The Psalms - the scaffolding of prayer

"Be filled with the Spirit, 

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, 

singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, 

always and for everything giving thanks 

in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father." 

(Ephesians 5:18-20)

Following the example of the Jewish people and of Jesus himself, the early Christians kept using the Old Testament collection of Psalms, not just as a kind of hymn book, but even more importantly as their basic scaffolding of prayer. This has continued in the Church's life right down to our day. In fact, Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy are supposed to pray our way through the book of Psalms every month - and for some in religious orders - more often than that! In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Psalter is prayed through weekly.

Each of us has our favourite psalms. And, if the truth be known, there are the psalms most of us would avoid if left to our own devices. You now what I mean - the ones that seem full of depression, anxiety, despondency and anger, where the Psalmist even seems to be shaking his fist at God. Yet, if we are honest, we have to admit that sometimes those are the Psalms that reflect how we feel.

It is easy to have prayer lives that help us avoid coming to terms with what is going on inside us. We all fall into that trap, and it's not what God wants, because ultimately it will not help us. Using the psalms in the way we are supposed to is one means of bringing the whole of our lives with their uneven rhythms before God, including the upset, temperamental and sinful bits, so as to become increasingly open to his grace and the healing power of his love.

Over the last few years I have noticed that more and more lay people are seeing the benefit of this, and are using forms of Morning and/or Evening Prayer each day, with a systematic praying of the psalms.

There is a little book by that title. In my youth I feasted on Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton (1915-1968). It was given to me by the late Father Austin Day, who even preached a series of sermons based on Merton's reflections.

Merton is not all that fashionable these days (and, I must admit, some of my friends think he was not always as orthodox as he might have been!), but I am glad to see that Praying the Psalms is still available. I enthusiastically commend it to you, and guarantee that if you read it your appreciation of the psalms will grow. (You can find it at Amazon.com if your local Christian bookstore doesn't sell it.)

In one of his most memorable passages Merton says:

"When we bring our sorrows to the Psalter we find all our spiritual problems mirrored in the inspired words of the psalmist. But we do not necessarily find these problems analysed and solved.

"Few of the psalms offer us abstract principles capable of serving as a ready and sensible palliative for interior suffering. On the contrary, what we generally find is a suffering just as concrete as our own, and more profound.

"We encounter this suffering at one of its most intense and articulate moments. How many of the psalms are simply cries of desperate anguish: 'Save me, O God, for the waters have come up even to my throat. I sink in the deep mire where no footing is : I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with crying out, my throat is parched: my eyes fail with watching so long for my God.' (Psalm 69:1-3)

"What were the dispositions of the saints and the fathers in chanting such a psalm? They did not simply 'consider' the psalm as they passed over it, drawing from it some pious reflection, some nosegay. They entered into the 'action' of the psalm. They allowed themselves to be absorbed in the spiritual agony of the psalmist and of the one he represented. They allowed their sorrows to be swallowed up in the sorrows of this mysterious Personage, and then they found themselves swept away, on the strong tide of his hope, into the very depth of God. ''But to you, Lord, I make my prayer: at an acceptable time, answer me, O God, in your abundant goodness: and with your sure deliverance.' (vv13,14)

"So, in the end, all sorrow turns to triumph and to praise: 'And I will praise the name of God in a song: and glorify him with thanksgiving . . . for God will save Zion : he will rebuild the cities of Judah' (vv32-37)."

Our Lady's Birthday

Most of what we know about Our Lady's birthday is from the Protoevangelium of James which has been dated by historians to the early second century. The earliest reference to the feast day itself comes from the sixth century. Most scholars believe that the feast originated in Jerusalem because of the existence of a church dedicated to St Anne dating from in the fifth century and considered to be the location of Mary's birth. Historians generally accept that September 8 was chosen for this feast day on account of the beginning of the civil year in Constantinople on September 1, emphasising that the birthday of Mary is the "beginning" of the work of salvation.

This feast day was introduced in Rome from the Eastern Church in the seventh century. It became a holy day of obligation throughout the west by the year 1007.

I share with you today two very different readings. The first, by John Mason Neale (1818-1866), is from his well known sermon for this feast. The second, a poem by Thomas Merton (1915-1968) explores the symbolic significance of our Lord's genealogy (the Gospel reading for today). 

JOHN MASON NEALE PREACHING ON 
OUR LADY'S BIRTHDAY

“THE LORD, WHOM YE SEEK, SHALL SUDDENLY COME TO HIS TEMPLE.” - MALACHI III. 1.

THERE is no festival of S. Mary which has not also to do with our LORD. How should it be otherwise? She who was so closely and so wonderfully connected with Him as Man, so that He was bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh, she cannot be divided in our thoughts from Him now. He is still Man, as truly as He ever was; He still has the flesh which He took of her; the same in which He suffered, the same in which He died, the same in which He rose again from the dead.

This text has, then, to do both with our LORD and with His Blessed Mother; and we may also apply it to ourselves, and say that it has to do with us.

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His Temple.” First of all, this prophecy was fulfilled when the Archangel Gabriel was sent to Nazareth with the most wonderful message that was ever heard on earth. “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with GOD. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His Name JESUS.” The womb of S. Mary was the temple into which our LORD at that moment entered. There it was that He, Who was the Desire of all nations, -He, Who even then might have said, “The earth is weak, and all the inhabiters thereof: I bear up the pillars of it,”- He, Whom the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain,-there He lay hid for all those long months, until the fulness of the time came, and GOD was born into the world. David, in the Psalms, represents our LORD as anxious to find out this temple for Himself: “I will not give sleep to mine eyes, nor slumber to mine eyelids, neither shall the temples of my head take any rest: until I find out a place for the temple of the LORD, an habitation for the mighty GOD of Jacob.” This place, this habitation, He did find out, when the HOLY GHOST came upon S. Mary, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her, and the Word of the FATHER took flesh in her womb.

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” And this promise was fulfilled the second time when our LORD was presented in the temple, at the Purification of His Blessed Mother,--in memory of which we keep Candlemas-day. It was His temple, though the Jews little knew it: He, then an infant six weeks old, was the one true Priest, though the High Priest little thought it; He was LORD of the countless armies of angels, and of all the tribes of men, though He had so few that were truly waiting for Him. “The LORD, Whom ye seek.” How many were those that sought Him then? If I count rightly, four only. See if I am wrong. S. Luke tells us that Anna the prophetess “coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise to the LORD, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” All, then, that looked for redemption in Jerusalem were at that moment in the temple--there were none others besides; and for all that appears, they were only S. Anna herself, S. Mary, and S. Joseph, and Simeon. Pour courtiers to wait on such a King!

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” This Scripture is fulfilled before us every day; for every day the HOLY GHOST comes down into His temples, the bodies of those who are baptized: He comes suddenly, He comes without preparation,--a few words, a little water,--and His temple is consecrated to Him for ever. As S. Paul tells us, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the HOLY GHOST?” and again, “Know ye not, that ye are the temple of GOD, and that the Spirit of GOD dwelleth in you?”

But those temples must, little by little, day by day, fall to pieces and perish. “This earthly house of our tabernacle must be dissolved,” says S. Paul. And when it shall have been,--when earth shall have returned to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,--then also this text shall be fulfilled; “The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” He shall come to it, to raise it up again from the earth, and--if it has been His true temple--to make it His glorious dwelling for ever. And this shall be suddenly, too, as S. Paul also tells us: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

That will be the last time that our LORD will come to His temple; for afterwards He shall abide in it for ever. The LORD GOD Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of that Holy City, New Jerusalem, which S. John saw, and which we also some day hope to see: according to that saying, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My GOD, and he shall go no more out.”

Now, what we are to notice in all these comings of our LORD to His temple, is their suddenness. “The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” In one moment He was conceived in the womb of S. Mary; in one moment He turns the heart of an infant, from being the abode and the den of Satan, into His own holy temple; in one moment He will raise up these bodies of ours, turning them from mortal to immortal, from corruptible to incorruptible. GOD does not stand in need of time to do His wonderful works. One day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

But we may take this verse in yet one more sense. “The LORD shall suddenly come to His temple,” when He comes to each of you at death. Long or short as your last illness may be, still the LORD’S coming will be sudden. There is one point, one moment of time, at which you will leave the world and go to Him. Then all our happiness depends on whether the first part of the verse be true: “the LORD, Whom ye seek.” If so, all is well. Then His Coming, though it must be dreadful, will also be glorious; then we may make answer with S. John, “He Which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen: even so come, LORD JESUS.”

But suppose the LORD, Whom ye do not seek, should suddenly come to His temple?

And now to GOD the FATHER, GOD the SON, and GOD the HOLY GHOST, be all honour and glory for ever. Amen.

RAHAB'S HOUSE
by Thomas Merton

Now the lean children of the God of armies 

(Their feet command the quaking earth)

Rise in the desert, and divide old Jordan 

To crown this city with a ring of drums. 

(But see this signal, like a crimson scar

Bleeding on Rahab's window-sill, 

Spelling her safety with the red of our Redemption.)

The trumpets scare the valley with their sudden anger,

And thunderheads lean down to understand the nodding ark, 

While Joshua's friend, the frowning sun, 

Rises to burn the drunken houses with his look. 

(But far more red upon the wall 

Is Rahab's rescue than his scarlet threat.)

The clarions bind the bastions with their silver treble, 

Shiver the city with their golden shout: 

(Wells dry up, and stars fly back, 

The eyes of Jericho go out,)

The drums around the reeling ark 

Shatter the ramparts with a ring of thunder.

The kings that sat

On gilded chairs, 

The princes and the great 

Are dead. 

Only a harlot and her fearful kindred 

Fly like sparrows from that sudden grin of fire.

It is the flowers that will one day rise from Rahab's earth,

That have redeemed them from the hell of Jericho.

A rod will grow 

From Jesse's tree, 

Among her sons, the lords of Bethlehem, 

And flower into Paradise.

Look at the gentle irises admiring one another by the water, 

Under the leafy shadows of the Virgin's mercy, 

And all the primroses and laughing flags 

Bowing before Our Lady Mary in the Eden of her intercession, 

And praising her, because they see the generations 

Fly like a hundred thousand swallows into heaven, 

Out of the jaws of Jericho, 

Because it was the Son of God 

Whose crimson signal wounded Rahab's wall, 

Uttered our rescue in a figure of His Blood.

The Birthday of Our Lady

Most of what we know about Our Lady's birthday is from the Protoevangelium of James which has been dated by historians to the early second century. The earliest reference to the feast day itself comes from the sixth century. Most scholars believe that the feast originated in Jerusalem because of the existence of a church dedicated to St Anne dating from in the fifth century and considered to be the location of Mary's birth. Historians generally accept that September 8 was chosen for this feast day on account of the beginning of the civil year in Constantinople on September 1, emphasising that the birthday of Mary is the "beginning" of the work of salvation.

This feast day was introduced in Rome from the Eastern Church in the seventh century. It became a holy day of obligation throughout the west by the year 1007.

I share with you today two very different readings. The first, by John Mason Neale (1818-1866), is from his well known sermon for this feast. The second, a poem by Thomas Merton (1915-1968) explores the symbolic significance of our Lord's genealogy. 

JOHN MASON NEALE PREACHING ON 
OUR LADY'S BIRTHDAY

“THE LORD, WHOM YE SEEK, SHALL SUDDENLY COME TO HIS TEMPLE.” - MALACHI III. 1.

THERE is no festival of S. Mary which has not also to do with our LORD. How should it be otherwise? She who was so closely and so wonderfully connected with Him as Man, so that He was bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh, she cannot be divided in our thoughts from Him now. He is still Man, as truly as He ever was; He still has the flesh which He took of her; the same in which He suffered, the same in which He died, the same in which He rose again from the dead.

This text has, then, to do both with our LORD and with His Blessed Mother; and we may also apply it to ourselves, and say that it has to do with us.

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His Temple.” First of all, this prophecy was fulfilled when the Archangel Gabriel was sent to Nazareth with the most wonderful message that was ever heard on earth. “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with GOD. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His Name JESUS.” The womb of S. Mary was the temple into which our LORD at that moment entered. There it was that He, Who was the Desire of all nations, -He, Who even then might have said, “The earth is weak, and all the inhabiters thereof: I bear up the pillars of it,”- He, Whom the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain,-there He lay hid for all those long months, until the fulness of the time came, and GOD was born into the world. David, in the Psalms, represents our LORD as anxious to find out this temple for Himself: “I will not give sleep to mine eyes, nor slumber to mine eyelids, neither shall the temples of my head take any rest: until I find out a place for the temple of the LORD, an habitation for the mighty GOD of Jacob.” This place, this habitation, He did find out, when the HOLY GHOST came upon S. Mary, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her, and the Word of the FATHER took flesh in her womb.

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” And this promise was fulfilled the second time when our LORD was presented in the temple, at the Purification of His Blessed Mother,--in memory of which we keep Candlemas-day. It was His temple, though the Jews little knew it: He, then an infant six weeks old, was the one true Priest, though the High Priest little thought it; He was LORD of the countless armies of angels, and of all the tribes of men, though He had so few that were truly waiting for Him. “The LORD, Whom ye seek.” How many were those that sought Him then? If I count rightly, four only. See if I am wrong. S. Luke tells us that Anna the prophetess “coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise to the LORD, and spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” All, then, that looked for redemption in Jerusalem were at that moment in the temple--there were none others besides; and for all that appears, they were only S. Anna herself, S. Mary, and S. Joseph, and Simeon. Pour courtiers to wait on such a King!

“The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” This Scripture is fulfilled before us every day; for every day the HOLY GHOST comes down into His temples, the bodies of those who are baptized: He comes suddenly, He comes without preparation,--a few words, a little water,--and His temple is consecrated to Him for ever. As S. Paul tells us, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the HOLY GHOST?” and again, “Know ye not, that ye are the temple of GOD, and that the Spirit of GOD dwelleth in you?”

But those temples must, little by little, day by day, fall to pieces and perish. “This earthly house of our tabernacle must be dissolved,” says S. Paul. And when it shall have been,--when earth shall have returned to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,--then also this text shall be fulfilled; “The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” He shall come to it, to raise it up again from the earth, and--if it has been His true temple--to make it His glorious dwelling for ever. And this shall be suddenly, too, as S. Paul also tells us: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

That will be the last time that our LORD will come to His temple; for afterwards He shall abide in it for ever. The LORD GOD Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of that Holy City, New Jerusalem, which S. John saw, and which we also some day hope to see: according to that saying, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My GOD, and he shall go no more out.”

Now, what we are to notice in all these comings of our LORD to His temple, is their suddenness. “The LORD, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple.” In one moment He was conceived in the womb of S. Mary; in one moment He turns the heart of an infant, from being the abode and the den of Satan, into His own holy temple; in one moment He will raise up these bodies of ours, turning them from mortal to immortal, from corruptible to incorruptible. GOD does not stand in need of time to do His wonderful works. One day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

But we may take this verse in yet one more sense. “The LORD shall suddenly come to His temple,” when He comes to each of you at death. Long or short as your last illness may be, still the LORD’S coming will be sudden. There is one point, one moment of time, at which you will leave the world and go to Him. Then all our happiness depends on whether the first part of the verse be true: “the LORD, Whom ye seek.” If so, all is well. Then His Coming, though it must be dreadful, will also be glorious; then we may make answer with S. John, “He Which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen: even so come, LORD JESUS.”

But suppose the LORD, Whom ye do not seek, should suddenly come to His temple?

And now to GOD the FATHER, GOD the SON, and GOD the HOLY GHOST, be all honour and glory for ever. Amen.

RAHAB'S HOUSE

Now the lean children of the God of armies 

(Their feet command the quaking earth)

Rise in the desert, and divide old Jordan 

To crown this city with a ring of drums. 

(But see this signal, like a crimson scar

Bleeding on Rahab's window-sill, 

Spelling her safety with the red of our Redemption.)

The trumpets scare the valley with their sudden anger,

And thunderheads lean down to understand the nodding ark, 

While Joshua's friend, the frowning sun, 

Rises to burn the drunken houses with his look. 

(But far more red upon the wall 

Is Rahab's rescue than his scarlet threat.)

The clarions bind the bastions with their silver treble, 

Shiver the city with their golden shout: 

(Wells dry up, and stars fly back, 

The eyes of Jericho go out,)

The drums around the reeling ark 

Shatter the ramparts with a ring of thunder.

The kings that sat

On gilded chairs, 

The princes and the great 

Are dead. 

Only a harlot and her fearful kindred 

Fly like sparrows from that sudden grin of fire.

It is the flowers that will one day rise from Rahab's earth,

That have redeemed them from the hell of Jericho.

A rod will grow 

From Jesse's tree, 

Among her sons, the lords of Bethlehem, 

And flower into Paradise.

Look at the gentle irises admiring one another by the water, 

Under the leafy shadows of the Virgin's mercy, 

And all the primroses and laughing flags 

Bowing before Our Lady Mary in the Eden of her intercession, 

And praising her, because they see the generations 

Fly like a hundred thousand swallows into heaven, 

Out of the jaws of Jericho, 

Because it was the Son of God 

Whose crimson signal wounded Rahab's wall, 

Uttered our rescue in a figure of His Blood.

New Year's Eve with Catherine Doherty & Thomas Merton

I take this opportunity to wish all readers of this blog a happy New Year. May you know the blessing of God in your life during 2013. It will undoubtedly bring its share of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, triumphs and tragedies. My prayer for each of us is that we never forget that, whatever the future holds, with the Eternal God as our Refuge, “underneath are the Everlasting Arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). He loves us, and if we are open to him he will continue to sustain us, lead us, guide us, and fill us with his love.

I have chosen three pieces to share with you at the outset of 2013:

THE NEW YEAR 

by Catherine Doherty

(Go HERE for background information on Catherine Doherty)

I keep thinking and meditating on the New Year, and thinking about the world in general; it kind of haunts me.

God hands us a shiny beautiful New Year. That is to say, he gives us time. I wondered: what are we going to do with this time? To each one of us God has given time—time to love him. It’s strange that in the Christian countries the New Year comes at the time right after Christ’s birth.

Stop and think of the Incarnation (Christ God becoming man), which leads to his crucifixion, which leads to his resurrection, all wrapped up in a little package of this Child—a crib in a stable. And then, as if the Child himself handed it over, he turns to me and to you and he says, “Here is a new year, shiny, coming from my hands. What are you going to do with it?”

The greatest thing we can do is to love. There is nothing else that matters, really. So why don’t we begin? Many of us already love our neighbour, love ourselves and our neighbour, but we have to extend that love.

Time really does not exist. I come from the mind of God—he had me there from all eternity, and I go to the Way (who is Christ) to the heart of God; and the Holy Spirit helps me to keep on the narrow path, the Way that Christ says he himself is.

When we talk Christianity or Christ to one another, whoever we are, wherever we are on the threshold of the New Year, something has to break into our hearts. Our Lord enlarges our heart, if we desire to enlarge it, to love more and more and more.

Will our love end in crucifixion? It’s obvious that when you and I totally forget the pronoun ‘I’, then we are crucified; and those who are crucified are free. This is a strange and mysterious thing. It’s one of the mysteries that God puts into our hearts.

If we agree to go to Golgotha, a little hill on which he was crucified, there is another side to the crucifix. Immediately the crucifix ceases to really be a crucifix as we understand it—that is to say, pain and all the rest of it—and it becomes a joy. In a sense, we can wish everyone a joyful New Year—provided we have opened our heart to Joy; we have mounted Golgotha; we have agreed to be crucified with Christ; and by doing so we have entered into his Resurrection.

By entering into his Resurrection, we have suddenly found ourselves totally free—free from all the things that affected us only yesterday. Free to love everyone, including our enemies. Free to lay down our lives for our fellowman.

This all sounds highfaluting, big ideas, but in everyday life, it is simplicity itself. Never think of yourself, day in and day out. You have to do an unpleasant job, but you do it joyfully, because whatever you do, you do for God. Joy lifts us up and makes us run toward whatever task is given to us; to what we call “the duty of the moment”.

The mother gets up, and the father, to nurse the baby and quieten it at night, but it goes a little further. It may go to a little neighboring child who cries. I lived in Chicago, on West Walton Place, which had been cut up into little apartments; we had a little apartment and one was above us. You could hear what happened. One evening, lying there and not sleeping very well, I kept hearing the patter of young feet and I knew that only a mother with her child lived up there. The child was about eleven or twelve. I met her going to school. Something worried me about this patter of feet. I got up and went upstairs and knocked at the door and said, “It’s the lady from downstairs”. “Oh,” she said, “I’m so glad it’s you”, and she opened the door. “I don’t know what’s happened to my mother. I don’t know what to do. She doesn’t wake up.” Well, her mother was dead!

Love is a strange thing. The patter of little feet. The cry of a child. The cough of an old person or a young one can disturb us, and should disturb us, and we should say, “Oh, I am responsible for everyone.” Dorothy Day, one of the great American saints-to-be, wrote in her Catholic Worker why we should not buy grapefruits (this was in the Depression) because the people who gathered grapefruits received such a small salary that they could not live on it. I am responsible. Do you realize that this beautiful New Year that God has put into your hands means that you are your brother’s keeper, and so am I?

It’s deep stuff; it’s bottomless, because it means that God is saying, “Enter my heart. It is in this heart of mine that you will know how to live out this beautiful year that I have given you ‘to have and to hold’”.

So let us be our brother’s keeper; and let us not forget that Christ is our Brother too. Not only in everyone, but in himself. And if we really want to learn how to love, we should go into his heart this year.

— from a spiritual reading, Dec. 29, 1976

TRUSTING GOD

- by Thomas Merton

(Go HERE for background information on Thomas Merton)

  

Dear God, 

I have no idea where I am going. 

I do not see the road ahead of me. 

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself . . . 

and the fact that I think I am following your will 

does not mean that I am actually doing so. 

But, I believe this: 

I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. 

I hope I have that desire in everything I do. 

I hope I never do anything apart from that desire. 

And, I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road . . . 

though I may know nothing about it at the time. 

Therefore, I will trust you always 

for though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, 

I will not be afraid 

because I know you will never leave me 

to face my troubles all alone. 

Amen.

- from  I have seen what I was looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings, Ed. B. Pennington.  (New City Press, Hyde Park, N.Y. 2005)

  

PSALM 91

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, 

who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, 

will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress; 

my God, in whom I trust.”

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler 

and from the deadly pestilence; 

he will cover you with his pinions, 

and under his wings you will find refuge; 

his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 

You will not fear the terror of the night, 

nor the arrow that flies by day, 

nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, 

nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. 

A thousand may fall at your side, 

ten thousand at your right hand; 

but it will not come near you. 

You will only look with your eyes 

and see the recompense of the wicked. 

Because you have made the LORD your refuge, 

the Most High your habitation, 

no evil shall befall you, 

no scourge come near your tent. 

For he will give his angels charge of you 

to guard you in all your ways. 

On their hands they will bear you up, 

lest you dash your foot against a stone. 

You will tread on the lion and the adder, 

the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. 

Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; 

I will protect him, because he knows my name. 

When he calls to me, I will answer him; 

I will be with him in trouble, 

I will rescue him and honor him. 

With long life I will satisfy him, 

and show him my salvation.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, 

and to the Holy Spirit;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, 

world without end. Amen.

His grace is still amazing

This is the text of a newsletter I sent to friends and supporters a couple of years ago. A number of people said it helped them, so i share it with you here.

He loves us;
he walks with us;
he shares his life with us.
He knows what we are really like;
he loves us just the same.
That is "grace."

Some time ago I preached about the grace of God, and told the people that those words pretty well sum up the Gospel and the Catholic Faith.

In spite of the fact that I went on to say how opening ourselves to God's grace begins to change us, heal us, and turn us into channels of that same grace for others (and, yes, I spoke about the cross of Jesus, the empty tomb, the community of faith, prayer, Scripture and the Sacraments!), the clergyman in charge gently chided me afterwards for "over-simplifying" things. He said that while the above might be OK as a starting point, that's all it is.

Now, I think I can understand what he was trying to say. I know that in our time when (especially as Anglicans) we have to stand up for right teaching in the face of all sorts of so-called "liberal" errors, we feel the need to fill out our preaching and teaching with great doctrinal precision.

At one level he was right. But I still think that at least some of the time we need to resist the very real temptation to smother our proclamation of the Gospel with so much theological detail that it loses its striking simplicity and its power to astonish.

Silvie Paladino, one of Australia's best known entertainers, sings each year for the big Carols by Candlelight in Melbourne. A woman of faith, she can always be counted on to impart something of the Gospel. In 2006 she sang "Your grace still amazes me". It was a real show-stopper! You can see for yourself on YouTube HERE.

Does God's grace still amaze YOU? Does the Good News of Jesus still overwhelm you? Does the Father's unconditional love for you still stop you in your tracks?

Or have you "matured" as a Christian and "moved on"? Actually, it is very sad when Christians "move on" from being amazed by God's grace. That kind of "moving on" is not growth - it is an unfortunate deterioration of our relationship with God.

REAL PEOPLE

The Bible is so authentic on lots of different levels. One of these is how it never covers up what its heroes were really like. We have the whole grubby truth about the community of faith . . . and not just in the Old Testament! All the way through the Bible we see the unholy sludge of evil and self-interest mingled with a genuine desire to love and serve the Lord. The very same people of whom it is said that they knew God, walked with God, were used by God, were his faithful servants and even his friends, are shown to have been a puzzling mixture of sinfulness and sanctity.

Yet God loved them. He overshadowed them with his presence. Sure, he challenged them. But he forgave them, and as their relationship with him deepened, he began transforming them from the inside out. That is grace.

Each of us can see the worst of our sins and failings mirrored in the Bible’s heroes. We see the the same sins and failings in the lives of great saints and leaders through two thousand years of Christian history. So we ought to be encouraged by the fact that God’s grace “was sufficient” for them all. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

It cost God everything to set us free from the consequences of our wilful rejection of him, and to restore the relationship between him and ourselves. That “everything” is why his grace is not only amazing, but sufficient. It is also why the cross - the great sacrifice of love - is the centre of Christian worship both here and in heaven where we fall before Jesus as “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.”

What of our day to day lives?

Thank God for the times when things go well for us. I mean that!

But each of us knows those other times when we are crushed by the burdens of life, when we swing from a sense of achievement to feelings of frustration and failure. Or when the joy in our hearts gives way to deep sorrow. Even seasons of spiritual refreshing and renewal can be punctuated with the awful feeling of God’s absence.

It’s not really so different to what we see in the Bible.

But through it all, and despite our feelings . . .

He loves us;

he walks with us;

he shares his life with us.

He knows what we are really like;

he loves us just the same.

That is “grace”.

I want to tell you about a well-worn and very traditional way of hanging on to that . . . a way of not just surviving the “civil war” going on inside us, but of growing as well.

AUTHENTIC CHRISTIAN PRAYING

Following the example of the Jewish people and of Jesus himself, the early Christians kept using the Old Testament collection of Psalms as the basic scaffolding of prayer. That has continued in the catholic tradition of the Church right down to our day. In fact, Anglican clergy are supposed to pray their way through the book of Psalms every month.

Each of us has our favourite Psalms. And - if the truth be known - there are the Psalms most of us would avoid if left to our own devices. You now what I mean - the ones which seem full of depression, despondency and anger, where the Psalmist even seems to be shaking his fist at God. Yet, when we are honest, we must admit that sometimes those are the Psalms which reflect how we feel.

It is easy to have prayer lives that help us avoid coming to terms with what is going on inside us. We all fall into that trap, and it’s not what God wants, because ultimately it will not help us. Using the Psalms in the way we are supposed to is one means of bringing the whole of our lives with their uneven rhythms before God, including the upset, temperamental and sinful bits, so as to become increasingly open to his grace and the healing power of his love.

I have noticed that more and more lay people are seeing the benefit of this, and are using forms of Morning and/or Evening Prayer each day, with a systematic praying of the Psalms.

There is a little book by that title. In my youth I feasted on Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton (1915-1968). It was given to me by the late Father Austin Day, who even preached a series of sermons based on Merton’s reflections.

Merton is not all that fashionable these days (and, I must admit, some of my friends think he is not as orthodox as he could be), but recently I was glad to see that Praying the Psalms has been reprinted. I enthusiastically commend it to you, and guarantee that if you read it your appreciation of the Psalms will grow. (You can find it at Amazon.com if your local Christian bookstore doesn’t sell it.)

In one of his most memorable passages Merton says:

“When we bring our sorrows to the Psalter we find all our spiritual problems mirrored in the inspired words of the psalmist. But we do not necessarily find these problems analysed and solved.

“Few of the psalms offer us abstract principles capable of serving as a ready and sensible palliative for interior suffering. On the contrary, what we generally find is a suffering just as concrete as our own, and more profound.

“We encounter this suffering at one of its most intense and articulate moments. How many of the psalms are simply cries of desperate anguish: ‘Save me, O God, for the waters have come up even to my throat. I sink in the deep mire where no footing is : I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with crying out, my throat is parched: my eyes fail with watching so long for my God.’ (Psalm 69:1-3)

“What were the dispositions of the saints and the fathers in chanting such a psalm? They did not simply ‘consider’ the psalm as they passed over it, drawing from it some pious reflection, some nosegay. They entered into the ‘action’ of the psalm. They allowed themselves to be absorbed in the spiritual agony of the psalmist and of the one he represented. They allowed their sorrows to be swallowed up in the sorrows of this mysterious Personage, and then they found themselves swept away, on the strong tide of his hope, into the very depth of God. ‘’But to you, Lord, I make my prayer : at an acceptable time, answer me, O God, in your abundant goodness: and with your sure deliverance.’ (vv13,14)

“So, in the end, all sorrow turns to triumph and to praise: ‘And I will praise the name of God in a song: and glorify him with thanksgiving . . . for God will save Zion : he will rebuild the cities of Judah’ (vv32-37).”

All that is grace!

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Merton: ". . . unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians."

In Conversations of Guilty Bystander (page 21), Thomas Merton wrote:

If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians. If we want to bring together what is divided, we cannot do so by imposing one division upon the other or absorbing one division into the other. But if we do this, the union is not Christian. It is political, and doomed to further conflict. We must contain all divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.

"Today a shrine is built for the Creator of the Universe"

Most of what we know about Our Lady's birthday is from the Protoevangelium of James which has been dated by historians prior to 200 AD. The earliest reference to the feast day itself comes from the sixth century. Most scholars believe that the feast originated in Jerusalem because of the existence of a church dedicated to St. Anne dating from in the fifth century and considered to be the location of Mary's birth. Historians generally accept that September 8 was chosen for this feast day on account of the beginning of the civil year in Constantinople on September 1, emphasising that the birthday of Mary is the "beginning" of the work of salvation.

This feast day was introduced in Rome from the Eastern Church in the seventh century. It became a holy day of obligation throughout the west by the year 1007.

I share with you today two very different readings. The first, from St Andrew of Crete (c. 650 - 740?) is from the Office of Readings; the second, a poem by Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968) graphically explores the symbolic significance of the Lord's genealogy.

FROM A DISCOURSE OF ST ANDREW OF CRETE

The old has passed away: all things are made new

The fulfilment of the law is Christ himself, who does not so much lead us away from the letter as lift us up to its spirit. For the law’s consummation was this, that the very lawgiver accomplished his work and changed letter into spirit, summing everything up in himself and, though subject to the law, living by grace. He subordinated the law, yet harmoniously united grace with it, not confusing the distinctive characteristics of the one with the other, but effecting the transition in a way most fitting for God. He changed whatever was burdensome, servile and oppressive not what is light and liberating, so that we should be enslaved no longer under the elemental spirits of the world, as the Apostle says, nor held fast as bondservants under the letter of the law.

This is the highest, all-embracing benefit that Christ has bestowed on us. This is the revelation of the mystery, this is the emptying out of the divine nature, the union of God and man, and the deification of the manhood that was assumed. This radiant and manifest coming of God to men most certainly needed a joyful prelude to introduce the great gift of salvation to us. The present festival, the birth of the Mother of God, is the prelude, while the final act is the fore-ordained union of the Word with flesh. Today the Virgin is born, tended and formed and prepared for her role as Mother of God, who is the universal King of the ages.

Justly, then, do we celebrate this mystery since it signifies for us a double grace. We are led toward the truth, and we are led away from our condition of slavery to the letter of the law. How can this be? Darkness yields before the coming of the light, and grace exchanges legalism for freedom. But midway between the two stands today’s mystery, at the frontier where types and symbols give way to reality, and the old is replaced by the new. Therefore, let the whole creation sing praise and dance and unite to celebrate the glories of this day. Let everything that is, in the world and above the world, join together in rejoicing. For today a shrine is built for the Creator of the universe. The creature is newly made ready as a divine dwelling for the Creator.

RAHAB'S HOUSE

Now the lean children of the God of armies

(Their feet command the quaking earth)

Rise in the desert, and divide old Jordan

To crown this city with a ring of drums.

(But see this signal, like a crimson scar

Bleeding on Rahab's window-sill,

Spelling her safety with the red of our Redemption.)

The trumpets scare the valley with their sudden anger,

And thunderheads lean down to understand the nodding ark,

While Joshua's friend, the frowning sun,

Rises to burn the drunken houses with his look.

(But far more red upon the wall

Is Rahab's rescue than his scarlet threat.)

The clarions bind the bastions with their silver treble,

Shiver the city with their golden shout:

(Wells dry up, and stars fly back,

The eyes of Jericho go out,)

The drums around the reeling ark

Shatter the ramparts with a ring of thunder.

The kings that sat

On gilded chairs,

The princes and the great

Are dead.

Only a harlot and her fearful kindred

Fly like sparrows from that sudden grin of fire.

It is the flowers that will one day rise from Rahab's earth,

That have redeemed them from the hell of Jericho.

A rod will grow

From Jesse's tree,

Among her sons, the lords of Bethlehem,

And flower into Paradise.

Look at the gentle irises admiring one another by the water,

Under the leafy shadows of the Virgin's mercy,

And all the primroses and laughing flags

Bowing before Our Lady Mary in the Eden of her intercession,

And praising her, because they see the generations

Fly like a hundred thousand swallows into heaven,

Out of the jaws of Jericho,

Because it was the Son of God

Whose crimson signal wounded Rahab's wall,

Uttered our rescue in a figure of His Blood.