The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^22. See who this is: David as one man was seeming to implore; see ye here our image and the type of the Church.

“Deal kindly, O Lord, in Your good will with Sion”. With this Sion deal kindly. What is Sion? A city holy. What is a city holy? That which cannot be hidden, being upon a mountain established. Sion in prospect, because it has prospect of something which it hopes for. For Sion is interpreted “prospect,” and Jerusalem, “vision of peace.” You perceive then yourselves to be in Sion and in Jerusalem, if being sure ye look for hope that is to be, and if you have peace with God. “And be the walls of Jerusalem built.” “Deal kindly, O Lord, in Your good will with Sion, and be the walls of Jerusalem built.” For not to herself let Sion ascribe her merits: do Thou with her deal kindly, “Be the walls of Jerusalem built:” be the battlements of our immortality laid, in faith and hope and charity.

23. “Then You shall accept the sacrifice of righteousness”. But now sacrifice for iniquity, to wit, a spirit troubled, and a heart humbled; then the sacrifice of righteousness, praises alone. For, “Blessed they that dwell in Your house, for ever and ever they shall praise You:” for this is the sacrifice of righteousness. “Oblations and holocausts.” What are “holocausts”? A whole victim by fire consumed. When a whole beast was laid upon the altar with fire to be consumed, it was called a holocaust. May divine fire take us up whole, and that fervour catch us whole. What fervour? “Neither is there that hides himself from the heat thereof.” What fervour? That whereof speaks the Apostle: “In spirit fervent.” Be not merely our soul taken up by that divine fire of wisdom, but also our body; that it may earn their immortality; so be it lifted up for a holocaust, that death be swallowed into victory. “Oblations and holocausts.” “Then shall they lay upon your altar calves.” Whence “calves”? What shall He therein choose? Will it be the innocence of the new age, or necks freed from the yoke of the law?...