Psalm 65:3

Say unto God, How terrible are thy works, O Lord! in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee. (Psalm 65:3 DR)

In the first two verses of this Psalm the Psalmist has used a series of imperatives in the construction of the praises to be rendered to God. Jubilate (jubilate), Dicite (sing/say) and Date (give) are sung in succession, and each action has its corresponding object and that to which the action is done. For jubilate, the shouting or singing is with joy and that joy is to God. For dicite, the thing sung or spoken is a psalm and that psalm is to His name. And finally, for date the thing given is glory, and that glory is to His praise.

And since they are in imperative form, they are not presented as suggestions of how to approach God or how to praise Him, but as something that flows from the nature of the relationship between God and man.

This is more fully fleshed out in this passage, which is once again introduced by an imperative—dicite—in which the Psalmist takes the imperatives already adduced and provides the grounding and rationale for them: it is because the works of the Lord are terrible. That is, the grandeur and awesome and frightful quality of God’s works are such that they prompt the praise of God, albeit not simply as a spontaneous reaction but rather as an obligatory response. It is because the works of the Lord are so terrible that one must shout with joy, sing praise and give glory.

The Latin terribilia is an adjective that is often rendered in modern English as awe-inspiring, awesome, magnificent, etc. However, it has more of the sense of frightful or dreadful, given that it comes from the verb terreo, meaning to frighten or terrify or alarm. Even English originally had this sense for terrible, in which it meant causing terror or exciting awe or dread. The works of God are certainly awesome and magnificent, but the Psalmist is trying to express the overwhelming nature of those works in comparison to man, and when he considers his own smallness, God’s works are truly terrible.

St. Augustine’s version of the Old Latin draws this out perhaps even more clearly, for whereas the Vulgate uses the adjective terribilia in this passage—Dicite Deo: Quam terribilia sunt opera tua, Domine!—St. Augustine’s version has Dicite Deo: Quam timenda opera tua! The word timenda is grammatically a gerundive, which functions as a verbal adjective, situated halfway—as it were—between an adjective and a verb. Gerundives are passive and carry the sense of an obligatory or suitable action, which is often rendered in English using the form to be. Thus this passage can be rendered in English as: Say ye to God, how to be feared are Thy works! The word timenda has a different etymology than terribilis, coming from timar which means to fear or to be apprehensive. Thus, the Vulgate implies the response of fear in respect to God’s works, whereas the Old Latin of St. Augustine sets it forth as an obligation.

But what precisely is the nature of this fear?

Say ye to God, How to be feared are Thy works! Wherefore to be feared and not to be loved? Hear another voice of a Psalm: Serve the Lord in fear, and exult unto Him with trembling. What means this? Hear the voice of the Apostle: With fear, he says, and trembling, work out your own salvation. Wherefore with fear and trembling? He has subjoined the reason: for God it is that works in you both to will and to work according to good will. If therefore God works in you, by the Grace of God you work well, not by your strength. Therefore if you rejoice, fear also: lest perchance that which was given to a humble man be taken away from a proud one. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 5.)

The quality of humility before God is of course baked into the meaning of the Psalmist’s words, for to recognize the awful or terrible nature of the works of God is to recognize the power and grandeur of His might and wisdom and all the rest, while simultaneously being aware of one’s own smallness. And since—as St. Augustine notes—the working out of our salvation with fear and trembling does not occur apart from God’s working in us, unless we have the humility to cooperate with God’s grace working in us, we will not do well but fall in pride and perchance have that grace taken from us. As the Scriptures say:

But He giveth greater grace. Wherefore He saith: God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. (James 4:6 DR)

To fear the Lord and to serve Him in fear and to with fear and trembling work out our salvation is on the one hand to be mindful of God’s grace which is not owed to us nor given because of our merits, but because of His great love for us even when we were dead in sins and enemies of God. And since we are not owed grace but given it gratuitously, we cannot presume upon God’s grace but rather be sober-minded in our pursuit of virtue and rejection of vice as we cooperate with that grace.

On the hand, the corollary of this fear is that we should fear our own pride, which sets up obstacles for God’s grace in that those who are prideful are explicitly said by the Scriptures to be resisted by God. Grace, on the other hand, is given to the humble, and thus this fear of God’s works not only prompts us to humility (as the Psalmist makes clear) but also serves as an antidote to pride.

The second half of this passage serves as a cautionary tale of sorts in what happens when one does not heed the Psalmist’s words. He goes on to say: In the multitude of Thy strength Thy enemies shall lie to Thee. That is, they see the terrible works of God or the works which are to be feared and decide to fear not. In their pride they do not humble themselves before God in fear but by refusing to acknowledge His works they lie unto Him.

They do this in the multitude of Thy strength, which means that even in the midst of the works of God which they can apprehend, they still refuse to shout with joy or to sing a Psalm or to give glory. Rather, they do do these these, but not to God or to His name or to His praise, but rather to their own. In pride they refuse to ascribe to the Lord what he is due, and instead ascribe it to themselves, and by doing so lie unto Thee. As St. Paul says:

For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:20-21 DR)

The end result of this willful rejection of God—as St. Paul goes on to describe—is God giving them over to their desires, which is the absence of His grace. They lie unto God, and are then given over to that lie:

Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying: That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity. (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 DR)

The danger of a lack of a fear of God is that the root of pride may be given space to take root and grow, choking out the grace that leads to repentance and is one of the terrible works of God, which when we cooperate with that grace enables us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

The soul that is most humble will also have the greatest courage and the most generous confidence in God; the more it distrusts itself, the more it will trust in Him on whom it relies for all its strength, saying with Saint Paul: I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me. (Light and Peace, R. P. Quadrupani, Chapter 11, 7.)

Humility tells the truth about God and about ourselves, and in that truth grace abounds and overflows. In humility we recognize our nothingness before God and our total reliance upon Him, that if He were to take away His loving-kindness we would become nothingness:

As God drew from nothingness everything that exists, in like manner does He wish to lay the foundations of our spiritual perfection upon the knowledge of our nothingness. Saint Bonaventure used to say: Provided God be all, what matters it that I am nothing! (Light and Peace, R. P. Quadrupani, Chapter 11, 3.)

But since God is charity, which is also one of the terrible works of God, we can have confidence in that charity which has been poured into our souls in Baptism by the Holy Ghost. Fear of God leads to humility, and that humility receives grace—as it is itself enabled and prompted by grace—and in grace the charity of God unites our hearts and wills to His, such that the pride which gives cause for fear is cast out by the perfection of charity:

And we have known, and have believed the charity, which God hath to us. God is charity: and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him. In this is the charity of God perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment: because as he is, we also are in this world. Fear is not in charity: but perfect charity casteth out fear, because fear hath pain. And he that feareth, is not perfected in charity. Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us. (1 John 4:16-19 DR)

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I brought in a couple abstract textures into After Effects and applied a Wiggle Hold animation to the Rotation and then blended them together. I then applied Wave Warp to one of them. After placing the text, I added Shadow Studio 3 to it and linked the Angle of the shadow to that of the Rotation of the background, so that the shadows of the text would move in sync.

I then added in some color correction and a quick VHS effect.

Enjoy.

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