When a person lays aside his past sinfulness, he is suddenly endowed with new dignity, with that cup of divine love of which it is said, And your cup which inebriated me, how it overflows!^[1] Inebriated with that cup, I repeat, hearts taste the sweetness of heavenly things through the strength of spiritual wisdom. Then they may merit to hear, Taste and see how good the Lord is.^[2] Now he said taste, because love of God can refresh the soul but cannot satisfy the desire, regardless of the amount of faith or longing with which it is sought. More and more, it arouses thirst when it is, as it were, tasted beforehand with the edge of the lips, and for this reason he says of himself, He who eats of me will hunger still, he who drinks of me will thirst for more.^[3] Because of its sweetness, it arouses an appetite for itself, but it does not cause disgust from satiety. Just as people who are experienced in drinking wine are likely to thirst all the more when they have become drunk, so it is with the devout and chaste soul that is prudent and contrite and that can, therefore, say with the psalmist, You have given us stupefying wine, when it has begun to think about hope in a future life and to imbibe a thirst for heavenly goods. It knows how to be filled but not how to be satisfied, so that the more it consumes according to its capacity, the more it lacks in its eagerness, and it can join with the prophet in that word of longing: My soul pines for your salvation;^[4] and again: My flesh and my heart waste away, O God of my heart;^[5] moreover, My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord.^[6]

Therefore, O God, you have cast us off. You have cast off those who in proportion to their sins removed themselves a distance from you. You have destroyed the accumulations of our wickedness, doing good to us because of our weakness. You were angry, since we were by nature children of wrath,^[1] having no hope and being without God in the world. You had mercy on us when you sent forth your only-begotten Son as a propitiation for our sins,^[2] in order that in his blood we might find redemption. We would not know that we were having these kindnesses done to us, unless you have made us drink the wine of sorrow. By wine he means the words that lead the hardened heart to conscious perception.

Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine. Gilead is a grandson of Manasseh; this is said in order that he may show that the succession of the patriarchs, from whom is descended Christ according to the flesh, comes down from God. And Ephraim is the support of my head. Judah is my king. He will join together by agreement the parts that are severed. Moab is the washbasin of my hope. Or a pot for washing, another of the interpreters says; or a pot of security; that is to say, the excommunicated person, who has been forbidden with threats to enter the church of the Lord. For the Moabite and the Ammonite will not enter until the third and until the tenth generation and until everlasting time.^[1] Nevertheless, since baptism possesses remission for sins and produces security for the debtors, he, showing the deliverance through baptism and the affection for God, says, Moab is a pot for washing or a pot of security. Therefore, all foreigners are made subject,^[2] bowing down under the yoke of Christ; for this reason he will set his shoe in Edom. The shoe of the divinity is the God-bearing flesh, through which he approaches humans. In this hope, pronouncing blessed the time of the coming of the Lord, the prophet says, Who will bring me into the fortified city.^[3] Perhaps he means the church, a city, indeed, because it is a community governed conformably to laws; and fortified, because of the faith encompassing it. Whence one of the interpreters produced a very clear translation: Into a city fortified all around. Who, then, will permit me to see this great spectacle, God living among people? These are the words of the Lord: Many prophets and just people have longed to see what you see, and they have not seen it.^[4]

All strangers have stooped and been put under the yoke of Christ, wherefore also over Edom does he cast out his shoe. Now the shoe of the Godhead is the flesh that bore God whereby he came among humankind.

Therefore, let the church of God be saluted and let it be taught to say what we were just saying: Give us help from trouble; for the help of people is worthless. So, perhaps, the meaning of the psalm does not at all permit us to allege weakness, if indeed affliction is a patron of help and not an occasion of infirmity. To those, then, who were rejected through sin but then received again through the kindness of God, it is appropriate to say, O God, you have cast us off and have destroyed us; you have been angry and have had mercy on us.

So, as I said, the creature baptized the Creator, the lamp the sun, and by doing so John the Baptist did not push himself forward but submitted himself. I mean, he said to the one who came to him, Are you coming to me to be baptized? It is I who ought to be baptized by you.^[1] A great confession, and a sound profession of humility by the lamp. If this had pushed itself forward against the sun, the wind of pride would very soon have blown it out. So this is what the Lord foresaw, what the Lord taught by his baptism. Such a great one wished to be baptized by such a small one; to explain it in a word, the Savior by one needing to be saved. John, I mean, had perhaps remembered, great though he was, some sickness or other of his. Why else, after all did he say, It is I who ought to be baptized by you? Certainly the Lord’s baptism means salvation, because salvation is from the Lord.^[2] For vain is the salvation coming from people. So why, It is I who ought to be baptized by you, if he had no need of any sort of cure? But in the Lord’s own very humility there is a marvelous medicine; one was baptizing, the other healing.

The first thing they must do is examine their own hearts, to see whether they are asking in faith. Any who ask in faith receive for their own good, and sometimes do not receive for their own good. When he does not cure the body, he wants to cure the soul. So trust him, and believe that since he has called you to an eternal kingdom, whatever he wishes is to your advantage. After all, what is this thing that you long for as though it mattered so enormously? Eternal life is what he has promised you, to reign with the angels is what he has promised you, rest without end is what he has promised you. And what, in comparison, is it that he does not give here and now? Isn’t it true that the health of human beings is vain? Isn’t it absolutely certain that all those who do get cured will eventually die? And when death comes, all those past events vanish like smoke. But when that other life that he has promised us comes, it will of course have no end. By denying you something here and now, he is equipping you for that life, he is preparing you for it, he is training you for it.

Would a man who was only a man say this of himself?^[1] For if a person says this, he blasphemes, and God does not hear sinners.^[2] But indeed Christ says that God hears him. He is therefore neither sinner nor mere man. It has also been said, Vain is the hope in man. And it is said, As for us we hope in our God.^[3]

Christ is therefore God, not coming from any other substance; the Father is living, and I live because of the Father,^[4] and, I am the bread of life; the one who eats this will live for all time.^[5] All the statements signify one substance. And that is why Jesus says that he is from above who says this: If therefore you will see the Son of man ascending, where was he before?^[6]

For the Spirit of the Lord did not say, he who does the truth, that his works be clearly seen as done in the Holy Spirit but as done in God,^[1] which we say are done not in the Father alone, or in the Son alone or in the Holy Spirit alone. But we confess that the truth is done by a human being in the holy Trinity itself, which is one God, in whom the blessed David indicates is the power of what is done by the faithful, saying, With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes. For he is the one God concerning whom the blessed apostle says, For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever.^[2]