Psalms 9:1

It is characteristic of the perfect to dedicate their whole heart to God and to consecrate their whole mind to him. "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart," Scripture says, "with your whole soul, with your whole strength and with your whole mind." Those who divide their thoughts between mammon and God, between Christ and gold, between the present and the future life, cannot truthfully say, "I shall confess to you, O Lord, with all my heart."

"I will confess unto You, O Lord, with my whole heart" [Psalm 9:1]. He does not, with a whole heart, confess unto God, who doubts of His Providence in any particular: but he who sees already the hidden things of the wisdom of God, how great is His invisible reward, who says, "We rejoice in tribulations;" [Romans 5:3] and how all torments, which are inflicted on the body, are either for the exercising of those that are converted to God, or for warning that they be converted, or for just preparation of the obdurate unto their last damnation: and so now all things are referred to the governance of Divine Providence, which fools think done as it were by chance and at random, and without any Divine ordering. "I will tell all Your marvels." He tells all God's marvels, who sees them performed not only openly on the body, but invisibly indeed too in the soul, but far more sublimely and excellently. For men earthly, and led wholly by the eye, marvel more that the dead Lazarus rose again in the body, than that Paul the persecutor rose again in soul. But since the visible miracle calls the soul to the light, but the invisible enlightens the soul that comes when called, he tells all God's marvels, who, by believing the visible, passes on to the understanding of the invisible.

Joshua the son of Nun was fighting in the desert, and as Moses prayed he kept prevailing: the one man fought, the other by his prayer conquered. So too do I, according to that which is written, 'Open your mouth, and I will fill it': I indeed seem to be the one speaking, but there are others by whose prayers I speak. The ninth psalm, which has been sung by you to the Lord, is great in its verses, great in its mysteries. Since, then, we cannot discuss everything, it is enough for the moment to speak about the title. Since we cannot enter into the house (for great is the king's palace, nor are we able to know all the mysteries of the king), for the moment, as it were standing at the title of the house, in the very vestibule, let us point out whose house it is. 'Unto the end, for the hidden things of the son, a psalm of David.' The phrase 'unto the end' does not pertain to the Jews, but to us who at the end have believed. They were the earlier son, we the latest. We therefore who are at the end ought to hear this psalm, because it pertains to those who are at the end. 'For the hidden things of the son.' What are these hidden things of the son? The mystery which throughout all past ages had been hidden has, at the end, been opened to us. 'For the hidden things of the son.' In the Hebrew it reads otherwise. For in the Hebrew it has ALAMOTH, which is translated 'for death': for AL is said for 'for,' MOTH is said for 'death.' Therefore it is said 'for death'; therefore 'for the death of the son' is what is written in the Hebrew. See, then, the Seventy translators: since they were translating for Ptolemy, a Gentile king, and it was harsh to say 'the death of the son,' they translated it 'the hidden thing.' They did not say 'for the death of the son': for they knew that it was being spoken of the Son of God. They saw that it was so written; and yet they were afraid to say that the Son of God would die. This much, for the moment, has been briefly discussed from the psalm, as to what was said, 'For the hidden things of the son.' And this was said in the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament it is spoken of the son in a hidden way. Now in the Gospel let us read openly of the open things of the son.