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| Mercy and Truth have met together, Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other by Evelyn de Morgan |
because he will speak peace for his people
and for his holy ones
and those who turn their heart to him.
But his salvation is near to those who fear him,
so that glory would dwell in our land.
Mercy and truth met together.
Righteousness and peace embraced.
Truth grew up from the land,
and righteousness looked down from heaven.
Indeed, the Lord will give goodness,
and our land will give its fruit.
Righteousness will go before in front of him,
and it will place his steps on the way. (Psalm 84:9–14 LXX [Ps 85:8–13])
He passes to the third section, in which he proclaims the coming of the Lord Savior with a most beautiful figure. For after praying that the Lord would appear to him, he is filled with sudden enlightenment, as though he has obtained his request, and he says: I will hear, that is, I shall not hinder myself by speaking, for I now realize that I have heard what I am to believe. We recognize that this type of utterance is peculiar to divine Scripture, for in my opinion nothing like it is found in secular books. You see the power of prophecy made manifest by these words. The Lord, that is the Holy Spirit, speaks within so that the psalmist may appear to be able to speak without. He listens inwardly so that he may be listened to outwardly. The prophet silently learns what the people can hear when it strikes their ears. Next comes: For he will speak peace to his people and to his saints. God’s Peace is the Lord Christ; he says that the Holy Spirit will speak of this Peace, for He is to tell of His Incarnation. When the psalmist spoke of the people, he said his people, not the uncommitted. He referred to the holy men who pleased the Lord by their edifying manner of life. The Lord Christ is their Peace, but He is a stumbling block and a foolishness to the unfaithful; they endure war in their sacrilegious hearts, for they do not follow the Author of peace along upright paths. But let us scrutinize this verse a little more attentively, for he refutes sinful minds by witnessing to the truth itself. Here the nature of the holy Spirit is clearly stated: He is the Lord God. Where are they who say that the holy Spirit is inferior to Father and Son, and is so lowly that He is thought not to have discretion over His own will? Let us listen to the holy Spirit who of His own accord said through His prophet that He was the Lord God.…
For though mercy and truth, peace and justice are abstractions, he allotted footsteps to two and embraces to the other two, both being bodily attributes. After he has stated from what nation the Lord was to be born, he now explains what benefits the coming of the holy incarnation has imparted. Through the Lord’s gift, the two Testaments have been united in an interlinked chain. In the New Testament comes mercy, by which the human race is freed through grace; in the Old stands truth, in which the Law and the proclamation of the prophets are contained, as was already said at Psalm 70. These two have met each other not to maintain their opposition, but to fulfill the grace of promised perfection; for it is clear that what was seen to be divided by eras has become one. So as to emphasize clearly the nature of the alliance, he restated with varied repetition of terms the fact that the two states, justice and peace, had lastingly entered into reciprocal harmony by a kind of loving embrace. Such an embrace tends to occur when people see each other after a long time; in loving enthusiasm they hug each other with arms entwined.
Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms 84.9, 11
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