Cassidorus on Psalm 109

Cassidorus on Psalm 109

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus was born in Scylletium, Bruttium, in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths (in modern Italy) in around 490. Cassiodorus was a statesman, historian, and monk and is credited with saving Roman culture from impending barbarism.

 

A psalm of David. These words are very familiar, for they are so to say pinned to the doors as a royal inscription. But the heading does not say: “Read and depart,” but: “Read and draw near.” So let us reverently enter to the mighty works of the Lord, for this psalm will discuss fully but briefly both the Lord’s incarnation and his almighty divinity. In certain passages he is seen to utter words of similar loftiness or beauty, as at the beginning of the celebrated Gospel, where it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So, the psalm is, so to say, the sun of our faith, the mirror of heavenly secret, the chest of Holy Scripture, in which all that is told in proclamation of both testaments is spoken in summary. So, we must hold it fast in love, for its sweetness to attain the word gathered in its succinct brevity.

The most holy prophet is borne upwards into the hidden heights of loftiest contemplation. In the first verse he recounts the words beyond understanding, which the almighty Father spoke to the Son, who is almighty and co-eternal with him, revealing at the same time his divinity and humanity. When he proclaims: The Lord said to my Lord, he reveals his divinity. When he adds: Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool, and: The Lord sets forth thy scepter of thy power out of Zion and thou wilt rule in the midst of thy enemies, the substance of his humanity is being declared, which could receive what it did not have. In the second section, the Father begins to reveal the nature of his divinity to a limited extent, in accordance with the limited extent of our capacity to understand. He says: with thee is principality in the day of they strength, in the brightness of the saints. From the womb before the daystar I have begotten thee. In the third part, the prophet speaks until the end, again revealing the shape of his humanity, when he says: The Lord has sworn and will not repent, and the rest. Thus, in these sections, the Word mad flesh, the Lord Christ, could be acknowledged by this three fold illumination.