Psalm 128:2

never get tired of winning

Often have they fought against me from my youth: but they could not prevail over me. (Psalm 128:2 DR)

There is a saying drawn from recent military history that you only catch flak when you are over the target; that is, you only are targeted by an enemy when they perceive you as a threat.

The same is also true in non-military contexts. I currently live in an area which hosts many types of wildlife, not all desirable. Currently there is a woodpecker that is laying waste to some of the older siding of my house, and even though there are squirrels ravaging decorative pumpkins and rabbits which tear up all the flowers in the flower beds, I am focused on the woodpecker and trying to get rid of it, because it is the greatest threat.

The Church as the mystical Body of Christ is also in the world the Church Militant, and part of this is because of the constant warfare which she undergoes, as seen in the previous passage. Due to her being the ark of salvation and the dispenser of graces in this world, she is the greatest threat to the enemy of souls and to the world of which he is the god (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4). To use more modern parlance, the values of the world are at complete enmity with the values of our Lord and His Church, and thus conflict is inevitable.

Because of this the Church will always be more or less at ill-ease in this world, at least as far as the world’s values and priorities hold sway and are not subject to Christ. In this manner the persecution of the Church and even the internal struggles that she faces from time to time are evidence of her threat to the world, for these trials and tribulations demonstrate that the Church is over the target, as the Psalmist now reiterates:

He assigns a reason for the enemies having come so often to the charge, and says it was because “they could not prevail over him;” for, had they prevailed over and destroyed God’s people, they would have had no occasion to renew the fight. The history of the Church bears testimony to this. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 128, 2.)

The abiding presence of the Church in the world over the course of so many centuries and after so many assaults from the evil one and the world he inhabits and influences thus gives cause for confidence in her divine origin and protection. For if she was not of divine origin she would not therefore be a threat to the devil and she would face no persecution or tribulation.

In the English translation the word “prevail” is more or less supplied by inference, as non potuerunt speaks more to the lack of power or ability, which when combined with expugnaverunt from the first half of the passage means that the ability of them to fight against the Church was not successful, which is more succinctly described by the phrase could not prevail.

St. Bellarmine follows the Vulgate here in seeing the lack of prevailing as the cause of the repeated assaults; that is, the fight is renewed throughout history because the Church has not succumbed, with the implication that this will continue. This follows from the term etenim, which the Douay-Rheims renders as the word “but,” although etenim generally means because or indeed. St. Jerome’s Hebrew translation does supply the word sed (but); however, this tends in English to give more of a sense of finality or contrast. In terms of finality it could give the impression that the assaults have happened but they did not prevail, and thus have concluded, which would be the wrong impression. Or in terms of contrast there is a distinction between the assaults themselves and the lack of prevailing, with the connection between them being the assault and its failure rather than looking more deeply into the why of this situation.

However, following St. Bellarmine we might see that the reason the Church is continually assaulted is because she does not succumb and is not prevailed over. This bulwark of truth against the lies of the devil and the world stands as a perpetual contradiction; she thus becomes a continually intolerable presence in the world, like an enemy which has placed a permanent garrison within one’s city. She is thus always over the target, as it were, for in her proclamation of the Gospel she contradicts and rebukes the spirit of the world.

On the individual level this enmity with the world also exists to more or less an extent depending on the conformity and submission of one’s family, friends, city, nation, etc., to Christ and His reign. We are to live at peace as best we can, but our Lord also declared that He had come to bring a sword:

Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. (Matthew 10:34-36 DR)

Ultimately there is no room for neutrality in this world; there is either submission to the god of this world or to our Lord Jesus Christ. Since the Church—which is Christ’s body—is guaranteed to suffer the slings and arrows of the devil, those who are members of that self-same body should expect no less. And while we are to strive to live at peace with all men (cf. Romans 12:18), it is inevitable that the world and those who follow the god of this world will oppose the members of Christ’s body.

We find this true of the current Zeitgeist which in spite of its platitudes about tolerance will simply not brook any rivals to its system or values. Even attempts to live and let live are not acceptable to its totalizing madness which cannot allow any lack of conformity to its ideals, for its principles are so absurd and insane that it can only achieve its ends through sheer will-to-power and coercive might.

However, this power—the potuerunt of the Psalmist—is not sufficient to overcome the Church of which our Lord is the Head and protector. This is why the Psalmist reiterates the same refrain from the first verse, so as to intensify the assaults of the world against the Church so as to accentuate her weathering of all such attacks. It is not because her members have sufficient strength in themselves but rather because they are joined to Christ in His mystical Body and thus rely upon the power of His grace to overcome evil. The more we suffer for righteousness’ sake the more we know we are over the target, and each victory over sin strengthens us by God’s grace for more to come, and we can have confidence that God will provide grace for us on an individual level (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:13) and for the Church as a whole to overcome the gates of hell (cf. Matthew 16:18) as our Lord promised:

To them that think and say, How great evils do we endure, how great are the scandals that every day thicken, as the wicked enter into the Church, and we have to endure them? But let the Church reply through some, that is, through the voice of the stronger, let her reply to the complaints of the weak, and let the stable confirm the unstable, and the full-grown the infant, and let the Church say, “Many a time have they vexed me from my youth up.” Let the Church say this: let her not fear it. For what is the meaning of this addition, “From my youth up,” after the words, “Many a time have they fought against me?” At present the old age of the Church is assailed: but let her not fear. Hath she then failed to arrive at old age, because they have not ceased to fight against her from her youth up? Have they been able to blot her out? Let Israel comfort herself, let the Church console herself with past examples. Why have they fought against me? “For they could not prevail against me.” (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 128, 3.)

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For this animation I decided to go completely text based. I typed out each individual letter of “prevail”, precomped them and then animated them on the Y axis using a wiggle() expression. I then applied the Extrude plugin to each precomped letter, adding a gradient to the extrusion and animating the extrusion in and out. I then animated the hue range of the gradient to animate the color shift and applied a loopOut()expression to that and applied that same effect to each letter.

Next I applied Time Remapping to each precomp and applied loopOut() so that I could offset each letter in time to make the color shift feel more random.

I then precomped all the letters, applied a looped Time Remapping and duplicated that and placed the duplicates throughout the composition and offset them in time to create what generally looks like a huge mess.

So yes, complete success.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: