Today we continue St Robert Bellarmine's commentaries on Psalm 31, the second in the series of 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 verse.
Verses 1 & 2
Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.
Beati quorum remissae sunt iniquitates, et quorum tecta sunt peccata.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile.
Beatus vir cui non imputavit Dominus peccatum, nec est in spiritu ejus dolus.
No-one knows better how sweet health is than he who deplores its loss. The prophet David firstly acknowledges how sweet it is to be lacking in sin, when he has himself tasted of the bitterness of sin. This is why he begins this Psalm of penitence with praise of pardon and innocence; for these heal the soul and are opposed to the sickness which is contracted from sins. He begins with pardon, so that he may proceed from the lesser to the greater, and his restoration of health has been very recent. “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven;” this is a crying out and a preaching of the goodness that is in pardon, as though he might say: O how happy are they who. After they have sinned, are not despised by God but, aroused by His grace, are converted to repentance and come to pardon! “And whose sins are covered,” here he repeats the same thing in other words; for sins, when they are forgiven, are hidden and covered over so that they in no way are visible; but on this we shall speak more a little later. “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin.” He moves from pardon, which is for the many, to innocence, which is for the very few, and he says: O how truly blessed and happy is he who has done nothing that could be reputed to him as a sin and to whom the Lord, whose judgement is most right, has imputed nothing whatsoever of sin. But such a person has not only not sinned in action but he is one “in whose spirit there is no guile,” that is, neither in word nor in thought has he sinned; the word spirit can be referred to either spirit,: to the one by which we know and which is called the heart or mind; and the one by which we speak, and which is called the spirit of the mouth or of the lips. Of the first, the Apostle says: “ For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?
[1] Of the second, he says: “ I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the understanding; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the understanding.
[2][1] For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Quis enim hominum scit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis, qui in ipso est? ita et quae Dei sunt, nemo cognovit, nisi Spiritus Dei. [I Cor. ii. 11]
[2] What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the understanding; I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the understanding. Quid ergo est? Orabo spiritu, orabo et mente : psallam spiritu, psallam et mente. [I Cor. xiv. 15]
But here we understand by innocence not natural innocence, acquired without the gift of God, which is of no effect; but that which God communicates to a small number of singular souls by the gift of His grace, and to whom are forgiven the sin contracted by the will of another, that is, original sin, so that He does permit them to commit a mortal sin by their own will; and this is an order of most excellent forgiveness. For that reason, all innocence has attached to it a certain forgiveness of sin; and of everyone except Christ it may be said: “ For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God.”
[1] And so the Apostle, in
Romans iv, adduces the text of this Psalm to prove that no-one is justified by works prior to receiving grace; and he says: “ But to him that worketh not, yet believeth in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reputed to justice, according to the purpose of the grace of God,”
[2] and thus David speaks of the blessedness of a man to whom, God having been accepted by him, God conveys justice without works: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin.” By these words, the Apostle explains the Prophet, and he says that David did not call blessed those who acquired justice through their own works, but those whose sins God forgave through His grace and to whom God made a gift of justice. But it seem to me that the Prophet was considering particular men when he says: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin,” etc., namely St Job, who says of himself in Chapter xxvii: “ I will not depart from my innocence. My justification, which I have begun to hold, I will not forsake: for my heart doth not reprehend me in all my life.”
[3] So too with Abel, Henoch, Noe, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, of whom no sin may be read in the Scriptures. Perhaps he also foresaw in the spirit Jeremias and John the Baptist, sanctified in the womb, and the Virgin Mother of God who, by a more excellent privilege, was preserved from original sin and from all actual sin. These words are expressed in Hebrew by the singular: Blessed is he whose iniquity is forgiven, and whose sin is covered. But by changing the points, this can be read: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven;
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
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