Psalms 147:2

The Lord who builds Jerusalem shall gather together the dispersions of Israel. How Jerusalem is built, how the dispersion is gathered together, has already been said. Since therefore these two little verses have been discussed, and we ought not to build upon another's foundation, let us pass on to what remains. Let us therefore see how Jerusalem is built: for in what follows the prophetic word has described it.

"He heals the broken of heart and binds up their wounds." A marvelous kind of healing is spoken of so that we wear ourselves away constantly if we wish to be restored to health. But that wound of contrition pertains to what makes us whole and leads to full recovery. And—what is beyond every good—it leads us to that physician who offers eternal health. Next comes, "He binds up their wounds." The metaphor is taken from a doctor's skills, which bind up broken and crushed bones with cloth bandages, whenever they want to make them solid, so that the limbs come back together into their proper place and coalesce into their former solidity. The heavenly physician binds penitents' hearts that have been crushed by dire affliction with a certain bundle of his piety imposed on the penitent and he further solidifies it and leads it to a very firm hope of healing, just as was said in the fiftieth psalm, "God does not despise a contrite and humbled heart." For also that publican who beat his heart with constant beating showed that he had brought about that contrition in himself, which he did not cease to pour into his guilty heart.

Who is "our God," that praise should be pleasant to Him? He makes Himself sweet to us, He commends Himself to us; thanks to His condescension...."But God commends His love to us"..."in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." [Romans 5:8] ...Let us see whether it be the commendation which the Apostle speaks of, that Christ died for the sinners and ungodly: "the Lord who builds up Jerusalem, and gathers the dispersions of Israel" [Psalm 147:2]. For the people of Jerusalem are the people of Israel. It is Jerusalem "eternal in the heavens," whereof the Angels are citizens also....All the citizens then of that city, through "seeing God," rejoice in that great and wide and heavenly city; they gaze upon God Himself. But we are wanderers from that city, driven out by sin, that we should not remain there; weighed down by mortality, that we should not return there. God looked back on our wandering, and He who "builds up Jerusalem," restored the part that had fallen. How restored He the part that had fallen?...He sent then to our captive estate His Son as a Redeemer. Take with You, said He, a bag, bear therein the price of the captives. For He put on Him our mortal flesh, and therein was the Blood, by the shedding of which we were to be redeemed. With that Blood He "gathered the dispersions of Israel." And if He gathered them that before were dispersed, how must we strive that they be gathered who now are dispersed? If the dispersed have been gathered, that in the Hand of the Builder they might be fashioned into the building, how should they be gathered who through disquiet have fallen from the Hand of the Builder? Behold whom we praise; behold to whom we owe praise all our life long.