A Gift of Knowledge

Domine, quid est homo, quia innotuisti ei, aut filius hominis, quod deputas eum? Homo vanitati smilis factus est: dies ejus sicut umbra praetereunt. Non differenter in octavo quoque psalmo proclamat Spiritus Sanctus: Quid est homo, quod memor es ejus, aut filius hominis, quoniam visitas eum? Confessio ista pulcherrima est, ut indignum se homo tanto munere ipse testetur. Et cum se indignum confitetur, gratiam ejus qui sibi hac largiatur extollit. Quod enim meritum hominis est, ut ei se cognoscibilem Deus praestet, ut incognoscibilis natura cognitioni nostrae sese ipsa submittat? Aut quae dignitas est filii homnis, ut deputetur? Deputatur autem, quidquid de eo in quo est in aliud destinatur. Rei naturam verborum virtus eloquitur. Homo vanitati similis effectus, et cujus dies tamquam umbra praetereunt, per indultam cognitionem Dei deputatur. Vanitas saeculum est, cujus habitus et forma tolletur. Deo enim inane est, quidquid quamvis exstet, tamen non ita subsistit ut maneat: et umbra quaecumque, etiamsi sit, tamen non est; quia cum fit, abeunte eo per quem efficiebatur eximitur. Homo itaque non umbra, sed umbrae similis; neque vanitas, sed similis vanitati per intercessionem mortis effectus; per indultam vero sibi cognitionem Dei deputatur. Et in quid deputetur, cognitio indulta testatur. Si enim cognitus fieri Deus homini, nisi assumpto homine, non potuit; quia incognoscibilem cognoscere, nisi per naturam nostram, natura nostra non potuit; et per hanc cognitionem homo qui deputatur, necesse est ut in id deputetur, in quo Deum ipse cognovit, scilicet, ut conformis Deo fiat, quia haec sit deputatio cognitionis indultae. Sanctus Hilarius Pictaviensis,Tractatus super Psalmos, Tractatus in Psalmum CXLIII

Lord, what is a man, that you take notice of him, or the son of a man, that you esteem him? A man is fashioned like a vanity, and his day passes like a shadow. 1 This is not different from the eighth Psalm in which the Holy Spirit declares: 'What is a man that you what have memory of him, or the son of man that you would visit him?' 2 This confession is most beautiful, that man bears witness that he is unworthy of such a gift. And when he confesses himself unworthy, He who gives him this grace he praises. For what worth has a man that God should furnish him with knowledge of Himself? That he should grant His unknowable nature to our cognition? Or what worth has a son of man, that he be esteemed? He may indeed esteem that to which he has destined something. The force of the words speaks the nature of the thing. A man is made like a vanity, and his days as a shadow pass, and by a gift of the knowledge of God he is esteemed. Vain the world, and its fashions and ways pass. For to God a thing is inane which though it exists does not subsist that it may persist, and like a shadow it is which even if it is, yet it is not, because coming to be it swiftly flies away and is not. A man therefore is not a shadow but like one and not a vanity but like a vanity because of the intervention of death, and by the gift of the knowledge of God he may be esteemed. And by what is esteemed, he gives witness to the knowledge given. For the knowledge of God cannot be in a man unless a man be lifted up, because to know the unknowable, if limited to our nature, is not possible for our nature, and by this knowing is the man who is esteemed, for it must be that in what he is esteemed, by which he knows God, he is made to conform to God, because this is the value of the gift of the knowledge. Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Homilies on the Psalms, from Psalm 51 1 Ps 143. 3-4 2 Ps 8.5