"O come, let us sing unto the Lord" (ver. 1). He calleth us to a great banquet of joy, not one of this world, but in the Lord. For if there were not in this life a wicked joy which is to be distinguished from a righteous joy, it would be enough to say, "Come, let us rejoice;" but he has briefly distinguished it. What is it to rejoice aright? To rejoice in the Lord. Thou shouldest piously joy in the Lord, if thou dost wish safely to trample upon the world. But what is the word, "Come"? Whence doth He call them to come, with whom he wisheth to rejoice in the Lord; except that, while they are afar, they may by coming draw nearer, by drawing nearer they may approach, and by approaching rejoice? But whence are they afar? Can a man be locally distant from Him who is everywhere? ...It is not by place, but by being unlike Him, that a man is afar from God. What is to be unlike Him? it meaneth, a bad life, bad habits; for if by good habits we approach God, by bad habits we recede from God. ...If therefore by unlikeness we recede from God, by likeness we approach unto God. What likeness? That after which we were created, which by sinning we had corrupted in ourselves, which we have received again through the remission of sins, which is renewed in us in the mind within, that it may be engraved a second time as if on coin, that is, the image of our God upon our soul, and that we may return to His treasures. ...

"Let us prevent His face by confession" [Psalm 95:2]. Confession has a double meaning in Scripture. There is a confession of him who praises, there is that of him who groans. The confession of praise pertains to the honour of Him who is praised: the confession of groaning to the repentance of him who confesses. For men confess when they praise God: they confess when they accuse themselves; and the tongue has no more worthy use. Truly, I believe these to be the very vows, of which he speaks in another Psalm: "I will pay You my vows, which I distinguished with my lips." Nothing is more elevated than that distinguishing, nothing is so necessary both to understand and to do. How then do you distinguish the vows which you pay unto God? By praising Him, by accusing yourself; because it is His mercy, to forgive us our sins. For if He chose to deal with us after our deserts, He would find cause only to condemn. "O come," he said therefore, that we may at last go back from our sins, and that He may not cast up with us our accounts for the past; but that as it were a new account may be commenced, all the bonds of our debts having been burnt....The more therefore you despaired of yourself on account of your iniquities, do thou confess your sins; for so much greater is the praise of Him who forgives, as is the fullness of the penitent's confession more abundant. Let us not therefore imagine that we have receded from the song of praise, in understanding here that confession by which we acknowledge our transgressions: this is even a part of the song of praise; for when we confess our sins, we praise the glory of God.

"And make a joyful noise unto Him with Psalms." We have already said what it is "to make a joyful noise:" the word is repeated, that it may be confirmed by the act: the very repetition is an exhortation. For we have not forgotten, so as to wish to be again admonished what was said above, that we should make a joyful noise: but usually in passages of strong feeling a well-known word is repeated, not to make it more familiar, but that the very repetition may strengthen the impression made: for it is repeated that we may understand the feeling of the speaker. ...Hear now: "For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods" (ver. 3) "For the Lord will not cast off His people." Praise be unto Him, and shouts of joy be unto Him! What people shall He not cast off? we have no right to make our own explanation here: for the Apostle hath prescribed this unto us, he hath explained whereof it is said. For this was the Jewish people, the people where were the prophets, the people where were the patriarchs, the people begotten according to the flesh from the seed of Abraham; the people in which all the mysteries which promised our Saviour preceded us; the people among whom was instituted the temple, the anointing, the Priest for a figure, that when all these shadows were past, the Light itself might come; this therefore was the people of God; to it were the prophets sent, in it those who were sent were born; to it were delivered and entrusted the revelations of God. What then? is the whole of that people condemned? far be it. It is called the good olive-tree by the Apostle, for it commenced with the patriarchs. ...This then is the tree itself: though some of its boughs have been broken, yet all have not. For if all the boughs were broken, whence is Peter? whence John? whence Thomas? whence Matthew? whence Andrew? whence are all those Apostles? whence that very Apostle Paul who was speaking to us but now, and by his own fruit bearing witness to the good olive? Were not all these of that people? Whence also those five hundred brethren to whom our Lord appeared after His resurrection? Whence were so many thousands at the words of Peter (when the Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke with the tongues of all nations) converted with such zeal for the honour of God and their own accusation, that they who first shed the Lord's blood in their rage, learnt how to drink it now that they believed? And all these five thousand were so converted that they sold their own property, and laid the price of it at the Apostles' feet. That which one rich man did not do, when he heard from the Lord's mouth, and sorrowfully departed from Him, this so many thousands of those men by whose hands Christ had been crucified, did on a sudden. In proportion as the wound was deeper in their own hearts, with the greater eagerness did they seek for a physician. Since therefore all these were from thence, the Psalm saith of them, "For the Lord will not cast off His people." ...

"O come, let us worship, and fall down to Him; and mourn before the Lord our Maker" [Psalm 95:6]....Perhaps you are burning with the consciousness of a fault; blot out with tears the flame of your sin: mourn before the Lord: fearlessly mourn before the Lord, who made you; for He despises not the work of His own hands in you. Think not you can be restored by yourself. By yourself you may fall off, you can not restore yourself: He who made you restores you. "Let us mourn before the Lord our Maker:" weep before Him, confess unto Him, prevent His face in confession. For who are you who mournest before Him, and confessest unto Him, but one whom He created? The thing created has no slight confidence in Him who created it, and that in no indifferent fashion, but according to His own image and likeness.

But I do not somehow think that this is what the Holy Spirit was chiefly concerned to remind us of in this psalm, where it says, "Let us weep before the Lord who made us." In another place it says, it is "he who made us, and not we ourselves," which, as I remarked, no Christian doubts. Because not only did God create the first human being, from whom come all people, but God also creates each and every human being today—he who said to one of his saints, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." So at the beginning he created people without other people; now he creates people from people. Still, whether it is people without people or people from people, it is "he who made us, and not we ourselves."8So at the first and easy sense of these words—still a true one, of course—"let us worship him, brothers, and prostrate ourselves before him and cry before the Lord who made us." He did not, after all, make us and now desert us. He did not go to the trouble of making us only to abandon us. "Let us worship before the Lord who made us," because we did not worship when he made us, and yet he made us all the same. So having made us before we worshiped him, is he going to desert us when we worship him? If someone were doubting whether he would be listened to when he prayed, Scripture reassures him when it says, "Let us cry before the Lord who made us." Of course he listens to those he made; of course he cannot fail to care for those he made.

Do not despair. You are sick, approach him and be healed; you are blind, "approach him and be enlightened." Those of you who are healthy, thank him for it; those of you who are sick, run to him to be healed. All of you, say, "Come, let us worship and prostrate ourselves before him, and let us weep before the Lord who made us," made us human beings and saved us. You see, if it was he that made us human beings, while we saved ourselves, it means we have done something better than he has. I mean, a saved human being is better than an unsaved one. So if God made you a human being, and you made yourself a good human being, what you made is better. Do not lift yourself up above God; submit yourself to God, worship, prostrate yourself, confess to the one who made you; because nobody can recreate except the one who creates; nobody can make you new but the one who made you in the first place.

"For He is the Lord our God" [Psalm 95:7]. But that we may without fear fall down and kneel before Him, what are we? "We are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand." See how elegantly he has transposed the order of the words, and as it were not given its own attribute to each word; that we may understand these very same to be the sheep, who are also the people. He said not, the sheep of His pasture, and the people of His hand; which might be thought more congruous, since the sheep belong to the pasture; but He said, "the people of His pasture." The people are therefore sheep, since he says, "the people of His pasture:" the people themselves are sheep....He praises these sheep also in the Song of Solomon, speaking of some perfect ones as the teeth of His Spouse the Holy Church: "Your teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the washing; whereof every one bears twins, and there is none barren." What means, "Your teeth"? These by whom you speak, for the teeth of the Church are those through whom she speaks. Of what sort are your teeth? "Like a flock of sheep that are shorn." Why, "that are shorn"? Because they have laid aside the burdens of the world. Were not those sheep, of which I was a little before speaking, shorn, whom the bidding of God had shorn, when He says, "Go and sell that you have, and give to the poor; and you shall find treasure in heaven: and come and follow Me"? [Matthew 19:21] They performed this bidding: shorn they came. And because those who believe in Christ are baptized, what is there said? "which come up from the washing;" that is, come up from the cleansing. "Whereof every one bears twins." What twins? Those two commandments, wherefrom hang all the Law and the Prophets. [Matthew 22:40]

Therefore, "Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" [Psalm 95:8]. O my people, the people of God! God addresses His people: not only the people of His which He shall not cast off, but also all His people. For He speaks in the corner stone [Ephesians 2:20] to each wall: that is, prophecy speaks in Christ, both to the people of the Jews, and the people of the Gentiles. For some time ye heard His voice through Moses, and hardened your hearts. He then, when you hardened your hearts, spoke through a herald; He now speaks by Himself, let your hearts soften. He who used to send heralds before Him, has now deigned to come Himself; He here speaks by His own mouth, He who used to speak by the mouths of the Prophets.

"As in the provocation, and in the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers proved Me" (ver. 9). Let such be no more your fathers: imitate them not. They were your fathers, but if ye do not imitate them, they shall not be your fathers: yet as ye were born of them, they were your fathers. And if the heathen who came from the ends of the earth, in the words of Jeremias, "The Gentiles shall come unto Thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our forefathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit:" if the heathen forsook their idols, to come to the God of Israel; ought Israel whom their own God led from Egypt through the Red Sea, wherein He overwhelmed their pursuing foes; whom He led out into the wilderness, fed with manna, never took His rod from correcting them, never deprived them of the blessings of His mercy; ought they to desert their own God, when the heathen have come unto Him? "When your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works. ...

But that this is the first and greatest commandment, and that the next [has respect to love] towards our neighbour, the Lord has taught, when He says that the entire law and the prophets hang upon these two commandments. Moreover, He did not Himself bring down [from heaven] any other commandment greater than this one, but renewed this very same one to His disciples, when He enjoined them to love God with all their heart, and others as themselves. But if He had descended from another Father, He never would have made use of the first and greatest commandment of the law; but He would undoubtedly have endeavoured by all means to bring down a greater one than this from the perfect Father, so as not to make use of that which had been given by the God of the law. And Paul in like manner declares, "Love is the fulfilling of the law:" and [he declares] that when all other things have been destroyed, there shall remain "faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of all is love;" and that apart from the love of God, neither knowledge avails anything, nor the understanding of mysteries, nor faith, nor prophecy, but that without love all are hollow and vain; moreover, that love makes man perfect; and that he who loves God is perfect, both in this world and in that which is to come. For we do never cease from loving God; but in proportion as we continue to contemplate Him, so much the more do we love Him.

Let us look well whether this precept extends to all sin; for what if any one sin any of those sins which are unto death, such as unnatural crimes, adultery, homicide, or effeminacy, it cannot be meant that such as these are to be admonished privately, and if he hear you, forthwith to say that you have gained him. And not rather first put him out of the Church, or only when remaining obstinate after monition before witnesses, and by the Church? One man, looking at the infinite mercy of Christ, will say, that since the words of Christ make no distinction of sins, it is to go against Christ’s mercy to limit His words only to little sins. Another, on the other hand, considering the words carefully, will aver, that they are not spoken of every sin; for that he that is guilty of those great sins is not a brother, but is called a brother, with whom, according to the Apostle, we ought not so much as to eat. But as they who expound this as referring to every sin give encouragement to the careless to sin; so, on the other hand, he, who teaches that one having sinned in little sins and such as are not deadly, is, when he has spurned the admonition of the witnesses and the Church, to be held as a heathen and a publican, seems to introduce too great severity. For whether he finally perishes, we are not able to decide. First, because he who has been thrice told of his fault and not hearkened, may hearken the fourth time; secondly, because sometimes a man does not receive according to his deeds, but beyond his trespass, which is good for him in this world; lastly, because He said not alone, Let him be as a heathen, but Let him be to thee. Whosoever then when reproved three times in a light trespass, does not amend, him we ought to hold for a heathen and a publican, avoiding him, that he may be brought to confusion. But whether he is esteemed of God also as a heathen and a publican, is not ours to decide, but is in the judgment of God.