Friday
at Matins [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Psalm 77 (78)
Attend, my people, to my law
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables:
I will speak ancient enigmas.
All the things we have heard and known,
and what our fathers have declared to us,
these will not be hidden from their sons,
in the generation to come.
The praises of the Lord and His hosts
and the wonders He wrought.
He raised it up as a covenant in Jacob
and established it a law in Israel,
that what he commanded our fathers
should be made known to their sons,
that generations to come might know;
their sons yet to be born and awakened,
and declared to their sons in turn.
That they may set their hope in God,
and not forget the works of God,
and may seek His commandments,
and be not like their fathers:
an insolent and wretched generation;
a generation that held not their hearts aright
and whose spirit trusted not in God.
We are in covenant with God; a covenant drawn up by The Word and sealed in His blood; a covenant so preeminent in its pronunciation and execution that it is the covenant to fulfil and end all covenants; its finality confirmed in the very Name of God who was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
In its giving, God sated man’s craving for knowledge and revealed the ancient enigma of His life and ours, letting us enter into the very nature of God in the covenantal relationship, which is not one between lawgiver and vassal but a perfect communion with the divine life.
And what have we professed and vowed but to enter into that communion, which is love, and to live it in such a way as to be a symbol of hope in that love for all generations? And here, when we are faithful to the communion of love we have been granted through God’s Holy Covenant, we preserve in our song of praise those ancient testimonies to the everlasting love of God for His creation and witness by day and by night to the eternal giving of love which is God, made known by His great wonders and even greater mercy, though many a time men have chosen to forget.
The sons of Ephraim, bending the bow to shoot,
have turned back in the day of battle.
They kept not the covenant of God,
and would not walk according to His law.
And they forgot His generosity;
His wonders, which He had shown them.
Before their fathers He did wondrous things,
in the land of Egypt, in the field of Tanis.
He divided the sea and led them through,
and he made the waters stand as in an amphora.
He led them with a cloud by day,
and all night with the glow of fire.
He cleft the rock in the desert
and gave them water as out of the great deep.
He brought out water from the rock
and led their streams to run down as rivers.
We have been called to battle under the banner of Christ; a battle for souls against our own weakness, as the strength of evil has already been rendered lame by the power of God, but for our own inclination towards sin. The greatest enemy is ourselves when we forget under whose banner we fight, and instead of joining with the hosts of heaven in the subjugation of the Evil One, we fight but for ourselves, our own status, under our own banner, for our own glory. It is this most human weakness that shakes off the armour of God and gives strength to the one who would deceive us with illusions of glory, which too often we heed over God’s own call to humble love, which is in fact the source of all glory.
Is it not humble love that God should consider the worldly needs of His people; that He should not forget that we are but creatures deficient in strength, in wisdom and in ingenuity; that we need signs, and sustenance, and assurance to support and sustain both body and spirit? And has He not given us all of these things and in abundance, that our faith should not falter in the day of battle, nor that we should forget the love for which we fight: the covenant of love that it is our duty to propagate until all are touched by the living waters that flow from Christ, our rock?
And they heaped sin upon sin against Him,
provoking the Most High to wrath in the wilderness.
And they tempted God in their hearts,
asking for meat to satiate their appetite.
And they spoke ill of God, saying:
“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
For He struck the rock and waters poured forth
and the streams overflowed.
Can he also give bread,
or prepare a table for His people?”
This the Lord heard and was enraged,
and fire blazed against Jacob,
and wrath rose against Israel.
Because they believed not in God,
and trusted not in His salvation.
And He commanded the clouds from above
and opened the doors of heaven.
And He rained down manna upon them for food,
and gave them the bread from heaven.
The bread of Angels was eaten by men;
He sent them food in abundance.
He brought forth the east wind from the heavens,
and by His power he sent forth the south wind.
And He rained meat upon them like dust,
and feathered fowl like as the sand of the sea.
And these fell in the midst of their camp,
round about their tents.
So they ate and were filled to surfeit,
and He gave them their desire;
they were not cheated of their desire.
But as yet the meat was in their mouths,
the wrath of God rose upon them.
And he slew the strongest among them,
and brought low the chosen men of Israel.
Be satiated then, brethren, in God’s bounty and do not doubt the love of the One who led our fathers from captivity and continues to lead us today, that the chains of our bondage be broken and that we be free to choose life over death, light over the darkness of evil, and to prosper our souls in the promise of eternal communion with Him who is our Creator and Redeemer, our origin and our resting place for time unending.
For we of all people have no reason to doubt as did our fathers. The wonders in our times far exceed the deeds of God in the wilderness. For our fathers demanded water and meat to fill their bellies, and they were fed; but in our own time, God has freely given the spiritual food of His own Son’s Body and Blood: the true Bread of Heaven and Chalice of Eternal Salvation to strengthen our souls and effect the salvation Christ wrought on the Cross for every generation until the end of days.
What more signs and wonders need we demand of God, when each day upon the altar before us, Christ is made truly present, not just to be worshiped as God deserves but to be consumed as He commanded: no mere symbol of communion with God but communion itself as He makes us at one with Himself as we take and eat and make our Lord and our God a part of ourselves?
God has given all for love and His wrath is not for those who want more, for His love is inexhaustible in its giving, but for those who do not trust in Him to provide. Ask all you will of God’s mercy and strength, for as we are taught, it is only by asking that we receive, but ask not so as to put God to the test, rather asking with true faith in His love, which finds no greater expression than in providing all we need for eternal life, even to giving His Only Begotten Son as the sacrifice that seals our covenant with the Almighty and is the source and summit of our salvation.
Yet the still sinned for all these things,
believing not in His wonders.
And their days were consumed in their vanity
and their years in haste.
When He slew them, then they sought Him,
turning in the dawn to return to Him.
And they remembered that God was their helper
and the Most High God their redeemer.
And they loved Him only with their mouths,
and with their tongues they lied to Him
But their heart was not right with Him,
nor were they faithful in their covenant with Him.
Yet He in His mercy graciously forgave their sins,
and would not destroy them.
And abounding in mercy,
He turned back His anger from them,
and did not kindle the fire of His wrath.
And He remembered that they are flesh;
a passing breath that never returns.
How often did they provoke him in the desert,
and move Him to wrath in the wilderness?
They turned about and tempted God,
and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
There was never a time when God did not seek our good and desire the salvation of His people. If one generation was unfaithful, He raised up prophets and worked His wonders for the next, in a constant outpouring of love to turn the hardened hearts of men from the path of self destruction.
So often have we abused the love of God and taken its strength for weakness; we who have seen that He knows only how to give and have experienced the unfathomable depths of His mercy. How often have we turned to Him in the day of distress crying, “Father, Father!” but in the midst of the blessing of His peace forgotten that it is from God’s hand that we receive all that is good? How often is our prayer spoken in tears when our heart is anguished but with hollowness when we have had our fill of God’s bounty and find ourselves untroubled in mind and body?
And yet His faithfulness is unwavering and His mercy inexhaustible, for God knows the frailty of our human state; how both flesh and spirit are prone to decay and are distracted by the fleeting gratifications of the world. And He grants His merciful love not ‘just one more time’, but infinitely for those who in a moment of grace see their error and remember Him: their God and only Redeemer.
Let us strive, then, to live our lives in such a state of recollection. May we, in our increasing awareness of our deficiencies, seek evermore closely to unite ourselves with the Saviour, who is our strength in adversity and our vindication in whatsoever suffering we bear for His sake by consciously seeking His path and keeping our vision firmly fixed on the City of God while we make our journey through the sin-bereft deserts of this world.
They remembered not His hand in the day
when He ransomed them from the hand of the foe;
when He wrought His signs in Egypt
and His wonders in the field of Tanis,
and turned their streams to blood,
their running water so they could not drink.
He sent a multitude of flies among them
to devour them, and frogs to destroy them.
He gave their fruits to the caterpillars,
and all their labours to the locusts.
He killed their vines with hail,
and their mulberry trees with hoarfrost.
He gave to the hail their cattle, and their stock to the fire.
He sent upon them the ferocity of His anger
– indignation and anger and strife –
sent down by avenging angels.
He made a path for His anger;
He spared not their souls from death;
and their cattle had their end in death.
He smote also all the firstborn in the land of Egypt:
the first fruits of all their labour in the tents of Ham.
And His own people He led away like sheep;
and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
And He brought them out in hope and they feared not;
and the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
He led them to the mountain of His sanctuary,
the mountain which His right hand had won.
And He cast out the nations before them,
and divided the land among them by lot;
and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
Yet they tempted and provoked
the Most High God,and kept not His decrees.
They turned away and kept not the covenant:
even like their fathers, they swerved like a crooked bow.
They provoked him to anger with their hill-shrines,
and roused His jealousy with their graven idols.
As we recall His many mercies through the history of our salvation, may we stand in awe of the faithfulness of our God and in shame for our inconstancy in responding to the outpouring of His love. May we bring the thankfulness we express in our prayer this night with us in every moment of our lives; the gratitude of men who have received an inestimable gift that, at once, ennobles our mean character and yet makes us all the more conscious of our poverty, for we deserved it not.
This God, who worked His wonders for our fathers, has done no less for us. He has ennobled us to be His pillar of fire that rises by night to lead His people through the darkness. He has granted to us the inextinguishable hope of a journey’s end in His peace and free from the onerous trials of the world. He has seen to it that amidst the tribulations that have marked our journey, He is always with us and that the light of His countenance always shines through even the thickest darkness, providing moments of grace and wonders great or small to stir within us the awareness of His closeness and the great depth of His love for us.
So it is that I ask myself, and you with me, to be sated and satisfied; to live out this thanksgiving for the love and mercy of God in lives of recollection and perpetual remembrance of all that we have been given as the People of God through all generations. For we have been led by His love to the mountain sanctuary where we stand this day, the earthly refuge of His faithful ones where we may draw strength from His abiding presence and raise our song of love for love received in immeasurable abundance. Here shall we be a humble light, reflecting but dimly the great glory of our God, as a beacon for the world. Here, we shall illuminate the His great works and emblazon the story of His love in the dark skies for all men to see and give thanks; aware always that it is His light, His love, His strength that brought us here, and rejecting the idol of our own pride that caused the footsteps of our fathers to falter.
God heard, and despised them,
and brought Israel down to nothing.
And He put away the tabernacle in Silo,
His tent, where He dwelt among men.
And He delivered their strength into captivity,
and their beauty into the hands of the enemy.
And His people had their end under the sword,
and He despised His inheritance.
Fire consumed their young men,
and their maidens died unlamented.
Their priests fell by the sword,
and their widows wailed not.
Then the Lord was roused from sleep,
like a warrior made uninhibited by wine.
And He smote His enemies on their hinds,
He put them to perpetual shame.
And He cast aside the tabernacle of Joseph,
and chose not the tribe of Ephraim;
but He chose the tribe of Juda,
Mount Sion, which He loved.
And He built His shrine to stand alone,
as the horn of the unicorn,
in the land which He established forever.
And He chose David His servant
and took him from the sheepfolds,
from the lambing ewes, He took Him,
to feed Jacob, His servant,
and Israel, his inheritance.
And he fed them in the innocence of his heart,
and guided them by the skill of his hands.
We have asked of God that He open our lips: let the words of our mouth bear true witness to the great works of God in our own lives. May they be words that our children’s children repeat with pride, of how we had thrown off the shackles that bound our forefathers to sin and the pursuit of worldly gain.
For how long did our fathers reject the call of God, even while having His Name upon their lips, falling away from Him in sin, infidelity and ingratitude? Generations have passed and, one day, we too will be the ancestors of a generation to come. May we never give them cause to weep for our inconstancy, but rather be a landmark in time, to man’s capacity to embrace the salvation offered by God in humble gratitude and with heartfelt praise that will resonate through the world for generations to come.
May we never know what it means to be without God, for from whence does our protection come but from on high, where God looks upon us with such tender love? From whom, our strength and success? May our communion with God through our prayer bring us ever closer to an interior understanding of our origin and destiny in His eternal love. For it is certain that we are created out of divine love, which endows us with the liberty to choose whether to give of it in its entirety, and so be lifted into the very life of the Godhead, or to imprison it in the confines of hate and suffocate its life-giving power for the world. May our choice be to be willingly led and fed by the hand of the Shepherd, who brought David’s kingly line to fulfilment; perfecting the story of love that was written from the beginning: that God and man should be one in the love by which man was created. And may our response to God’s love be as generous and faithful as He, who led our fathers out of Pharaoh’s captivity and us from the entombment of Satan’s grasp.
at Matins [7]
Psalm 78 (79)
`
O God, the nations have risen against Your inheritance;
they have defiled Your Holy Temple,
Jerusalem has been pillaged like apples for the picking.
The corpses of your servants they have given as carrion
to the fowls of the air,
the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth.
Their blood they have poured out
like water round about Jerusalem;
with no man left to bury the dead.
We have become a thing of reproach
to our neighbours, and scorn and mockery
to them that encompass us.
How long, O Lord? Will Your anger endure to the end?
Will your jealousy blaze as a fire?
Pour out Your wrath upon the nations
that have not known You,
and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon Your name;
for they have devoured Jacob
and laid waste to his dwelling place.
Remember not our past iniquities
but let Your mercy precede us
for we have been reduced to dire poverty.
Help us, O God our salvation,
and for the glory of Your name, Lord, deliver us,
and pardon our sins for Your name’s sake.
Lest they should say among the nations,
“Where is their God?”
Let it be known to the nations in our sight
that there is vengeance
for the blood Your servants have shed;
let the sighs of the captives come before You.
By the great strength of Your arm,
protect the children of the slain.
Deal to our neighbours sevenfold,
direct to their hearts,
the reproach with which they blasphemed You, O Lord.
But we, Your people, the sheep of Your flock,
will give You unceasing thanks;
from generation to generation, we will proclaim Your praise.
May we never sleep our guard over our souls, the temple of your Holy Spirit, that place where you dwell and through which you impart every blessing. When the enemy surrounds us on all sides, may we resist their advances and not allow ourselves to be defiled and the treasures of your grace plundered. And if we must suffer under their assault, then let it be so, for what may they take from us other than what you first gave us?
You created us the crowning glory of your creation, and from the dust breathed life into a creature that would rule over all others. But not satisfied with the world and all it contained, we desired equality with you, our Lord and God, and so were brought low, back to the dust. Now, as the tempter surrounds us with his armies, even if our flesh were to become the food of beasts, it would still be more than we deserved for having once rejected your love. So may we be food for the vultures that circle the condemned, but never relent, never fall again, never depart from your love even as life is torn from our bodies. For who that has known your love could prefer a life that is the death of the soul to death in your arms? So shall we surrender only to death and let our blood be the mean price of your favour. Let it be ever said that in the darkest night of temptation, your saints stood firm in death to await your dawn.
For what shall our death gain the enemy? What benefit will their mockery win for them, if they cannot take us alive? Let them boast in their empty victory, let them rejoice over those they have slain, for their joy will be short-lived when you send your Spirit upon the fallen and breathe again a life indestructible into our mortal flesh. May they see the ones they have cut down rise again, no more for them to wound or maim. Make us stand again before them in your glory, that they may know the pain of defeat; that they may know you are God.
Spare us from the pain of eternal death, though we have deserved this for all the sins of our youth. May this, my last stand against the foe, bring me a victory not earned but bestowed from your heart, which had mourned my loss in the days I strayed far from you, but which even then desired me to taste of your boundless mercy. If you, my God, would use the death of even the least of your creatures for your glory, then I surrender all to you, that you may show yourself my God to confound my enemies.
They say to us, who seek our souls, that no man may ever be pleasing in your sight, that we have been forsaken from birth for the sins of our first parents, and that all we may hope for can only be found here in this life. They say you have abandoned the world and are no more to be seen in your creation. They say you have turned us over to death and that you have taken all that is of value from us. Use me to teach them that your love prevails even in the grave; that you have never forsaken those who trust in you. May your kindness to your servants open the eyes of those who do not know you to the destiny you have reserved for all mankind, and to the love with which you call all souls from darkness in to light. May all men witness your great love for us and run from the foe even as the arrows rain down upon their backs, in the sure hope that they die in your Christ and rise with Him into the splendor of your kingdom.
Fill heaven with your saints and deign to allow me to be numbered among them, for I have loved you even in my wanderings and sought you even in the darkness of my sin. Spare not your mercy from those most in need of it, and permit not one soul to be handed over to the darkness. So let all your saints rejoice that the enemy may never know victory despite our weakness, for you have been our strength and the praise of our souls for all eternity.