MEANING WHAT YOU SING

Caesarius of ArIes (470 - 542)


Above all, strive by holy thoughts, as well as by prayers, to fulfill

in daily life what you profess orally; and may the Holy Spirit

who speaks to you upon your lips also deign to dwell in your

hearts. It is truly good and pleasing enough to God when the

tongue devoutly chants the Psalms, but it will be better still if

your life is in harmony with the words on your tongue. Our words

and our lives should be in agreement. Let not our words bear

testimony against our evil habits, and let not our tongue refute

our lives. If one thing is uttered with our mouth, and something

else appears in our actions, what the tongue seems to build up

our evil life immediately destroys. For your part, dear Christians,

may the sense of a Scripture passage hold your attention as well

as the pleasantness of the sound. If, when a person chants the

Psalms, he only pays attention to the sweetness of the sounds and

the arrangement of the words, but does not heed what should be

understood in them, his ears receive passing nourishment, but

the Word of God does not reach his heart. In a certain sense, such

a one chews on pure wax, but does not taste the sweetness of the

honey at all.

Sermon 75