He abideth for ever in the sight of God: his mercy and truth who shall search? (Psalm 60:8 DR)
When we call a place a home, we mean more than just a place we happen to inhabit at a particular time or sleep at night. Those who travel a lot and stay in multiple places do not call their hotel rooms “home.” An extended vacation might cause one to call the place of residence “home,” but this is only a linguistic convenience. And even though the “homeless” might stay in one place, it is only their “home” in a colloquial sense.
Home thus signifies both location and duration. We enter different houses all the time, but only one is our home, and sometimes it’s not even the one we own, for it takes time and care to make a house into a home. Sometimes we even feel a connection to a childhood home and feel as if it still holds that place in our lives, even after years of not living there.
In this sense home not only signifies location and duration but also a certain relation; that is, there is something proper to the place that makes it were one belongs such that any other place is not properly home.
The Psalmist in this penultimate verse continues his prophetic oration concerning the eternal king, our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Robert Bellarmine comments:
Christ, the head of the Church, “abideth forever in the sight of God” for us; the Apostle testifies it was for such purpose he “entered into heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us.” (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 60, 7.)
Heaven as the abode of God, as it were, is thus the proper place for Christ; it is His home, so to speak, because as eternal Son of the Father He abides forever in His sight, as the Psalmist proclaims. This proper relation of the Son to the Father is seen in His possession of mercy and truth; the Vulgate renders this in the form of a question, with the intent that the answer is that no created being can search out His mercy and truth because He—as God—consubstantially possesses them. To be more precise, since God does not possess attributes as being simple in essence, He just is mercy and truth. In this manner the Son whose mercy and truth cannot be searched out is wholly and completely consubstantial with the Father. St. Paul uses similar language:
But to us God hath revealed them by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-11 DR)
In a similar manner as the Psalmist, St. Paul demonstrates that the Holy Ghost is consubstantial with the Father and the Son since He searches out the deep things of God, something that only God Himself can do as nothing lesser than God can search out the deep things of God.
This Trinitarian aspect of this passage is brought out in different ways in the Old Latin and in St. Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew. In the former (which St. Augustine follows) the passage is still framed in the second half as a question, but rendered more pointedly:
He shall abide for everlasting in the sight of God; His mercy and truth who shall seek for Him? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 60, 8.)
St. Augustine perhaps indirectly relates this to St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2, as he notes that the reason “for Him” is appended is because those who seek the things of Christ (and who are thus joined to His Mystical Body)—that is, mercy and truth—do so for His sake:
But by preaching [mercy and truth], they know it: for they would not preach it, unless they knew it. But he that loves God and Christ, in preaching the mercy and truth of the Same, does himself seek her for Him, not for himself: that is, not in order that himself may have by this preaching temporal advantages, but in order that he may do good to His members, that is, His faithful ones, by ministering with truth of that which he knows: in order that he that lives, no longer for himself may live, but for Him that for all men has died. [2 Corinthians 5:15] (ibid.)
Just as the Spirit who searches the deep things of God helps us in our weakness (cf. Romans 8:26) and unites us to Christ so that we receive eternal life (cf. Romans 8:11), so those who seek after mercy and truth obtain it in the One Who is mercy and truth:
Mercy is spoken of, because our merits God regarded not, but His own goodness, in order that He might forgive us all our sins, and might promise life everlasting: but truth is spoken of, because He fails not to render those things which He has promised. (ibid.)
St. Jerome’s Latin rendering of the Hebrew of this passage available to him is perhaps even more Trinitarian in character:
He shall sit forever before the face of God: mercy and truth shall preserve him.
It begins with a slightly different rendering of the first half of the passage, opting for “sitteth” (sedebit) rather than “abideth” (permanet). The Hebrew yashav has the primary sense of to sit, which by implication means to dwell or inhabit. The LXX renders this as διαμενεῖ which carries the sense of remaining or continuing in an unchanged or permanent state or place, as the cognate of the Latin permanet suggests. But to sit in the context of the presence of God—especially for the king—entails that the place of sitting is a throne, and thus He reigns as king with God:
Instead of “abideth,” the Hebrew word has “he sitteth;” to show that he sits as a Judge, instead of standing as a servant. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 60, 7.)
The Hebrew for preserve is natsar, which primarily carries the sense of guarding or watching. In this passage it refers to the mercy and truth preserving or keeping the king who sits before the face of God. The implication of this from the Trinitarian reading is that the self-same mercy and truth which God just is—that same mercy and truth are what constitute, as it were, the king who sits as King before God. He is preserved not because he lacks mercy and truth and receives it but rather because He possesses it, so to speak, by nature as very God. St. Paul uses similar language to describe our Lord’s condescension in the Incarnation:
[Christ Jesus], being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. (Philippians 2:6-7 DR)
The reason our Lord thought it not robbery to be equal with God is precisely because He was equal with God, as robbery denotes acquiring something one does not possess. In a similar manner, the King is preserved by mercy and truth not because He does not possess them or needs them but rather because He does possess them; or more precisely, as God He just is mercy and truth. The Son receives mercy and truth in that He is eternally begotten by the Father and “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine” (John 16:15 DR).
The upshot for the Psalmist in this grand passage is that our Lord Jesus Christ is Lord and King of all creation, and the mysteries of His mercy and truth go beyond our comprehension. But the theological implication is that we who are united to His holy Catholic Church—the mystical Body of Christ—are deeply united to Him and thus share in and participate in that unfathomable mystery:
“His mercy and truth who shall search?” His mercy, in redeeming fallen man; and his truth, by virtue of which he has kept and will adhere to his promises. “Who shall search them,” for they are a great abyss; and, as the Apostle to the Ephesians says, “The charity of Christ surpasseth knowledge;” is beyond our comprehension. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 60, 7.)
In this animation I wanted to capture a this dynamic of receiving that which is beyond our comprehension. I found this image of a guy in front of a waterfall which I thought would work nicely, but I’ve done the waterfall animation thing before (and, to be honest, probably will again…) and wanted to make it more overwhelming.
I decided to keep the posture and overall landscape, but I masked out the man and the surrounding hills from the rest of the image and placed that on a layer above. Below that I brought in an abstract texture and applied Stretch to it to create the flowing strips. I followed that with Pixel Sorter 3 to create the flowing horizontal pixelization. I thought it ended up being a nice look.
Enjoy.
He abideth for ever in the sight of God: his mercy and truth who shall search?
(Psalm 60:8 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: