I will bless the Lord at all
times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the
humble hear and be glad.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt
his name together!
I sought the Lord, and he answered me and
delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are
radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
and saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps
around those who
fear him, and delivers them.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those
who fear him have no lack!
The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but
those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach
you the fear of the Lord.
What man is there who desires life
and loves
many days, that he may see good?..
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and
saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the
righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out
of them all.
He keeps all his bones; not one of them is
broken..
The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge
in him will be condemned.
Psalm 34
Reflection – OK, I’m back. And back with
one of my favourite psalms of all, one of (in my view) the most beautiful and
poignant pieces of biblical poetry and prayer there is. I often assign this psalm
as a penance in confession, and return to it often in my personal prayer.
This psalm
captures the essential spiritual attitude that must be at the heart of our life, and that spiritual attitude is praise and thanksgiving. This is always important, but all the more
important when life in the world or in our own personal lives is hard and
painful.
The world is
full of troubles right now. Be it simple tragedies like the earthquake in
Nepal, or the genuinely horrific evil of terrorism and brutal violence in the
Middle East and Africa, or the various complex and painful social ills and
evils confronting us here in North America, there is little ‘good news’ in the
news we read these days. As well, we all have our personal problems and
sorrows, big and little, which can darken our minds and hearts at any time.
To praise
God in the face of all this may seem a bit polyanna-ish, a bit ‘whistle a happy
tune’ or ‘these are a few of my favourite things’—a flight from reality into
positive thinking, some kind of head trip to fool oneself into feeling better.
To say that, when one’s own personal problems and sorrows are mounting
especially high, praise should be particularly intense in one’s own life, seems
almost perverse—like the more pain you are in, the more you should try to smile
and laugh.
If it were
just a matter of positive thinking, of raindrops on roses and whiskers on
kittens, the objection would hold. But that is not what praising God is,
really. To praise God in the face of evils and sorrows of all kinds is to make
a deep act of faith and trust in the reality
of God, that God is real, is here, is acting, that there is a whole bigger
and broader field of being (admittedly almost entirely concealed from us) in
which there is great good, cause for hope, reason to rejoice.
Pain and
suffering focus the mind on themselves and on their immediate cause. When we
stub our toe, our whole world becomes, for a brief moment, The Toe, and the
stupid thing we just stubbed it on (Drat it! Drat it to heck!). All suffering,
and certainly the very big and calamitous sorrows of life and of the world, has
that effect on us—the entire world is defined by my grief, by this evil, by
that sorrow.
Aside from
personal sufferings and sorrows, those who are involved in various types of social
activism have to be vigilant about this. Yes, there are great evils happening
in the world, like abortion (for example). But… the whole world is not defined
by this evil. Countless men and women welcome their children into life, even in
difficult circumstances, and even in the most tragic wrong choices women make
to have an abortion, the mercy of God is poured forth in unstinting measure.
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