Therefore hath God heard me, and hath attended to the voice of my supplication. (Psalm 65:19 DR)
In this penultimate passage of Psalm 65, the Psalmist provides the corollary to the previous passage. For if God does not hear those who look at iniquity in their hearts, then who does He hear?
The Psalmist answers this implicitly: Therefore hath God heard me. An important distinction, however, immediately arises. As was seen in the previous passage, to look at iniquity in one’s heart is a deliberate decision for wickedness, an intentional turning away from the assistance of grace. In this state we shun God’s goodness and mercy, and thus He does not hear the prayers of those who look at iniquity in their hearts.
However, when one turns from one’s sins in repentance—when, like the prodigal son, one returns to oneself and thus in humility returns to God, then, like the father of the prodigal who welcomes him home, so God then hears our prayers. It is not that an unrepentant heart makes God deaf to prayer, but rather that we make ourselves deaf to His voice calling us to penance. This hardening of the heart rejects grace and embraces one’s own pride and self-sufficiency, which leads only to misery.
Thus, the Psalmist—even if coming out of his sins—has confidence that the Lord will hear his prayer and attend to his supplication:
Because He is a searcher of hearts, God saw me sincerely sorry for my sins, and, so far from “looking at iniquity in my heart,” that I turned away from it in perfect horror. “And hath attended to the voice of my supplication;” because He saw me attending to the voice of His commandments, and not to the voice of the evil one, prompting me to wickedness. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 65, 19.)
The Psalmist speaks here in direct relation to the previous passage. The Vulgate uses propterea, meaning therefore or for this reason. Thus, if God does not hear the prayer of those who look at iniquity in their hearts, then the reason God has heard his prayer is precisely because he has refused to look at iniquity in his heart, either through the avoidance of sin or coming to penance in humility. The Vulgate also has exaudivit, meaning has heard, and exaudivit is in the present perfect tense, signifying that this action of God hearing his prayer is not only a past event, but one that was brought to completion and has effects or consequences into the present. That is, God didn’t just hear the Psalmist’s prayer at a certain point in time, but that hearing in some sense continues into the present moment.
This much is evident from the Psalmist’s invocation of it, but is also present in the previous passages in which he speaks of paying his vows to God by means of sacrifices and holocausts, as well as by means of recalling what God has done for him. He also sets forth the principle of prayer by means of the juxtaposition of the previous passage with this one. That is, if God will not hear those who look at iniquity in their hearts, but will hear those who do not do look at iniquity in their hearts, then this principle can be retroactively applied as well as extrapolated into the future.
Such thus forms the confidence of the Psalmist in God attending to his voice and his supplication, for he has chosen to follow God’s law, to walk in His ways, to accept His will in the various trials and tribulations that God uses to purify him, and to stand in humility before his Maker and reject sin.
It can be tempting in the midst of present struggles to look back with a sort of nostalgia on previous days or times when things seemed better, when life was seemingly easier, when God felt closer. This kind of misplaced retrospection can be misleading, however, for while we should always strive to come back to our first love, we can never go back to a time that came before. The moments of our lives that crash around us like the waves of the sea or carry us along like a constantly flowing river will always be new, will always bring something different from what came before. Trying to live in the past is like trying to catch the wind in your hands.
For the Psalmist, God’s hearing of his prayer is not something to be reclaimed from the past or even to be left there as something fossilized in amber, but is rather a reality that continues into the present, precisely because the One Who is the Source of that reality is beyond all time. Unlike the variegated seasons of our lives, God is unchanging, not subject to the fickleness of our affections or the vicissitudes of this world and its ever-shifting movements and moments.
To be heard by God is to begin by not looking at iniquity in one’s heart, which is something that cannot be accomplished by merely natural effort. Because of the wound of Original Sin and our own frailty as created beings, we are incapable of living in God’s friendship apart from the gift of grace by which He imparts His own charity into our souls by the Holy Ghost. The Psalmist shows forth the fruit of living in this grace and aligning his own will with God’s will, for he can suffer being tried by fire, being brought into a net, having men set over him, or whatever else life may bring. All the troubles of this world become the proving ground of that charity within his soul, given to him that he might return such an august Gift to the very One Who gave it.
In the end, this complete gift of himself and his will and his affections and loves and all that he is becomes the prayer itself, one that God will always hear.
I wanted to go with something flowing and abstract for this animation, and so I used Trapcode Mir to create the dark flowing mass which I thought was kind of fun. I added in some glows and some small moving shapes and then some color correction and noise.
Enjoy.
Therefore hath God heard me, and hath attended to the voice of my supplication.
(Psalm 65:19 DR)
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