Psalm 41:10

I will say to God: Thou art my support. Why hast thou forgotten me? and why go I mourning, whilst my enemy afflicteth me? (Psalm 41:10 DR)

As humans in our weakness we are generally loathe to suffer things we deem to be needless, and often even those things that are needful. This disjunction in our minds causes us to avoid suffering whenever possible, which we euphemize by speaking of taking “the path of least resistance.” We generally want to expend the least mount of effort or energy for the greatest resulting outcome, and can be easily dissuaded from even greater things if it means a temporary increase in effort or suffering.

For example, we all know that physical exercise on some level is necessary for a certain level of fitness. Yet the often modest efforts required for even a baseline of health is often seen as too great an effort or expenditure of time, with the result that future efforts will be even more difficult and thus less likely to be engaged in, with a motivational vicious cycle as a result.

The Psalmist is no stranger to suffering or strenuous efforts, and his longing for the water-brooks with which he opened this Psalm forms the motivation and desire for the Lord. This has not waned even in the face of scoffers and trials and temptations and even the doubt and disquietude in his own soul.

Yet the weakness of our flesh is such that in this vale of tears we will never get beyond the temptation to spiritual laziness or devotional sloth. In our sojourning we are never immune or aloof from the temptations which arise from our own concupiscence or from the snares of the devil. In fact, it is likely the case that the closer one gets to God, the more difficult the struggle becomes. For as we root out the areas of our life and will that we are still holding on to, we find the things that we are clinging to because we think they are too difficult to let go of; if they weren’t, we wouldn’t struggle to overcome them.

The Psalmist’s struggle with the disquietude of his soul comes back into focus again, and there is this fascinating oscillation throughout this Psalm between hope and disquietude, between confidence and despondency. Here he begins with a statement of confidence and trust: I will say to God: Thou art my support. The Vulgate has Dicam Domino: Susceptor meus es, with susceptor having the sense of someone who is a guardian or protector. It also can carry the sense of someone who undertakes anything, and so “support” is appropriate here as the Lord is seen as undergirding the Psalmist in his sojourning and longing for the Lord. “Protector” could also be used, as it is for susceptor in Psalm 3:

Tu autem Domine, susceptor meus es, gloria mea, et exaltans caput meum.

But thou, O Lord art my protector, my glory, and the lifter up of my head.

St. Jerome’s Hebrew translation has Dicam Deo: Petra mea, which means I will say to God: [Thou art] My rock. This rock is thus what undergirds the Psalmist as his support.

However, now the pendulum swings the other way; or rather, it is precisely because the Lord is the Psalmist’s support or protector that he now asks: Why hast thou forgotten me? and why go I mourning, whilst my enemy afflicteth me?

Cassiodorus explains this as a rhetorical device known as erotema, which is more or less equivalent to the modern manner of asking a series of rhetorical questions. In the device of erotema one asks a series of repeated or related rhetorical questions as a way of exaggerating chagrin, to make the case, as it were, for whatever answer the rhetorical questions imply. Cassiodorus frames the Psalmist’s disquietude in this manner:

The Son of Core had said earlier, With me is prayer to the God of my life; now he proclaims that he will make to the Lord the prayer earlier mentioned, which is: “Now that by the divine grace of Baptism You have taken me up to be set through Your blessings in that native abode, why do You allow me to be disturbed by various disasters through the devil’s deceit?” The most holy man had realized how sweet that repose would be, and he stood fiercely aghast at the rocky roads of this world. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 41, 10.)

There is a of course a great deal of resonance to our experience here. When we find something that we long for and come to obtain it in some way, the repose of our delight in that thing can seem total and permanent, and we have the tendency to imagine that the universe will cooperate with that. However, we quickly discover that this is not the case, and the more we desire something, the more difficult it becomes to have obstacles to attaining or reposing in it.

The Psalmist in the waters of Baptism has found what his soul longed for, slaking his thirst for the strong living God. There is, of course, a sense in which he has attained what he desired, for by being incorporated into the Body of Christ we receive a forestate of that participation in the divine nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4) and the promise of redemption. But it is as yet in this vale of tears still only a foretaste, for in our sojourning we still groan as we await the redemption of our bodies:

And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8:23 DR)

This life is a warfare (cf. Job 7:1) and we cannot always understand the manner in which God’s providence works in and through the circumstances and vicissitudes of life:

He now admires the vicissitudes of the divine providence in governing us. If, O God, thou art really “my support, why hast thou forgotten me?” How does it come to pass that I should be overwhelmed by so many temptations and tribulations, that so pour down upon me, that, though you are my hope and my strength, you seem to have forsaken me? How does it happen again, that “I go mourning whilst my enemy afflicteth me?” while you are my helper and my protector. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 41, 9.)

It is in these times of trial and testing that our faith is proved to be founded upon God as our support or rock, rather than upon the consolations that we receive or the good things that come to us in this life. As noted in a previous passage, the Psalmist’s tears of longing were both in the daytime of prosperity and in the night of adversity. It was thus in the daytime that God commanded His mercy, and in turn the Psalmist offered a canticle in the night. The interplay between the day and the night, between prosperity and adversity, between exultation and suffering is the mystery of God’s providence in bringing us unto final salvation, purifying our hearts and wills so that they find their support in Him alone, as St. Paul exhorts:

For God is not unjust, that he should forget your work, and the love which you have shewn in his name, you who have ministered, and do minister to the saints. And we desire that every one of you shew forth the same carefulness to the accomplishing of hope unto the end: That you become not slothful, but followers of them, who through faith and patience shall inherit the promises. For God making promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom he might swear, swore by himself, saying: Unless blessing I shall bless thee, and multiplying I shall multiply thee. And so patiently enduring he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves: and an oath for confirmation is the end of all their controversy. Wherein God, meaning more abundantly to shew to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the strongest comfort, who have fled for refuge to hold fast the hope set before us. Which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, and which entereth in even within the veil; Where the forerunner Jesus is entered for us, made a high priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. (Hebrews 6:10-20 DR)

This anchor of the soul is of course the support or rock of which the Psalmist speaks, and St. Paul connects this hope directly to our Lord Jesus Christ entering “within the veil,” as a priest in the order of Melchisedech, by which he means our Lord’s offering of His own blood as a pleasing sacrifice to the Father. It is because of this that we have the anchor for the soul, the support of which the Psalmist proclaims of God. St. Augustine sees in this passage of the Psalm a figure of Christ as our Head speaking in His agony on the cross:

For I am suffering here, even as if You had forgotten me. But You are trying me, and I know that Thou dost but put off, not take utterly from me, what You have promised me. But yet, Why have You forgotten me? So cried our Head also, as if speaking in our name. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? I will say unto God, You are my lifter up; why have You forgotten me? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 16.)

It is with this voice also that the Church cries unto God, for in our sojourning in this vale of tears we can often feel as if God has forgotten, for the joys found in the hope of redemption are mingled with the tears of this present world and its afflictions:

We are particularly morose when we suffer scourgings in this world, when we are tried by the deceitful thieving of our enemy, when we endure the sins of the flesh though our spirit is unconquered and wars on them. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 41, 10.)

The tears of this world are inevitable, but they must not conquer us, for a sadness which leads to despair opens us to the assaults of the devil, as despair essentially opens the gates of soul to the enemy. We will never understand the vicissitudes of divine Providence in the ordering of this world or of our own lives, but neither are we meant to. Rather, in imitation of our Lord Who offered up His life for us in resignation to the will of His Father, so we too must follow in resignation of will to God’s will. This will never turn out to be the path of least resistance for our flesh and its desires, but is nevertheless the shortest path to union in love with God:

For God in his infinite goodness sometimes sees fit to test our courage and love by depriving us of the things which it seems to us would be advantageous to our souls; and if he finds us very earnest in their pursuit, yet humble, tranquil and resigned to do without them if he wishes us to, he will give us more blessings than we should have had in the possession of what we craved. God loves those who at all times and in all circumstances can say to him simply and heartily: Thy will be done.” (R. P. Quadrupani, Light and Peace, Part II, Chapter 12, 7.)

---

This animation was all procedural, using a script called Nebulosity which generates 3D fractal noise. It also allows for volumetric lights, so I added a few in and added in some light animation. I applied Shadow Studio 3 to the text and added in a bit of camera shake.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: