Psalms 93:3

The floods have lifted up, O Lord, they have lifted up their voices; from the voices of many waters, wonderful are the surgings of the sea. As many words, so many meanings: as many little verses, so many sacraments. The floods have lifted up their voices. This is what is said in another place: 'The rush of the river maketh glad the city of God.' And in another place: 'The rivers shall clap their hands together.' The floods seem to me to be those which water the whole world, the apostolic and prophetic dignities. The floods have lifted up their voices. Proclaiming the praise and glory of the Lord, announcing his judgments through the whole world. 'Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the round world.' From the voices of many waters. The voices of many waters have furnished us with three mysteries. Let us see what those mysteries are. From the voices of many waters, wonderful are the surgings of the sea, wonderful is the Lord on high: thy testimonies are made exceedingly credible. If we understand the sea mystically as this world... for it is bitter and full of tempests, in which those who sail behold many wonders of the Lord. On account of which he says: Wonderful are the surgings of the sea. For we see many, lifted up by swelling waves, suddenly collapse; but others we see, oppressed by the billows, again raised up to the heights. For nothing in this world is found firm, nothing stable. Where you think there is calm, there is shipwreck: where the appearance of quiet is shown, there the assault of the tempest and the whirlwinds lie hidden; and unless we cry out, 'Master, save us,' we suddenly perish. Wonderful is the Lord on high. Whoever has been able to withstand firmly the billows of this world's sea, dwelling steadfastly upon the rock, he will be able to understand how wonderful is the Lord on high. 'For the exalted one dwells in the exalted places, and the holy one in the holy'; as he also says elsewhere, 'Be ye holy, as I also am holy, the Lord your God.' But the man whom the consciousness of his sins humbles, and who cannot lift up his eyes to heaven together with Jesus, in his sight the Lord is not wonderful on high, but terrible to those beneath.

"The floods lift up their voices" [Psalm 93:3]. What are these floods, which have lift up their voices? We heard them not: neither when our Lord was born, did we hear rivers speak, nor when He was baptized, nor when He suffered; we heard not that rivers did speak. Read the Gospel, you find not that rivers spoke. It is not enough that they spoke: "They have lift up their voice:" they have not only spoken, but bravely, mightily, in a lofty voice. What are those rivers which have spoken?...The Spirit itself was a mighty river, whence many rivers were filled. Of that river the Psalmist says in another passage, "The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God." Rivers then were made to flow from the belly of the disciples, when they received the Holy Spirit: themselves were rivers, when they had received that Holy Spirit. Whence did those rivers lift their voices? Wherefore did they lift them up? Because at first they feared. Peter was not yet a river, when at the question of the maid-servant he thrice denied Christ: "I do not know the man." [Matthew 26:69-74] Here he lies through fear: he lifts not his voice as yet: he is not yet the river. But when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the Jews sent for them, and enjoined them not to preach at all, nor to teach in the name of Jesus....For when the Apostles had been dismissed from the council of the Jews, they came to their own friends, and told them what the priests and elders said unto them: but they on hearing lifted up their voices with one accord unto the Lord, and said, "Lord, it is You who has made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;" [Acts 4:24] and the rest which floods lifting up their voices might say, "Wonderful are the hangings of the sea" [Psalm 93:4]. For when the disciples had lifted up their voices unto Him, many believed, and many received the Holy Spirit, and many rivers instead of few began to lift up their voice. Hence there follows, "from the voices of many waters, wonderful are the hangings of the sea;" that is, the waves of the world. When Christ had begun to be preached by so powerful voices, the sea became enraged, persecutions began to thicken. When therefore the rivers had lift up their voice, "from the voices of many waters, wonderful" were "the hangings of the sea." To be hung aloft is to be lifted up; when the sea rages, the waves are hung as…