Psalm 131:10

whose face is whose?

For thy servant David's sake, turn not away the face of thy anointed. (Psalm 131:10 DR)

The frailty of our nature as humans entails that despite our best intentions, we have no guarantee of future fidelity to a person or a mission or a cause. This contingency should prompt us to humility, but instead can cause us to overcompensate by projecting over-confidence. We see this in the future St. Peter, who—when confronted with the prophecy of our Lord that all His disciples would be scandalized and scattered—proclaims:

And Peter answering, said to him: Although all shall be scandalized in thee, I will never be scandalized. (Matthew 26:33 DR)

What is fascinating is that immediately after prophesying this, Jesus tells them that they will eventually be reunited after His Resurrection, with the implication that this scattering and scandalizing would be forgiven. But instead of accepting this in humility, St. Peter says what was noted above, which means he both denied Jesus’ prophecy and overestimated his own constitution. This prompts our Lord to reply:

Amen I say to thee that in this night before the cock crow, thou wilt deny me thrice. (Matthew 26:34 DR)

St. Peter’s prophesied failure thus rises from being scandalized and cowardly to also denying the very Lord Who gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and Who built His Church upon him. Perhaps it was his memory of this and his appreciation of his role which led him to think himself invincible, as it were, as if his position as Vicar of our Lord in and of itself prevented him from these sorts of moral failures.

In the face of our Lord’s words St. Peter doubles down one more time:

Peter saith to him: Yea, though I should die with thee, I will not deny thee. And in like manner said all the disciples. (Matthew 26:35 DR)

The final interesting note here is that St. Peter’s misplaced self-confidence now leads the other disciples to be emboldened to speak in a like manner, when previously they had been silent. And perhaps it is this misplaced confidence in their own abilities and strength which causes them to fall into the temptation that our Lord warns them to pray against.

The Psalmist takes stock of all the blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon His people and upon him as king, especially in relation to the construction of the temple. As King Solomon dedicates the temple he prays that the Lord will now look favorably on the people and upon him for “Thy servant David’s sake.” This invocation is predicated on the promises that the Lord made to David, who despite his many great failures was a man noted for his meekness. This meekness is what allowed David to be confronted by his sins and then turn from them in repentance, returning to Lord. King Solomon reiterates this for the entire people in his dedication prayer:

But if they sin against thee (for there is no man who sinneth not) and thou being angry deliver them up to their enemies, so that they be led away captives into the land of their enemies far or near; then if they do penance in their heart in the place of captivity, and being converted make supplication to thee in their captivity, saying: We have sinned, we have done unjustly, we have committed wickedness: And return to thee with all their heart, and all their soul, in the land of their enemies, to which they had been led captives: and pray to thee towards the way of their land, which thou gavest to their fathers, and of the city which thou hast chosen, and of the temple which I have built to thy name: Then hear thou in heaven, in the firmament of thy throne, their prayers, and their supplications, and do judgment for them: And forgive thy people, that have sinned against thee, and all their iniquities, by which they have transgressed against thee: and give them mercy before them that have made them captives, that they may have compassion on them. (1 Kings 8:46-50 DR)

King Solomon—in his wisdom—here recognizes the frailty of the human condition and the fickleness of the human heart. He does not presume that he nor the people will be sinless, but instead entreats God’s mercy in advance that there be mercy for them if they return to God in penance, even if they are taken away from the land, which also presumes the dereliction of the temple.

Thus in this passage from the Psalm the Psalmist begs that God turn not away the face of Thy anointed, which is fascinating in that he is framing the turning face as of himself as king (anointed), rather than of God turning away His face. This implicitly is a plea for grace to avoid sin, to avoid turning from God to sin or the pleasures of this world.

There is, of course, also a prophetic aspect to this passage, for it prefigures the Anointed One—the Christ, our Lord and Savior—who is the fulfillment of all Davidic types. All the promises made to David and which Solomon here invokes are brought to completion in our Lord Jesus Christ who as Son of David and Son of God brings God’s people out of their captivity to sin. He in His self-emptying in the Incarnation (cf. Philippians 2:7) is the perfection of David’s meekness, and in the Garden of Gethsemane has the words of this Psalm in His bones, as it were, as He prays to the Father to have the cup taken from Him, yet submits to the Father’s will: “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39 DR).

There is thus a sharp contrast between our Lord and St. Peter, for while our Lord emptied Himself and submitted to the will of the Father, St. Peter puffed up his own pride and rejected what our Lord spoke of him. As Solomon elsewhere rightly says:

Pride goeth before destruction: and the spirit is lifted up before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18 DR)

The Psalmist understands his own need and that of his people for the grace of God. He has confidence in God not turning from them but remembering His promise; what concerns him is his own frailty which his status as God’s chosen king does not obviate; if anything he stands more in need of such strengthening grace. As St. Paul says:

Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12 DR)

St. Peter would eventually learn this lesson, and through his failure he came to understand his need for the grace of the Lord at all times, and that only through this could he be the Rock on which the Church was built. Our Lord prompts him three times in the inversion of his three failures to confess his love for the Lord, which St. Peter in humility had to endure so as to learn what it meant to love. It was not in the braggadocio of future heroism or the misplace self-confidence of his own efforts, but in the humility of the charity that he truly had for the Lord from whence his strength actually arose. His own strength failed him miserably when his Lord was arrested, but the charity of God poured forth into his heart (cf. Romans 5:5) filled him with that self-same charity and the courage which accompanies it, so much so tat he eventually would willingly lay down his life for his Lord, thus making good on the unfulfilled promise in the garden, itself the fulfillment of our Lord’s prayer for him and his successors:

But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. (Luke 22:32 DR)

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For this animation I found an excellent old woodcut of the Holy Face and brought it into After Effects. I applied some level adjustments and threshold to flatten out the luminance values and then blended some textures on it. I drew some lines and added a repeater and then applied Wave Warp for the animation portion, as well as to an overlay texture going the opposite direction.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: