This psalm . . . is instructive beyond any other, capable of giving more than adequate instruction in how to give evidence of endurance in the midst of hardships.

I said [has] the sense, I determined, his meaning being, I determined within myself not to sin against my oppressor simply in action but also not to say anything against him by word of mouth, especially since what is initially verbal abuse turns to physical abuse, and the person who is determined not to do physical harm ought not have recourse to verbal abuse.

Have no doubt about it, when people annoy and torment you when you are doing the right thing, those people are the lackeys of the wickedest sinner of all. They are slaves of the author of every evil deed. David saw this with prophetic eyes and recognized the face of the evil one. So he kept quiet. He had no wish whatever to do the will of the evil one. So he kept quiet. He had no wish whatever to do the will of him who ruins one’s peace of mind. He simply said nothing. He closed his doors in silence; patience lay before him, and silence kept a sleepless vigil. No enemy could creep in, and from his cloistered lips no ambivalent speech, no heedless talk, could issue forth. Mightier far is the patient person who can govern himself than the valiant one who captures citadels.^[1] The just person is his own cloister; he is his own eternal guard.

It is a universal custom to be upset when you see your plans at the mercy of sinners, and to be upset also at your own misfortunes, especially when you are badly treated by wrongdoers while conscious of your own virtuous behavior. The general run of people react to such developments by turning to criticism and displeasure with the God of all. Hence, blessed David says, I shall guard my ways so as not to sin with my tongue: I kept my words to myself, that is, I made a decision and judgment to guard myself against any sin.

If insults are offered to you or to anyone else, or wrongs done, be immovable, and as far as an answer in retaliation is concerned, be silent as one that is dumb, always singing in your heart this verse of the psalmist.

If you know there is sin, be silent. Do not add to your guilt by denying it. If you are not aware of sin, be silent. You are secure in your innocence. The reports of other people cannot nail any sin to a conscience that knows itself to be innocent.

When he was silent he ceased from good, that is, from the meditation of the Law, which is the teacher of good. When the grief of the sin renewed, the wound from sin became more serious, as when we lead others from meditation on the Law. It becomes a festering sore, having applied no medicine from divine precepts. And so he has not stood in silence, but when he had returned to his senses, he cast out that very thing bringing such harm to his spirit. He shows this by my heart grew hot.

In temptation, good words flee from us and the spirit is silent. The soul speaks about those temptations that it recognizes and is silent about those it does not. In this place good indicates the virtues and knowledge that flee in the time of temptation.

In the Gospel it was written, after the Lord spoke to Cleopas, Was not our heart burning within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?^[1] Where will you burn? Where will the coals of fire be found in you who are never set on fire by the declaration of the Lord, never inflamed by the words of the Holy Spirit? Hear also . . . David. . . saying, My heart burned within me, and in my meditation fire became inflamed. From where do you glow? Where is the fire kindled in you?

It is not that he was enquiring about his own death—death is not the end of one who will rise again—but rather his enquiry concerned that end of which the apostle speaks: Afterwards there will be the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father.^[1] . . . Evil will fade to nothingness, and eternal good will take its place. . . . That, surely, is the true end. It is not the end of one person alone, but the end of all. Why then does David say my end? But consider a moment who it is that is speaking. He speaks as humankind or as one representing men and sharing the same substance as they; he is one who stands for all, is in the likeness of all and is truly versed in that perfection that belongs to the consummate man.

But here the prayer is not simply, Make me know the number of my days, but Make me know the number of them that ‘is.’ What does that mean? . . . These days of ours do not have being; they depart almost before they arrive, and when they do arrive they cannot stand still. They join onto each other; they follow one another and cannot hold themselves together. Nothing of the past can be called back, and the future that we await will pass away; as long as it has not come, we do not possess it, and when it has come, we cannot keep hold of it. . . . What I am seeking is the simple is. I seek the true is, . . . which is the bride of my Lord, where there will be no death, no deficiency, where the day passes not but abides, the day that is preceded by no yesterday and hustled on by no tomorrow. Make known to me the number of my days, this number, the number that is.

Not even all the possessions amassed nor all humankind, if measured by their lifetime, from Adam to the last human being—not even this measure is anything in comparison with the measure of your life, Lord.

The end of the rational nature is the understanding of the holy Trinity.

With my eyes on him who is, and comparing with him these present things that have no being in that sense, I shall see that what I lack is greater than what I have, and so I shall be more humbled about what is missing than elated about what is at hand.

By handbreadths he means not, as many commentators believed, that he made us for fighting, certain commentators of this mind being swept away to the extremes of fairy tales. Instead, since handbreadth refers to the hand measurements made by women in weaving garments, he meant here, you wove my life as with a kind of measurement, not making it indeterminate and without conditions but subjecting it to time limits. And my being is as nothing before you: you measured my life in such a way that my existence and constitution are counted as nothing in comparison with you.

Such, brothers, is our life, we whose existence is so transitory. Such is the game we play on earth: we do not exist, and we are born, and being born we are dissolved. We are a fleeting dream, an apparition without substance, the flight of a bird that passes, a ship that leaves no trace on the sea. We are dust, a vapor, the morning dew, a flower growing but a moment and withering in a moment. A person’s days are as grass: as the flower of the field, so shall he flourish.^[1] Beautifully has holy David meditated on our weakness . . . and he defines the days of a person as the measure of a span. ON HIS BROTHER ST.

God, who knows precisely the allotted days of each one of us, regards nothing as immeasurable. His knowledge embraces the measure of all things. To him nothing is beyond his understanding, nothing is unweighed, nothing is unmeasured, nothing is unnumbered. He says, The very hairs of your head have been numbered.^[1] . . . We know that God is said to have measured the heavens with the palm of his hand^[2]—the palm, from thumb to little finger, being the span by which a thing is measured and its length ascertained. Those who accept this reading understand that our days are measured or numbered, and in that sense they are short. However, the all-knowing God has measured, as we said above, and fully comprehends the very heavens. . . . The prophet’s days are not short but great, for God has measured them with the same palm as that with which he measured the heavens.

Mortal life is a harsh condition. What else is its birth but an entry into a life of toil? Even the infant’s cry bears witness to the toil that awaits it. From this burdensome banquet no one is excused. We must drink of the chalice that Adam has filled for us. We have been fashioned by the hands of Truth; yet, on account of sin, we were cast out in the day of vanity. We have been fashioned to the image of God, but we have marred that image by sinful transgression. Thus the psalm reminds us how we have been made and to what state we have fallen.

As we regard our sin, our mortality, our fleeting seasons, our groaning and toil and sweat, the stages of our life that succeed one another and will not stand still but slip by imperceptibly from infancy to old age, as we regard all these, let us see in them the old self, the old day, the old song, the Old Covenant. But when we turn to our inner being, to all that is destined to be renewed in us and replace the things subject to change, let us find there the new self, the new day, the new song, the New Covenant, and let us love this newness so dearly that the oldness we meet there does not frighten us. As we run our race, we are passing from the old things to the new. This transition is effected as the old things decay and the inner are made new, until our outer decaying self pays its debt to nature and meets its death, though it too will be renewed at the resurrection. Then all things that at the present are new only in hope will be made new in very truth.

Our hope and our patience is Christ; he is our redemption;^[1] he is our expectation. . . . Look on us, Lord, when you come in judgment; let your mercy look on us. . . . In the power of your mercy lies the substance of our soul and life. We must not fear physical death; rather, we should fear him who can save or destroy our soul.^[2] Our soul’s substance is that virtue that God has poured into hearts made in the image of himself.

We will have to say that if we give in to troubles, we do not believe in him insofar as he is endurance; and if we are weak, we have not believed in him insofar as he is strength. Commentary on the

It is not merely one lapse that he is confessing, for he prays to be forgiven all his iniquities. He knows that without God’s forgiveness no one can be saved. For we were born in sin. We have inherited a stain. Our human condition has a congenital tendency to sin.

Although this holy man was conducting himself in noble devotion, he still asks to be freed from all of his iniquities by the Lord’s mercy.

For my part, I realized that this happens to me with your permission, and I waited longer in the knowledge that I would receive help from the same quarter from which comes also the allowance of my suffering.

The strong hand strikes as though harshly, but it is swift to heal. If it is powerful to wound, it is also powerful when it comes to applying a remedy. As the Lord says, I will strike, and I will heal.^[1] . . . This hand of the Lord took from Job all that he had and gave it all back again. In fact, he greatly added to Job’s store of good things, even doubling what he had before. Do not be troubled because David says he has fainted. A person can faint and rise up stronger than before. The Lord lifts up all that fall and sets up all that are cast down.^[2] Whoever is corrected will rise up with virtue.

I realize that all your scourging proves to be for a person’s correction and betterment; it is not as though you were indifferent to human beings in allowing them to suffer, instead preferring to improve their souls.

The psalmist returns now to the truth of which he reminded us earlier. However much progress a person has made here, all human anxiety in this life is pointless, for we live in uncertainty. Which of us can be secure even about the good in ourselves? We fret in vain. Each of us must cast our anxiety on the Lord, cast on him whatever worries us, believing that he will sustain and protect us. What is certain on this earth? Only death. . . . You have made some progress, have you? You know what you are today, but you do not know what you will be tomorrow. . . . You hope to get money, but whether it will come your way is uncertain. You hope to find a wife, but it is uncertain whether you will find one, or what she will be like if you do. You hope to have children, but you cannot be certain that any will be born. If they are born, it is not certain that they will survive. If they do live, you cannot know whether they will grow up well or prove to be weaklings. Whichever way you turn, everything is uncertain, except for one sole certainty: death. If you are poor, there is no certainty that you will ever be rich; if you are uneducated, you cannot be certain of being taught; if you are in poor health, it is uncertain whether you can recover your strength. You have been born, and so you can at least be certain that you will die, but even in this certainty of death uncertainty lurks, because you do not know the day of your death. We live beset with uncertainties, holding one thing only as certain, that we shall die, but without even the certainty of when that will be. The only thing we ultimately fear is the one thing that we cannot possibly avoid. All human anxiety in this life is pointless.

So this is what should concern us, being rescued from sins and attaining reconciliation with you, which results in complete resolution of problems, and not taking pains over other things, which are futile and useless for the painstaker, never bringing one an outcome for the pains or providing one with lasting benefit from the pains.

What the psalmist means is: As long as I am in this body, I am unhappy. Who of us could say that? If we are octogenarians, we are afraid to die; if we are centenarians and sick besides, still we cling to life and beg for respite. Why do we do that? Because sin gnaws at our conscience. We know that if we leave our body, we are going not to Christ but to hell. On the contrary, what does the apostle say? I desire to depart and to be with Christ.^[1] Give me freedom from anxiety, for after death I am going to be with Christ; even now I long to die. So our psalmist, because he is one who loves the Lord, cries: Unhappy man that I am, because my sojourn is prolonged!

Forgive me, so that I need no longer be a pilgrim and a wayfarer. Forgive me so that I may be called home from exile. If you forgive me, before I go from this place, I shall no longer be an exile and a pilgrim. Once you will have forgiven me, I will no longer be in foreign parts. I shall be a fellow citizen of your saints; I shall be with my ancestors, who were pilgrims before me and are now truly citizens. I shall be a member of God’s household. I shall not dread punishment but shall merit grace through our Lord Jesus; with whom, Lord God, be praise to you, and honor and glory forever; now and always and for ages of ages. Amen.

Grant me a little time that I may repent for my sins, for in hell no one has the power to confess his sins.