Psalm 95:3

extra ecclesiam nulla salus

Declare his glory among the Gentiles: his wonders among all people. (Psalm 95:3 DR)

The Psalmist continues to prophetically set forth the establishment of the Church in this world through its proclamation of the Gospel. This was metaphorically imaged in the opening passages as the new canticle that would be sung following the captivity, which has the corollary that the Church is now on the offensive in the warfare between good and evil. This was brought about by our Lord’s victory over sin and death through His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, as St. Paul describes:

And despoiling the principalities and powers, he hath exposed them confidently in open shew, triumphing over them in himself… Ascending on high, he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men. (Colossians 2:15, Ephesians 4:8 DR)

This freedom from the captivity to sin and the bonds of servitude to the flesh (cf. Romans 7:4-6) is why the Church is God’s instrument to proclaim the good news, for in her members this freedom has been realized and her mission is thus vivified by the Holy Ghost such that even the gates of hell cannot overcome her (cf. Matthew 16:18) as they have already been overcome by her Lord and Savior, who holds in His hand the keys of death and hell (cf. Apocalypse 1:18).

Instead of the old song of this world, she now sings the new canticle of God’s salvation which is manifest in and through her, which is precisely why the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus—no salvation outside the Church—is a means of hope for the world rather than, as is sometimes incorrectly perceived or maligned, a means of exclusion or overweening triumphalism. For in this doctrine is the promise of salvation itself, the certain means of coming into friendship with God. For to say that there is no salvation outside the Church is to say that there is salvation inside the Church. The blindness and ignorance that our race suffers under due to Original Sin obscures the truth (cf. Romans 1:21) and leads man into error, such that he grasps after God but ends up taking hold of demons, as the Psalmist will show forth vividly in the coming passages. But in the Church is the certainty and fullness of truth without alloy or error, in which God Himself has set forth with clarity the doctrine that leads to salvation in the Person of His Only Begotten Son in the flesh, Who is the Head of the Church, as St. Paul states in no uncertain terms:

And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he may hold the primacy: Because in him, it hath well pleased the Father, that all fullness should dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven. (Colossians 1:18-20 DR)

It is crucial to understand the inseparable link that St. Paul draws here between our Lord in His Incarnation and work of Redemption and that of Him as the Head of the Church, for that Church is His very Body, He in Whom there is the fullness of divinity and reconciliation with the Father. To be united to the Church as His Body is thus to be united to Him as the branch is to the vine (cf. John 15:5-8).

It is this manifestation in the world of truth and salvation in the Church that compels the Church to sing this new song, as the Psalmist describes, which is now poetically expanded in the passage. In the first half the Church is to declare God’s glory “among the Gentiles,” which is somewhat of an abstraction that juxtaposes the chosen people of God in the Old Covenant with those outside of it; that is, those who were not Jewish or had not been circumcised. But in the establishment of the Church in the New Covenant the pagans are now called to this revelation of God’s glory as manifest in the Church through her Head, our Lord Jesus Christ.

After nearly twenty centuries of this reality of the Church, this can seem simply matter-of-fact, but in the time following our Lord’s establishment of the Church it was truly a new song, as it were, for there had been within the Old Covenant a wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles, a necessary yet time-bound aspect of the Old Covenant and God’s purpose in salvation history. But our Lord came to break down this wall, as St. Paul describes in terms that would have been quite vivid to his contemporaries:

For which cause be mindful that you, being heretofore Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh: Making void the law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace; and might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in himself. (Ephesians 2:11-16 DR)

St. Bellarmine notes that in the previous passage the Psalmist exhorts the Church to glorify God in all times, but now in this passage in all places:

Having said he should be praised at all times, he now adds, that he should be praised in all places. “Declare his glory among the gentiles.” Make known God’s glory, not only to the Jews, as did the prophets of old, but also to the gentiles, which he expresses more clearly, when he says, “his wonders among all people,” tell all nations of the wonderful works of God, that so manifest his glory. Though this exhortation applies to all who know his wonders, it specially applies to the Apostles of the Lord, for it was they that made God’s glory known to all nations, as well as the wonderful works, not only of the Creator, but also of the Redeemer, and of the sanctifier; that is, of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 95, 3.)

This revelation of God’s glory—Whose fullness is manifested in the flesh in the Incarnation of our Lord—is now expanded by the Psalmist from the Gentiles generically to all people specifically. This poetic parallelism both buttresses the first clause of this passage but also penetrates more deeply, for not only are the Gentiles and pagans now included in the New Covenant in an abstract sense, but this promise is for all people and for each person who will come to the saving laver of salvation, as St. Peter declared in the first sermon of the newly born Church:

Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, whomsoever the Lord our God shall call. (Acts 2:38-39 DR)

This promise of salvation for the peoples of the world is such a serious matter that our Lord commands it to be proclaimed to the entire world, what has been termed the Great Commission. St. Augustine takes this with the requisite seriousness, noting that to not proclaim God’s glory and wonders among the nations by preaching the Gospel is to be accursed:

“Declare His honour unto the heathen:” His honour, not yours. O you builders, “Declare His honour unto the heathen.” Should ye choose to declare your own honour, you shall fall: if His, you shall be built up, while you are building. Therefore they who choose to declare their own honour, have refused to dwell in that house; and therefore they sing not a new song with all the earth. For they do not share it with the whole round world; and hence they are not building in the house, but have erected a whited wall. How sternly does God threaten the whited wall? [Ezekiel 13:10] There are innumerable testimonies of the Prophets, whence He curses the whited wall. What is the whited wall, save hypocrisy, that is, pretence? Without it is bright, within it is dirt. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 3.)

It is thus precisely because there is no salvation outside the Church that she is compelled by her Lord to be that instrument of declaration and salvation, and if her members fail in this they presume upon God and become as whited walls, and through their failure set up again—as it were—those middle walls of partition that our Lord tore down by His very death and Resurrection, for they become a hindrance to the reconciliation of the nations and her peoples to the Lord:

A certain person, speaking of this whited wall, said thus: “as, if in a wall which stands alone, and is not connected with any other walls, you make a door, whoever enters, is out of doors; so in that part which has refused to sing the new song together with the house, but has chosen to build a wall, and that a whited one, and not solid, what avails it that it has a door?” If you enter, you are found to be without. For because they themselves did not enter by the door, their door also does not admit them within. For the Lord says, “I am the door: by Me they enter in.” [John 10:9] (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 3.)

This refusal to sing the new song together that St. Augustine speaks of is when those within the Church—especially those commissioned to preach and teach—refuse to proclaim the fullness of truth contained in her doctrines and dogmas. By doing this they build walls that stand in the middle of nowhere with doors in the middle, and those who pass through are just as lost as they were before. The only door to salvation is our Lord Jesus Christ Who is the Way, the Truth and Life (cf. John 14:6), and thus the only message that the Church can proclaim is the complete and total truth that He has given to her to freely give (cf. Matthew 10:8) to all people:

“Declare His honour unto the heathen.” What is, unto the heathen? Perhaps by nations but a few are meant: and that part which has raised the whited wall has still somewhat to say: why are not Getulia, Numidia, Mauritania, Byzacium, nations? Provinces are nations. Let the word of God take the word from hypocrisy, from the whited wall, building up the house over the whole world. It is not enough to say, “Declare His honour unto the heathen;” that you may not think any nations excepted, he adds, “and His wonders unto all people.” (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 95, 3.)

---

This animation was a fairly simple concept and I found the images pretty quickly and isolated them in Photoshop. In After Effects I created some precomps for the megaphone and the screaming head and then added some slight wiggle hold animation to the precomps. I created some precomps of the text blocks and timed them out to pop in and out and used some blending modes to merge some of them into the background a bit.

I brought in a texture and precomped it and drew some masks and then applied Stretch to get the noise coming out of the megaphone.

I applied some more significant wiggle hold animation to a background texture, setting the Rotation amplitude fairly high to create the randomization. I finally added in some noisy particles and some color correction.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: