Thursday
at Compline [1]
Psalm 69 (70)
O God, come to my assistance:
O Lord, make haste to my help.
Let them be ashamed and confounded,
who seek after my soul.
Let them be turned back and blush with shame,
those who wish me evil.
Let them be swiftly turned back in disgrace,
those who say to me in derision, “Aha, aha!”
Let all who seek You, rejoice in You and be glad;
and may those that love Your salvation
say forever, “The Lord be glorified”.
But I am poor and needy:
help me, O God.
You are my help and deliverer:
O Lord, do not delay.
In the stillness of this place, as the final toll of the bell dissolves into the emptiness of the night, I have searched my heart to find the strength I need to be the man you created me to be. But within, as without in the dark of night, I have found nothing. Emptiness and weakness possess me. And so I have swayed all my life, courting the whisper of the changing winds, and in my inconstancy deserved the derision of the eternal foe, who sees the impotence of my will and laughs me to scorn.
Would that I could prove them wrong. Would that I could live as you have called me. Would that I could be numbered among your saints, who walk in your truth, and whose every breath glorifies your name. It is not that I have not loved you; it is not that I seek darkness over your light. But I am the most worthless of your servants, the one best forgotten, for so often have I taken your love and squandered it. Every day have I fallen short in my actions, and every night have I found myself wanting.
Yet how is it that you do not despise me as I despise myself? How is that you have hope yet for my soul? So it is that again this night I ask for your strength, for I cannot do it alone. I ask with confidence that you have not exhausted your love for me, and that you see through my weakness my true love for you and my desire to confound those who rejoice at my every fall and who mock you for my many deficiencies.
Raise up within me then, O Lord, your strength to spurn the tempter and reject the enemy of my soul. I acknowledge that I am weak and unworthy but, in the same breath, that I am chosen and you are powerful. Your paths I know and desire, but my footing is infirm: guide me then, I pray, with your light, and be my strong deliverer from the snares they have placed along my way. And in that moment when I am about to fall, make haste to help your needy servant and do not allow my foot to stumble.
at Compline [2, 3]
Psalm 71 (71)
In You, O Lord, I have hoped,
let me never be confounded:
deliver me in Your justice and rescue me;
incline Your ear to me and save me.
Be for me a divine protector
and a stronghold to keep me safe,
since You are my buttress and my refuge.
O my God, deliver me
from the hand of the sinner,
from the hand of the lawless and unrighteous;
for You, O Lord, are my confidence,
my hope, O Lord, from my youth.
By You have I been sustained from the womb:
from my mother’s womb
You have been my protector.
Of You shall forever be my song;
I have become a wonder to many,
but it is You who are my strong help.
Let my mouth be filled with praise
that I may sing of Your glory,
and of Your greatness all the day long.
Cast me not off in my days of old age:
when my strength fails, do not forsake me.
For my enemies have spoken against me;
those who spied out my life
have taken counsel together,
saying “God has forsaken him,
pursue and seize him,
for there is none to deliver him.”
Be not far from me, O God:
O my God, regard and help me.
This night of our Gethsemane has brought us to confront the foe in our own weakness and sinful disposition. Our enemy is not weak but knows our every weakness and deceives with precision, sending phantoms of doubt and suspicion to confound even the strong. For the enemy is stronger than we are of our own power; more so then the need to draw strength from the One who formed us and has sustained us from the mother’s womb.
For we were born defenseless and in need of a protector, and that we grew to become men is itself at the care of God’s providential right hand. He has always been our refuge, and it is under His patronage that we stand in His presence here, the price of sin not yet having taken its toll on our frail being. Some of us He has raised as prophets and saints but not one of them could have stood victorious against the foe alone. How more urgent our need, then, we who may only gaze upon the saints in wonder, to cling fast to God’s help and call upon His Name, “O my God, deliver me”?
And God who sees all things will regard the lowliness of our fragile state, and His greatness of which we sing will be ours in the day of our deliverance. For he has perceived the evil among His creation since the day the serpent first lulled our mother, Eve, with his sweet promises, and He has never ceased to call men back from death to life. He has looked with pity on man as our great Fall repeated, times innumerable, and as evil permeated the love of creation and twisted it upon itself. Indeed He has seen; and in His Christ, He has felt our plight, known and borne our every weakness that we should take strength in His love and choose not as our most ancient parents did, but choose anew the choice of love, the choice of life, the choice of truth over the lies of the deceiver.
Confound and bring to nothing
the slanderers of my soul:
let them be overwhelmed
with confusion and shame,
who seek my harm.
But I will ever hope
and magnify Your praise.
My mouth shall declare Your justice
and Your salvation all the day long.
Since I am unversed in wiles of the world
I submit myself to the power of the Lord:
and think only of Your justice, O Lord.
You have taught me, O God, from my youth:
wherefore I will never cease
to declare the wonders of Your grace.
And even until I am old and grey haired,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I have proclaimed Your great strength
to every generation that is to come;
Your power, O God, and Your justice
even to the highest;
the great things You have done:
O God, who is like You?
How great and evil,
the tribulations you have shown me,
many and grievous;
and then in Your turning
you have brought me life,
brought me back again
from the depths of the earth.
You have increased your generosity,
You have turned to me and comforted me.
So I will praise Your truth
with music on the lyre;
I will sing to you with the harp,
O God, O Holy One of Israel.
My lips shall exult as I sing to You,
and my soul, which You have redeemed.
Indeed, my tongue shall meditate
upon Your justice all the day long,
when those who seek to harm me
have been confounded and put to shame.
So it is in the Lord’s strength that evil will be conquered and our weakness fortified with the power of the Almighty. Even in the darkest chasm of our sin, there is hope from above, for God seeks not our destruction but the defeat of the evil that has overcome us. And His strength against the foe is gentle on the one He brings home to His love: the purgation of sin, soothing waters to the sinner, but a crushing torrent upon the root of sin. So, freed from the captor we find ourselves renewed, unharmed by the terrors of the darkness, and longing to proclaim the glory of God, His mercy and justice, that pulled us from the jaws of death.
And now we are His through the redemption wrought by Christ, may we labour ever more diligently in this our Work of God, and strengthen the bonds of love that hold us so securely and yet gently, as a mother cradles the infant at her breast. May we suckle here, and regain something of that innocence lost, the loving awe of a baby gazing into the eyes of his mother: may we so surrender all into the countenance of God, forgetting all the knowledge our parents gained, all the wiles of this wretched world, and trust again in the loving power of our God.
And may this certainty in God’s strong protection be our anchor in the hour when the tempter returns and life’s trials threaten to capsize our faith. For in those moments of darkness and turmoil, He is there with His strong arm; but it is we who so often fail to see Him. And like our Lord this night in Gethsemane, may we trust always in God’s providential care, that when we surrender our lives to His will, then though even death come to take us, it will be destroyed in the dawn of our resurrection.
For though we have looked into the very eyes of death, and been shown the evil tribulations the forces of evil wish to bring; all this we have seen for the salvation of our souls. The anguish and torture of the souls that follow the paths of darkness are not ours, for we are His. And though we suffer, we shall not be crushed, for Christ has suffered with us. And though temptations plague our thoughts, we shall not be overcome, for it is with Christ that we submit our will saying, “not my will but Thine be done”. In the bitterest trials Christ is with us: His Spirit our consoler in pain and our protector in temptation – for this was His promise; we shall not be forsaken. Let us trust then, brethren, that just as the darkness of the night gives way to radiant dawn, when we call for His strength to resist the tempter and trust in His mercy to return from the path of sin, it is Satan that is confounded and put to shame when we, God’s beloved, rest again in His embrace.