Psalm 9:15
so contrasty
Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death, that I may declare all thy praises in the gates of the daughter of Sion. (Psalm 9:15 DR)
Most of the clarity that we receive in our lives probably comes by means of contrasts. When you are in great pain, the eventual relief stands out by contrast, even if that relief is what would be otherwise normal. When one is in financial straits, having a modest and normal income seems like great wealth in comparison.
Similarly in the spiritual life virtue stands out from vice as from its opposite, and what becomes in a sense normal in terms of sanctification is actual freedom from the slavery and tyranny of sin.
The Psalmist brings to completion the thought from the previous passage in this passage, which can be seen as a commentary of sorts on what came before by means of this sort of contrast. The chiastic structure brings this out quite beautifully:
A. Have mercy on me (v. 14)
B. See my humiliation (v. 14)
B1. Gates of death (v. 15)
A1. Gates of Sion (v. 15)
What makes this contrast most striking is that it is not something that the Psalmist brings about through any effort of his own, but is owed to the grace and mercy of God. For God is the one who liftest him up from the gates of death, and this enables him to then declare God’s praises. The latter is intimately and necessarily related to the former as effect to cause.
The gates of death of which he speaks are related (as we saw above) to the humiliation at the hands of his enemies, which in the literal sense refers to the temporal and physical oppression from his enemies but in the spiritual sense are temptations and vices and the assaults of the evil one. Our Lord in speaking here speaks for His Body the Church and thus for all the members thereof:
For man is exalted in Him, not that Man only which He bears, which is the Head of the Church; but whichsoever one of us also is among the other members, and is exalted from all depraved desires; which are the gates of death, for that through them is the road to death. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 14.)
In the ancient world the gates of a city were where congregations of people assembled and where justice was meted out by the judges. It also was the symbol of the strength of a city against its enemies, for having strong gates implied that one could hold out against a besieging army more effectively. Gates thus stood for the ethos and raison d'être of a people or a city or a nation, symbolizing its virtue and strength.
To be lifted up from the gates of death thus implies salvation from otherwise certain death, which in the spiritual sense stands in for freedom from the death of the soul in mortal sin. These gates of death must be overcome, which gives the image of our Lord besieging the gates of the city of death to rescue the Psalmist from his captivity. St. Paul describes this in terms of the subsequent victory procession of our Lord after His death and resurrection:
And despoiling the principalities and powers, he hath exposed them confidently in open shew, triumphing over them in himself. (Colossians 2:15 DR)
This victory procession occurs at the gates of Sion, which is set in contrast to the gates of death. Sion is of course a mountain, so there is both the moral juxtaposition between death and life, vice and virtue, but also a physical juxtaposition between the depths in which are the gates of death and the heights of the gates of Sion.
Our Lord in speaking in this passage speaks for the members of His Body, the Church, which is set in contrast with the gates of death and hell, as our Lord promised to St. Peter:
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. (Matthew 16:18-19 DR)
St. Augustine notes that while the gates of death are those depraved desires from which we are rescued, the gates of Sion are the sacraments and beginnings of faith through which we are transferred from death to life and from depraved desires to higher ones:
But the joy in the fruition [of depraved desires] is at once death itself, when one gains what he has in abandoned wilfulness coveted: for “coveting is the root of all evil:” [1 Timothy 6:10] and therefore is the gate of death, for “the widow that lives in pleasures is dead.” [1 Timothy 5:6] At which pleasures we arrive through desires as it were through the gates of death. But all highest purposes are the gates of the daughter of Sion, through which we come to the vision of peace in the Holy Church... Or haply are the gates of death the bodily senses and eyes, which were opened when the man tasted of the forbidden tree, [Genesis 3:7] ... and are the gates of the daughter of Sion the sacraments and beginnings of faith, which are opened to them that knock, that they may arrive at the hidden things of the Son? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 14.)
In the Church and her sacraments we are thus rescued from the gates of the death and are transformed in heart and mind so that we can declare God’s praises in the gates of the daughter of Sion. She is the means by which our Lord lifts us up from the gates of death, from temptations and sins, which is why our Lord promised St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. The Great Commission our Lord gave to His apostles is thus ultimately an offensive action rather a defensive one, and she acts as a conduit of our Lord’s grace to a world enslaved in sin and locked behind the gates of death:
And here we may note the beauty of the contrast between the gates of death, and the gates of the daughter of Sion or Jerusalem; the former are in the lowest bottom; the latter, on a high mountain: in the former are assembled the evil spirits; in the latter the people of God: from the gates of the former come forth nothing but temptations and war, that lead to death; the gates of the latter “Are built on peace;” for Jerusalem “Has put peace as its boundary;” and it is named as “The vision of peace.” The Church, then, “Is lifted up from the gates of death,” to announce God’s praise, “In the gates of the daughter of Sion;” which means being delivered from all temptations that may lead her to eternal death; to acknowledge the great grace conferred on her by her liberator, and to praise him with the Angels of God, who are in the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 9, 14.)
For this animation I wanted to capture the notion of being lifted up, and I happened upon this image of some feet jumping in the air, and thought it might be a nice basis for this.
I isolated them in Photoshop and brought them into After Effects where I added some wiggle hold to the Position and Rotation to give it some slight movement. I used Stretch and loopFlow on a background texture to create the movement streaks in the background which I thought worked well. I finally added in some more textures and color correction.
Enjoy.
Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death, that I may declare all thy praises in the gates of the daughter of Sion.
(Psalm 9:15 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: