Psalm 41:9

In the daytime the Lord hath commanded his mercy; and a canticle to him in the night. With me is prayer to the God of my life. (Psalm 41:9 DR)

The nature of our intellects as embodied beings is that we come to know and understand things discursively. Unlike the angels who immediately and intuitively perceive essences, we come to know things through the information collected by our senses and then comparing them to other things in our intellect.

The so-called Peripatetic axiom has it as such:

Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu.

Nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses. (St. Thomas, De veritate, q. a. 3., 19.)

In other words, we take the concrete data that our various senses provide to us and then abstract universals from these particulars. There is in this manner a starting point to our knowledge in reality that is then filtered through our senses and then arrived at through the intellect. This process is truly a process and thus not immediate, which means it is also mediated and affected by the various vicissitudes of this life. On the most basic level, to think deeply about something we have to have some time to actually think about it. The deepest realities of existence do not necessarily come immediately or self-evidently to us.

The Psalmist invokes this sort of dynamic as he moves into the current passage, having just described the roiling of the waves and billows that have passed over him, which describe various realities as was previously seen. One thing about a pressing storm is that one is mostly concerned with survival; thinking about the deep things is not high on the list of priorities. To be fair, deep things may be in mind, but they are more likely that of a deep watery grave, either literally or metaphorically.

Thus the Psalmist comes to the calm in the storm, as it were. The night is now over and the day has dawned and he declares that “In the daytime the Lord hath commanded His mercy.” St. Augustine noted on an earlier passage that the “daytime” signifies the times of prosperity, and that even in those times the Psalmist still speaks of the tears of longing after God. That longing is now fulfilled, as it is in this daytime of prosperity and peace that the Lord will now command His mercy:

Therefore follows: The Lord will commend His loving-kindness in the day-time; and in the night-time will He declare it. In tribulation no man has leisure to hear: attend, when it is well with you; hear, when it is well with you; learn, when you are in tranquility, the discipline of wisdom, and store up the word of God as you do food. For in tribulation every one must be profited by what he heard in the time of security. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 16.)

St. Augustine thus encourages us to be spiritual doom-preppers, as it were, and there is a certain practicality to this, for—as noted earlier—to be able to think deeply about things we have to have the opportunity to think. When we are constantly in fight or flight mode we are unable—due to our bodily limitations—to turn our minds to higher things. That is why it is so important to not waste the times of reprieve that we are granted in God’s mercy. When we find ourselves in times of tranquility or peace or prosperity, we should not use them to indulge our appetites but rather to take advantage of God’s clemency and fix our eyes and wills upon Him even more. After all, just as day invariably turns to night, so these times of prosperity and peace will not always obtain:

For in prosperity God commends to you His mercy, in case thou serve Him faithfully, for He frees you from tribulation; but it is in the night only that He declares His mercy to you, which He commended to you by day. When tribulation shall actually come, He will not leave you destitute of His help; He will show you that which He commended to you in the daytime is true. For it is written in a certain passage, The mercy of the Lord is seasonable in the time of affliction, as clouds of rain in the time of drought. The Lord has commended His loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night will He declare it. He does not show that He is your Helper, unless tribulation come, from whence you must be rescued by Him who promised it to you in the day-time. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41, 16.)

In the day-time of life it can be easy to forget God’s mercy for—if we are honest with ourselves—in these times we feel as we don’t really need God’s mercy and can do quite well without Him. But it is when the “night” of life comes with its tribulations and waves and billows and deeps and heights that we suddenly cry out to God to save us and to command or commend His mercy. St. Augustine’s point is to acknowledge this reality—we naturally understand God’s mercy most when we most need it, and thus it is in the times of tribulation that He declares it to us by showing it.

The point of all spiritual growth and striving in the day-time of life is so that when the storms come in the night we will have ears attuned to hear the declaration of God’s mercy in the midst of that night.

Our Lord illustrates this perfectly following the feeding of the 5000, in which He demonstrated His power and authority over creation itself by miraculously multiplying loaves and fishes. Immediately after this He commanded the disciples to get in a boat and go to the other side of the lake, and as they did a storm arose in the night:

And when it was late, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and himself alone on the land. And seeing them labouring in rowing, (for the wind was against them,) and about the fourth watch of the night, he cometh to them walking upon the sea, and he would have passed by them. But they seeing him walking upon the sea, thought it was an apparition, and they cried out. For they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he spoke with them, and said to them: Have a good heart, it is I, fear ye not. And he went up to them into the ship, and the wind ceased: and they were far more astonished within themselves: For they understood not concerning the loaves; for their heart was blinded. And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Genezareth, and set to the shore. (Mark 6:47-53 DR)

St. Mark’s account includes this important detail about the interior disposition of the disciples, for while they were afraid of the storm and of what they thought was a ghost coming to them—which they no doubt thought presaged their impending deaths—they had already seen earlier Jesus’ power over nature and creation. In the day-time, then, they had perceived God’s mercy. But now in the night they immediately return to fear, which St. Mark describes as a blindness of heart, which appropriately corresponds to the fear in the night. That is, they did not take the miracle of the loaves to heart, they did not take the time—when they had the time in the day-time—to ponder its significance, to come to truly understand Who Jesus is.

For if they had, St. Mark implies, they would need not have feared either the storms or Jesus coming to them on the water, for they would have perceived that it was in this moment that God was declaring to them His mercy, as it were. For if Jesus had power over the very elements that give life (as seen in the bread), it would logically entail that He had power over the other elements. St. Mark says that Jesus was passing by them, which indicates that He was testing their faith; if they had understood concerning the loaves, they would have trusted in Him and His mercy towards them. They could have asked for help, knowing that He would not leave them destitute, but instead they cried out in fear at His approach, just as they feared the storm and the waves.

St. Mark concludes by stating that after the storm ceased they passed over to the other side, which corresponds nicely with the Psalmist’s words in the previous verse in which the heights and billows passed over him. The Psalmist now speaks as one who has been brought through the storms and tribulations, and now seeks to comprehend the mercy of God while it is daytime.

There is a slight variant in the Old Latin which gives a slightly different coloring to this passage, as St. Augustine has shown in his following of it. The Vulgate has: in die mandavit Dominus misericordiam suam, et nocte canticum ejus, whereas the Old Latin has: in die mandavit Dominus misericordiam suam, et nocte declarabit. This slight variant in the second half is what slightly changes the verb in the English translation from command as it is in the Douay-Rheims to commend as it is in the English translation of St. Augustine, even though mandavit is used in both the Vulgate and Old Latin. Both command and commend have similar etymological roots, although commend is more about something given or entrusted whereas command has more the sense of something required.

The Vulgate provides the sense that God commands that His mercy come to the Psalmist in the daytime so that he will experience it, with the response being that the Psalmist will sing a canticle of praise to God in the night. The Old Latin, however, has more of the sense that God commends or entrusts His mercy to us in the daytime so that we will understand it, and then God makes it known to us in the night; that is, in the tribulation of this life we come to see it in action as if God is declaring it.

Ultimately this variant is perceiving the same reality from different sides, for both perspectives lead to the culminating phrase: With me is prayer to the God of my life. The certainty of suffering and tribulation should cause us to take hold of God’s mercy while it is the day-time of life, for in the night and in the storms there will only be fear if we understand not concerning the loaves, as it were; that is, if we do not call to mind God’s mercy and living-kindness:

Whilst therefore it is summer, while it is well with you, while you are in tranquility, hear the word of the Lord. For how can it be that in the midst of these tempests of the world, you should pass through the whole of that sea, without suffering? How could it happen? To what mortal’s lot has it fallen? If even it has been the lot of any, that very calm is more to be dreaded. The Lord has commended His loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night-time will He declare it.

What shouldest thou do then in this pilgrimage? What shouldest thou do? There is with me prayer unto the God of my life. This I make my business here; I who am the hart thirsting and longing for the water-brooks, calling to mind the sweetness of that strain, by which I was led on through the tabernacle even to the house of God; while this corruptible body presses down the soul, [Wisdom 9:15] there is yet with me prayer unto the God of my life. For in order to making supplication unto God, I have not to buy anything from places beyond the sea; or in order that He may hear me, have I to sail to bring from a distance frankincense and perfumes, or have I to bring calf or ram from the flock. There is with me prayer to the God of my life. I have within a victim to sacrifice; I have within an incense to place on the altar; I have within a sacrifice wherewith to propitiate my God. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 41:16-17)

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This was an exceedingly simple animation, involving just an ellipse. I wanted to evoke the notion of day-time, and thus the bright orb of the sun. I added in a bunch of blurs and added glows using Deep Glow, as well as some lens artifacting within Deep Glow. I used Red Giant Looks to color correct and used some camera shake to gives the whole scene some movement. I don’t think there are any keyframes in this, so it is entirely procedural.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: