The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^7. You have heard a groan in the winepress, “My soul longs and fails for the courts of the Lord:” hear how it holds out, rejoicing in hope: “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.” Here they have rejoiced for that cause. Whence comes rejoicing, but of hope? Wherefore have they rejoiced? “In the living God.” What has rejoiced in you? “My heart and my flesh.” Why have they rejoiced? “For,” says he, “the sparrow has found her a house, and the turtle-dove a nest, where she may lay her young”. What is this? He had named two things, and he adds two figures of birds which answer to them: he had said that his heart rejoiced and his flesh, and to these two he made the sparrow and turtle-dove to correspond: the heart as the sparrow, the flesh as the dove. The sparrow has found herself a home: my heart has found itself a home. She tries her wings in the virtues of this life, in faith, and hope, and charity, by which she may fly unto her home: and when she shall have come there, she shall remain; and now the complaining voice of the sparrow, which is here, shall no longer be there. For it is the very complaining sparrow of whom in another Psalm he says, “Like a sparrow alone on the housetop.” From the housetop he flies home. Now let him be on the housetop, treading on his carnal house: he shall have a heavenly house, a perpetual home: that sparrow shall make an end of his complaints. But to the dove he has given young, that is, to the flesh: “the dove has found a nest, where she may lay her young.” The sparrow a home, the dove a nest, and a nest too where she may lay her young. A home is chosen as for ever, a nest is framed for a time: with the heart we think upon God, as if the sparrow flew to her home: with the flesh we do good works. For you see how many good works are done by the flesh of the saints; for by this we work the things we are commanded to work, by which we are helped in this life. “Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the poor and roofless into your house; and if you see one naked, clothe him:” and other such things which are commanded us we work only through the flesh....We speak, brethren, what ye know: how many seem to do good works without the Church? how many even Pagans feed the hungry, clothe the naked, receive the stranger, visit the sick, comfort the prisoner? How many do this? The dove seems, as it were, to bring forth young: but finds not herself a nest. How many works may heretics do not in the Church; they place not their young in a nest. They shall be trampled on and crushed: they shall not be kept, shall not be guarded....In that faith lay your young: in that nest work your works. For what the nests are, what that nest is, follows at once. Having said, And the dove has found herself a nest, where she may lay her young; as if you had asked, What nest? “Your altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God.” What is, “My King and my God?” You who rules me, who has created me.

8....“Blessed are those who dwell in Your house”....If you have your own house, you are poor; if God's, you are rich. In your own house you will fear robbers; of the house of God, He is Himself the wall. Therefore “blessed are those who dwell in Your house.” They possess the heavenly Jerusalem, without constraint, without pressure, without difference and division of boundaries; all have it, and each have all. Great are those riches. Brother crowds not brother: there is no want there. Next, what will they do there? For among men it is necessity which is the mother of all employments. I have already said, in brief, brethren, run in your mind through any occupations, and see if it is not necessity alone which produces them. Those very eminent arts which seem so powerful in giving help to others, the art of speaking in their defence or of medicine in healing, for these are the most excellent employments in this life; take away litigants, who is there for the advocate to help? Take away wounds and diseases? What is there for the physician to cure? And all those employments of ours which are required and done for our daily life, arise from necessity. To plough, to sow, to clear fallow ground, to sail; what is it which produces all these works, but necessity and want? Take away hunger, thirst, nakedness; who has need of all these things?...For instance, the injunction, “Break your bread to the hungry.” For whom could you break bread, if there were nobody hungry? “Take in the roofless poor into your house.” What stranger is there to take in, where all live in their own country? What sick person to visit, where they enjoy perpetual health? What litigants to reconcile, where there is everlasting peace? What dead to bury, where there is eternal life? None of those honourable actions which are common to all men will then be your employment, nor any of these good works; the young swallows will then fly out of their nest. What then? You have said already what we shall have; “Those who dwell in Your house are blessed.” Say now what they shall do, for I see not then any need to induce me to action. Even what I am now saying and arguing springs from some need. Will there be any such argument there to teach the ignorant, or remind the forgetful? Or will the Gospel be read in that country where the Word of God Itself shall be contemplated?...“They shall be always praising You.” This shall be our whole duty, an unceasing Hallelujah. Think not, my brethren, that there will be any weariness there: if you are not able to endure long here in saying this, it is because some want draws you away from that enjoyment. If what is not seen gives not so much joy here, if with so much eagerness under the pressure and weakness of the flesh we praise that which we believe, how shall we praise that which we see? “When death shall be swallowed up in victory, when this mortal shall have put on immortality,” no one will say, “I have been standing a long time;” no one will say, “I have fasted a long time,” “I have watched a long time.” For there shall be great endurance, and our immortal bodies shall be sustained in contemplation of God. And if the word which we now dispense to you keeps your weak flesh standing so long, what will be the effect of that joy? How will it change us? “For we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is.” Being made like Him, when shall we ever faint? What shall draw us off? Brethren, we shall never be satiated with the praise of God, with the love of God. If love could fail, praise could fail. But if love be eternal, as there will there be beauty inexhaustible, fear not lest you be not able to praise for ever Him whom you shall be able to love for ever. For this life let us sigh.