Psalm 132:13-15
Verses 13–15. God’s promises to Zion, city of his choice
21. For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has preferred it for his dwelling. Zion is the Church, and Zion is also the heavenly Jerusalem toward whose peace we are running. Not in the angels, but in ourselves, is Zion still on pilgrimage, and the nobler part of it awaits the part which has still to find its way home. From there letters reach us, the letters we read every day. This is the city, this is the Zion, on which God has set his preferential love.
22. This is my rest for ever and ever. God is speaking here. My rest, he says, the place where I shall find my rest. How greatly must God love us, brothers and sisters, if he can say he finds rest because we find rest! It is not as though he were ever disturbed or needing rest in that sense, but he says that he takes his rest in Zion because we shall there find rest in him. Here will I live, because I have made it my choice.
23. I will abundantly bless the widow within it, and I will satisfy its poor with bread. Every soul that knows itself to be bereft of all help save that of God alone is a widow; for what did the apostle say about this? One who is truly a widow, and desolate, hopes in the Lord (1 Tim 5:5). He was talking about the kind whom all of us in the Church are accustomed to call widows, as opposed to those of whom he went on to say, But a woman who lives in luxury is as good as dead even while she lives (1 Tim 5:6). This latter he would not enroll among the widows. Describing true widows and holy women, however, he says, One who is truly a widow, and desolate, hopes in the Lord, and perseveres in prayer and entreaty night and day (1 Tim 5:5). Then he added the caution already quoted: But a woman who lives in luxury is as good as dead even while she lives. What makes someone a widow, then? Having no help from any other source but God. Women who have husbands may give themselves airs because they have men to help them, but those who are left alone are true widows, and the help they can expect is all the more powerful for that.
From this we can see that the whole Church is one single widow, whether in men or in women, in those who are married, in the young or the old, or in virgins: the whole Church is one single widow, left alone in this world, insofar as she is conscious of her desolation and acknowledges her widowed state; for then her help is near at hand. Do you not recognize this widow in the gospel, brothers and sisters, in the parable by which the Lord taught us that we must pray always and never give up? There was a certain judge in a city, he said. This man neither feared God nor respected other people. But a widow appealed to him daily, demanding, Do justice for me against my opponent. (Lk 18:3) By insisting, the widow broke down his resistance. The judge had neither reverence for God nor respect for anyone else, but he said to himself, Even though I do not fear God or respect other people, I will see justice done for this widow, if only because of all the harassment she is causing me. (Lk 18:4–5) If the unprincipled judge listened to the widow for no better reason than to rid himself of the annoyance, does not God listen to the Church, whom he urges to pray to him?
24. What is meant by the next promise, brothers and sisters—I will satisfy its poor with bread? Let us be poor, and then we shall be satisfied. Many people pin their hopes on this world; though Christians, they are proud; they worship Christ, yet they are not satisfied. The trouble is that they are already filled up with other things and wallow in their proud affluence. These were the kind another psalm referred to when it spoke of the contempt in which we are held, a disgrace to the affluent, and contemptible to the proud (Ps 122(123):4). They are well off and therefore have plenty to eat, but they are not satisfied. Again, another psalm said of them, All the rich of the world have eaten, and worshiped (Ps 21:30(22:29)). They worship Christ, they hold him in reverence, they say their prayers to Christ, but they are never filled to their satisfaction with his wisdom and justice. Why not? Because they are not poor. The truly poor, on the other hand—that is, the humble of heart—eat all the more as their hunger grows keener, and the more empty they are of what the world enjoys, the hungrier they become. If someone is full, you may offer him anything you choose and he will reject it. But give me a hungry person, give me the people of whom the Lord said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Mt 5:6), and they will be the poor of whom our present psalm promises, I will satisfy its poor with bread. This is certain, for in the other psalm just quoted—the one where it is said, All the rich of the world have eaten, and worshiped—mention is also made of the poor, and in almost the same terms as in the psalm we are studying: The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the Lord will praise him (Ps 21:27(22:28)). Notice the contrast: before telling us that all the rich of the world have eaten, and worshiped, it has told us that the poor shall eat and be satisfied. Why the difference? If the rich are said to have worshiped, why are they not said to have been satisfied, whereas the poor, also named, are said to have eaten their fill? What was it that satisfied them? In what does this satisfaction consist, brothers and sisters? God himself is bread. This bread came down from heaven in order to be transformed into milk for us, as he said to his followers: I am the living bread which has come down from heaven (Jn 6:41). This is why the psalm promises, The poor shall eat and be satisfied. With what will they be satisfied? The next words give us a hint: And those who seek the Lord will praise him.
25. Be poor, then; let your place be among the members of the widow; look for help in God alone. Money counts for nothing; you will find no help there. Many have stumbled headlong into ruin for the sake of money; many have perished pursuing it. Many have been the target of robbers on account of their money—people who would have been safe if they had not possessed the wealth that made thieves hunt them down. Many again have put their trust in powerful friends; and when these fell, they dragged down with them the clients who had relied on them. Look around you: human experience is full of such examples. Are we telling you anything extraordinary? We are not speaking only of these scriptural passages: you can read the same in the world around you. Be wary of putting your trust in money, or human friendship, or rank and celebrity as the world sees them. Get rid of all these. You possess them, do you? Then be thankful to God if you can spurn them. But if you are conceited about them, there is no need to wait until you fall prey to rapacious humans; you are a prey to the devil already. If, however, you put no reliance on these things, you will be among the members of the widow-Church, of whom the Lord says, I will abundantly bless the widow in Zion; and you will also be one of the poor, of whom he promises, I will satisfy her poor with bread.
26. There is another aspect of poverty and riches which we should not omit to mention. You sometimes find a poor person who is proud and a rich one who is humble. This is a matter of daily and painful experience for us. You hear a poor man apparently groaning under the domination of the rich and, as long as the powerful rich man is oppressing him, you regard the poor man as humble. But it may be that even then he is not really humble; even in that condition you can detect that he is proud. From this you discern what he would have been like if he had been an owner of property. God’s poor are poor in their minds, not in their purses.
But then you come across another person who has an ample household, lush lands, many estates, and plenty of gold and silver, yet he knows that these are not to be relied upon. He humbles himself before God and uses his wealth to do good. His heart is so sincerely raised to God that he realizes not only the uselessness of his riches but even their power to trip him up unless God guides and helps him and unless he finds a place among the poor who are full fed with bread.
Then you find another person who is a beggar, yet puffed up with pride—or at any rate, if not puffed up, since he has nothing, then looking for something to get puffed up about. God is not concerned about our resources but about our greed. He judges a person on the cupidity that drives him to lust for temporal things, not on the resources he has not managed to get his hands on.
The apostle gives this advice concerning the well-off: Instruct the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to put their trust in unreliable wealth, but in the living God, who gives us everything to enjoy in abundance. He goes on to tell them what to do with their wealth: Let them be rich in good works, give readily, and share what they have. And notice, they are to be regarded as poor in the present life, for he recommends, Let them use their wealth to lay a good foundation for the future, and so attain true life. (1 Tim 6:17–19) When they have attained it they will be truly rich, but as long as they do not possess it they must recognize that they are poor.
So it comes about that all the humble of heart, all who are established in twofold charity, whatever they may own in this world, are counted by God as his poor, the poor whom he satisfies with bread.
Verses 16–18. Augustine’s conclusion roots this messianic psalm explicitly in Christ
27. I will clothe its priests with salvation, and its holy ones will rejoice with great joy. We have reached the end of the psalm. Concentrate just a little longer, beloved. I will clothe its priests with salvation, and its holy ones will rejoice with great joy. Who is our salvation? Who else but our Christ? What does it mean, then, to say, I will clothe its priests with salvation? Remember Paul’s words: As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves in Christ (Gal 3:27). And its holy ones will rejoice with great joy. Why will they rejoice? Why their great joy? Because they have been clothed with salvation. Once they were darkness but now they are light, though not from any source in themselves; they have been made light in the Lord. Accordingly the psalm adds, There I will raise up a horn for David. The true exaltation of David is that we rely on Christ, for Christ is the exaltation of David, and a horn symbolizes something high and uplifted. But what kind of exaltation? Not carnal, certainly. The symbolism makes this clear, for while all the bones of an animal are covered with flesh, the horns stand clear of the flesh. Thus a horn signifies spiritual exaltation. What sort of spiritual exaltation is meant here? That which trusts in Christ and declines to say, “This is my doing,” or, “I baptize.” Instead it confesses, He it is who baptizes (Jn 1:33). That is where David’s horn is seen.
If you want confirmation that this is David’s horn, notice how the psalm continues: I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. What lamp is this? You know the answer, because you have heard what the Lord said about John: He was a burning, shining lamp (Jn 5:35). And what did John say? He it is who baptizes. This is what will make the saints rejoice, this is why the priests will exult: their certainty that any good in them is not theirs but his. And because it is Christ who has the power to baptize, everyone who has received baptism comes calmly to Christ’s temple, knowing that it originates not from any human source but from him in whom David’s horn has been raised up.
28. Upon him my sanctifying power shall flourish. Upon whom? Upon my anointed. This phrase, my anointed, is spoken by God the Father, like the preceding words, I will abundantly bless the widow in Zion, and I will satisfy its poor with bread. I will clothe its priests with salvation, and its holy ones will rejoice with great joy. And again it is God who says, There I will raise up a horn for David. He says, I have prepared a lamp for my anointed because Christ is ours, and Christ is also the Father’s. He is our Christ because he saves us and rules us as our Lord; and he is the Father’s Son. But as Christ, the anointed, he is our anointed and the Father’s anointed. If he did not belong to the Father, the psalm would not have prayed earlier, For the sake of your servant David, do not turn away the face of your anointed.
Upon him my sanctifying power shall flourish. It flourishes upon Christ. Let no one else arrogate to himself the power to sanctify. If others could claim it, the declaration would not be true that upon him, Christ, my sanctifying power shall flourish. The glory of this sanctifying power will indeed flourish, because Christ’s sanctifying power resides in Christ himself, and this power is the sanctifying power of God in him. He says, It shall flourish, because he wants to suggest its beauty and glory, just as trees are beautiful when they flower. How does the sanctifying power of baptism flower and shine out gloriously? How has the world been conquered by its beauty? Because it flourishes in Christ. If it depended on the power of ordinary human beings, how could it flourish? All flesh is but grass, and human glory like the flower of grass (Is 40:6).
Saint Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 121–150, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, vol. 20, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 190–195.
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