[Video] Psalm 65:15

I will offer up to thee holocausts full of marrow, with burnt offerings of rams: I will offer to thee bullocks with goats. (Psalm 65:15 DR)

In the mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, there are a series of scenes set during Passover which serve as a means of setting the context of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem prior to His Passion.

We see Levites sounding the shofars at the entrance of the temple, and then throngs of people carrying or leading sheep into the temple courts. The shot then switches to a line of people bringing their sacrifices, and as a priest blesses the sacrificial victim, men covered in blood pick up the animals and carry them into the inner temple. One of the final shots is of worshipers offering prayers and supplications and praises, followed by a Levite on an elevated platform chanting and pouring copious amounts of incense into a fire.

For some reason I had never made a connection between the offering of sacrifice and incense on the practical level. With so many animals being sacrificed at Passover, the smell would no doubt be overwhelming, and incense would mitigate that somewhat. And while the practical aspect does not by any means exhaust its meaning—nor is it the most important aspect—it does underscore the very visceral act of sacrifice.

That is, something is violently destroyed, there is a lot of blood, and things get smelly.

Being so far removed from the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant, we cannot perhaps as fully appreciate sacrifice in this manner. We can understand the idea of sacrifice and the term can certainly apply to the mortifications of our fleshly desires, but there is probably something about taking the sacrificial victim in your own hands and offering it as a sacrifice that we can never fully comprehend. When God called on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it wasn’t Abraham offering up his only son in an abstract sense. Rather, he held the knife in his own hand that would end his son’s life and draw forth his life-blood upon the altar. The faith of Abraham when seen in this light is utterly remarkable.

As the Psalmist continues to elaborate on the nature of the vows he made to the Lord, he fills out the catalog—as it were—of the sacrifices he brings before the Lord. In a previous passage he spoke of going into the house of the Lord with burnt offerings, and now these burnt offerings are expanded to be holocausts full of marrow. The Vulgate uses medullata, which the Douay-Rheims renders as full of marrow, which was used of things of rich or exceedingly fine quality. The prophet Isaiah speaks of this idea:

And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people in this mountain, a feast of fat things, a feast of wine, of fat things full of marrow, of wine purified from the lees. (Isaiah 25:6 DR)

Full of marrow thus speaks to a sacrifice that is the best that the Psalmist can offer. The burnt offering or holocaust seen earlier was when the entire sacrificial victim was consumed by fire, such that nothing remained that could be used. This burnt offering is now seen to be full of marrow; that is, the Psalmist is willing to utterly dispose of the best that he possesses so as to pay his vows unto the Lord.

This sacrifice is indeed an outward expression of piety and devotion and worship, but the quality of the sacrifice speaks to his interior disposition:

“Holocausts marrowed I will offer to Thee.” What is marrowed? Within may I keep Thy love, it shall not be on the surface, in my marrow it shall be that I love Thee. For there is nothing more inward than our marrow: the bones are more inward than the flesh, the marrow is more inward than those same bones. Whosoever therefore on the surface loves God, desires rather to please men, but having some other affection within, he offers not holocausts of marrow: but into whosesoever marrow He looks, him He receives whole. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 19.)

The doubled-minded man who seeks the praise of men, St. Augustine argues, loves God only superficially, because he does not love God deep in his bones, as it were. When our affections are turned elsewhere, we do not offer ourselves as a holocaust full of marrow, but rather bring offerings to God that are only partial. That is, we hold onto the things of this world or set our affections on its goods and pleasures, or even hold on to our own affections or grievances or sense of entitlement or ingratitude or any other such thing. These attachments or entanglements prevent us from keeping God’s love within, as St. Augustine describes, for we are keeping a lesser love within instead.

The Psalmist continues by expanding further upon the holocausts, also offering burnt offerings of rams. The Vulgate has cum incenso arietum, which could be literally rendered as with the incense of rams. There is a dual meaning here, as incenso literally means that which is set on fire or burnt. However, in the context of the Scriptures and of sacrifice the smell of the burnt offering is frequently said to be a sweet savor to the Lord:

And they shall burn them upon the altar, for a holocaust, putting fire under the wood: for an oblation of most sweet savor to the Lord. (Leviticus 3:5 DR)

This language of a sweet savor is not only found within the Old Covenant, but is transferred to the One Holy Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ:

And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness. (Ephesians 5:2 DR)

And those united to Christ in His mystical Body the Church—who by the offering of themselves as living sacrifices unto God—also participate in this odor of sweetness:

Now thanks be to God, who always maketh us to triumph in Christ Jesus, and manifesteth the odor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are the good odor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one indeed the odor of death unto death: but to the others the odor of life unto life. (2 Corinthians 2:14-16 DR)

St. Augustine sees in this passage the hierarchical nature of the Church on display, for the rams are the rulers or bishops of the Church—and by extension the priests under them—who offer prayer for the Church:

“With incense and rams.” The rams are the rulers of the Church: the whole Body of Christ is speaking: this is the thing which he offers to God. Incense is what? Prayer. “With incense and rams.” For especially the rams do pray for the flocks. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 19.)

This prayer of the “rams” or the rulers of the Church is most especially exemplified in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this most perfect prayer of the Church in which Christ as High Priest re-presents His perfect sacrifice to the Father in the person of the priest or bishop at Mass. As the members of the Church unite themselves to that most august and holy sacrifice, they participate and share in Christ’s offering to the Father and thus become that good odor of Christ unto God. Thus is fulfilled the Psalmist’s words:

Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight; the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice. (Psalm 140:2 DR)

St. Augustine further sees the oxen or bullocks of the final clause of this passage as referring to the Apostles and thus of their successors and of those commissioned to preach the Gospel through the sacrament of holy orders. These men who are set apart in such a manner are sanctified so as to sanctify the Body of Christ:

What of the rest, that perchance are conscious of certain sins, that perchance in the very road have slipped, and, having been wounded, by penitence are being healed? Shall they too continue, and to the holocausts shall they not belong? Let them not fear, he has added he-goats also: “I will offer to Thee oxen with he-goats.” By the very yoking are saved the he-goats; of themselves they have no strength, being yoked to bulls they are accepted. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 19.)

Thus our Lord’s establishment of the Church in her visible structure is the means by which the members of the Church are sanctified and made into that odor of sweetness as living sacrifices offered unto the Lord. The Sacraments bring us into this union with Christ or restore it when it is lost. The Psalmist speaks of bringing all these sacrifices, by which the entire Body of Christ is speaking. By being united to that Body in the Holy Catholic Church we can then offer our lives as a pleasing sacrifice to God, whole and entire, reserving nothing for ourselves, but as a holocaust unto the Lord become the odor of sweetness unto God.

---

I found this interesting medieval miniature of a man getting ready to slaughter a goat or sheep, and naturally had to do something with it. I isolated all the figures in Photoshop and split out some of the body parts of the man with the axe.

In After Effects I used the Puppet Tool to rig up the axe-man and then animated the motion, and then did the same for the man holding the sheep, timing it to correspond with the motion of the swinging.

For the blood splatter I animated a red circle and then applied Roughen Edges, animating some of the parameters in sync with the circle expanding.

I then added in some color correction, half-tone effects and camera shake.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: