8 Think, brethren, and reflect what good things God gives unto sinners: and learn hence what He keeps for His own servants. To sinners who blaspheme Him every day He gives the sky and the earth, He gives springs, fruits, health, children, wealth, abundance: all these good things none gives but God. He who gives such things to sinners, what do you think He keeps for His faithful ones? Is this to be believed of Him, that He who gives such things to the bad, keeps nothing for the good? Nay verily He does keep, not earth, but heaven for them. Too common a thing perhaps I say when I say heaven; Himself rather, who made the heaven. Fair is heaven, but fairer is the Maker of heaven. But I see the heavens, Him I see not. Because you have eyes to see the heavens: a heart you have not yet to see the Maker of heaven: therefore came He from heaven to earth, to cleanse the heart, that He may be seen who made heaven and earth. But wait thou with full patience for salvation. By what treatment to cure you, He knows: by what cutting, what burning, He knows. You have brought sickness on yourself by sinning: He comes not only to nurse, but also to cut and to burn. Seest thou not how much men suffer under the hands of physicians, when a man promises them an uncertain hope? You will be cured, says the physician: you will be cured, if I cut. It is a man who speaks, and to a man that he speaks: neither is he sure who speaks, nor he who hears, for he who is speaking to the man has not made man, and knows not perfectly what is passing in man: yet at the words of a man who knows not what is passing in man, man sooner believes, submits his limbs, suffers himself to be bound, often without being bound is cut or burned; and receives perhaps health for a few days, even when just healed not knowing when he may die: perhaps, while being healed, dies; perhaps cannot be healed. But to whom has God promised anything, and deceived him?
9. “Fix my prayer in Your ears, O Lord”. Great earnestness of him who prays! That is, let not my prayer go out of Your ears, fix it then in Your ears. How did he travail that he might fix his prayer in the ears of God? Let God answer and say to us; Would you that I fix your prayer in My ears? Fix My law in your heart; “and attend to the voice of my prayer.”
10. “In the day of my trouble I have cried unto You, for You have heard me”. A little before he had said, All the day have I cried, all the day have I been troubled. Let no Christian then say that there is any day in which he is not troubled. By “all the day” we have understood the whole of time. What then, is there trouble even when it is well with us? Even so, trouble. How is there trouble? Because “as long as we are in the body we are absent from the Lord.” Let what will abound here, we are not yet in that country whither we are hastening to return. He to whom foreign travel is sweet, loves not his country: if his country is sweet, travel is bitter; if travel is bitter, all the day there is trouble. When is there not trouble? When there is joy in one's country. “At Your right hand are delights for evermore.” “You shall fill me with joy,” he says, “with Your countenance: that I may see the delight of the Lord.” There toil and groaning shall pass away: there shall be not prayer but praise; there Alleluia, there Amen, the voice in concord with Angels; there vision without failing and love without weariness. So long therefore as we are not there, you see that we are not in that which is good. But do all things abound? If all things abound, see if you are assured that all things perish not. But I have what I had not: more money has come to me which I had not before. Perhaps more fear too has come, which you had not before: perhaps you were so much the more secure as you were the poorer. In fine, be it that you have wealth, that you have redundance of this world's affluence, that you have assurance given you that all this shall not perish; besides this, that God say unto you, You shall remain for ever in these things, they shall be for ever with you, but My face you shall not see. Let none ask counsel of the flesh: ask ye counsel of the Spirit: let your heart answer you; let hope, faith, charity, which has begun to be in you, answer. If then we were to receive assurance that we should always be in affluence of worldly goods, and if God were to say to us, My face you shall not see, would ye rejoice in these goods? Some one might perhaps choose to rejoice, and say, These things abound unto me, it is well with me, I ask no more. He has not yet begun to be a lover of God: he has not yet begun to sigh like one far from home. Far be it, far be it from us: let them retire, all those seductions: let them retire, those false blandishments: let them be gone, those words which they say daily unto us, “Where is your God?” Let us pour out our soul over us, let us confess in tears, let us groan in confession, let us sigh in misery. Whatever is present with us besides our God, is not sweet: we would not have all things that He has given, if He gives not Himself who gave all things.
11. “Among the gods there is none like You, O Lord”. What did he say? “Among the gods,” etc. Let the Pagans make for themselves what gods they will; let them bring workmen in silver and in gold, furbishers, sculptors; let them make gods. What kind of gods? Having eyes, and seeing not; and the other things which the Psalm mentions in what follows. But we do not worship these, he says; we do not worship them, these are symbols. What then do ye worship? Something else that is worse: for the gods of the gentiles are devils. What then? Neither, say they, do we worship devils. You have certainly nothing else in your temples, nothing else inspires your prophets than a devil. But what do ye say? We worship Angels, we have Angels as gods. You know not altogether what Angels are. Angels worship the one God, and favour not men who wish to worship Angels and not God. For we find Angels of high rank forbidding men to adore them, and commanding them to adore the true God. But when they say Angels, suppose they mean men, since it is said, “I have said, You are Gods, and all the children of the Most Highest.” Whatever man thinks to the contrary, that which was made is not like Him who made it. Except God, whatever else there is in the universe was made by God. What a difference there is between Him who made, and that which was made, who can worthily imagine? Therefore this man said, “there is none like You, O Lord: there is not one that can do as you do.” But how much God is unlike them he said not, because it cannot be said. Let your Charity attend: God is ineffable: we more easily say what He is not than what He is. You think of the earth; this is not God: you think of the sea; this is not God: of all things which are in the earth, men and animals; this is not God: of all things which are in the sea, which fly through the air; this is not God: whatever shines in the sky, the stars, sun and moon; this is not God: the heaven itself; this is not God: think of the Angels, Virtues, Powers, Archangels, Thrones, Seats, Principalities; this is not God. What is He then? I could only tell you, what He is not. Askest thou what He is? What “the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor has risen up into the heart of man.”...
Source: The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms (New Advent)