Psalm 34:9

But my soul shall rejoice in the Lord; and shall be delighted in his salvation. (Psalm 34:9 DR)

In this life there can be much happiness and many pleasures, and for our part we are inclined to seek after them. A certain good is manifest to us though our senses and our appetites desire them as delectable, which in the integrity of our being is then intended to be considered by the reason and then sought out by the will if judged to be ordered to the good.

This ideal circumstance rarely obtains in our fallen nature, however, as we often bypass the adjudication of our appetites and simply go with them as being indicators of what is good or bad. In the previous decades we unironically asked how can it be wrong if it feels so right? Which is bad enough as it is, although now we don’t even unironically ask the question, but either assume there is no wrong or right or simply invert them altogether, such that our societal pathologies somehow have become the arbiters of these questions.

In the past we have made joy simply a more intense form of happiness, but now it has become a slogan for the satiation of bodily desires, such that what is a spiritual good is now a materialistic rationalization for every conceivable appetite; instead of asking how something can be wrong when it feels so right, we are now encouraged to do whatever brings us joy.

As the Psalmist moves from considering the oppression of his enemies to now the state of his own soul, he draws a sharp distinction between their futility in seeking after evil and his decision to seek what brings him joy. Their untoward desires are plots against him, motivated by the basest appetites that they may gain wealth or power or any other pleasures of this world, but he in contrast determines to rejoice in the Lord. This choice to rejoice is important, for it is evidently not a feeling, as he has just finished noting how they are laying traps and snares for him. In fact, given that this Psalm is interpreted as being of Christ unjustly persecuted, this joy is conceived of in respect to His Passion and Death, as St. Paul speaks of:

Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. For think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds. (Hebrews 12:2-3 DR)

The Psalmist’s decision to rejoice is thus not based upon any circumstance or potential pleasure or delight that he could have in this world, but is fixed upon an unmovable source: He chooses to rejoice in the Lord. His body is hard-pressed about by his enemies who seek to destroy him, but in his interior man he cannot be shaken; his soul is what rejoices in the Lord. The conjunction autem connects this passage in the Vulgate with the previous passage. The Douay-Rheims renders this as but to draw out this contrast, that in spite of the snares hidden for him he will nevertheless rejoice in the Lord.

There is also potentially the sense in which this is put into the mouth of the one who repents from his evil ways. It will be remembered that Cassiodorus read the previous passages as a prayer for repentance for those who sought evils to him; this could then be seen as the fulfillment of that prayer, in that in contrition the sinner finds that his true happiness and delight is in the Lord:

After fittingly announcing what was to overtake impure spirits, and after praying in His devoted fashion for sinners, he comes to the second section, in which He recounts the joy of His heart and also recounts the sequence of His passion with the clearest truth. It is the prime blessing of a pious spirit to rejoice in the Lord, for in Him everything is sought when the unspotted mind seeks its destination there. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 9, Ancient Christian Writers.)

St. Augustine makes this end of the pious spirit—which is God Himself—even more explicit, for in obtaining God one has obtained everything:

This then for the wicked that would hurt me: what for me? But my soul shall rejoice in the Lord, as in Him from whom it has heard, I am your salvation; as not seeking other riches from without; as not seeking to abound in pleasures and good things of earth; but loving freely the true Spouse, not from Him wishing to receive anything that may delight, but Him alone proposing to itself, by whom it may be delighted. For what better than God will be given unto me? God loves me: God loves you. See He has proposed to you, Ask what you will. [Matthew 7:7] If the emperor should say to you, Ask what you will, what commands, what dignities, would you burst forth with! What great things would you propose to yourself, both to receive and to bestow! When God says unto you, Ask what you will, what will you ask? Empty your mind, exert your avarice, stretch forward as far as possible, and enlarge your desire: it is not any one, but Almighty God that said, Ask what you will. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 12.)

St. Augustine makes a somewhat provocative point here, noting that when the soul rejoices and delights in the Lord, there is nothing better that can be received. For once the soul has found God and found its delight in God, it has found the end and font of all delight and goodness. Simply put, there is nothing greater that can be desired or sought. The implication of this is that if we then seek after lesser pleasures and delights, we are abandoning that which is greatest for that which is lesser. C. S. Lewis brings this out in his usually pithy manner, suggesting that our problem isn’t that we desire too much, but rather too little:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses)

This is, of course, precisely what St. Augustine is driving at. If God is willing to give us Himself, we cannot possibly ask for anything that He will not give us; thus, as our Lord says, Ask what you will. Our problem is that in our sinfulness we take this as a means to obtain the lesser pleasures that we desire in this world, thinking that God’s generosity can be used as a cover for our self-gratification, and then we get dejected when we don’t get what we want. As St. James says:

You covet, and have not: you kill, and envy, and can not obtain. You contend and war, and you have not, because you ask not. You ask, and receive not; because you ask amiss: that you may consume it on your concupiscences. (James 4:2-3 DR)

But what our Lord is saying is that if we ask for what God wants—which is to give us Himself—we will always receive it. This is brought out in the example of the emperor granting a favor—who, in such a situation, would ask for something pedestrian or banal? Would we not ask for something great and noble in keeping with the dignity of the one offering? In a similar manner, when we ask of God we must ask for great things, even boldly for Himself, as that is what He offers to give us.

This is of course found directly in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar in which our Lord fully gives Himself to us to be the joy of our souls. This is why St. Augustine says that we must enlarge our desires so that we might ask and receive this great gift that God wishes to give to us. This is the sentiment that the Psalmist expresses elsewhere:

For what have I in heaven? and besides thee what do I desire upon earth? For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever. (Psalm 72:25-26 DR)

Our desires must therefore be fixed upon the Lord, directed towards Him and away from the passing and fading pleasures of this world which cannot satisfy a soul meant to delight in the salvation of the Lord. For it is the possession of God Himself, the union of the soul with the Blessed Trinity that is this salvation, which is what the soul rejoices in.

Anything less than this is literally hell:

[S]tretch thy desire even unto the heavens, call thine own the sun, the moon, and the stars, because He Who made all said, Ask what thou wilt: yet nothing wilt thou find more precious, nothing wilt thou find better, than Himself Who made all things. Him seek, Who made all things, and in Him and from Him shalt thou have all things which He made. All things are precious, because all are beautiful; but what more beautiful than He. Strong are they; but what stronger than He. And nothing would He give thee rather than Himself. If aught better thou hast found, ask it. If thou ask aught else, thou wilt do wrong to Him, and harm to thyself, by preferring to Him that which He made, when He would give to thee Himself Who made. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 12.)

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This animation was fairly simple. I found some space-ish images on Unsplash and used LoopFlow to animate them, applying some blending modes to layer them in a pleasing manner. I then applied Deep Glow to get some of the nice bright highlights, and then used CC Kaleida to create the kaleidoscope effect.

Enjoy.

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