XXXIII. David ad eamdem rem

XXXIII. David ad eamdem rem

Rescue me from the mud, so I won't get stuck; free me from those who hate me and from the deep waters. Don't let the floodwaters drown me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. Its meaning is such. Lord God, through the gentleness of your grace, rescue me, a sinner, from the decay in which I was born through the flesh, and which urges me toward that sin, through which that hardness arises in me that denies you. You will also rescue me from the great desire of my flesh, which is filthy, because you made me from the earth at first; but after the fall of Adam, I became unclean mud, which everywhere springs up in me with vice, and in me worms crawl, in which there is foulness and all uselessness. But the flesh itself should give off the fragrance of good works through the virtuous grace of your gifts, since human flesh is useful and useless in the humility of both good and bad knowledge, but it tends toward evil. But you, O God, take me away from the murky actions, so that I may not be found in the stench of uselessness and not in the oblivion of those things that pierce me like a thorn of death into perdition, and in the sweetest peace. IV. Make me transcend this mud by the fragrance of virtues through good knowledge, so that I may trample underfoot that which lies beneath the steps of my good actions. But free me from those who, out of hatred, want to take away all the substance you have given me in good knowledge, those who are the taste of sins, and also from the depths of the same sins that try to suffocate me, namely, those who serve luxury. Don't let the turmoil of dangerous wickedness, which is greed, drown me in the rescue of your goodness, nor let the throat of the ancient Serpent, which exists like hell's abyss in the oblivion of God, swallow me up because of the habit of evil deeds; nor let the well of contrition press down on me, which is the effect and fullness of all evil deeds in pride, its mouth being what death is said to be, so that death doesn't bind me in this way with its closed mouth, nor let there be anyone to rescue me from it. Now that blessed man is the one whom God hears, and who has this gift from God, that he asks of Him the things that need to be asked for.