State super vias et videte et interrogate de semitis antiquis quae sit via bona et ambulate in ea et invenietis refrigerium animabus vestris

29 Apr 2019

Kings And Sacrifice


A templo tuo in Jerusalem tibi afferent reges munera

Templum in Jerusalem est, in quo hostiarum legitima offerebantur: nunc autem a templo in Jerusalem a regibus sunt munera afferenda. Quod utique contra locorum significationem rationemque gestorum est: ut illic quo inferri magis oporteret, id est de templo, offerenda sint munera. Sed quia est coelestis illa nobis mater Jerusalem, et primitivorum conscriptorum, et frequentantium coetus  omnisque in Christo renatus Dei templum est, maxime in quo non mors magis sit regnatura, sed vita; et qui ipse rex sit ejus, cujus servus fuerat ante, peccati, hostiam se ipsum vivam et rationabilem et placentem Deo offerens: tum ergo ab hoc templo, id est, ab hac sancta corporis sui habitatione, in illo conventu angelorum frequentantium, id est in illa coelesti Jerusalem, si qui reges sint, id est, qui peccato ultra non serviant, offerent se ipsos Deo munus.


Sanctus Hilarius Pictaviensis,Tractatus super Psalmos, Tractatus in Psalmum LXVII

Source: Migne PL 9 464-5 
From your temple in Jerusalem kings shall offer gifts to you. 1

The temple is in Jerusalem, in which rightly they offered sacrifice; now however from the temple in Jerusalem gifts must be brought by kings, and this seems opposed to the usage of the places and the reason of the acts, for they should rather bring in, that is, into the temple, the gifts they offer. But because the celestial Jerusalem is our mother, and in the earliest writers there is a gathering of throngs, 2 and all who are reborn in Christ are the temple of God, in whom death reigns no more, but life, and he is now a king who was before a servant of sin, there is an offering living, rational and pleasing to God, and so from this temple, that is, the sacred habitation of the body, in that gathering of throngs of angels, that is, in that celestial Jerusalem, if they are kings, that is, if they are no longer slaves of sin, they shall offer themselves as a gift to God.

Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Homilies on the Psalms, from Psalm 67


1 Ps 67.30
2 Heb 12.22

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