Psalm 41:4

My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: Where is thy God? (Psalm 41:4 DR)

In the modern world we are schooled from the earliest age to avoid suffering at almost any cost, and we have billion dollar industries built up around providing these means of escape. We have largely imbibed the false notion that we are meant to be happy in this world, by which happiness we mean the delights of our senses and the lack of pain or sorrow. Missing in this analysis is that this world is a vale of tears, and thus our sojourning will be as a consequence marked by tears and sorrow.

We feel suffering to be a deficiency, a hole that needs to be filled by something, a lack of something to which we somehow feel entitled. On some level suffering is a deficiency, but it is the result of Original Sin and the loss of sanctifying grace. The “lack” that we existentially suffer is real, but also not of a natural origin; that is, sanctifying grace is a supernatural reality, and thus the happiness that this lack points to lies beyond this world and its attendant sorrows, for the gaping void is meant to be filled with divine charity.

The Psalmist gives further voice to his longing, and that “thirst” for the fountains of living water is now shifted to the metaphor of hunger. His tears, however, are not merely tears of sorrow, but rather of longing, an intensity of desire for the “strong living God” so powerful that his tears serve as a corollary to the waters he longs for:

My tears (he says) have been not bitterness, but my bread. Those very tears were sweet unto me: being thirsty for that fountain, inasmuch as I was not as yet able to drink of it, I have eagerly made my tears my meat. For he said not, My tears became my drink, lest he should seem to have longed for them, as for the water-brooks: but, still retaining that thirst wherewith I burn, and by which I am hurried away towards the water-brooks, My tears became my meat, while I am not yet there. And assuredly he does but the more thirst for the water-brooks from making his tears his meat. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 6.)

This sincere longing for the Lord that the Psalmist describes wells up from within his very soul, so that the as yet unfulfilled desire—which is usually a bitter feeling—becomes rather his source of sustenance. This seeming paradox is captured well in the Proverbs:

Hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul: desire when it cometh is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12 DR)

For while his longing for the courts of the Lord in the heavenly Jerusalem is not in this life fulfilled, his longing for the fountains of water—that is, the waters of Baptism—is the impetus of grace wrought by the Holy Ghost in the soul (cf. Romans 5:5). This intensity of desire thus increases the more he comes into union with God, as the fountains of grace overflow, welling up within him (cf. John 4:14) as he receives grace upon grace (cf. John 1:16). Elsewhere the Psalmist perfectly encapsulates the essence of this longing and growth in grace:

Blessed is the man whose help is from thee: in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place which he hath set. For the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of gods shall be seen in Sion. (Psalm 83:6-8 DR)

Such a desire becomes the source of joy and contentment, rather than the angst and discontent that tears and unfulfilled desire usually bring, for the charity of God dwells within the soul, drawing it into union with the Blessed Trinity even in the midst of this sojourning:

Those who do not strive to weep before the Lord should hearken to the message that continual tears have brought satiety rather than starvation. And rightly, for that weeping is food of souls, the strengthening of the senses, absolution from sins, renewal of minds, cleansing of faults. Through these unremitting tears he shows that the Christian people can be schooled by afflictions. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 41, 4., Ancient Christian Writers.)

In this manner the tears and afflictions of this world truly become food that strengthens the soul in its sojourning, inflaming the longing for eternal things. This is partially because these tears and unfulfilled desires demonstrate the temporal and barren nature of the goods and pleasures of this world and this life. We can strive for happiness or to sate ourselves with pleasure, but such experiences are not always achievable, and even when they are almost immediately fade away. If we make the goods and pleasures of this world our “bread,” we will always be hungry, a ravenous gnawing at the soul which can never be filled.

But the thirst for the waters of life is mirrored by the tears of desire—when that longing for God becomes our bread, it is the Bread of Life Himself that we seek. The Psalmist here thus seems to make a prophetic reference to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, by which we come into union with God by partaking of His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, in which the longing of the soul finds its ultimate desire:

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever. (John 6:55-59 DR)

In our sojourning in this world we can thus come to a foretaste of union in Heaven with the Blessed Trinity, and for the Psalmist this longing cannot help but express itself in tears:

There is a weeping that springs from contemplating eternal good and longing for future light, and tears of joy and desire cannot help but break out as the soul is athirst for the mighty living God. (John Cassian, Conferences, 9.29, ACCS.)

St. Augustine notes that this desire is said—not without reason—to be the Psalmist’s bread “day and night,” which not only encompasses the totality of a day, but has reference to the various stages and extremes of life, both prosperity (the day) and adversity (the night):

That food, which is called bread, men eat in the day-time, while at night they sleep; but the bread of tears is eaten day and night; whether by day and night you understand “always,” or take “day” for the prosperity of this world, “night” on the other hand for the adversity of this life. Whether then my lot is cast in the prosperity, or in the adversity of this world, I still pour forth the tears that flow from my longing, I cease not from the craving of my longings. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 6.)

It is important to understand that the Psalmist eats the bread of these tears even in the day; that is, even in the midst of worldly prosperity and happiness. One can certainly empathize with having these tears in the night of adversity. However, he is not deceived about his ultimate end, and thus even in the midst of the proper and rightly ordered pleasures and goods of this world he—as it were—holds to them loosely, as St. Paul speaks:

This therefore I say, brethren; the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. (1 Corinthians 7:29-31 DR)

The Psalmist thus treats the day of this life just as he does the night, for the reality is that even when things seem to go well in this life, that is not the most important thing, for both the sorrows and the happiness of this world will equally pass as a shadow. In fact, the happiness and goods of this world which pass as a shadow can—if we allow them—become the object that casts the shadow, so to speak. That is, they can occlude our vision of the Light of Life, so that we become accustomed to living in the shadows of this world, rather than walking in the full light of God. Our final end, after all, is to—as the Psalmist earlier said—come and appear before the face of God:

And when well off in this world, it is still but ill with me, until I appear before God! Why then dost thou bid me rejoice in the day, as it were, if any prosperity of this life smiles upon me? Is it not deceptive? Is it not frail, and fading, and mortal? Is it not fugitive, temporary, transitory? Has it not more deceit in it than delight? Why then should not my tears become my bread even in it, since even when the prosperity of the world is beaming around us, so long as we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 6.)

This longing of the soul is compounded by the affronts of the world, both from those who scoff at the Psalmist’s hope and the very nature of the world itself. For those who mock him seek for proof of his confidence in God. Why, after all, should he hope in God when he has these tears even in the midst of prosperity? And if God is so good and worthy of desire, why does He allow adversity to befall the Psalmist in the first place?

The world in and of itself also brings about this reproach, for the various circumstances and extremities that we daily face seem to call into question God’s providence and the desire that one should have for Him. Again, if God is the “strong living God,” why so many afflictions of both body and soul? St. Augustine considers this line of thought and the natural response to it:

For this mind of ours seeks to find something that is God, about which they who say, Where is thy God? may not insult us. It seeks to find a Truth not subject to change, a Substance not capable of failing. The mind itself is not of this nature: it is capable of progress, and of decay; of knowledge, and of ignorance; of remembering or forgetting; at one moment it wishes for this thing, at another it does not wish for it. That mutability is not incident to God. Were I to say God is susceptible of change, they will insult over me, who say, Where is thy God? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 7.)

Our minds being subject to change and moved about by the movements of this world and this life naturally want a firm foundation, a Truth upon which they can rest and be secure. St. Augustine in this line of reasoning demonstrates that the very vicissitudes of this life necessarily point beyond this world and its wisdom and knowledge:

Having therefore sought to find my God in visible and corporeal things, and found Him not, having sought to find His substance in myself, (as if He were of the same nature as myself,) and found Him not, I perceive my God to be something higher than my soul. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 7.)

His point is that ultimately the resolutions to these issues are not going to be found within what the mind can attain to on its own, for the very finitude and inconstancy of the mind necessitates that it cannot be the final arbiter of what is true or not, of what is real or shadow. It is ultimately as passing as the things of this world, for it is a creature like the rest and unable to account for its own essence or existence. This of necessity points to a reality beyond itself, a Source and Substance that is not subject to the passing nature of contingent reality but rather is the One from Whom all created being receives its being.

His longing seems—on the superficial, natural level—to be inexplicable, but seen with supernatural faith it is the natural (or rather supernatural) consequence of having found what his heart longs for. The scoffers of this world ask him “Where is thy God?,” but it is a question that his heart has already asked and answered. Their question only inflames his desire all the more, as it reinforces the supernatural end to which his soul is sojourning, and the prosperities and afflictions of this world become the means by which God leads him to the eternal homeland.

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I’m not sure why I went with this Lego astronaut, but I saw an image of it and thought it might be fun. I isolated it in Photoshop and brought the figure into After Effects and animated it spinning and with a little vertical movement.

I then brought in some abstract background images and applied Stretch to them to create the movement in opposite direction. I then drew a shape and applied Wave Warp and Mirror to create the wave motion, and then used that as a matte for one of the images.

I finally added in some text and color correction. Kind of silly, but I think it’s also kind of fun.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: