Psalm 25:6

I will wash my hands among the innocent; and will compass thy altar, O Lord: (Psalm 25:6 DR)

Perhaps this is a “me” thing, but I find it difficult to focus on absolutely anything else when my hands are dirty. To be fair, it probably matters in the way in which they are dirty, for they are probably dirty way more than I would care to know. However, dirtiness that causes stickiness or weird textures of any kind is really distracting to me, and I find myself wanting to wash my hands as soon as possible.

We use our hands so often and for so many things that we probably don’t realize just how much we actually use them, until either we are prevented from doing so or have something (like sticky hands) which makes their use more immediately and consciously apprehended.

The hands in many ways also serve as a symbol for our wills, for even though we can enact our wills without the use of our hands, it is a very obvious and very often means by which we put our wills into action. Idioms like “took matters into his own hands” or “he had a hand in it” express this connection between will and action. The idiom “to wash your hands of it” is especially pertinent to this passage. For while it derives more properly from the Gospel when Pilate washed his hands following Jesus’ condemnation, the act of washing was meant to absolve himself of responsibility; thus, in some respects the Psalmist’s words here are the inverse.

By declaring that he will he is again asserting his innocence, reframing how he began this Psalm. It is his confidence in this innocence and God’s purification of his heart and soul that prompts him to approach the altar. These are words in preparation for sacrifice, for he is preparing to enter the sanctuary and to offer adoration to God in that sacrifice:

I will make clean my works among the innocent: among the innocent will I wash mine hands, with which I shall embrace Your glorious gifts. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 25, 6.)

This passage is so pregnant with sacrificial intent that it (and the following verses) form verbatim the Lavabo oration that the priest prays following the Offertory. As he is praying the words of the Psalmist here, he is literally washing his hands in water as a symbol of purity of soul:

But the washing of hands is a symbol that you ought to be pure from all sinful and unlawful deeds; for since the hands are a symbol of action, by washing them, it is evident, we represent the purity and blamelessness of our conduct. Didst thou not hear the blessed David opening this very mystery, and saying, I wall wash my hands in innocency, and so will compass Thine Altar, O Lord? The washing therefore of hands is a symbol of immunity from sin. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Lectures, 5.2., ACCS.)

There is a fine connection here to Psalm 14 and Psalm 23 in which the Psalmist uses similar language in describing those who stand in His tabernacle:

Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? or who shall rest in thy holy hill? He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice: (Psalm 14:1-2 DR)

Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and clean of heart, who hath not taken his soul in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour. (Psalm 23:3-4 DR)

This purity of hands stands in for purity of will; that is, a will that is transfixed on the Lord and wholly submitted to His will, that does not desire evil but seeks after virtue. Such an alignment of the heart and hands is the telos—the goal or end for every priest who is ordained, but is grounded in the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the perfection of the office and the fountain of the graces which flow to it in the sacrament of holy orders.

As He approached the altar of the cross to offer Himself as a pleasing oblation to the Father, He was accounted among the guilty, yet His innocence was unimpeached. This self-same innocent Sacrifice and Priest is the One Who offers every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as the priest acts in persona Christi, participating in that priesthood of Christ. He wishes to thus cleanse himself in conscience so as to align his will more perfectly to Our Lord.

The Psalmist here moves from the lavabo—the washing of the hands—to the altar itself, the place of sacrifice. The Vulgate uses the term circumdabo, which the Douay-Rheims renders as “compass,” but which in modern English would be more like encompass, surround, encircle. The following Psalm will use a similar expression:

I have gone round, and have offered up in his tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation: I will sing, and recite a psalm to the Lord. (Psalm 26:6 DR)

St. Bellarmine comments that some commentators referred this “compassing” to an image of the number of offerings or victims placed around the altar, an image of the superabundance of sacrifice to express the Psalmist’s desire. But St. Bellarmine himself—based on the parallel passage in Psalm 26 noted above—refers rather to the action of the Psalmist himself; that is, literally going round the altar. There is a fascinating parallel here to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In the High Mass of the Traditional Roman Rite, immediately prior to the Lavabo the priest will literally go round about the altar, incensing it while praying an oration—drawn from Psalm 40— that again references his hands:

Dirigátur, Dómine, orátio mea, sicut incénsum, in conspéctu tuo: elevátio mánuum meárum sacrifícium vespertínum.

Let my prayer, O Lord, be directed as incense in Thy sight: the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. (Psalm 140:2 DR )

This deep connection of the hands of the priest to the Mass of course extends even further, as he uses his consecrated hands to confect the Eucharist. But this connection occurs on a spiritual level as well since our Lord in His offering of Himself as the Perfect Sacrifice did so by stretching out His hands upon the wood of the cross. All of this is then perfectly coalesced in Our Lord Who as both Victim and Priest offers the Holy Mass as High Priest, present truly in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

It is because of this stupendous mystery that occurs in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that the Psalmist prophetically washes his hands among the innocent, typologically foreshadowing our Blessed Lord Who is both Innocence itself and the One Who makes innocent. The Psalmist will prophetically go round about the altar, but Jesus Christ the Great High Priest will fulfill this compassing of the altar as both victim and priest, offering the Sacrifice of the Mass through His ministers yet as the One offered on the altar in the renewing and re-presenting of that One Sacrifice. In this manner the prophecy of Malachi is also fulfilled:

For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11 DR)

In uniting herself to Christ and His Sacrifice, the Church as His mystical Body also offers herself:

Christ left the Eucharistic Sacrifice to His Church; it is her chief dower, her glorious mine of wealth, her greatest joy, her all-hallowed sanctuary. At the altar she enters into living communion of sacrifice with Christ; the Sacrifice of the Mass is offered not alone for the Church, but also by her and through her to the Most High. And this is the principal reason why the Eucharist is and is called the Sacrifice of the Church. — To this is added, moreover, the circumstance that the Church Militant during Holy Mass offers herself and is at the same time offered. Christ has placed Himself in the hands of the Church, that she may offer Him to the Heavenly Father; with the infinitely meritorious and acceptable sacrifice to God of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Church unites the offering of herself. In union with the sacrifice of Christ the faithful should offer themselves with all their labors, sufferings and prayers, with body and soul. St. Augustine expresses this sentiment in an appropriate manner, when he says: “The whole body of the redeemed, that is, the society and communion of saints (of Christians), is presented to God as a joint sacrifice by the Highpriest who in His passion also offered Himself for us in the form of a servant, that we might become the members of so exalted a Head.” (Fr. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Book I., Chapter 16., 4.)

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I used Trapcode Mir to create this nice cascading water effect, and used some colored lights in the scene to create the lighting effects. I wanted to keep this one simple and clean in keeping with the theme, and so kept it pretty stripped down, but I still really like how it turned out.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: