Psalms 143:3

For the enemy has persecuted my soul. This needs no interpretation: no one doubts that it is the devil. He has humbled my life on the earth. This is what he means. Before this I had wings, and I flew: but now the enemy has persecuted me and seized me, and bound my feet and my hands; just as a bird is caught by a man, and seems as it were to be dead, because it does not have the free use of its wings to fly. So too, he says, the enemy has bound me with the awareness of my sins. He has placed me in dark places, like the dead of the world. Like the dead of the world: not yet dead. Why? Because he stands in repentance. But if anyone who sins does not do penance, this man is dead to the world, and not like one dead, but perfectly dead. This, then, the enemy supposed—that I would not do penance for my sins, which he himself suggested to me that I should commit.

"For the enemy hath persecuted my soul: he hath humbled my life on the earth" (ver. 3). Here we speak, here our Head speaketh for us. Manifestly both the devil persecuted the Soul of Christ and Judas the Soul of his Master: and now too the same devil remaineth to persecute the Body of Christ, and one Judas succeedeth another. There lacketh not then of whom the Body too may say, "For the enemy hath persecuted my soul." For what doth each one who persecuteth us endeavour save to make us abandon our heavenly hope, and savour of the earth, yield to our persecutor, and love earthly things? "They have laid me in dark places, as the dead of the world." This ye hear more readily from the Head; this ye perceive more readily in the Head. For He died indeed for us, yet was He not one of the "dead of the world." For who are the "dead of the world"? And how was not He one of the "dead of the world"? "The dead of the world" are those who have died of their own desert, receiving the reward of iniquity, deriving death from the sin transmissed to them; according as it is said, "For I was conceived in iniquity." ...In dying, saith He, I do the will of My Father, but I am not deserving of death. Nought have I done wherefore I should die, yet is it Mine own doing that I die, that by the death of an innocent One, they may be freed who had wherefore they should die. "They set me in places," as though in Hades, as though in the tomb, as though in His very Passion, "as the dead of the world."