Homilies on the Psalms — Homily 8 — Psalm 67 (LXX; MT 68), Homily II: vv. 5–7
Greek source: Origen's homilies on the Psalms, preserved in a single manuscript (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. graec. 314, 12th century), from the reading text of L. Perrone et al. (eds.), Die neuen Psalmenhomilien. Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, Origenes Werke XIII (GCS NF 19; Berlin, 2015), pp. 200–224. Psalms are numbered as in the Septuagint. This English translation is released into the public domain.Homily 2 of the 67th Psalm
1. It is not possible to do what is commanded in the divine Scriptures by God, or by Christ, or by the Holy Spirit, without first having understood what is being said. In many places we think we understand some of the things we have been commanded. But when we examine and search whether what has been commanded is worthy of the one who commanded it, and whether it shows some greatness worthy of God who spoke it, we do not really find this in such an understanding. Then the word itself urges us, according to the saying "seek and you will find", to seek also what we thought we had understood before we sought. Having sought, then, we may find in the commandments of God something worthy of the one who commanded it. We may find something that is done not by just anyone, but by people of such a kind and stature as also do the other great and divine commandments of God.
Just as, then, the commandments about martyrdom are not for everyone to do, but for those who have great love, the love toward God, "the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, the love that never fails", so in many cases we shall find that it belongs to certain great persons in God to do what God has ordered. And for each of the commandments we must seek the intent of the commandment and the greatness of the love, so that, empowered by it and enlightened by the true light, we may understand and do what has been commanded.
2. But what does this preface of mine mean? Listen: the beginning of today's reading was a commandment. For the word said: "Sing to God, make music to his name, make a way for him who has mounted upon the west; Lord is his name". I ask, then, whether the God of the universe, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit commanded this so that nothing else should be understood by "Sing to God" than a modulation of the voice. Musicians can produce this better than we can, and so can all who have made a practice of training their voice and enlarging and amplifying it through some art of voice-training and voice-care. I ask, then, whether the word means only something of this kind. Or perhaps it does mean this first, for the sake of the simpler people and usefully for them, for some reason, as we shall show at once. Even so, the commandment nonetheless also reveals a second greatness, one that has sense and is worthy of the one who commanded it. This can be seen in "Sing to God, make music to his name".
First, then, the word professes that the letter too has something useful, and it is necessary to show this first. We know that all of us human beings need relaxation, and that our ruling faculty cannot always be kept strained, not even if we become very earnest. Those outside the faith, then, seek relaxation in disorderly games, in unrestrained laughter and in indecent songs, and in their songs they take their own passions as themes. At times they sing love songs, at other times, following their superstition, paeans and the hymns of the demons. At still other times they take their grief as a theme, and so they sing laments in their dejection; and at other times they take weddings as themes, and from this come nuptial songs.
But the word wished to draw us, and the soul of believers, away from the pagan songs to the better ones that are according to God. By setting beside them things that seem to be of the same kind but are better, it would detach the soul from its desire for those songs. And the word says: "Do you want to sing and use love as the theme of your song? Learn that there is truly also a divine, heavenly love, and in keeping with it the Song of Songs has been written. But do you want to sing nuptial songs? Learn about the divine wedding of the king's son in the Gospel, to which you have been called. Understand the Bridegroom, comprehend the bride, and sing not just a song but, above all, the Song of Songs, just as there are certain holies of holies. But do you wish to lament, and as a pagan you had songs suited to it, and laments? Learn that now too there is for you a certain beatitude of those who weep."
Understand, then, what you must lament. See your Jerusalem, seek the return to it, and say in lament: "How the city that was filled with peoples has sat alone! She who ruled among the lands has become tributary; weeping she wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks" and what follows. Lament also for yourself and for your arrival in Babylon, saying: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept" and the rest. And see how your lament will benefit you: it teaches you to seek the fatherland itself, to consider the mysteries concerning it, and to lament until you return to the city built of the most precious stones, and not lifeless ones. For you are "living stones being built up, a spiritual house, into a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ". If, then, you lament your exile from Jerusalem and understand that while you are at home in the body you are away from the Lord, you will be fashioned according to God. You will be a crystal stone, a stone of the enclosing walls, a chosen stone, a sapphire stone, and whatever other stones are called precious, of which the Jerusalem in heaven is built. And turning to God and saying: "How false are the idols our fathers acquired", take up the hymns to the God of the universe. Change the whole character of your singing and making music to something more dignified, more reverent, more beneficial.
These things, then, concern the letter of "Sing to the Lord": that it too has, in and of itself, what is useful.
3. The wonderful Apostle, writing in one of his letters, has furnished me with words in part, as far as I am able to set them alongside. Starting from there, I shall try to suggest how something deeper can also be understood in "Sing to the Lord, make music to his name". Paul says: "speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to God". And there, in that letter, he named "psalms", "hymns", "spiritual songs", where he says: "singing with grace in your hearts". If someone relies on these words according to the wording, I do not know whether he can show how the heart sings, doing something other than not singing but speaking. For with the articulate voice I see a difference between speaking without singing and singing without speaking in prose. It is clear that if I speak, I need another excellence for my speaking; but if I sing, then in order to sing well I need music and the knowledge of rhythms and notes. And I shall need to know the names of the melodies and the notes, about which musicians will speak better than I can.
If, then, it is possible to sing with the heart and at other times only to speak in it, and if singing with the heart is something other than simply speaking with the heart, because of: "For our spirit in our hearts cries out and sings 'Abba, Father'", then we must examine what singing in the hearts is. There is in us, besides the perceptible voice, another voice, an intelligible one. The word knows that this voice is heard by God alone, and so it said: "the Spirit crying out in our hearts". And perhaps also, when it is said: "With my voice I cried to God", the word is not speaking about the perceptible voice. For God does not need that voice when I say that I "have cried to him". For as far as it comes through flesh and breath and blood, this voice is a striking of the air.
But we have another voice. To name it plainly and to persuade the hearer, I shall say that it is the voice of a pure mind.
I need, then, an intelligible music, which gives rhythm to the voice of the mind; I need a spiritual, not a perceptible, voice-training. And where am I to learn these things? Who are the teachers of this music? David made music and used instruments; the narrative says that he was a kind of musician. Why, indeed, is the name not applied to David? Perhaps the translators were on their guard because of its derivation from the Muses, but the fact is clear, that David took up this art and this power. So I shall speak in the ordinary way, without being on my guard, so that we may understand music. David is in many places a type of our Savior. The one David prepares for himself an instrument of ten strings, or made of however many strings. But the great musician David, the one "strong of hand" (for this is how they say the name is interpreted, rendered from "David" into "strong of hand"), about whom the prophets prophesy that he will rule the people, came into the world and fashioned for himself a great instrument of many strings: the church. This Word gives rhythm to the mind of each of us and sets order on the movements of the mind and on the voices of the mind, as though in music — so we are able to keep the commandment that says: "Sing to the Lord". This is the understanding with which the Apostle can have said "singing and making music in your hearts".
For when the mind does not think out of tune about Christ, nor grasp out of rhythm the things concerning the God of the universe, but sees what it ought about him and speaks of God knowing as is fitting, then it has uttered, if I may name it thus, both the tension of the voice about God in his severity and the relaxation that comes in his kindness. And when, proclaiming about God, it is able to make a blend of what comes from tension, with measured spiritual rhythms and heavenly melodies, then it sings like the heavens: it sings with the heart and makes music to God. How like the heavens? As it is written: "The heavens recount the glory of God".
We have read also in the Revelation of John how certain holy festivals were seen by John, the prophet and apostle (for it was as a prophet that he wrote the Revelation). Angels have been seen holding lyres and making music, and certain ones have been seen "singing the song of Moses the servant of God". The intent of the whole Revelation is spiritual; in it is written: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches". In accordance with that intent, I think that the things about the song and the psalms too are signified in the spiritual sense. For all of us must learn the spiritual music, sing to God and want to hymn him. Now, then, we hymn in part and we sing in part. But "when the perfect comes", we shall no longer prophesy in part and no longer know in part, but shall know perfectly; so then, with the holy angels, archangels, thrones and dominions, we shall hymn God. And this will be our work in the age to come: to sing with our hearts, to see God with pure hearts, and to do whatever is analogous to these.
Let us try, then, to sing in both ways, and not simply to sing, but to sing to the Lord. For in order to please the Lord, I shall need to learn the voice in which the Lord rejoices and the melodies in which the Master delights. If I am set to sing before a king, I shall need to know what kind of melodies the king accepts, so that by singing I may please the king. If I am about to sing in the theaters of some city, I shall need to know the melodies suited to peoples and cities. So if I am about to sing to the Lord, I shall need to know the melodies that delight the Lord, so that I may sing to God with the Lord as my hearer.
4. It is good, then, to sing to God, and this is the first good; and second, it is good to make music "to his name". For as he himself differs from his name, so singing differs from making music. Therefore Scripture applied the better thing, singing, to him, but the lesser thing, making music, it applied not to him but "to his name". It did not say "Sing to the name of the Lord", but "to God", and it said "make music" not to the Lord but "to his name". So that the difference between singing and making music may be understood, I come back again to the perceptible, for perceptible things become a stepping-stone to understanding the better things. Therefore the whole of Scripture has spoken in perceptible things, so that from them we may ascend to the spiritual. If Scripture had not spoken the law in perceptible terms, I could not have said in the first place: "For we know that the law is spiritual". The one who sings, then, uses the bare voice, but the one who makes music uses the instrument as well. There is an instrument, the psaltery, and there is something clearer, song. The instrument, the psaltery, cannot render the clarity of the human voice, but the instrument imitates the clarity of the human voice, as it were, as far as it can. When, then, you come to wish to understand the difference between singing and making music, see yourself for the moment without a body, and consider singing. Consider your body too (for you know about its resurrection), and see making music.
But if we must also carry the difference between singing and making music over to our present affairs, we might say this. In what you understand rightly about God and in what you say well about God, you sing to him. But in what you do fittingly through the movement of the instrument, which is your spiritual psaltery (I mean the body), you make music to God. The skilled player does not strike the strings at random when he makes music. He knows the times and the places: when to strike the hypate or the parhypate, and when the nete; when to strike the higher string, and when to give the note lower. So the one who knows how to make music on this psaltery tunes it to the word of God. He knows when to move the string that is the hand, and when to move the string that is the foot, so that it walks where it should and does what is fitting. He knows when to give his eye to seeing, so that the eye may never see anything out of tune (and he sees out of tune "who looks at a woman to desire her"). He knows how to keep the ear from ever admitting anything out of tune or hearing anything out of tune. And what does the ear do when someone transgresses the commandment that says: "You shall not admit a vain report"? And he knows how to keep this string, the mouth, from ever singing out of tune. And this string, the mouth, also sings out of tune when we speak an idle word, about which it is written that "you will give an account of it on the day of judgment".
It is possible also to use the string of the belly in tune, when we eat and drink to the glory of God. It can also be used out of tune, when we do such things through gluttony, so that it is said of us: "whose god is the belly". Fill in the rest for yourselves; since we have indicated it from these, it is seemly to pass over in silence the words about the rest. And the Apostle commands: "all things do in the name of Jesus". For this reason we must understand that he said "to sing to God" of the better things, but "to make music to his name" as said of making music through the body, as has been shown.
5. On account of the instrument, the psaltery, let us consider a third commandment. What does the word command us? "Make a way", it says, "for him who has mounted upon the west; Lord is his name". In Isaiah it is written: "Throw the stones that are in the way and make a way for my people". Taking that as an example, I shall pass on to the explanation of the present text as it appears to me and as it is given to me through your prayers.
The one who prepares a way tries to throw the stones of stumbling off the road, so that the traveler may travel without stumbling; hence it is written: "Throw the stones out of the way and make a way for my people". And this has been said so that one may understand from the perceptible how the one who teaches a people would throw the stones out of the way. Some stumbling-blocks seem to arise because of the caution of Scripture and its obscurity. When he resolves all of these and gives his hearers the sound word, he throws the stones out of the way. When he overturns the contrary interpretations suggested by the wording and levels Scripture by making it clear (for the whole of Scripture is a way that leads to salvation), then he fulfills the commandment that says: "Throw the stones from the way and make a way for my people". But to explain about the stone of stumbling now would be a digression.
Just as, then, it is possible to make a way for a people, as we have explained, so too it is possible to make a way for God. He wishes to walk about in us who are in this region, the land that lies opposite the paradise of God planted toward the east. For "make a way", it says, "for him who has mounted upon the west". Someone might perhaps misconstrue the words "for him who has mounted upon the west" as ill-omened, since the west is opposite to the east. For this reason Scripture has of necessity added "Lord is his name", so that, even if it may seem ill-omened on the face of it to say that "the Lord has mounted upon the west", you may be confident in declaring that the Lord mounts upon the west, where Adam is, cast out of paradise.
What, then, is "Make a way for him who has mounted upon the west"? The Lord seeks a way within you, so that he may not only dwell in you (for he did not promise you this alone) but also walk about in you. He seeks, then, a way to walk about in you, as he seeks a house in you, so that he may dwell in you. Build, then, a house for the Lord. Try also to understand spiritually, as a spiritual person, what was said by the prophet, and to say it from a disposition like his: "Remember", namely, "O Lord, David and all his meekness, how he swore to the Lord, vowed to the God of Jacob: If I shall go up upon the bed of my couch, if I shall give sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids and rest to my temples, until I find a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob". Do not sleep "until you find a place for the Lord", where you will build him a house. Seek that he may fulfill what he promised when he said: "I will dwell in them". Do not "give sleep to your eyes and slumber to your eyelids" until you have made a way for him who wishes to walk about in you. And what is it to make a way for God, who wishes to walk about in you? The Lord walks in clean places; the Savior keeps festival in swept places. Sweep the place, as is done in the houses of the rich. For when the rich have walks in their houses, some servants are appointed to prepare the place of the walk, to sweep it, to clean it and to sprinkle it, so that they may make the walk more pleasant for the master. So you too, consider that you have walks within yourself.
If you want to hear from Scripture about these walks, listen to Solomon, who says: "Do not get drunk with wines, but converse with one another, and converse in walks". You have seen these walks, then, the ones in our nature, made so that God may walk in them. Now consider that through wickedness they have been filled with much uncleanness, with many stones of stumbling, with a great stench of sins; for "they stank and my bruises festered", it is said concerning the nature of sins. You have seen, then, that the walks are filled both with the stench of sins and with stones of stumbling, and you have understood what is said here in "Make a way for him who has mounted upon the west". So make a way for God.
For he seeks to walk about in you. As he looks around, seeking a place, he does not find one, since he often sees thorns and does not wish to walk upon thorns. For when he sees pleasures ruling in you and perceives that you are distracted by worldly wealth, when he sees cares in you, he sees the thorns in the walks. Then he seeks other, cleaner walks, and leaves you. For God cannot walk in such walks. The thorns are cares, pleasures and wealth, according to Luke, who interpreted the parable about the sowing.
6. Then another explanation about the west (δυσμαί) will also be given. At the beginning, when you make a way for God, God mounts upon you who are not yet perfected, who have not yet come to the east and do not yet nobly bear "the image of the heavenly": he mounts upon you while you are still "upon the west". But do not suppose that God, having mounted "upon the west", always remains "upon the west". In the same psalm, at any rate, near the beginning it is written: "Sing to God, make music to his name, make a way for him who has mounted upon the west; Lord is his name". But near the end of the same psalm it says: "Kingdoms of the earth, sing to God, make music to the Lord who has mounted upon the heaven of heaven toward the east". By nature, then, he "has mounted upon the heaven of heaven toward the east". But if I must speak boldly, he acts against his own nature in mounting upon the west.
Perhaps the word can also hint at something deeper in these words: that one sun must set, and another sun must rise. And God's mounting begins in you when the sun that is opposed to the sun of righteousness sets. But if you are perfected and the sun of righteousness comes to be in you, the Lord mounts upon you. You are then no longer simply at the setting of that light, but are also "heaven of heaven toward the east". To show this from Scripture is not out of place, but even necessary, for perhaps some of the hearers have stumbled at what was said. Suppose, then, that when a sun has come to be it can set, so that the Lord may mount at the setting of that sun. I say, then, that the law "has a shadow of the good things to come", and anyone who has been benefited in a similar way says about the law: "For we know that the law is spiritual". It is written in the law about many unclean people that they will be unclean until evening, and as long as the sun is up for them they are unclean. But when the sun sets and evening comes, then one becomes clean: "the Lord mounts upon the west". For in the anagogy of the law, when you interpret it as spiritual, the law can say something about a sun that makes one unclean; the Lord releases him from uncleanness at the very setting of the sun. You who were once unclean, pay attention to this: "Satan, transforming himself into an angel of light", is a sun. But I have dared to say "is a sun" with an addition: I mean "sun of injustice". For if there were no other sun, it would not be said about the Savior: "But to those who fear his name a sun of righteousness will rise". If the sun were something good without any addition, it would be a great addition to say that "the one rising for those who fear the name of God" is a sun "of righteousness", and not simply a sun. If you want further to see an example of how a sun of injustice rises for some, look, I pray, at those who rest in the word of the heresies as in the true light. Look at the heretic saying: "I am not in night but in day". When you see the word that is in him, do not hesitate to call it a sun of injustice: "They spoke injustice to the height, he set his mouth against heaven".
7. The Lord, then, "mounts" at the beginning "upon the west". Hear in this way also the words written, "upon the west" and "of him who has mounted upon them". Let everything set for you that you formerly thought gave light within you, that you glorified and admired. Let love of money set; let teaching alien to the truth set. Let fornication set, which because of its pleasure you thought was an excellent and good thing. Then the Lord may mount upon you, once you have made the opposites set and have made a way for him. And he himself may become for you not only one who dwells in you but also one who walks about in you.
"Make a way", then, "for him who has mounted upon the west; Lord is his name; exult before the father of orphans and judge of widows". Is God, then, the father of all orphans, both of the pagans and of the wicked? For there are those who are orphans in a wicked way: orphans indeed, but living most basely. And is God the God and judge of all widows? For it is written: "of the father of orphans and judge of widows". And how many widows there are, yet not chaste, but widowed badly! But if you understand the father from whom you must be orphaned, and if you understand the husband whose death you ought to pray for with a chaste soul, you will see how God "is father of orphans and judge of widows".
John says in his letter: everyone "who commits sin" has been born "of the devil". Therefore the Savior says to those who sin, as is written in the Gospel: "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father". This father who is spoken of, the devil, is your father if you sin: let him die. And when does he die? Or is it when you die? For what great difference does it make to you, if he has died to you: he does not live for you, even if to others he seems to live? I shall support this from the wonderful Paul, who says about the devil: "And God will crush Satan under your feet shortly". For me Satan no longer exists; for me Satan has been crushed, when I no longer sin. But so that he may already be crushed under our feet, and may not in his anger stir up trouble against us again at some time, let us entreat the one who crushes him to crush him now as well.
For he is likely to be enraged, to lift up his head like a dragon, to threaten us and to plot many things against us; but the Lord will scatter his counsels. For the righteous person, then, he has been crushed by God, and indeed crushed under the feet of the righteous person, who tramples him. The righteous person has not only received the authority to tread on him but has also used it. For the Savior said: "I give you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall ever harm you". And we too, if indeed we are disciples of Jesus, have received this authority. But the one who has the authority does not always use the authority. Blessed rather is the one who has received the authority and used it, and treads "upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy". Take courage, for: "nothing shall ever harm us". The devil may not be crushed for another person, since that person is still unjust and not worthy that God should crush the devil for him and that the devil should fall under his feet. Yet if we have understood that the devil has been crushed for the righteous person, it will also be understood that the father, who is the devil, dies, since in this way one must become an orphan of the devil.
For an image of this matter, come to the Gospel. There you will perceive a place where the letter does not preserve the whole sequence of thought as well as the anagogy does. Someone came to the Savior and said: "Permit me first to go and bury my father". The Savior's word was spiritual, and when he heard bodily things he did not speak bodily things, as is clear from many places. For this reason he answers him: "Let the dead bury their own dead", and he did not permit him to go and bury his father. For as far as the letter goes, what happens is unreasonable. What harm was there in doing what was proper, going back to bury his father for two hours, and then following the teacher? Or, if someone wishes to keep the letter in these things too and preserve it throughout, let him be taught when it is not proper to bury the one whom Jesus calls father. For we, the living disciples of Jesus, have not been permitted to bury the dead, since the Savior says: "Let the dead bury their own dead". And since whoever touches a dead body is defiled and becomes unclean, he wishes us not to touch the father even if he dies, not even on the pretext of burying him. I think, then, that we have understood the orphan whose father is God, according to what is written: "Exult before him, the father of orphans". For something of this kind is said in the forty-fourth psalm to the church from the nations, which is figuratively called a daughter: "Hear", it says, "daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father's house, because the king has desired your beauty".
I know that you love Abraham and do not want to hear anything ill-sounding about him. But attend to Scripture and accept that he too once had the devil as his father, before he received an oracle from God. For when he became worthy of the oracle, the first commandment he hears is this: "Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father's house, and go away into the land which I will show you"; and Abraham did as God commanded him. We cannot become children of Abraham unless we do the works of Abraham himself. For the Savior says: "If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham". So all the works must be examined and done. And if you are to be a son of father Abraham, you must first do "Go out from your land", and next "from your kindred and from your father's house", so that you may also hear from God: "Go away into the land which I will show you".
And here it is written: "Exult before God, the father of orphans and judge of widows", and in another psalm: "The orphan and widow he will take up", it says. Just as he took up Jeremiah, so he will take up an orphan and so he will take up a widow. For this reason become an orphan in the sense described, and you will no longer have such a father.
But let us also look at "judge of widows". There is Christ and there is Antichrist; there is the true light and the one who transforms himself "into an angel of light". In the same way there is a bridegroom and, if I must coin a name, an anti-bridegroom, formed like the word Antichrist. Christ, then, woos the human soul lawfully, but the devil woos it lawlessly. He wants to become her bridegroom so that he may corrupt her. So he once wanted to corrupt Eve, and so he once wanted to corrupt the church of the Corinthians. The Apostle feared this, and wished to heal the church that would be corrupted if it listened to the devil's words, so he said: "But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts be corrupted from the simplicity toward Christ". Let your soul, then, become a widow of that lawless and foul husband. Then God may judge what is just for you, and may take you up as a soul that has become a widow of such a husband: the God of whom it is written: "The orphan and widow he will take up".
8. After this comes: "God in his holy place". Heaven does not contain God, nor does the earth, for all creatures are less than the one who created them. Yet when he wishes, he becomes containable, and he becomes containable in a holy place; for where the place is defiled and profane, God cannot be. What, then, is the holy place? It is the one about which the Apostle tells you: "Do not give place to the devil", and about which Solomon says to you: "Even if the spirit of the ruler rises up against you, do not leave your place". But Judas gave place to the devil; for this reason "after the morsel Satan entered into him".
"God", then, is "in his holy place". And if you wish, I shall begin from the first place and go on in my discourse to every place of God. I say this: the first holy place for God is Christ. Therefore, as the place of God, he says: "The Father is in me". For if he promised to dwell in you, if he promised to walk about in you, how much more will he dwell there: in wisdom, in truth, in righteousness, in life, in resurrection? I cannot recount all the things that Christ is, in which the Father will dwell as in a house and in which he will walk about as in a place. The Holy Spirit too is a place of God, and the whole host of the holy angels are places of God. So too the church is a place of God. Rightly, then, it is not written all together as "places of God", but all is the place of Christ; for we, the many, are one in Christ.
"God settles the single-mannered in a house". The house is the one about which the Savior says: "In my Father's house there are many dwelling-places". Let us look also at the "single-mannered" (μονότροποι). All of us who still sin are many-mannered (πολύτροποι) and go through various changes. Now we bear a manner of anger on our face, at other times a manner of grief; at times a manner of fear and cowardice, and at other times a manner of pleasure, the irrational elation of the soul. There is also another manner on the face, that of love of money, and there is a manner of fornication. And why should I list the multitude of the countless manners of wickedness? The worthless person, then, is many-mannered, but the righteous person, as an imitator of God, is single-mannered. God is always the same: I say to him: "But you are the same", and God says: "I have not changed". In the same way the imitator of God, the Son of God, is single-mannered and is always the same.
Therefore, in my view, the Son of God is the whole of virtue. The many virtues are not many subsistences; all the virtues are one. The Greeks filled themselves with many virtues in order to participate in them, but for us Christ suffices in place of them all. For he himself is all things, so that by imitating him I may become single-mannered and dwell with the single-mannered in the house of God in Christ Jesus, to whom belong the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen.