Psalm 5:12

obtaining the inheritance

But let all them be glad that hope in thee: they shall rejoice for ever, and thou shalt dwell in them. And all they that love thy name shall glory in thee: (Psalm 5:12 DR)

In contrast to the wicked who are full of deceit and who lead others into error, the Psalmist now contrasts the lot of the righteous who do not place their trust in men but rather in the Lord. The psalm is brought full circle as the inscription in verse 1 about the psalm being for those who obtain the inheritance—which St. Augustine views as pertaining to the Church—is finally fleshed out and brought to concrete fulfillment, as the Lord is promised to come and dwell in them.

St. Augustine and St. Robert Bellarmine both take this as the fulfillment of the prophecy with which the psalm begins:

This will be the exultation for evermore, when the just become the Temple of God, and He, their Indweller, will be their joy. “And all that love Your name shall glory in You:” as when what they love is present for them to enjoy. And well is it said, “in You,” as if in possession of the inheritance, of which the title of the Psalm speaks: when they too are His inheritance, which is intimated by, “You will dwell in them.” (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 5, 16.)

The happy inheritance of the just, as promised in the Psalm, is here predicted. “Let them all be glad that hope in thee,” that is to say, though the just are now engaged in a laborious contest, let them rejoice in hope; not putting their hope in the vanities of this world, but in the true God, through whom, in the proper time, they will exult forever in his praise. “And thou shalt dwell in them,” making them, as it were, your habitation; they will, therefore, be in God, as he is in them; and he will be all unto all in them. And this external praise and exultation will arise from the immense internal joy and glory which will be their lot. “For all they that love thy name shall glory in thee:” namely, all the truly just, love making them the just, the friends, the sons of God. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Psalms, 5, 11-12.)

This is of course not only merely the promise as fulfilled in the Church itself, but more specifically, mystically and literally in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The almighty God comes to not only dwell in them in some spiritual sense, but also in a truly physical manner in the Blessed Sacrament. What the Psalmist could only glimpse as in a glass darkly under the old covenant becomes a clear and present reality in the new covenant, established in Christ’s blood and re-presented every time the sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated.

There is a certain fittingness of the Eucharist to our nature; we are composite of spirit and flesh, and Christ comes to literally dwell within us soul (pertaining to the spiritual) and divinity, body and blood (pertaining to the flesh. And just as we are not merely spirits who inhabit a body but are a totality as persons, so Jesus Christ indwells us in the fullness of his hypostatic union, the person of the Word united to the human substance. And while it is a sacramental mystery, it is no less real for that matter, which at present is perceived by faith but is a foretaste of St. John’s prophecy when faith shall become sight:

And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people; and God himself with them shall be their God. (Apocalypse 21:3)

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In this animation I wanted to keep it a bit more abstract, but I was pondering the line about the cause of rejoicing, which is the indwelling of God in the just. I had in mind a Trinitarian aspect, and so I made these three circles with textures. Granted, this is only a very abstract and tenuous allusion, and I was also wanting there to be a bit of variation in size for more compositional balance; thus, the relative sizes of the circles is not meant to imply anything theologically.

As I’ve mentioned in other .gifs, not everything is necessarily meant to mean something or track completely with a potential idea associated with it, and sometimes compositional balance is also a consideration which leads to certain design decisions.

At any rate, I track matted the textures to the circles and used a simple looping turbulent distortion on them (and the background) to make them feel a bit flowy. Then I added a looping wiggle expression to the Position and Rotation properties of each circle, parenting the textures to the relevant circle. I did the same with some of the smaller circles with textures. Add some color correction and text and the animation was complete. Very simple from a design and technique perspective, but I like how it looks.

Enjoy.

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View a higher quality version of this gif here: