Video: Psalm 65:13

I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee my vows, (Psalm 65:13 DR)

The fire and water through which the Psalmist has passed become, as it were, a crucible of purification, him being proved and tried as silver is tried, as was mentioned earlier in this Psalm. And while on the level of the soul these things are for its purification and sanctification, this is not an end unto itself. Rather, the sanctification of the heart is wrought so as to allow man to worship God, to come before Him in holiness. As the Scriptures say:

Follow peace with all men, and holiness: without which no man shall see God. (Hebrews 12:14 DR)

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8 DR)

It is after the Psalmist has been tried and proven, and after he has passed through the fire and water, and after he has suffered all the afflictions previously described—after all these things his heart is now ready to bring worship and adoration to the Lord.

This is evident in the shift in perspective of this Psalm. The Psalm began with the Psalmist entreating his listeners to sing unto the Lord, as was seen in the various imperatives from the first few verses. Following that the terrible works of the Lord were recounted, and then the ways in which God tests and proves His people.

It is now that the Psalmist returns to his own voice, as it were. For after the testing and trying and purification, he now speaks: I will go into Thy house. The use of will is perhaps on the surface not terribly interesting, but when juxtaposed with the preceding verses it takes on immense importance. For when he says I will, he is speaking of the interior of himself, the intentions and will with which he will go into Thy house. This will of his has been shaped and molded and refined by the fire and water and afflictions and such which he has passed through, all of which have proved and tried his will so that it conforms to the will of God. The purification of his will by means of trials and temptations and tribulations now makes him ready to offer sacrifice to God—his will in now aligned with God’s will.

He goes on to recount the means by which he will go into Thy house—with burnt offerings. The conformity of his will with the will of God is not merely an interior reality but has its outward manifestation, for in his offering of sacrifice to God he does not make things up as he goes along, but offers to God worship and adoration as God Himself desires and commanded. The burnt offering or holocaust becomes the outward expression of the immolation of his own will as a pleasing offering to God:

I will enter into Your House in holocausts. What is a holocaust? A whole sacrifice burned up, but with fire divine. For a sacrifice is called a holocaust, when the whole is burned. One thing are the parts of sacrifices, another thing a holocaust: when the whole is burned and the whole consumed by fire divine, it is called a holocaust: when a part, a sacrifice. Every holocaust indeed is a sacrifice: but not every sacrifice a holocaust. Holocausts therefore he is promising, the Body of Christ is speaking, the Unity of Christ is speaking, I will enter into Your House in holocausts. All that is mine let Your fire consume, let nothing of mine remain to me, let all be Yours. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 18.)

St. Augustine well notes that a burnt offering or holocaust is the complete consumption of the sacrifice by fire. Some sacrifices could be offered that would be a sacrifice for the one bringing the sacrifice—for example, a grain offering—but that offering might be otherwise used for what it is, in this case eaten. Or something like giving money where one personally sacrifices the money and has no more any use of it, but the money itself is then otherwise used as money.

A burnt offering or holocaust, on the other hand, is burned completely and thus ceases to be the thing it was or to have the use it had. A burnt offering of a sheep would not therefore be a barbeque afterwards, but instead was completely consumed by the fire.

In a similar manner the offering of one’s heart and will to the Lord becomes, as it were, a burnt offering, such that nothing is retained, nothing held back. The Psalmist speaks of bring burnt offerings into the house of the Lord, and St. Augustine rightly sees this as prophetic of the Body of Christ speaking, for even as our Lord gave up His life as a sacrifice which was pleasing to the Father, so those who are members of His mystical Body likewise offer themselves:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1 DR)

The burnt offerings that the Psalmist brings into the house of the Lord is thus ultimately himself, his intentions, his will, his heart and soul, all that he is. Nor is such a reading foreign to the Psalmist’s own mind, as we read elsewhere:

For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted. A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 50:18-19 DR)

For the Psalmist, the offerings and sacrifices which God desires begin within, the renovation of the soul and the abandonment of one’s own will to the will of God. Earlier in the same Psalm he cries out to God to create a clean heart in me, which precisely aligns with our Lord’s words that the clean in heart will see God. The actions and outward sacrifices that we make are well and good, but if they do not arise from a will that is oriented towards the Lord and a heart whose affections are set upon Him, they become ultimately meaningless gestures, for God desires the afflicted spirit and the contrite and humbled heart. There is a providential link here between the afflicted spirit that becomes a sacrifice to God and the afflictions that God hast laid on our back. These afflictions—painful though they may be—become the means of purification and the manner in which we become a pleasing sacrifice unto God. The alignment of our will with God’s will and the renovation of our hearts in purity then makes the outward manifestations of that sacrifice pleasing to God; we cannot have the latter without the former:

If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath any thing against thee; leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother: and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift. (Matthew 5:23-24 DR)

In the crucible of the fires and afflictions, our hearts can be purified of the affections of this life and the love of the things of this world. Each of these kinds of dross being burned away become as burnt offerings that we offer up to God as that living sacrifice that St. Paul speaks of, and this process of sanctification leads to the holiness without which no one will see God. The Sacraments of the Church are the conduits of the grace that brings about this transformation, from Baptism, in which the fire of God’s charity is poured into the soul and the stains of sin are washed away—a passing through fire and water—to Penance in which we come before the merciful Judge with that humility of heart that God will not despise—to the Blessed Sacrament of the altar in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which we unite ourselves as living sacrifices to the One Perfect Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father.

The Church herself as united to our Lord as His mystical Body participates in His sacrifice and unites herself to it, and in the willing acceptance of suffering in charity—for the sake of our Lord—has a share in it:

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church. (Colossians 1:24 DR)

The Psalmist thus prophetically looks forward to the establishment of the Church as united to our Lord in His sufferings, as he says I will go into thy house with burnt offerings, by which he ultimately means himself and the members of the Church who offer themselves to God in His Church as living sacrifices. Thus the Psalmist speaks of God increasing His Church:

Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion; that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up. Then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings: then shall they lay calves upon thy altar. (Psalm 50:20-21 DR)

After we are united to God in charity, having come before Him in humility and repentance—then shall they lay calves upon Thy altar. The purity of heart that only God can provide—through the outpouring of His grace—then allows the sacrifices that we bring before Him of our own lives—and in all the sufferings we willingly suffer for His sake—to be acceptable, for they begin with the contrite and humbled heart that God will not despise. In union with His mystical Body and thus of our Lord Jesus Christ, we then make the entirety of our will and heart and soul and life a burnt offering, offered up completely and unreservedly to God.

Kierkegaard famously quipped that purity of heart is to will one thing, and he was surely correct, for this is nothing other than the purity of heart which allows us to see God, when in the consummation of all things we finally see Him face to face:

But this shall be in the Resurrection of just men, when both this corruptible shall be clad in incorruption, and this mortal shall be clad in immortality: then shall come to pass that which has been written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Victory is, as it were, fire divine: when it swallows up our death also, it is a holocaust. There remains not anything mortal in the flesh, there remains not anything culpable in the spirit: the whole of mortal life shall be consumed, in order that in life everlasting it may be consummated, that from death we may be preserved in life. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 18.)

---

I found this image from a medieval manuscript and isolated the figures in Photoshop. In After Effects I precomped the various pieces and rigged up the kneeling priest using the Puppet Tool. I then added some slight animation to him. I created a flickering fire using shape layers and wave warp for the candle flame.

In a new precomp I placed the text, duplicated it and recolored one piece, and then in the main composition used Motion Tile to repeat and animate it. I finally added in some light color correction and textures.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: