This entire psalm voices a prayer as spoken by holy people to the person of Christ. For since for our sakes and on our behalf he received insult when he became man, we are taught to join our prayers with his as he prays and supplicates the Father on our behalf, as one who repels both visible and invisible attacks against us.

By saying in the day of tribulation, he indicates a time of the most severe affliction in which we entreat the Lord with an intense longing.

May he remember all you sacrificed and make us mindful of all the tortures and insults you bore for our sake . . . may he turn into resurrection joy that cross on which you were offered up in your entirety to God.

Yes, may he fulfill not only your intention to lay down your life for your friends, so that the seed, by dying, might spring again more abundantly, but also your intention that . . . the entry of the whole Gentile world should be facilitated.

We shall rejoice in your salvation, rejoice that death will not harm you, for so you will show us that it will not harm us either.

People rejoice in riches, or in glory or in nobility of birth, but the righteous in the salvation of God.

May the Lord grant all your requests—all of them, not only the petitions you offered on earth but those also by which you intercede for us in heaven.

Sometimes people run off to a mountain to pray, as though God will be able to hear them better from there. Do you want to make contact with God in your prayer? Humble yourself. But again, just because I have said, Do you want to make contact with God? Humble yourself, do not take it literally and materialistically and go off down to underground vaults and there start beseeching God. Do not go seeking either caverns or mountains. Have lowliness in your heart, and God will give you all the high altitude you want. He will come to you and be with you in your bedroom.

The salvation which he established is recognized as our power when it is neither diminished by diseases nor injured by pains. Such a salvation makes us powerful, since it protects us within its eternal existence.

They trusted in horses and chariots, he is saying, and enjoyed no benefit from them but were caught up in unseen entanglements and collapsed. We, by contrast, invoked divine assistance, and won salvation in visible manner and emerged superior to the adversaries.

Among the ancients there were two types of triumphs: a greater one having to do with chariots, which was called a laureled triumph; the other, a lesser triumph, was called an ovation. But leaving such things to worldly people, he affirms that he has been exalted in the name of the Lord. For chariot and horse do not exalt, though they seem to glorify people with honors in this world. But it is the Lord’s name which leads to eternal rewards.

Those who trust in human honors have been snared by their own perverse desires and have fallen into the pit of death.

A Christian is said to rise in two senses; first, when he is freed by grace from the death of vices in this life and he continues in God’s grace of justification. . . . Second, there is also the general resurrection at which the just will receive their eternal rewards. In this passage it is clear that both senses of resurrection are appropriate. For this reason, when he adds we have been raised, it is because in any sort of resurrection the faithful arise from their humble status and are elevated to divine rewards.

They say these things will happen in the time of the advent of that Savior. Then all the powers of the adversaries and those hidden and secret enemies of God who have turned their backs on the Savior will be laid low. All who receive that Savior will rise from the first fall. Therefore, Simeon says, Behold, this child is destined to cause the rising and falling of many,^[1] namely, the ruin of his enemies and adversaries and the resurrection of those who, having fallen once, have been rescued by him.

We will rise upright as others are collapsing, because our King is saved, and arising from the dead he ascends into the heavens, and as he sits on the right hand of God the Father he hears us in the day we call him. To him be glory forever. Amen.

And hear us on the day we call on you. As Christ now offers sacrifice on our behalf, hear us on the day we call on you.