Why, O Lord, do you stand
far off?
Why do you hide yourself in
times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked
persecute the poor—
let them be caught in the
schemes they have devised…
Their mouths are filled
with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under their tongues are
mischief and iniquity.
They sit in ambush in the
villages;
in hiding places they
murder the innocent.
Their eyes stealthily watch
for the helpless;
they lurk in secret like a
lion in its covert;
they lurk that they may
seize the poor;
they seize the poor and
drag them off in their net…
Rise up, O Lord; O God,
lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.
Why do the wicked renounce
God,
and say in their hearts,
“You will not call us to account”?
But you do see! Indeed you
note trouble and grief,
that you may take it into
your hands;
the helpless commit
themselves to you;
you have been the helper of
the orphan…
O Lord, you will hear the
desire of the meek;
you will strengthen their
heart, you will incline your ear
to do justice for the
orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth
may strike terror no more.
Psalm 10: 1-2, 7-9, 12-14,
17-18
Reflection – We return to our regular
scheduled programming with the Monday Psalter. Psalm 10 is quite a lengthy one,
so I have simply given sufficient excerpts to give the gist of it. It seems to
me that this psalm is powerfully relevant in our times. There is a spirit of
violence at loose in the world, in case you haven’t noticed, a true spirit of
war and hatred and savage attack on the innocent and the helpless.
I don’t need to go into all the
details of this spirit in the world today—if you aren’t aware of the tragic
events unfolding in so many places, you probably aren’t the sort of person who
reads my blog, I would venture.
I have been aware, though, of a real
danger in the midst of all these situations. It is perhaps one that is
perpetual in humanity, confronted with true evil and injustice. Namely, there
is real danger of belligerence, rage, vengeance, a meeting of violence with
violence, hatred with hatred. ‘You want to kill us? Fine – then we’ll kill you
first!’ That kind of thing. Bring it on, baby, and let’s see who has the most
guns.
I am not a pacifist, properly
speaking. There is a time and a place, there are situations where armed
resistance to evil-doers is sadly necessary. And in a sense I am not even
thinking of those sorts of situations—we may well have to go to war against
ISIS, for example—I truly hope not, but it may come to that.
I am thinking, though, more of a
general attitude of bellicosity, a tendency to meet force with force, anger
with anger, that it seems to me comes up in many places and situations in the
world today, not just geo-political ones. And it seems to me that this is a deep spiritual malady which this
psalm addresses.
There are people who hate, true. There
are people who are set on courses of action that are genuinely wrong and evil.
They may have varying degrees of culpability, but the evil done is real and grave.
There may be people who hate me, and
who are doing evil to me, and of
course that is very hard to deal with.
The great temptation is to meet evil
with evil, force with force, violence with violence. Anger for anger, blood for
blood. It is the great temptation of humanity, and always has been, and has
left our world awash in blood, choked with anger.
Psalm 10 opens for us another door,
another path, a path which will only be fully revealed in Jesus Christ. ‘I offered
no resistance to those who tore at me… turn the other cheek… Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do.’ This is a very serious call in our days
of violence, this season of war in the world. We are Christians; we are called
to love our enemies, and this love must be real and incarnated, not some vague
meaningless abstraction.
It’s not really about what’s
happening in Iraq or Syria or Ukraine, although of course it applies there. It’s
about what’s happening at the office or around the supper table, in the neighborhood
or the parish, online and offline and in every other line. We are to love, and
we are to look to God to show us how the injustices or wrongs of our world are
to be healed. The way of violence heals nothing; the way of peace and of love
is the hope of the world.