Psalm 90:12
left and right and straight ahead
In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. (Psalm 90:12 DR)
In this world full of troubles, we are all bound to stumble and fall. Walking the narrow road is difficult for a reason, and there are obstacles and pitfalls all along the way. If it were not for grace such a path would be a hopeless cause, for we are seemingly fated to stub our feet from time to time.
Sin causes us to stumble by presenting a good to our affections that is disordered in some manner; either in what it is, its proportion to some other good, the circumstances in which it might be enjoyed, etc. The loss of our reason’s mastery over the affections entails that too often our desires have mastery over us and we become slaves to our passions, such that what to one person might seem a little stone easily stepped over might be to another a boulder blocking the way.
In commenting on this passage St. Robert Bellarmine invokes St. Augustine and his distinction between the two feet of our affections, one for fear and one for love:
The feet mean our affections, that very often knock against the stones; and, as St. Augustine, treating of this passage, says, Our feet are two affections, fear and love; and, whenever man proceeds in his actions, words, or desires, he is carried by one or the other, by the desire of acquiring one thing or losing something else, or by a desire of avoiding evil, or the fear of falling into it; we then knock our foot against the stone, when we fall into sin, on an occasion offering of acquiring some temporal good, or of avoiding some temporal evil, whence we lose eternal happiness… (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 90, 12.)
In this walk that we are on we are constantly torn back and forth between fear and love, which can make us very unsteady. Sometimes we lead with fear, when an obstacle or difficulty presents itself and we shrink back, or we can lead with love, when the desire for some good presents itself and we reorient ourself to it so as to attain it. Both are inclinations which have their place when ordered by reason and enlightened by faith, but when left to their own devices they can quickly lead us into the ditch. Fortunately, God provides grace to assist us is this journey so that these unsteady and uncertain steps need not lead over a cliff:
[B]ut they “who dwell in the aid of the Most High” are so assisted by the Angel guardian, that the occasion is altogether removed; that is, the stone is taken out of the way, or the mind is so enlightened as to distinguish good from evil; that the feet, that is, the affections are so raised from the earth that the temporal advantage, that could not be had without sin, is easily despised; and the temporal evil, that could not be avoided without sin, is most patiently endured. (ibid.)
This grace, St. Augustine reminds us, flows from Christ as from the Head to his Body; or rather, from the Head down to his feet. For while Christ as Head reigns in heaven, his feet, as it were, are still on earth in that the pilgrim Church and those who comprise it still face the slings and arrows or the world the flesh and the devil. St. Peter’s restoration after his denial of Jesus becomes a fitting example of God’s grace at play in the lives of his saints, protecting their steps and raising them when they fall:
If His head is in heaven, His feet on earth; what means our Lord's feet on earth? Our Lord's saints on earth... We need not therefore wonder that our Lord was raised up to heaven by the hands of Angels, that His foot might not dash against a stone: lest those who on earth toiled in His body, while they were travelling over the whole world might become guilty of the Law, He took from them fear, and filled them with love. Through fear Peter thrice denied Him, [Matthew 26:69-75] for he had not yet received the Holy Ghost: afterwards, when he had received the Holy Spirit, he began to preach with confidence....Our Lord so dealt with him, as if He said, thrice you have denied Me through fear: thrice confess Me through love. With that love and that charity He filled His disciples. Why? Because He has set His house of defense very high: because when glorified He sent the Holy Ghost, He released the faithful from the guilt of the Law, that His feet might not dash against a stone. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 90, 16.)
We can thus have confidence that our fall into sin is not an inevitability if we place our confidence in Christ and seek him as our refuge. The unsteady feet can be made nimble and able to tread the heights, as the Psalmist remarks elsewhere:
God who hath girt me with strength; and made my way blameless. Who hath made my feet like the feet of harts: and who setteth me upon high places. (Psalm 17:33-34 DR)
In this animation I took it a bit more abstract, in that the subject matter is not exactly related to the verse in question, but I still think is fairly apropos.
The imagery is from a medieval manuscript (I don’t recall which) is which is depicted angels carrying the soul of a saint to heaven. In this depiction the saint appears as an infant of sorts to signify innocence and and the birthday of the saint on the day of his death. And since the saints can no longer stumble, it seems the eschatological fulfillment of this Psalm.
I cut out the figures in Photoshop which was fairly straightforward, and separated the wings from the bodies of the angels so I could animate them later. The entirety of the background some from the manuscript, but does not occupy that much space in the original. I used the newly implemented Generative Fill tool in Photoshop to generate the background from a sample, and it did a pretty good job. There are naturally some areas that upon close inspection look a little off, but from a glance it feels fairly seamless.
In After Effects I rigged up the characters with the Puppet Tool and did some slight hovering animation, and then attached the wings to some Nulls attached to the puppet pins to keep them locked on the angels’ shoulders.
I lastly added some text with boxes and applied some wiggle hold to the position properties of those boxes to give them a bit of random motion.
Enjoy.
In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
(Psalm 90:12 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: