Caput 11. Spes salutis nititur bonitate quae creavit.
Hope in the Creator's Goodness
The soul declares its hope in God's goodness as its creator and pleads for preservation from perishing.
But I am your creature: under the shadow of your wings I will hope in your goodness, by which you created me.✦ Help your creature, whom your kindness created: do not let what your goodness has brought about perish in my malice; do not let what your highest clemency has made perish in my misery. For what good is there in your creating me, if I sink into my corruption? For have you established all the children of men in vain? You created me, Lord; rule what you have created. Do not despise the works of your hands, God.✦ You made me from nothing; if you do not rule me, Lord, I will return again to nothing. For just as, Lord, I did not exist, and you made me something out of nothing, so if you do not rule me, I will still be reduced to nothing in myself.1
The Unchanging Love That Saves
The soul appeals to the same love that created it to save it, quoting Isaiah that God's hand is not shortened, and confessing that sin now separates.
Help me, Lord, my life, so that I don't perish in my wickedness. If you hadn't created me, Lord, I wouldn't be; because you created me, I now am; if you don't govern me, I'm already nothing. Not my merits, not any grace of my own, compelled you to create me, but your most kind goodness and clemency.2 That love, Lord my God, which compelled you to create: let that same love, I beg you, compel you now also to govern.3 For what good is what your love compelled, if I perish in my misery and your right hand does not govern me? Let this clemency compel you, Lord my God, to save what has been created—the clemency that compelled you to create when it had not yet been created. Let that same love that conquered you to create also conquer you to save; for it is no less now, because that very love is you yourself, who are always the same. Your hand is not shortened so that it cannot save; nor is your ear heavy so that it cannot hear (Isa.✦4 LIX, 1); but my sins have separated me from you, darkness from light, the image of death from life, vanity from truth, this moon-driven life of mine from your eternal life.✦5
Read the original Latin
Ego autem creatura tua, sub umbra alarum tuarum sperabo in bonitate tua, qua creasti me. Adjuva creaturam tuam, quam creavit benignitas tua: non pereat in malitia mea, quod operata est bonitas tua; non pereat in miseria mea, quod fecit summa clementia tua. Quae est enim utilitas in creatione tua, si descendam in corruptionem meam? Numquid enim vane constituisti omnes filios hominum? Creasti me, Domine, rege quod creasti. Opera manuum tuarum ne despicias, Deus. Me fecisti de nihilo; si me non regis, Domine, iterum revertar ad nihilum. Sicut enim, Domine, non eram, et de nihilo aliquid me fecisti; sic si me non regis, adhuc in nihilum redigar in me.
Adjuva me, Domine vita mea, ne peream in malitia mea. Si non creares me, Domine, non essem: quia creasti me, jam sum; si non regis, jam non sum. Non mea merita, non mea gratia, te coegerunt ut creares me, sed benignissima bonitas tua et clementia. Illa charitas, Domine Deus meus, quae te ad creationem coegit, ipsa, quaeso, et modo cogat te ad regendum. Quid enim prodest quod compulit charitas tua, si peream in miseria mea, et non me regat dextera tua? Haec te cogat, Domine Deus meus, clementia ad salvandum, quod creatum est, quae te compulit creare, quando creatum non est. Ipsa te vincat charitas ad salvandum quae te vicit ad creandum; quia nec nunc minor est, quia ipsa charitas tu ipse es, qui semper idem es. Non est abbreviata manus tua, ut salvare nequeat; neque aggravata est auris tua, ut non audiat (Isai.
LIX, 1); sed peccata mea diviserunt inter me et te, inter tenebras et lucem, inter imaginem mortis et vitam, inter vanitatem et veritatem, inter lunaticam hanc vitam meam et sempiternam tuam.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Ps.56.2 — Be gracious to me, O God, for man has swallowed me up; all day long the fighter oppresses me.
- ↩Ps.137.8 — Daughter Babylon, the one who is destroyed — blessed is the one who repays you with the same treatment you gave us.
- ↩Isa.59.1 — Look, the LORD's hand is not too short to save, and his ear is not too heavy to hear.
- ↩Isa.59.2 — But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he does not hear.
Notes
- 1 ↩in me taken as interior collapse into creaturely nothingness, not mere physical annihilation.
- 2 ↩mea gratia here is the speaker's own favor/desert as a claim on God, not the divine gift of grace; rendered "grace of my own" to keep the protected lemma while marking the contrast.
- 3 ↩charitas rendered "love" per default lexeme policy; theological-virtue sense (divine charity) remains in view.
- 4 ↩Printed sentence breaks mid-citation; neighboring section continues "LIX, 1)". Treated as Isa 59:1 candidacy.
- 5 ↩lunaticam evokes lunar mutability more than clinical madness; rendered moon-driven to keep the contrast with sempiternam (eternal).
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