Psalm 26:8

My heart hath said to thee: My face hath sought thee: thy face, O Lord, will I still seek. (Psalm 26:8 DR)

In the previous passage of this Psalm was the shift from the the third person to a direct address unto God, in which the Psalmist asks the Lord for mercy that he might be heard, and is heard that he might receive mercy.

Directly following this is another shift in voice, for now the Psalmist speaks of himself in the third person, as if viewing and evaluating his own desires and longings from outside of himself, as it were. For instead of immediately saying, “I have said to Thee,” he says “My heart hath said to Thee.” This mode of stepping outside of himself flows from the humility with which he addressed the Lord in the previous passage. For he does not simply assert his own will, but rather speaks as one knowing that the desires of his heart and its longings are laid bare before God, Who knows them before they are ever uttered. For the Psalmist to speak of himself from outside of himself, is as to acknowledge that what he will say with his lips is what flows forth from his heart and his soul. He does not simply say the words, but rather joins the words to what God already sees and knows.

To have the heart speak also indicates that this is primarily an interior movement, the honesty of what he truly desires and which God alone can see. For in our words we can proclaim many things to which our heart does not align, and from the outward perspective of men there is generally no way to know for certain if the words of the mouth match the desire of the heart. But God knows all things, including that which resides in our hearts, and thus the Psalmist allows the reality that exists within his soul to do the speaking, so to speak:

My heart has said to You, I have sought Your countenance. For I have not exhibited myself to men; but in secret, where Thou alone hear, my heart has said to You; I have not sought from You anything without You as a reward, but Your countenance. Your countenance, O Lord, will I seek. In this search will I perseveringly persist: for not anything that is common, but Your countenance, O Lord, will I seek, that I may love You freely, since nothing more precious do I find. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 26, Exposition 1, 8)

In the Vulgate there is a juxtaposition between the face of the Psalmist—facies mea—and the face of the Lord—faciem tuam. The word facies generally has the sense of make, form, shape, or figure, and is often rendered as face in English since the face of a man or a thing (like the face of a coin) serves as the outward expression of the interior reality. When we consider another person, his face is the most notable characteristic that we generally associate with him as a person, even if there are other characteristics that are far more distinguishing. We think of the face of our beloved as standing in, in some respect, for the beloved as a whole person, and the mind’s eye sees the face when it considers the beloved.

This juxtaposition of facies—of faces—thus describes the union the Psalmist desires with the Lord. The Psalmist’s face—which stands in for the entirety of his being—is not only something he says seeks God, but his very heart is what says this, and thus is something that God knows in the secret place of his interior longing:

The heart reveals its silent longing, to which the Godhead listens more than to the most thundering voices of nations. He said to Moses: “Why criest thou to me?” although we do not read that Moses had said anything. So the faithful man said that his heart was speaking to the Lord, since he seemed to offer his thoughts by this means. The man who lives a holy life seeks the face of the Lord; of such men Scripture says: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 26, 8)

In the Old Latin there is an inversion of the first instance of facies, which is applied to the Lord rather than to the Psalmist. The Old Latin has Tibi dixit cor meum, quaesivi faciem tuam—My heart hath said to Thee: I have sought Thy face. In this case the emphasis is shifted to the object of the desire of the heart—Thy face—rather than on the interior motivation or disposition as in the Vulgate—my face. But both renderings are describing the same reality from different sides, for the face of the Psalmist is reflected in the voice of his heart, and the face of God is sought because of this interior desire. Both exquisivit from the Vulgate and quaesivi from the Old Latin are in the perfect tense, describing an action that has been completed. The Psalmist not only steps outside of himself to describe the action of his heart, but also in a sense places himself outside of time, as if looking upon an action of himself suspended in this moment of prayer. He sees his own heart and its longings in a sort of perpetual present, as it were, for he sees in the present the state of his heart as it has been, a heart that has sought the face of the Lord. This past action does not exist only in the past but in some manner characterizes the entirety of his being; it is why he can say that his face has sought the Lord. Just as when we think of a person when think of his face and what that speaks about him as a whole, so when the Psalmist considers his own face he considers it primarily in terms of its desire and longing for God.

This does not rise from a place of pride or vainglory; after all, it is not him merely saying these words. Rather, his heart is what speaks, and its longing is what God perceives in secret. It is because the Psalmist has the Lord as his light and salvation, because he has desired the Lord as the one thing, that his face can be said to have sought the Lord. His own heart bears witness to this truth, and since only God knows the heart, there is no place for deception or hedging or obfuscation. In the previous passage he brought himself before God in humility and repentance, and this transformation of the soul to long for God—by the infusion of God’s charity—creates a heart that can say such things to God, that sculpts a face that has sought the Lord:

These verses require more to be reflected on and put into practice than to be explained. “My heart hath said to thee.” My desires have spoken to thee. “My face hath sought thee.” My interior eyes, fixed in the face of my soul, look for thy beauty—despise everything else. “Thy face, O Lord, will I still seek.” It shall be always my study to look for a sight of thee, in the hope not only of seeing thee face to face in the world to come; but that also, in this world, too, I may study one thing only, to catch your looks, and through them to be enlightened and inflamed. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 26, 8)

The final clause of this Psalm flows in the parallelism directly from the first, for if the seeking of God’s face is the action of the past that is considered in the present, then this same seeking will also be in the future. Thus the Psalmist continues the juxtaposition of faces, in that if his face has sought the Lord, now he says: “Thy face, O Lord, will I still seek.” This language directly ties back to verse 4 in which he speaks of the one thing that he has asked of the Lord, and the one thing that he will still seek after. In both cases the word requiram is employed for “I will seek.” In verse 4 this one thing was to dwell in the house of the Lord, to see His delight, to visit His temple, and here in verse 8 this one thing is filled out and completed in the face of the Lord. For if the face is that by which we understand the person, then to seek God’s face is just to seek after God Himself, ultimately to possess Him in His entirety, which just is the Beatific Vision in which we behold the face of God.

St. Augustine contrasts the Psalmist’s pure longing with a man who loves God for the good things he receives from God. He considers that this man—who knows he is mortal—still longs for these things as if he is immortal and prays for them within the same mindset. But what if he should obtain them, and what if God should grant him an eternity in this state? He would be presumably overjoyed because he gets the goodies of this world with immortality thrown in; he gets to have his cake and eat it too, as it were.

But within this joy would be a lie, for while he would potentially thank God for giving him what he thought he desired, he would not be thanking God because he loved God but rather for the sake of the things he wanted. He doesn’t fear losing the love of God, but rather losing the things that he has chosen to love, that his heart and his face has sought after. His heart could not truly say: “my face has sought thee, thy face, O Lord, will I still seek.” For if he obtains the things of this world that he desires, he no longer seeks the face of God that he might have them. He has already gotten what he wants from God—thank you very much—and now he can enjoy the pleasures of this world on his own terms and for his own sake.

The Psalmist, on the other hand, has made the Lord the one thing that he desires, and the things of this world are counted as nothing in comparison to that. He fears losing the one thing rather than losing the goods of this world:

But what doth he wish? To contemplate the delight of the Lord all the days of his life. And on the contrary the other, who in this way and for this reason would worship the Lord, if those temporal advantages were at his hand, would not fear the anger of his Lord, unless lest He should take them away. This man feareth not His anger on this account; since he hath said of his enemies, That they may eat my flesh. For what doth he fear His anger? Lest He take away that which he hath loved. What hath he loved? Thy countenance. Therefore he deems this to be the anger of the Lord, if He turn away His countenance from him. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 26, Exposition 2, 16)

The man who seeks God that he might gain the things of this world does not fear losing God; in fact, this is perhaps the one thing he does not fear, since the love of this world is what truly matters to him. On the contrary, the man who seeks the face of the Lord for God’s own sake only fears losing the face of the Lord, and is content to have nothing of this world if only he might have that one thing. This is why he requires it, as was seen in verse 4, because it is the necessary condition of his beatitude. He could gain all the things of this world, but if he does not possess that one thing then he possesses nothing.

It is the heart that has truly dis-attached from the love of this world and all its lusts and pleasures which can say my face hath sought Thee. In such a declaration there is no pride precisely because the love of self and of this world and its goods is no longer present. Instead, such a heart has been infused and filled to overflowing by the charity of God, which just is the very life of God within the soul. This charity turns our face to behold God’s face, so that we behold Him as He is. This requires a transformation of heart, a face that is molded into the likeness of the face it is to behold.

On the mount of Transfiguration our Lord’s face (facies) shines like the sun, which vision causes the disciples to fall upon their faces (faciem) in fear when they heard the voice confirming Jesus’ divinity. Their faces were not yet conformed to His face so as to be able to behold Him as He is. But with the coming of the Holy Ghost and the outpouring of the charity of God into their souls they had the righteousness of Christ infused into their hearts, enabling them to enter in the very life of the Blessed Trinity, the union of God with man to culminate in the Beatific Vision. Their faces began to be transformed into His likeness so that like beholds like, as it were. And all who are brought into the mystical Body of Christ partake of the same, having hearts that are enabled by that same outpouring of grace in baptism to now seek the face of God, reflecting in our own faces His glory as we are ourselves transformed into His likeness:

But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18 DR)

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I found an illustration of the Sacred Heart and isolated it in Photoshop, then split it into the heart and the flame. In After Effects I precomped both pieces, animating the scale of the heart to “pump,” and applying Loop Flow to the flame to simulate the burning.

I added in an illustration of a crown of thorns and slightly animated the rotation, and then apply Mad Painter to a texture background.

I added in the text and applied Shadow Studio for the shadow, and adjusted the Blend Mode to create the various shades and such within the shadow, drawing from the imagery behind it.

Finally I added in some color correction, a little camera shake, noise and finished it up.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: