Psalm 95:2

the day of all days

Sing ye to the Lord and bless his name: shew forth his salvation from day to day. (Psalm 95:2 DR)

The Scriptures use the metaphor of living stones to describe the edifice of the Church, in which each member of the Mystical Body of Christ is being built. St. Paul describes this in terms of the incorporation of the Gentiles:

Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22 DR)

It is important to note here that the Church is not some optional thing for the Christian, for to be outside of the Church is to be—as St. Paul states—a stranger and foreigner. However—and this would have been scandalous to some of St. Paul’s brethren—in the Church the nations of the Gentiles are also made citizens of God’s kingdom; those who were once far off are now brought near (cf. Ephesians 2:13). There is thus a necessity of being in the Church, and this not merely in some abstract sense, for the Church isn’t just an idea or a concept but is concretely realized in its being founded on Christ and His apostles and prophets, which unambiguously shows forth its visible structure.

And while the teaching of the apostles is certainly important, it is not their teaching alone upon which the Church is founded but upon them, which implies their visible authority in the Church and thus of their successors. That is, the proclamation of the Gospel of which the Psalmist speaks here is predicated on the authority of Christ as the God-man, Who then gave His authority to His apostles, who have then handed it down through the Church by means of their successors. This is the superstructure of the Church into which each individual member of the Church is built, as St. Peter elaborates:

Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore it is said in the scripture: Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious. And he that shall believe in him, shall not be confounded. To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set. (1 Peter 2:5-8 DR)

In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass all the baptized participate in this offering of spiritual sacrifices which are made acceptable by Jesus Christ, as St. Peter says, for our Lord is the Great High Priest Who offers the Mass through His minister the priest, and the faithful joined with him. The ministerial priesthood of the priest—which participates in that of our Lord—is thus distinct in kind and not merely degree from the holy priesthood of all believers, for the priest acts in persona Chirsti—in the Person of Christ—to offer the One Sacrifice of Christ to the Father in the Mass. This is made evident in the Orate frates:

P. Oráte, fratres: ut meum ac vestrum sacrifícium acceptábile fiat apud Deum Patrem omnipoténtem.
M. Suscípiat Dóminus sacrifícium de mánibus tuis ad laudem et glóriam nominis sui, ad utilitátem quoque nostram, totiúsque Ecclésiæ suæ sanctæ.

P. Brethren, pray that my Sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father almighty.
S. May the Lord receive the Sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of His Name, to our benefit and that of all His holy Church.

The Sacrifice is thus that of both priest and laity, for the priest prays “my Sacrifice and yours,” but the Sacrifice is offered by the priest acting in persona Christi, for the servers respond in behalf of the laity, speaking to the priest: “May the Lord receive the Sacrifice from thy hands.” Fr. Nicholas Gihr sets forth this reality:

Therefore, at the altar, the priest is the authorized representative of Jesus Christ and of the Church, but in a twofold manner: Jesus Christ, the Divine Highpriest, celebrates by the priest who is His subordinate minister; the Church, on the contrary, celebrates in the person of the priest, who is the superior mediator given her by God. When he consecrates, that is, celebrates the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the priest represents, first, the person of Jesus Christ, and then the Church. Then also he acts and speaks in the name of the Church, inasmuch as he performs the remaining acts of divine worship, namely, the ceremonies and liturgical prayers accompanying and surrounding the sacrificial function. (Fr. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Part I., Article 2., Chapter 15.)

This flows seamlessly into the baptized as a holy priesthood as they offer through the priest this Sacrifice:

The priest, therefore, celebrates in the name of the Church, in the name of the whole Christian people, so that in as far as they are members of the Church, all the faithful at least habitually offer through him as their representative the Eucharistic Sacrifice. For this reason also the Prince of the Apostles calls all Christians “a holy and a kingly priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5-9), that is, called “to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (Fr. Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Part I., Article 2., Chapter 15.)

This hierarchical structure as visible in the Mass is a microcosm of that which exists in the Church as a whole—as both St. Paul and St. Peter describe—which is built on the foundation of Christ as the chief cornerstone, built on the foundation of the Apostles (and thus their successors), and continually built up as each baptized member is built into the Church.

These introductory remarks fill out what the Psalmist begins to flesh out in this Psalm, which is the Church’s mission in this world to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the previous passage the singing of this new canticle was seen as a picture of the Church being constructed as she increases in this world through this proclamation, and here the Psalmist prophesies the coming of our Lord and the going forth of the Gospel.

The Latin word used in the Vulgate for the phrase shew forth is “annunciate,” which, as its English cognate suggests, means to “announce, proclaim, relate.” This is St. Jerome’s rendering of the term εὐαγγελίζεσθε in the Septuagint, which is often translated as to preach good news, to speak good tidings, and is the root of the English word evangelize or evangelization. To shew forth certainly has this connotation, although perhaps slightly more ambiguously. The Old Latin that St. Augustine uses follows the Septuagint more literally by rendering it as bene nunciate, which can be translated as “announce good tidings.”

St. Augustine thus sees this as naturally tying into the proclamation of the Gospel by the Church:

How does the building increase? “Be telling,” he says, “good tidings of His salvation from day to day.” Let it be preached from day to day; from day to day, he says, let it be built; let My house, says God, increase. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 3.)

St. Justin the Martyr also sees in this passage a presaging of the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel:

“Sing to the Lord and bless His name; show forth His salvation from day to day, His wonders among all people.” With these words the Holy Spirit commands all those inhabitants of this globe who know the mystery of salvation [the passion of Christ], through which He saved them, to sing out and constantly praise the Father of all. (St. Justin the Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 74., ACCS.)

It is, however, these glad tidings that are to be proclaimed which point to the deeper mystery embedded in the Psalmist’s words, which is the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of the Father. For while the Church is to proclaim the Gospel from day to day in the literal sense, this day precedes the Church in the very Person of our Lord Jesus Christ Who is the Eternal Day. These glad tidings therefore connect this Psalm to the message of the angel announcing the Incarnation, and in this manner connect us back to the Eternal Word:

It is good that [the angel] said “has been born today” and did not say “this night,” for with heavenly light he appeared to those who were conducting the watch by night and brought the good news that day was born, namely, the One concerning Whom the prophet foretold, saying, “Announce well His salvation from day.” Indeed, the salvation of God, that is, the Lord Jesus, is “day from day” because he Who appeared temporally as a human being from a Virgin Mother was, in truth, Himself born before all time and without spatial limitation, light from light, true God from true God.

Because, therefore, the light of light rose for those of us dwelling in the region of the shadow of death, the herald of this rising says “A Savior has been born to you today,” so that being always advised by this word we may recollect that the night of ancient blindness is gone past, and the day of eternal salvation has drawn near, and “let us cast off the works of darkness.” And let us walk as children of light, “for the fruit of the light,” as the same Apostle Paul says, is “in all justice and holiness.” (Venerable Bede, Homilies on the Gospels, 1.6., ACCS.)

The moral upshot of these mysteries as set forth in the Gospel is precisely found in the good news of this salvation, which i s freedom from sin. St. John explicitly links the Incarnation to this freedom from sin:

He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 DR)

The works of the devil are synonymous with our captivity to sin, which the Psalmist alluded to in the previous passage by means of the house (the Church) being built after the captivity. But the reason the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel is in fact good news is precisely because of the bad news that characterizes our state outside of the Church and therefore outside of Christ:

There you are [mentioned] again, that is under whom the house was held in captivity. From the first transgression of the first human being, the whole human race, being born in the shackles of sin, was the property of the devil who had conquered it. After all, if we had not been held in captivity, we would not have needed a Redeemer. (St. Augustine, Sermon 27.2., ACCS.)

The greatness of our redemption lies in the condescension of our Lord in His great humility to redeem us from our sins. The brightness of the Eternal Day has shined upon the Church and necessarily prompts her to proclaim this Day from day to day. This is set forth both in her preaching and preeminently in the offering daily of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the re-==presentation of the One Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, as was prophesied by the prophet:

For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11 DR)

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I wanted to focus on the word salvation specifically but do so in a way that was more than just text on the screen. I laid out the various pieces of text to fit the composition and then precomped each piece of text. In the precomps I added in a subtle texture and used loopFlow to animate it.

Back in the main composition I brought in that same animated texture as a background and animated the positions of the pieces of text.

I used Shadows Studio 3 on duplicates of these text pieces and then applied a bunch of glows to the original layers as well as added in some lighting and layer styles to the original precomps. I finished up with some color correction and light textures.

Enjoy.

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