Psalms 69:30

"Poor and sorrowful I am" [Psalm 69:30]. Why this? Is it that we may acknowledge that through bitterness of soul this poor One does speak evil? For He has spoken of many things to happen to them. And as if we were saying to Him, "Why such things?"— "Nay, not so much!" He answers, "poor and sorrowful I am." They have brought Me to want, unto this sorrow they have set Me down, therefore I say these words. It is not, however, the indignation of one cursing, but the prediction of one prophesying. For He was intending to recommend to us certain things which hereafter He says of His poverty and His sorrow, in order that we may learn to be poor and sorrowful. For, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." [Matthew 5:3] And, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." This therefore He does Himself before now show to us: and so, "poor and sorrowful I am." The whole Body of Him says this. The Body of Christ in this earth is poor and sorrowful. But let Christians be rich. Truly if Christians they are, they are poor; in comparison with the riches celestial for which they hope, all their gold they count for sand. "And the health of Your countenance, O God, has taken Me up." Is this poor One anywise forsaken? When do you deign to bring near to your table a poor man in rags? But again, this poor One the health of the countenance of God has taken up: in His countenance He has hidden His need. For of Him has been said, "You shall hide them in the hiding place of Your countenance." But in that countenance what riches there are would ye know? Riches here give you this advantage, that you may dine on what you will, whenever you will: but those riches, that you may never hunger.

Brothers, the Lord of the universe has need of nothing; he requires nothing of anyone, except that confession be made to him. For David, the chosen one, says, "I will confess to the Lord, and it shall please him more than a young bullock with horns and hoofs. Let the poor see it and be glad." And again he says, "Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the All-High your vows; and call on me in the day of affliction, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." "For a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God."

Always indeed, dearly beloved, "the earth is full of the Lord's kindness," and the nature of things itself is the teacher to each one of the faithful in the worship of God, while "heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them" proclaim the goodness and power of their Creator. The wonderful beauty of the elements that serve him demands a due thanksgiving from the understanding creature.

For what is more fruitful or more filled with the truest confession than that passage in one of your letters in which you humbly bewail the fact that our nature did not remain as it was created but was debased by the father of the human race? In your letter you said, "But I am poor and sorrowful," I, that am still hardened in the filth of an earthly image, having in me more of the first Adam than of the second, still give my attention to the senses of the flesh and to earthly acts. How shall I dare to depict myself when earthly corruption proves that I deny my heavenly image? I blush to paint what I am, I do not dare to paint what I am not. But what good will it do me, wretched as I am, "to hate iniquity and to love virtue," when I do rather what I hate and am too sluggish to strive to do what I love? I am torn apart, fighting with myself in an interior warfare, while "the spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit," and "the law of my body under the law of sin fights against the law of my mind." Unhappy am I who have absorbed the poisonous taste of that hateful tree, not the wood of the cross! The ancestral poison hardens in me, from Adam the father, who by his fall has undone the whole race. These and many other things you said, groaning over your misery and expecting the redemption of your body, knowing yourself saved by hope, if not yet in fact.

So does the man who sees God in all things, who tastes God in them through his three powers. "Pleasing to Him be my theme; I will be glad in the Lord." And elsewhere: "For you make me glad, O Lord, by Your deeds." Again: …