Salmos 56

Salmos 56:7

For God has made our days short, and our substance is as nothing in his sight. "All things are vanity, everyone living," whether living in the body or living in virtues, and yet all things are vanity. His condition is one of fluctuation and uncertainty, and, while he does not fear, he suffers a storm in fair weather. For when he was in honor, he did not understand; he has been compared with senseless beasts and is created similar to them. "For nothing," he says, "shall he save them" (a reference, undoubtedly, to the just who are saved not through their own merit but through the mercy of God), "and my offenses are not hidden from you." These words are spoken in the person of Christ. If he, who did not sin nor was guile found in his mouth, suffered for us and bore our sins, how much more ought we to confess our faults? "My soul," he says, "refused to be comforted," considering the sins that I had committed. "I remembered God and was delighted," knowing that I was to be saved by his mercy. "I meditated in the night with my own heart, and I swept my soul. And I said, 'Now I have begun, this is the change of the right hand of the Most High.' " These are the words of a just person who, after meditating in his sleep and feeling pangs of conscience, says in the end, "Now I have begun," either to do penance or to enter the threshold of knowledge; and this very change from good to better is a change not of my own strength but of the right hand and power of God. — Against the Pelagians 2.19