Paulinus of Nola

In his own words on Psalms

• Psalms 6:6

  My heart of stone has no tears to summon.… Delicacies are my pleasure while my soul goes hungry. Who could furnish me with a spring for streams of tears, so that I might lament my deeds and days? For I need a river to lament the heavy strokes that I deserve for a life spent in sin. Break the stone that is my heart, saving Jesus, so that the inner me may be softened and a stream of devotion pour forth.

  POEMS 31:407

• Psalms 53:5

  Perhaps he calls them saints in this psalm in the same way that he calls them just in the Gospel when he says, "I am not come to call the just but sinners," that is, those just who boast of the holiness of their race and the letter of the Law, to whom it is said, "Do not boast of your father Abraham, for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." This type is exemplified in the Pharisee who recited his good works in the temple, as if recalling them to an ignorant Lord, not praying to be heard but demanding the reward due to his good conduct. Yet, this was displeasing to God because he tore down by his pride what he had built up by his justice; he did not do this silently but at the top of his voice; and it is evident that he did not speak to divine ears, because he wished to be heard by people. Hence, he was not pleasing to God because he was pleasing to himself. "For God has scattered the bones of people pleasing to themselves; they have been confounded," he says, "because he has despised them," who "does not despise a contrite and humbled heart."

  LETTER 121

• Psalms 139:21-22

  I also ask and beg of you to expound for me what [Paul] says to the Romans, for I admit I have very poor sight for this opinion of the apostle about the Jews, where he says, "As concerning the gospel, indeed they are enemies for your sake, but as touching the election they are most dear for the sake of the ancestors." How can these same ones be enemies for our sake, now that we former Gentiles have become believers, as if Gentiles could only believe if the Jews had refused to believe? Is not God the one Creator of all, "who will have all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," and was he not able to gain both without dispossessing one for the other? Second, "most dear for the sake of the ancestors": how or why this "most dear," if they do not believe and if they continue to be enemies of God? "O God," he says, "have I not hated them that hated you and pined away because of your enemies? I have hated them with a perfect hatred." Certainly, I think the Father's voice speaks to his Son by the prophet in the same psalm where he spoke on behalf of believers: "But to me your friends, O God, are made exceedingly honorable; their dominions are exceedingly strengthened." How can it be profitable for their salvation to be "most dear to God for the sake of the ancestors" when salvation is acquired only through the faith and grace of Christ? What good does it do them to be loved, when they are inevitably to be damned because of their unbelief, because they have fallen away from the faith of the prophets and of the patriarchs, their ancestors, and have become enemies of the gospel of Christ? If they are most dear to God, how shall they be lost? And if they do not believe, how can they fail to be lost? If they are loved for the sake of the ancestors, without any merit of their own, why will they not be saved for the sake of the ancestors, too? "And if, Noah, Daniel and Job shall be in the midst thereof, they shall not deliver the wicked children: they shall be delivered."

  LETTER 121