Lord, hear my voice. Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. (Psalm 129:2 DR)
We have all had the experience of when someone is “listening” to what we are saying but who—as is clear from their mannerisms—is mentally a thousand miles away. And no doubt we have all at times been guilty of the same lack of attentiveness because of distractions or lack of interest. This leads us to make a distinction between being physically present and truly present, the latter of which is the most desirable.
Our prayers and attendance at Mass can often manifest this same sort of unfortunate bifurcation between our physical and—for lack of a better term—moral presence. Distractions are not entirely avoidable, but the dispositions we bring to prayer have an impact both in our attentiveness and in the potential fruits we can receive from the sacrifice of the Mass, the latter of which are more or less depending on our disposition:
These impetratory fruits of the Mass are the more bountifully imparted to us, the more our hearts are open to them, the more worthy they are disposed to receive them; therefore we should prepare our hearts to receive them by a purification of our interior by penance, by withdrawing our affections from earthly things and by inflaming our desires for heavenly goods. (Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Book I., 21., 2.)
Whoever assists at Mass with reverence and devotion, enters into the closest and most intimate connection with the Sacrifice, because as the priest prays and offers the Mass, such a one joins his prayers, praying and offering with the priest — and because in addition to this, the Church also prays and offers for all there present. The faithful who worthily assist at Mass, gain thereby a special sacrificial fruit, more or less abundant according to the measure of their co-operation, their worthiness and devotion. (Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Book I., 22., 2.)
The Psalmist has the entirety of his affection and devotion fixed upon God, and his cry to the Lord is as if to someone who might otherwise be occupied but whom he hopes to bring to full attention. St. Bellarmine observes:
However loud one may cry, he will not be heard, unless the person to whom he cries attend to him. People are often so absorbed in other matters, that they pay no heed to one talking to them, and then one talks to them in vain. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 129, 1.)
God, of course, cannot be distracted and is—for lack of a better phrase—not only fully present to all men but also to all things. We often project our own limitations upon God and fall into what I call the God-too-small fallacy in which we judge the importance of things or events in terms of their bigness or importance relative to ourselves and thus make that the measure of God or God’s action. This of arises in argument about God’s existence, as if the size and scope of the universe compared to man’s insignificance proves that God doesn’t exist or—as is usually the case—that God wouldn’t care about certain moral actions that almost always involve some sort of sexual proclivity. However, the truth is that we almost always make God too small, for in reality God not only cares about or sees each action we take—whether good or bad—but is fully present to everything, from the largest galaxy to the smallest subatomic particle. And this is not some generic presence but is on the level of God sustaining anything that exists in its existence, which is the height and depth of being present.
This is—incidentally—what we actually mean when we say that God is omnipresent; it isn’t that He is some nebulous cloud that fits itself into every unoccupied space between things, but rather that He is the very source of being for everything that exists, and thus the reason that exists. This isn’t some pantheist delusion in which parts of God are in everything (since God has no parts) or a misguided panentheism in which the non-divine world is somehow (contradictorily) part of the divine nature (since one cannot have “part” of something which has no parts). The very transcendence of God as God in the utter simplicity of His Divine Being entails that at all times He is completely and infinitely distinct from any created thing since the “gulf” between created being and uncreated being is likewise infinite.
Th upshot of this digression is that God always hears (as it were) our prayers; in fact—as our Lord reminds us—He obviously knows what we ask before we ask it (cf. Matthew 6:8). The Psalmist’s cry is thus not about somehow emotionally manipulating God into hearing him like we might do to our fellow humans. Instead, the limitation of language and our own weakness show this to be about the interior disposition of the Psalmist—he understands that God always hears, but he needs to be clear within himself that he truly means what he prays by aligning his actions and his will with the words that he offers up to God:
Now, God always sees and hears everything, but when he does not grant what we ask, he is like one that does not attend to us, as if he were thinking of something else, and, therefore, David, being most anxious for a hearing, and not content with having called out with a loud voice, asks, furthermore, that God may deign to attend to him; that is, to receive his prayer, and grant what it asked. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 129, 1.)
In our prayers we must make every effort to come before our Lord with a pure heart and a worthy disposition, entreating Him to assist us with His grace. Thus the blessings we may receive are not because of our efforts but rather His crowning the gifts He lavishes upon us. This is especially the case at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in which the priest acts in persona Christi for Christ our Great High Priest, offering to His Father Himself as the perfect oblation of infinite value. Such an awe-inspiring reality should compel us to assist with love and devotion and beg for the grace to enter into such deep waters:
The Mass is a spiritual mine of gold, where we may dig and enrich ourselves with little labor; it is a treasure-house inexhaustible in its riches, that is ever open to us and to which we can always gain admittance. But where are our faith and love? Do we esteem and make use of this overflowing fountain of heavenly blessings? Is the holy hour of Mass, so full of graces, what is dearest to us and the most precious portion of the day? Do we consider the celebration of the Holy Mass, or assisting thereat, as the highest and most important action of our daily duty? We have in this certainly much to lament, much to atone for. Holy Mass should be the treasure, the joy and comfort of our life. (Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Book I., 22., 2.)
In this animation I wanted to focus on the voice aspect of this passage and the desire of the Psalmist for it to be heard, and so I thought that some sort of text-based approach might be nice. I created the text and then applied the plugin Extrude to it which creates these faux-3D extrusions, which can be a pain in After Effects to do natively.
I then made color adjustments to get the look I wanted and duplicated this layer several times and arranged it as seen. I animated one of the layers and parented the others to it so as to be really efficient because I am lazy. Since these aren’t truly 3D layers I had to be a bit creative with the timing so they wouldn’t overlap each other incorrectly, which meant having to split layers at certain times. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it worked, which may actually be the definition of elegance, since something elegant that doesn’t work probably couldn’t be considered elegant. But I digress.
I then precomped these layers and duplicated the precomp untile I had enough copies to create the layout I wanted. Instead of using Time Remapping I simply set the Strecth of the time to -100% to get them to reverse in direction. Now that is elegant.
I finally added in some glows and color correction and it was complete.
Enjoy.
Lord, hear my voice. Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
(Psalm 129:2 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: