The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^7. “Who gives food to the hungry.” Behold, from you I look for nothing: “God gives food to the hungry.” Who are “the hungry”? All. What is, all? To all things that have life, to all men He gives food: does He not reserve some food for His beloved? If they have another kind of hunger, they have also another kind of food. Let us first enquire what their hunger is, and then we shall find their food. “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” We ought to be God's hungry ones....“The Lord looses them that are fettered; the Lord lifts up them that are dashed down; the Lord makes wise them that are blind”. Perfectly has he by this last sentence explained to us all the preceding ones: lest perchance, when he had said, “the Lord looses them that are fettered,” we should refer it to those fettered ones, who for some crime are bound in irons by their masters: and in that he said, “He lifts up them that are dashed down,” there should occur to our minds some one stumbling or falling, or thrown from a horse. There is another kind of fall, there are other kinds of fetters, just as there is other darkness and other light. Whereas he said, “He makes the blind wise;” he would not say, He enlightened the blind, lest you should understand this also in reference to the flesh, as the man was enlightened by the Lord, when He anointed his eyes with clay made with spittle, and so healed him: that you might not look for anything of this sort, when He is speaking of spiritual things, he points to a sort of light of wisdom, wherewith the blind are enlightened. Therefore in the same way as the blind are enlightened with the light of wisdom, so are the fettered set free, and those who are dashed down are lifted up. Whereby then have we been fettered? Whereby dashed down? Our body was once an ornament to us: now, we have sinned, and thereby have had fetters put on us. What are our fetters? Our mortality....“The Lord loves the righteous.” And who are the “righteous”? How far are they righteous now? Just as you have; “the Lord, guards proselytes”. “Proselytes” are strangers. Every Church of the Gentiles is a stranger. For it comes in to the Fathers, not sprung of their flesh, but their daughter by imitating them. Yet the Lord, not any man, guards them. “The orphan and widow He will take up.” Let none think that He takes up the orphan for his inheritance, or the widow for any business of hers. True, God does help them; and in all the duties of the human race, he does a good work, who takes care of an orphan, who abandons not a widow: but in a certain way we are all orphans, not because our Father is dead, but because He is absent....

8. “And the way of sinners He shall root out.” What is, “the way of sinners”? To mock at these things which we say. Who is an orphan, who a widow? What kingdom of heaven, what punishment of hell is there? These are fables of the Christians. To what I see, to that will I live: “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Beware lest such men persuade you of anything: let them not enter through your ears into your heart; let them find thorns in your ears: let him, who seeks to enter thus, go away pierced: for “evil communications corrupt good manners.” But here perhaps you will say, “Wherefore then are they prosperous? Behold, they worship not God, and commit every kind of evil daily: yet they abound in those things, through want of which I toil.” Be not envious against sinners. What they receive, you see, what is in store for them, do you not see?...Will you not believe even the Lord your God, who says, “Broad and spacious is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that walk by it”? This “way the Lord will root out.” And, when “the way of sinners” has been “rooted out,” what remains for us? “Come, you blessed of My father, enjoy the Kingdom;” “The Lord shall reign for ever”. “O Sion, your God” shall reign for ever; surely your God will not reign without you. “For generation and generation.” He has said it twice, because he could not say it for ever. And think not that eternity is bounded by finite words. The word eternity consists of four syllables; in itself it is without end. It could not be commended to you, save thus, “for generation and generation.” Too little has he said: if he spoke it all day long, it were too narrow: if he spoke it all his life, must he not at length hold his peace? Love eternity: without end shall you reign, if Christ be your End, with whom you shall reign for ever and ever. Amen.