Helping the inwardly paralyzed
Commenting on the Psalm-verse, “I have been young and now am old, and I have not seen a just man forsaken nor his seed seeking bread” (Ps 36:25), St. Augustine expected that some would deny, from personal experience or even from biblical examples, that such is the case: just people have been forsaken and their children begging for bread. At which point Augustine gives a wonderful image of the preacher’s role in uncovering biblical texts and bringing people before Christ:
“When a person is thinking in this way, all his limbs are slack and unable to do what is good. Can we lift him up like a paralytic and open the roof of this Scriptural text and lower him before the Lord? You see that the text is obscure, and if it’s obscure, it has a roof over it. I see someone who is a paralytic in mind, and I see this roof, and under this roof I know that Christ is hidden. As much as I can I will do what was praised in those who opened the roof and lowered the paralytic before Christ so that he could say to him: “Be of good heart, son; your sins are forgiven you” (Mt 9:2). In this way he healed the inner man from his paralysis, forgiving his sins and strengthening his faith. But there were people there who did not have eyes to see that the man’s inner paralysis had already been healed, and they thought that the physician who had healed him was blaspheming. “Who is this,” they say, “who forgives sinns. He is blaspheming. Who except God can forgive sins?” And because he was God, he heard them thinking such things. They were thinking something true about God, but they could not see God present. That is why that physician did something for the paralytics’s body, too, so that he could also heal the inner paralysis of those who were saying such things. He did something they could see and gave them something they could believe. Well then, if you are so weak and ill that when you see examples of people suffering you wish to stop doing the good, you are suffering from an inner paralysis. Let us try, if we can, to remove the roof and lower you before the Lord” (Augustine, Enar. in Ps 36/3, 3; PL 36, 385).
Those who do not have Latin may like to know that the late Maria Boulding has translated all of Augustine’s sermons on the psalms. The five volumes are available in soft cover from New City Press. The sermons are are extremely rich – Augustine commented on all 150 psalms. He sees them as reflecting what he called “The Whole Christ”. The selection Joe has given us is a tasty example of how one may find in these sermons. I reviewed many of the volumes for AUGUSTINIAN STUDIES but still go back them.
Yes, God bless Maria Boulding and give her eternal happiness for having given us, for the first time ever, a complete translation of Augustine’s expositions of the Psalms. I’ve had only two reservations about her translation: first, that she sometimes gives two or more English words where Augustine has used the same Latin word in the development of an argument; this I think doesn’t adequately represent his rhetorical course. Second, she doesn’t make much of an effort to convey the oral character of most of these texts so that they read more like lectures than like the vivid discourse of a preacher fully engaged with his audience, often interacting with them. What do you think?
Joe: On the second point I did detect that more often than not when the notarius who took down the sermon, he would note Augustine’s asides. Augustine pointed out that stomach were rumbling during his talk or, in other place, he mentioned (it was Summer) that the congregation smeeled a bit and were undoubtedly yearning to go to the baths. He also acknowledged the applause given to the cantor when the psalm was sung well.
On the first point: Latin is a very economical language and sometimes it is hard to get the meaning economically. For example, I love the ancient collects in Latin but it is very hard to get them into English with the same brevity. I do concede that sometimes the English of Augustine dos not do justice to the Latin and is tempted to paraphrase as does that old work horse translation of the Confessions by the wonderfully named Pine-Coffin in the Penguin edition.
Back to the sermons (or however you translate “enarrationes” – “glosses”?) who can not love observations like Augustine saying that the camel is a metaphor for Christ because the camel kneels down to accept a rider and then rises up just as Christ went down in the incarnation in order to raise us up as sons of God.
At any rate: I log up in anticipation of supper.