The fulfillment of prophecy and the light of mercy

He says that those seated with the apostles, the earth being shaped to be a soul capable of bearing fruit, and the inhabited world in which angels dwell, and the dogmas of truth and the gifts of the Spirit, will speak before all these, just as to the prophets God has become a refuge from generation to generation. And the phrase 'And from the age and as of the age you are' signifies the movement of God from infinity to infinity. For you are the same one remaining forever, not one in one age and another in another age; for you are the same one, unchangeable and immutable, from infinity to infinity.

Having raised man from things of lowliness and debasement to height, guarding him in that suspension and height, do not turn him back to become such as the low things (Ps 89:3). Place our iniquities before you, to punish us for them, as all our age—and time is that which extends our day with bodily life—is manifest and enlightened to you, not only of every transgression in practice but also of that which is manifest and enlightened to you in thoughts (Ps 89:8).

The coming prayer of those standing by is: what God has in his right hand, and to see it, what they are doing (Ps 89:12-17). As those standing say: O Lord God, reveal the providence of the world which you created through your right hand, so that we may grasp not how it does and works through it, but let us know it as it approaches us. The petition of those calling upon the presence of Christ is able, for He himself is the right hand of God. For then the right hand of God became known, who is the Word having become flesh who dwelt among us; for we beheld his glory as of the only-begotten from the Father. And having known the right hand of God, let us know with it those who have been instructed in wisdom in the heart, who are not merely those who claim to be. But we speak of Wisdom in the perfect ones. It is possible even for the prophets to be known as those having been instructed in wisdom in the heart, for whom the brightness of Christ has been revealed. For then the prophets, truly proclaiming beforehand concerning him, were shown to be perhaps able.

Before their prophecies were fulfilled. For their words have reached an outcome through the revealed right hand of God, and they have become manifest as if they were instructed by the wisdom of God.

But the heart is instructed in wisdom by one who has made the mind and the ruling principle wise, as the speaker himself contends in ten thousand ways as if to say they are speaking truly: 'Even if he is an unlearned man in speech, yet not in knowledge.' And it is also said, 'Those laid low in heart by wisdom.' For the thought and the memory are laid low from the plains of the wisdom of the wise and the pious one imposing it upon things; and it is said concerning the plains of wisdom, that we protect the feet of the soul by stepping into them.

'Turn back, O Lord; how long will you turn your face and your right hand away from us?' (Ps 30:16). For you do this to us for only a little while, yet a long time appears to those exhausted by the longing. Having been discouraged among your servants, turn back to us, having become distant and having turned away from your commands.

'We have been filled in the morning with your mercy' (Ps 89:13). For your right hand, which we were worthy to be made known, having shone upon us, prepared the beginning of a spiritual day, like the sun of righteousness (Mal 4:2). In the beginning, occurring in the morning, we were filled with the mercy from you, as your true light enlightened us in all those days so that we might rejoice and be glad (Ps 119:130). It is not something entering into our minds in the morning that is poetic.

But since it rises to us not in one way but diversely according to various actions and thoughts, we come to be filled in many days; in all those days let us rejoice and be glad, so much as to be able to loose the dark and evil exterior of the days, in which you humbled us by captivity and delivered us to enemies through ignorance and malice. For in days and in many more, having been humbled, we see evils, but you provide the opposites of the truly good things, concerning which it is said, 'The fool does evil in jest,' or the things that are burdensome and causing harm, concerning which it is said to Job, 'If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not also receive evil?' (Job 2:10). For having seen both kinds of evils before, now we rejoice and are glad. Look then upon the...