; they are, as it were, falling. But “God strengthens.” For “the just falls seven times, and rises again; but the wicked shall be weakened in evils.” When evils befall the wicked, they are weakened thereby; when evils befall the righteous, “the Lord strengthens all that are falling.”...“And lifts up all those that have been cast down:” all, that is, who belong to him; for “God resists the proud.”

14. “The eyes of all hope upon You, and You give them food in due season”. Just as when you refresh a sick man in due season, when he ought to receive, then You give, and what he ought to receive, that You give. Sometimes then men long, and he gives not: he who tends, knows the time to give. Wherefore say I this, brethren? Lest any one be faint, if perchance he has not been heard, when making some righteous request of God. For when he makes any unrighteous request, he is heard to his punishment: but when making some righteous request of God, if perchance he have not been heard, let him not be down-hearted, let him not faint, let his eyes wait for the food, which He gives in due season. When He gives not, He therefore gives not, lest that which He gives do harm....“You give them meat in due season.”

15. “You open Your Hand, and fill every living thing with blessing”. Though sometimes You give not, yet “in due season” You give: You delay, not deny, and that in due season. “Righteous is the Lord in all His ways, and holy in all His works”. Both when He smites and when He heals, He is righteous, and in Him unrighteousness is not. Finally, all His saints, when set in the midst of tribulation, have first praised His righteousness, and so sought His blessings. They first have said, “What You do is righteous.” So did Daniel ask, and other holy men: “Righteous are Your judgments: rightly have we suffered: deservedly have we suffered.” They laid not unrighteousness to God, they laid not to Him injustice and folly. First they praised Him scourging, and so they felt Him feeding.