[Video] Psalm 65:20

Blessed be God, who hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me. (Psalm 65:20 DR)

This incredible Psalm began with the inscription speaking of the Resurrection, and the Psalmist now finds its fruition, that God “hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me.” The perils of this life—whether brought about by the malice of man or of devils, or allowed by God for the disciplining of His children—all these things are now seen within their true reality in light of the resurrection. For while they were certainly actual trials and tribulations and true testings of faith and perseverance, they nevertheless—in spite of their difficulty, or, perhaps, precisely because of their difficulty—become as jewels adorning the crown of the saints, or as the variegated strokes of a painted masterpiece whose glory is greater than its struggle, as St. Paul states:

[T]hough our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen, are temporal; but the things which are not seen, are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 DR)

As the Psalmist concludes this magnificent declaration of hope in God, it ends where is began, for the mercy of the Lord and the prayer of the Psalmist are viewing the resurrection from different sides, as it were. The Psalmist’s prayer being heard is a result of God’s mercy, and God’s mercy is that for which the Psalmist prays. The renovation of heart which is wrought by God’s mercy enables this prayer, this communion in which the restoration of the soul through baptism becomes a forestate of the resurrection of the body, when the old wound of sin in man will be forever done away with, when mercy shall be as the sun and prayer shall become face to face.

In the present vale of tears through which we make our weary pilgrimage, the resurrection is ours in Christ through hope. This reality is already present through the charity of God within the soul, yet awaits its final consummation on the Last Day. The mercy of God enables this union of man with God in the Body of Christ, His Church, and prayer reaches out in hope to lay hold of that mercy which has already laid hold of us:

“Blessed be my God, that has not thrust away my supplication and His mercy from me.” Gather the sense from that place, where he says, “Come ye, hear, and I will tell you, all you that fear God, how great things He has done to my soul:” he has both said the words which you have heard, and at the end thus he has concluded: “Blessed be my God, that has not thrust away my supplication and His mercy from me.” For thus there arrives at the Resurrection he that speaks, where already we also are by hope: yea both it is we ourselves, and this voice is ours. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 24.)

Those united to Christ in His mystical Body the Church are thus already there in the Resurrection, for the very charity of God that dwells in their hearts is the self-same Charity Who will be seen face-to-face in the glory of the Beatific Vision. The Trinitarian end or culmination of our being—that for which we were created—makes its in-roads in the here and now, and all that befalls us in this life is the refining fire of that same charity, preparing us to see Charity Himself with faces uncovered. Now we see as through a glass darkly, not only because of our finitude and weakness, but also because our eyes are unprepared and unready to behold the burning sun of Charity Himself as He is, a Love which both fills and consumes, which refreshes and ignites.

The Psalmist does not exclude the trials he has faced or the suffering he has endured from the mercy of the God. Instead, all those sufferings are in some mysterious way an integral part of God’s mercy, his passing through fire and water both a symbol of suffering and pain but also of rebirth and a heart set afire by love.

Baptism, after all, symbolizes and brings about the death of the old man with all his sins and evil desires, the love of this world being drowned in the waters of charity so that that the love of God may fill the soul instead. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost through this baptism ignites—as it were—the flame of charity in the heart, that eternal fire which has burned from the deepest recesses of eternity unto the fathomless stretches of a world without end. Man does not cease to be a creature, but he is transfigured and raised to new life, partaking in the very life of the Godhead.

Seen in this new blinding light, the sufferings of this life which perhaps at one time encased the world in darkness now become the shadows and shading that give the world depth, like the shadows of an image that thrust the light into focus. For the Psalmist all is now woven into a glorious tapestry of God’s mercy, a reality for which he cannot help but lift up his voice in prayer, that he may continually dwell within that mercy:

So long therefore as here we are, this let us ask of God, that He thrust not from us our supplication, and His mercy, that is, that we pray continually, and He continually pity. For many become feeble in praying, and in the newness of their own conversion pray fervently, afterwards feebly, afterwards coldly, afterwards negligently: as if they have become secure. The foe watches: you sleep. The Lord Himself has given commandment in the Gospel, how “it behooves men always to pray and not to faint.”

Therefore let us not faint in prayer. Though He puts off what He is going to grant, He puts it not away: being secure of His promise, let us not faint in praying, and this is by His goodness. Therefore he has said, “Blessed is my God, that has not thrust away my supplication and His mercy from me.” When you have seen your supplication not thrust away from you, be secure, that His mercy has not been thrust away from you. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 24.)

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I brought in a nice abstract image and used LoopFlow on it to get the movement, then duplicated it, rotated it and used some blending modes to create this nice cross type of image. I then added in some color correction, chromatic aberration, noise and other effects.

Enjoy.

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