7 “Thus in a holy thing I have appeared to You, that I might see Your power and Your glory”....Unless a man first thirst in that desert, that is in the evil wherein he is, he never arrives at the good, which is God. But “I have appeared to You,” he says, “in a holy thing.” Now in a holy thing is there great consolation. “I have appeared to You,” is what? In order that You might see me: and for this reason You have seen me, in order that I might see You. “I have appeared to You, that I might see.” He has not said, “I have appeared to You, that You might see:” but, “I have appeared to You, that I might see Your power and Your glory.” Whence also the Apostle, “But now,” he says, “knowing God, nay, having been known of God.” For first you have appeared to God, in order that to you God might be able to appear. “That I might see Your power and Your glory.” In truth in that forsaken place, that is, in that desert, if as though from the desert a man strives to obtain enough for his sustenance, he will never see the power of the Lord, and the glory of the Lord, but he will remain to die of thirst, and will find neither way, nor consolation, nor water, whereby he may endure in the desert. But when he shall have lifted up himself to God, so as to say to Him out of all his inward parts, “My soul has thirsted for You; how manifoldly for You also my flesh!” lest perchance even the things necessary for the flesh of others he ask, and not of God, or else long not for that resurrection of the flesh, which God has promised to us: when, I say, he shall have lifted up himself, he will have no small consolations.
8....But you have heard but now when the Gospel was being read in what terms He has notified His Majesty: “I and My Father are One.” Behold how great a Majesty and how great an Equality with the Father has come down to the flesh because of our infirmity. Behold how greatly beloved we have been, before that we loved God. If before that we loved God, so much by Him we were beloved, as that His Son, Equal with Himself, He made a Man for our sake, what does He reserve for us now loving Him? Therefore many men think it to be a very small thing that the Son of God has appeared on earth; because they are not in the Holy One, to them has not appeared the power of the Same and the glory of the Same: that is, not yet have they a heart made holy, whence they may perceive the eminence of that virtue, and may render thanks to God, nor that to which for their own sakes so great an One came, unto what a nativity, unto what a Passion, they are not able to see, His glory and His power.
Source: The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms (New Advent)