Commentary on Psalm 63:8-10

Another preview from Elder Aimilianos' commentary on Psalm 63 (LXX 62), from the unpublished third volume of his collected works:

8 My soul clings closely behind You,
Your right hand has upheld me.

Now the mutual feelings of tenderness and love, along with the power of union, reach their culmination in a sweetness and a delicacy that is like the gentle breath of a mild breeze or the fragrance of perfume. My soul clings closely behind You. “I am attached to You, my God. I follow You. I never want to be separated or apart from You.” This is the expression of a common life lived together over a long period of time, an expression of unity, identity, and mutual assimilation.[1] “You and I, together forever, so closely united that we could never live apart from each other, for we are one. My “I” has been submerged and lost in the boundless depths of You. And this is because Your right hand has upheld me. Your power and Your grace continually help me.”[2] For our spiritual lives to bear fruit, two things are necessary: the exercise of our free will, which is expressed in the first part of this verse, and divine grace, which is expressed in the second.

Think of a small child who with great tenderness and affection loves his father. He takes hold of his hand, embraces him, clings to him, just as the father loves and holds the child. Let us also call to mind the icon of the Glykophilousa, in which the Theotokos is depicted holding the child Jesus with infinite tenderness. The two of them are caught up in a reciprocal embrace so that their bodies appear to merge and form a single body; their cheeks pressed against each other as if to form a single face, a single person. That, my beloved, is the exercise of free will.[3]

David says nothing here about the need for strength or human struggle. His inner disposition is simple, namely, not to be separated from God: my soul clings closely behind You. The strength necessary for such a union comes directly from God, which is why he says Your right hand has upheld me, which means “Your grace upholds me: working together, my free will and Your grace can accomplish all things.” Saint Athanasios of Alexandria understands this verse as follows: “Not even for a moment, my God, can my spirit be separated from You, for I am afire with ardent love, and, as if my mind were a mass of glue, I adhere to You in desire.”[4] It is the movement of our free will, of our desire, which attracts and draws down divine grace.

The Holy Forty Martyrs, whose memory we celebrate today, said: “We have one honor and one life; and there is one gift, one grace, and one assurance: to die for the sake of Christ.” Why did they believe that dying for the sake of Christ was an “assurance”? Because Christ assures them of an eternal dwelling place with God, and this is why they said: “Let our feet freeze here, so that they may dance in paradise. Let our hands now tremble and shake, so that we might raise them boldly in supplication before God. Let us cast aside our garments so that, stripped naked like Christ, we might be clothed in His grace. Let us offer our bodies as a sacrifice for the love of Christ.”[5]

Today is also the Second Sunday of Lent, when we celebrate the memory of Saint Gregory Palamas. He was the son of a Byzantine nobleman, but renounced the world and became a monk, persuading his mother, siblings, and servants also to be tonsured and enter monasteries and convents.[6] Every day he drank only a little water and ate only a little bread. He avoided sleep as much as he could, because it robbed him of precious hours for prayer, which for him was communion with God. For a three-month period, he slept only for a short interval around mid-day, after consuming a small amount of bread.[7] He was a “heavenly man and an earthly angel.”[8] For five days of the week he remained secluded in his cell, leaving it only on Saturdays and Sundays in order to attend the Divine Liturgy.[9] There he sought the face of God, an experience essential for his assimilation to the divine, for his growth in likeness to God. Like the psalmist, his constant wish was to be with God, to be united with Him. As he was dying, he appeared to be speaking, although his voice was little more than a whisper. One of his disciples drew near and heard him say the following words: “The things of heaven are destined for heaven.” And this he repeated, his biographer tells us, in a rhythmic fashion until the moment when his “heavenly soul was released from its natural union with the earth, and joined the company of the angels, with whom he had long consorted.”[10] Saint Gregory could not imagine himself to be merely a creature of the earth, because all his thoughts, his heart, his desires, and his whole being were of heaven. He was completely united with God. “Grant that I may see You, my God; that I may be filled with You, delight in You, and be united with You.” Moved by the same desire, the exiled and persecuted psalmist continues with assurance:

9 But as for them, in vain they sought after my soul,
and they shall descend into the lowest parts of the earth.
10 They will be given to the edge of the sword;
they will be served up to the foxes.

“Those who pursue me are not my enemies, my God, but Yours. And thus it is in vain that they seek to kill me. In the end, it is they who will descend into the lowest parts of the earth, and be given to the edge of the sword.” The Septuagint says they will be given over to the “hand” of the sword, which is a personification of death in the form of a lethal weapon. They will be served up to the foxes, or, in the Hebrew: “they will provide nourishment for the jackals.”[11]

Endnotes

[1] Compare St. Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge 16: “The righteous, who are still in the process of being purified, are characterized both by fear and a moderate measure of love; perfect love, on the other hand, is found only in those who have already been purified and in whom there is no longer any thought of fear, but rather a constant burning and clinging of the soul to God through the energy of the Holy Spirit. As it is written, my soul clings closely behind You, Your right hand has upheld me (Ps 63:8)” (Philokalia 1:257); St. Kallistos Angelikoudis, On Prayer 2: “The soul dominated by divine eros cannot turn back, for as David says, my soul clings closely behind You (Ps 63:8)” (Philokalia [Gr] 4:298); id., On the Contemplative Life: “Blessed are they who, with all the power of their soul and with all spiritual knowledge, are raised up to visions and contemplations of God . . . for they cling with ardent desire closely behind God (Ps 63:9), and are overcome by unbearable longing, for they contemplate the inexpressible beauty of the divine face” (Philokalia [Gr] 5:55).

[2] The words “behind” and “right hand” in Psalm 63:8 are paralleled in Exodus 33:20-33, where God covers Moses with His hand, which He then withdraws, allowing Moses to see His back; cf. St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Life of Moses 2.250: “When David heard and understood this (i.e., that Moses was “covered by the hand of God”), he said, concerning himself, my soul clings closely behind You, Your right hand has upheld me. Here you see how Psalms agrees with Exodus. For the one says that the right hand upholds the person who has joined himself closely behind God, and the other that the hand touches him who waits in the rock for the divine voice and prays that he might follow closely behind it (Ex 33:20-33)” (trans. A. Malherbe & E. Ferguson, 119); and Evagrios, On Psalm 62: “My soul clings closely behind You: to be ‘behind’ God is to be with God, as Moses teaches, having seen the back parts of God (Ex 33:20-23)” (ΒΕΠΕΣ 80:100).

[3] In addition to these images of parental love and concern, the Hebrew verb “to cling closely” (or “to hold fast to”) also occurs in Genesis 2:24, where it describes the intimate community of life between husband and wife.

[4] On Psalm 63 (PG 27:280). The image of the “mass of glue” (o­ἷον τινι κόλλῃ τῆ μνήμῃ) resonates with the phrase “my soul clings (ἐκολλήθη) closely behind You.”

[5] The Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia were a group of Christian soldiers sentenced to death under the Roman Emperor Licinius (who was himself executed in 325). Angered at their refusal to worship the gods of Rome, Licinius ordered that they be stripped of their clothing and left naked on a frozen lake where they perished from the cold. The martyrs’ last words, cited above by the elder, are taken from the hymns of the vesper service (9 March).

[6] St. Philotheos Kokkinos, The Life of St. Gregory Palamas 3; 14 (ed. D. Tsamis, 429, 441).

[7] Ibid., 21 (449).

[8] Compare St. John Chrysostom, Sermon on Repentance: “The Apostle Paul is a citizen of heaven, yet he is clothed in humble attire. He is a heavenly man and an earthly angel. Gladly do I spend my time reading his Epistles, contemplating the beauty of his virtues” (PG 49:291)

[9] Life of St. Gregory Palamas 26 (454).

[10] Ibid., 115 (563).

[11] For a corpse to remain unburied, to be consumed by scavengers, is an ultimate curse in Biblical literature, as it was among the ancient Greeks. The psalmist’s desire for revenge against his enemies constitutes a provocative contrast to the images of longing and intimacy of the rest of the psalm, and captures the political violence out of and in which this psalm was born.