Saul! cease to rage: let the evil spirit depart from you... St. David sings, rattling into the slender harp.

Saul I call my mind, troubled, indignant at the thoughts that come from the ruler of the world. He, my mind, was ordained by God at the establishment of the kingdom of Israel at creation, and then, at the redemption of man, into king, lord of soul and body; by disobedience to God, by violating God's commandments, by violating unity with God, he deprived himself of dignity and grace. Spiritual and bodily forces are disobedient to him; he himself is under the influence of an evil spirit.

St. David sings, proclaims the words of Heaven. And the sounds of his psalter are the sounds of heaven! The subject of the hymn is the bliss of man.

Brethren, let us listen to the Divine teaching, set forth in the Divine hymn. Let us listen to the verbs, let us listen to the sounds with which Heaven speaks, with which the Heaven thunders to us.

O you who seek happiness, who pursue pleasure, who thirst for pleasure! Come: listen to the sacred song, listen to the teachings of the salvific one. How long will you wander, prowl through valleys and mountains, through impassable deserts and wilds? How long do you torment yourself with unceasing and vain labor, not crowned with any fruits, with any lasting gains? Incline your humble ear: listen to what the Holy Spirit says through the mouth of David about human blessedness, which all men strive for, which all men hunger for.

Let everything around me be silent! and let my very thoughts be silent within me! Let the heart be silent! Let only reverent attention live, act! let holy impressions and thoughts enter into the soul, through Him!

David was a king and did not say that the throne of kings is the throne of human bliss.

David was a commander and a hero, from youth to old age he quarreled with foreigners in bloody battles; the number of battles he fought, the number of victories he won; to the banks of the Euphrates from the banks of the Jordan he moved the borders of his kingdom and did not say that in the glory of the victorious and conqueror is the blessedness of man.

David gathered up innumerable riches, gathered them up with his sword. The gold lay in his storerooms like copper, and the silver was thrown into them like cast iron. But David did not say that in riches is the blessedness of man.

David had all the earthly consolations — in none of them did he recognize human blessedness.

When David was a youth, when his occupation was to feed the sheep of his father Jesse, suddenly, by the command of God, the prophet Samuel came and anointed the poor shepherd with holy oil as king of the people of Israel. David did not call the hour of his anointing as king the hour of blessedness.

David spent his childhood days in the wilderness. There his muscles began to feel the valor of the muscles of a hero: without weapons, with only his hands, he threw himself at a lion and a bear, strangled a lion and a bear. There his soul began to move, to be filled with heavenly inspiration. The hands that had crushed the lion and the bear made a psalter, touched the strings, tense and harmonized by the action of the Spirit: harmonious, sweet, spiritual, intelligent sounds were emitted. Far, far away, through time, through centuries and millennia, these sounds have rushed, repeated and repeated by countless voices, glorifying the name of David to all the ends of the earth, to all the centuries of its Christian life. A life in the wilderness, a life full of wondrous feats, of wondrous inspiration, David did not call the blessedness of man.

Blessed is the man, he sings, in whatever place, in whatever rank, in whatever condition and rank this man may be, who does not go to the counsel of the wicked, and does not stand in the way of sinners, and does not sit in the seat of the destroyers [2].

Blessed is the man who is preserved from sin, who reflects sin from himself, in whatever form, in what garb sin appears to him: whether he appears in a lawless act, whether he appears in a thought that advises iniquity, or in a feeling that brings pleasure and ecstasy to sin.