Psalm 25:1

Unto the end, a psalm for David. Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my innocence: and I have put my trust in the Lord, and shall not be weakened. (Psalm 25:1 DR)

In this life wherein we are continually assaulted by temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, it can be difficult for the soul to find peace and confidence in God, for even the temptations which are resisted can, as it were, seem to leave a residue that gives the sense of uncleanness. The very attraction of the temptation—else it would not be a temptation—can seem to be an act of consent, but this is not the case:

Your fears lead you to believe you are defeated at the very moment you are gaining the victory. This comes from the fact that you confound feeling with consent, and, mistaking a passive condition of the imagination for an act of the will, you consider that you have yielded to the temptation because you felt it keenly. (R. P. Quadrupani, Light and Peace, Chapter II, 6.)

At bottom is a lack of trust in God’s grace to provide the assistance to overcome temptation and an overreliance on feelings, the latter of which are notoriously unhelpful and at times deceptive, since the devil can make use of our lack of interior integrity between mind and emotions to lead us into an incorrect view of ourselves:

The attraction of the feelings towards the object presented by the imagination is at times so strong that the will seems to have been carried away and overcome by a sort of fascination. This, however, is not the case. The will suffered, but did not consent; it was attacked and wounded, but not conquered. This state of things coincides with what St. Paul says of the revolt of the flesh against the spirit and of their unceasing warfare. The soul, indeed, experiences strange sensations, but as she does not consent to them, she passes through the ordeal unsullied, just as substances coated with oil may be immersed in water without absorbing a single drop of it. (R. P. Quadrupani, Light and Peace, Chapter II, 8.)

As this Psalm commences, the Psalmist finds himself longing for justification from God in the face of his enemies. David voices this prayer as he is in exile from his homeland, unjustly hunted by King Saul out of jealousy and paranoia. He is also forced to live in a foreign land full of pagans and idolatry, the practices of which are troubling to his mind and conscience.

The people of Israel were chosen by God to be separated from the rest of men, to be a holy people set apart for Him and to worship Him as the only true God. But David in his exile is now separated from that holy and set apart people, cast back into the pagan world—as it were—although he had done nothing wrong, nor had he desired any evil to King Saul.

It is perhaps difficult to imagine from the perspective of 3000 years removed, but in his exile he would have been unable to perform many of the various duties required of him as a member of God’s covenant with Israel. He also would have been constantly surrounded by that which he was supposed to be set apart from. No doubt there was a battle within his mind, for although he knew he harbored no malice towards King Saul, yet he was still in exile and cut off from the tabernacle of the Lord for which he longs in so many other Psalms. Perhaps there was the temptation to imagine a wrong he had committed, and his exile just recompense for what he had done. He gives voice to this elsewhere:

O Lord my God, if I have done this thing, if there be iniquity in my hands: If I have rendered to them that repaid me evils, let me deservedly fall empty before my enemies. Let the enemy pursue my soul, and take it, and tread down my life on the earth, and bring down my glory to the dust. (Psalm 7:4-6 DR)

It may thus seem brash to request that the Lord judge him, but the Psalmist gives voice to this because he is confident of his innocence. His conscience may be troubled, but he knows that he has not erred in his heart and thus places his cause before the Lord rather than before anyone else to judge him. His exile and other circumstances may give others cause to believe him guilty; after all, King Saul, the Lord’s anointed, is the one who deemed David a usurper and pronounced him worthy of death. Yet in spite of this the Psalmist’s hope is in God’s justice; he chooses to trust in the judgment of God rather than his own appraisal of his situation or even of his own self, as St. Paul speaks of:

But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by man’s day; but neither do I judge my own self. For I am not conscious to myself of any thing, yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me, is the Lord. (1 Corinthians 4:3-4 DR)

It is important to remember here the Psalmist’s exile among the wicked and pagan peoples, for in their company he does not wish to abandon God nor take part in their ways. He wishes to walk in innocence, which in the Vulgate is innocentia, a translation of the Greek ἀκακία, which literally means “without malice.” St. Jerome’s Hebrew translation uses simplicitate, from which English ultimately gets the word simplicity. In modern English “simplicity” tends to mean something like “not complicated.” But in its derivation from Latin through the Old French simplicite, it originally meant “singleness of nature,” meaning in this context something without alloy, not double-minded. (Online Etymological Dictionary, simplicity)

Kierkegaard famously said that “purity of heart is to will one thing,” and the Psalmist thus walks in simplicity of mind, desiring only God’s law. It is because he has not strayed from this law that his simplicity of heart is truly innocence.

His appeal for judgment is thus not primarily about a vindication of his conscience but rather a plea to be faithful to God, to be separated from the wicked even though he is forced to walk among them:

The request for judgment seems indeed to be hazardous, but separation from evil men, which takes place at the Lord’s scrutiny, is acknowledged to be fittingly sought by one who is truly deserving. So we have here not pride in what he deserves, which is execrable, but a just request from a faithful servant asking to be separated from the exceedingly wicked, so that he may not share the portion of evil men. The holy man demands judgment because he is certain of the Lord’s mercy. As Paul has it: “As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day.” (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 25, 1.)

This certainty of God’s mercy thus frames the Psalmist’s confidence, which lies entirely in God’s action rather than his own efforts. He is not conscious of any sin and knows he has harbored no malice, yet this is not the source of his innocence, but rather the grace and mercy of God which has kept him from evil. In his cooperation with that grace by refusing to hate King Saul even though he is being unjustly persecuted, he places his vindication and innocence in God’s hands, the one who will reward him with both the physical crown of the kingdom as well as the crown of justice of which St. Paul spoke. St. John gives voice to this same confidence in his first epistle:

My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth. In this we know that we are of the truth: and in his sight shall persuade our hearts. For if our heart reprehend us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Dearly beloved, if our heart do not reprehend us, we have confidence towards God: And whatsoever we shall ask, we shall receive of him: because we keep his commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in his sight. (1 John 3:18-22 DR)

In this manner the Psalmist has confidence in God’s justice because he has followed the commandments, and even though the circumstances and temptations to despair and second-guess everything no doubt swirled around him, his hope is not in his own efforts or ability to analyze his own heart:

He walks in his innocence because, as he says later, he puts his trust in the Lord, and the presumption he shows is not in his own powers but in God’s generosity. There follows a beautiful proof of this assertion, for he maintains that he is not weakened in his trust in the Lord. This is in fact the innocence of which he spoke earlier, in other words, confidence in the Lord's power that no weakness of sin can weigh on him. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 25, 1.)

The superscription of this Psalm is unto the End, which points this Psalm ultimately towards our Lord Jesus Christ who fulfills it, the One Who was without sin yet suffered the calumny of accusations of evil against Him, and was sentenced to an ignominious death among the wicked. Yet it is His willingness to maintain His innocence before God even in the face of injustice which serves as the fulfillment to this passage and the model that all Catholics are to follow, as St. Peter explains:

For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God, a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if committing sin, and being buffeted for it, you endure? But if doing well you suffer patiently; this is thankworthy before God. For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, did not revile: when he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to him that judged him unjustly. (1 Peter 2:19-23 DR)

The soul of the righteous man can thus be confident in the Lord, for the soul that loves God and seeks to do His will has let go of its own pretended self-sufficiency, and rather leaves everything to God, such that when temptation comes—no matter how intense—it cannot assail the will that is aligned with that of its Lord:

Now, you often see souls afflicted because the enemy, occupying all the other faculties, makes therein so great a noise and confusion that they scarce can hear what this superior will says; for though it has a clearer and more penetrating voice than the inferior will, the loud, boisterous cries of the latter almost drown it: but note this well: as long as the temptation is displeasing to you, there is nothing to fear; for why should it displease you, except because you do not will it? (R. P. Quadrupani, Light and Peace, Chapter II, 8.)

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I found an image of a pair of shoes, which was oddly harder than you might think, as you apparently don’t find many images where the inner and outer shoes are isolated enough to cut out. I found these boots and isolated them in Photoshop and then brought them into After Effects.

I started by creating the walk cycle for the boots and then looped that. Next I placed in some background textures and used Stretch on them to animate the background. I then placed my text in a precomp and used Motion Tile to repeat and then animated that to get some parallax with the boots to create the sense of walking.

Fun project and it turned out pretty well I think.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: