Salmos 50

Salmos 50:23

For this ointment is made from the gifts of God bestowed on the human race. Happy the man who makes it his business to gather these carefully for himself and keep them in mind with due thanksgiving. When they shall have been pounded and refined in the heart's receptacle with the pestle of frequent meditation, all of them fused together in the fire of holy desire, and finally enriched with the oil of gladness, you will have an ointment more excellent than the former, and far more precious. Enough proof can be found in the words of him who said: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me." No one doubts that the recalling of favors is an incentive to praise. Furthermore, since the only thing that Scripture says of the former ointment is that God does not despise it, it follows that the second one, which especially glorifies him, is the more highly commended. Therefore the former is applied to the feet, the latter to the head. St Paul says: "God is the head of Christ," so in speaking of Christ we may understand the head as referring to his divinity, and it is beyond doubt that he who offers thanks anoints the head, because he makes contact with God, not man. I do not mean that he who is God is not also man, for the one Christ is both God and man; I mean that all things which are good, even those of which man is the agent, really come from God rather than man. "It is the spirit," we are told, "that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer." Hence there is a curse on the man who puts his trust in man, for although our whole hope rightly depends on God made man, it is not because he is man but because he is God. Therefore the first ointment is applied to the feet, the second to the head, because the humiliation of a broken heart fittingly corresponds to the lowliness of the flesh, and honor is owed to majesty. See then what an ointment I have been describing for you, with which he before whom even the Principalities stand in awe, does not disdain to be anointed on the head. Rather does he regard it as a matter of signal honor, for he says: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me." — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 10