The noonday devil

Psalm 91 is probably best known to most Catholics as the text of a hymn that everyone either loves or hates: “On Eagle’s Wings.” (Count me in the less than enthusiastic crowd. But then, my taste in Church music runs to Byzantine chant.)

That same psalm, in the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate (the canonical Latin version of the Bible), is the source of a phrase that was once common in prayers and in discussions of the seven deadly sins: “the noonday devil.”