Exalt ye the Lord our God, and adore his footstool, for it is holy.

“And the apostles worshiped, and, therefore, they who bore the testimony of the faith received authority of faith. And the angels worshiped God, of whom it is written: "And let all his angels worship him."But they worship not only his Godhead but also his footstool, as it is written: "And worship his footstool, for it is holy." Or, if they deny that in Christ the mysteries also of his incarnation are to be worshiped, in which we observe as it were certain express traces of his Godhead and certain ways of the heavenly Word, let them read that even the apostles worshiped him when he rose again in the glory of his flesh.”

“"O magnify the Lord our God" [Psalm 99:5]. Magnify Him truly, magnify Him well. Let us praise Him, let us magnify Him who has wrought the very righteousness which we have; who wrought it in us, Himself. For who but He who justified us, wrought righteousness in us? For of Christ it is said, "who justifies the ungodly." [Romans 4:5] ..."And fall down before His footstool: for He is holy." What are we to fall down before? His footstool. What is under the feet is called a footstool, in Greek ὑ ποπόδιον, in Latin Scabellum or Suppedaneum. But consider, brethren, what he commands us to fall down before. In another passage of the Scriptures it is said, "The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool." [Isaiah 66:1] Does he then bid us worship the earth, since in another passage it is said, that it is God's footstool? How then shall we worship the earth, when the Scripture says openly, "You shall worship the Lord your God"? [Deuteronomy 6:13] Yet here it says, "fall down before His footstool:" and, explaining to us what His footstool is, it says, "The earth is My footstool." I am in doubt; I fear to worship the earth, lest He who made the heaven and the earth condemn me; again, I fear not to worship the footstool of my Lord, because the Psalm bids me, "fall down before His footstool." I ask, what is His footstool? And the Scripture tells me, "the earth is My footstool." In hesitation I turn unto Christ, since I am herein seeking Himself: and I discover how the earth may be worshipped without impiety, how His footstool may be worshipped without impiety. For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord's may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping. But does the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, "It is the Spirit that quickens, the flesh profits nothing."...But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, "Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him." [John 6:54] Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, "This is an hard saying, who can hear it?" And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto them hard that He said, "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you have no life in you:" they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, "This is a hard saying." It was they who were hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not meek, they would have said unto themselves, He says not this without reason, but there must be some latent mystery herein. They would have remained with Him, softened, not hard: and would have learned that from Him which they who remained, when the others departed, learned. For when twelve disciples had remained with Him, on their departure, these remaining followers suggested to Him, as if in grief for the death of the former, that they were offended by His words, and turned back. But He instructed them, and says unto them, "It is the Spirit that quickens, but the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." [John 6:63] Understand spiritually what I have said; you are not to eat this body which you see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood.”

“Exalt ye the Lord our God,.... Christ, who is Lord of all, and Immanuel, God with us, God in our nature, our Lord and our God; exalt him in his person, as God over all, blessed for ever; in his offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, by hearkening to his word, by trusting in his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice, and by submitting to his ordinances, and obeying his commands; exalt him in heart, thought, and affection, thinking highly of him, and affectionately loving him; exalt and extol him in words, speak of his love and loveliness, and of the great things he has done; exalt him in private and in public, in the family and in the house of God; make mention of him everywhere, that his name be exalted: and worship at his footstool; worship him who is the object of the adoration of angels, and ought to be of men; worship him privately and publicly, internally and externally, in spirit and in truth; at his footstool, on earth, he being on his throne in heaven; see Isa 65:1 or else the ark is meant, which is so called, Ch1 28:2, and this being a type of the human nature of Christ, that may be meant here; and which, though not the object of worship, nor is it said, worship his footstool, but at it; yet, in worshipping Christ, respect is to be had unto him, as in our nature, in which he has done such great things for us: the Targum is, "worship in or at the house of his sanctuary;'' so Kimchi interprets it of the sanctuary, which agrees with Psa 99:9, for he is holy: essentially holy, glorious in holiness as a divine Person, and therefore to be worshipped: or "it is holy"; the footstool, the ark, the human nature of Christ, in which the Godhead dwells bodily.”

“Adore his foot-stool. The ark of the covenant was called, in the Old Testament, God’s foot-stool: over which he was understood to sit, on his propitiatory, or mercy-seat, as on a throne, between the wings of the Cherubim, in the sanctuary: to which the children of Israel paid a great veneration. But as this psalm evidently relates to Christ, and the New Testament, where the ark has no place, the holy Fathers understand this text of the worship paid by the Church to the body and blood of Christ in the sacred mysteries: in as much as the humanity of Christ is, as it were, the foot-stool of the divinity. So St. Ambrose, l. 3. de Spiritu Sancto, c. 12., and St. Augustine upon this psalm. (Challoner) — The last mentioned holy Doctor inculcates the obligation of adoring Jesus Christ in the blessed Eucharist, and refutes the Capharnaites, &c., John vi. (Worthington) — The Jews adored God, shewing a relative honour, by prostrating themselves before the ark, in the same manner as Catholics do before holy images. (Berthier) — It is. Septuagint and some psalters, “he is holy.” (Calmet) — Hebrew is ambiguous. (Berthier) — “I discover how I may adore the foot-stool,…without impiety. Christ took flesh of Mary,…and give it us to eat for our salvation. But none eats that flesh, till he have first adored it.” (St. Augustine)”