Bellarmine on Psalm 101: Verses 9-11

We continue our series of posts featuring St Robert Bellarmine's commentary on Psalm 101, the fifth of the Seven Penitential Psalms.

The Latin is reproduced courtesy of the Digital Collection site  - UANL and is accompanied by my fairly literal translation. The Scripture excerpts (Douay Rheims/Vulgate) are taken from the DRBO site but the verse numbering follows that of Bellarmine’s Latin text.

Where footnotes are included, the text follows each section.

Verse 9

All the day long my enemies reproached me: and they that praised me did swear against me.

Tota die exprobrabant mihi inimici mei, et qui laudabant me adversum me jurabant :

The life of those who do penance seriously is always unwelcome to those who want to persist in their sinning. “He is grievous unto us,” it says, “even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, and his ways are very different;”[1] Although these words were spoken of a just man, they can however apply also to a penitent sinner, who is panting for justice. And so he says: “All the day long my enemies reproached me,” that is, those who were friends to me because of our common interest in sin have now become enemies to me as I have changed into another man; and they reproached me all the time with this change, as though I was acting foolishly; and they who formerly praised me because the wicked man was praised when he acted badly, later they “did swear against me,” that is,

they conspired among themselves by a pre-arranged oath. St. Jerome translates the Hebrew as they swore because of me, but the Hebrew word properly means in me, and for this reason our edition correctly has, against me; for they swore in me is the same as they swore against me.

[1] He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, and his ways are very different. Gravis est nobis etiam ad videndum, quoniam dissimilis est aliis vita illius, et immutatae sunt viae ejus. [Sap. ii. 15]

Verse 10

For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.

quia cinerem tamquam panem manducabam, et potum meum cum fletu miscebam;

He puts forward the reason why his enemies reproached him, “For,” he says, “I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,” that is, because they thought it was folly to take up willingly a life of such austerity. To eat ashes like bread is to eat coarse bread dirtied with ashes, which happens especially when bread is consumed that has been baked in hot ashes but not cleansed of the ashes; this is what penitents are accustomed to do, namely to eat badly prepared food, barley bread, or bran bread, and mixed with ashes or bits of soil, as St Francis is witnessed to have done by St Bonaventure (see chapter v of his Life). He writes that St. Francis scarcely would accept cooked foods in time of health, indeed he prepared foods mixed with ashes, etc. To mingle drink with weeping means nothing if not: in drinking wine, “which gladdens the heart of man,” you

should not rejoice but weep in recalling sins you have confessed against God. By ash may be understood penitence itself, so that the sense would be: “I did eat ashes like bread,” that is, by the action of penitence I refreshed my soul, just as a body is wont to be refreshed by bread; “and mingled my drink with weeping,” that is, by weeping tears I satisfied my thirst for interior reconciliation, just as a drink of water or wine slakes the body’s thirst. Finally, as it says in Ps. xli: “My tears have been my bread day and night;”[1] and in Lamentations iii: “he hath fed me with ashes:[2] this text may be understood as meaning: Today I felt grief, and this very grief was for me my daily bread, and continual weeping was for me my daily drink: I was sustained by grief, I was refreshed by tears of sorrow and desire.

[1] My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: Where is thy God? Fuerunt mihi lacrimae meae panes die ac nocte, dum dicitur mihi quotidie : Ubi est Deus tuus? [Ps. Xli. 4]
[2] And he hath broken my teeth one by one, he hath fed me with ashes. VAU. Et fregit ad numerum dentes meos; cibavit me cinere. [Thren. Iii. 16]

Verse 11

Because of thy anger and indignation: for having lifted me up thou hast thrown me down.

a facie irae et indignationis tuae, quia elevans allisisti me.

This is why a true penitent chooses to be covered in ashes and to slake his thirst with tears, not through foolishness nor poverty but because he recognises the anger of the Most High, to whom, through this humiliation, he desires to offer satisfaction and signs of true repentance in some degree. “For I did eat,” he says, “ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, because of thy anger and indignation,” that is, because I understood thy wrath and indignation kindled against me because of sins I confessed. For I discerned thy wrath and indignation, “for having lifted me up thou hast thrown me down,” that is, raising me through

Thy grace to the highest dignity of thy friendship and sonship, afterwards, as retribution for my sin, Thou didst throw me down to earth, casting me down from the dignity of a friend and a son to the suffer the fate of an enemy, of a rebellious and fugitive slave. Lest sinful men might think the loss of grace to the sinful man, be a minor matter, which they bring about through sinning, Scripture makes use of a word meaning a smashing down: for a vessel, which from a high position smashes down on the ground, loses not only the dignity of its position but is smashed to pieces, so that nothing good remains. In such a way, blinded by carnal desires, the sinful man does not see the harm to his soul, and he truly suffers the loss of everything when his body and soul are consigned to hell by Him whom it is not possible to resist.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.