Wednesday
at Vespers [4]
Psalm 130 (131)
Lord, my heart is not puffed up:
nor are my eyes haughty.
Neither have I sought to walk among the great:
nor the wondrous things that are too high for me.
If I had not humbled my mind but exalted my soul:
As a child pulled from his mother’s breast,
such should be the reward for my soul.
Let Israel hope in the Lord,
from this time forth and for eternity.
I begin my contemplation here, without any disrespect to my Holy Father’s ordering of the Psalter, but with the profoundest submission to his exhortation to humility in all things and at all times before God and my brethren.
Consider the soul before the Lord in the celestial light that is the liturgy of His body the Church: does the
man approach the light, his soul unsheathed as a sword proudly lifted in his own victory over the inimical perils of this mortal world, or sheathed and sheltered from that piercing light, which consumes all defilement except that redeemed through no action of our own might or triumph, but through the triumph of His light over darkness that shines through our earthly worship, giving our souls a glimpse of that perfection to which we are called to participate through faith.
We come, not equals in the act of redemption, nor worthy from our labours, to sing our evening praises to the Lord of Light and Life, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10) and we stand in awe of that love which raises us where we dare not raise ourselves: our eyes to the very countenance of God and our souls to their source, through the unfathomable depths of the Divine Love. Indeed humility before God is the first and every subsequent step towards wisdom and is the prerequisite step for our participation in the Work of God.
So the Psalmist exhorts us to mortify our proud hearts and to avert our gaze by his example: coming before God victorious in nothing that is not given from His bounty; seeking not the status of His holy ones whom He exalted for our edification; and claiming no knowledge for our own genius, for what knowledge have we that He did not first reveal to us only ever according to our limited ability to comprehend that which is too high for our minds to grasp in its fullness.
Of our own proportions in the divine schema we should be as nothing to Him, and yet we are raised in status to a child before its mother, for certain by no merit of our birth. And where we should rightly content ourselves neither to suckle nor to attain even infancy, we find ourselves fed by the very Word of God and nurtured to maturity by a love we have no right to claim.
Indeed, speret Israel in Domino, for what greater hope shall you find than in Him, in whose image you were created and through whose sacrifice you are redeemed from the disfigurement of sin and the just punishment of eternal death. Hope in the Lord, that in His presence here, He may swell your humbled heart with His love and lift your lowly gaze to the light of His face, which shines upon you through this night, a lamp for your steps that you may walk always in His path to eternal life.
at Vespers [5]
Psalm 131 (132)
O Lord, remember David and all his meekness:
How he swore to the Lord,
how he vowed to the God of Jacob:
“I will not enter the tabernacle of my dwelling,
nor go up to the bed wherein I lie;
I will not give sleep to my eyes,
nor rest to my temples,
until I find a place for the Lord,
a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.”
Behold, we have heard of it in Ephrata;
we found in the wooded fields.
But now we will enter into His dwelling,
we will worship in the place where his feet have stood.
Arise, O Lord, to enter Your resting place,
you and the ark you sanctified.
May Your priests be clothed with justice,
and your holy ones rejoice.
For the sake of David, your servant,
do not turn away the face of Your anointed.
The Lord swore an oath to David:
“From the fruit of your loins I will set one up upon your throne.
If your sons keep My covenant
and these My decrees which I shall teach them.
Their sons, too, forevermore
shall sit upon your throne.”
For the Lord has chosen Sion,
He has chosen her for His dwelling.
“This shall be by resting place forever;
in her will I dwell, for I have chosen her.
Her widow I will bless with my blessing:
I will satiate with bread the hunger of her poor.
Her priests I will clothe with salvation,
and holy ones shall rejoice in exceeding joy.
There I will raise up a horn for David;
I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.
His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but upon him shall my sanctification flourish.
As David, who swore not to rest until he had found a worthy dwelling place for the Lord, so too having received in Jesus Christ the fulfilment of God’s promise to flourish His sanctification upon His holy ones, do our souls not find rest until they find their rest in Him.
And where shall we find Him but in His holy temple where he is pleased to dwell all the days of our life? The Ark of God’s Holy Covenant, once captive of the Philistines in the wooded fields, has been raised up on the wood of the cross and returns now in triumph to the temple of His glory, the holy temple where His Spirit dwells. For David conquered the land and took great pains to provide for the Temple of God (1 Chronicles 22:14), and God ordained that his son, Solomon, raise its stones in His peace so that no man should die in its founding, save for Him, who in the fullness of time would, through His own Blood, establish for ever the eternal Temple of God in the hearts of His people: the promise of God fulfilled in the Son of David, Jesus the Christ, the living God, whose very Body is the Temple of God and whose Blood was shed that it may stand for ages unending, the abiding presence of God and the source of our exceeding joy.
Let us, then, remember David and his lament that despite the bounteous blessings of God a temple worthy of His glory should not yet have been built. And let us remember God’s reply through the prophet Nathan, and His promises fulfilled, that though we are unworthy, we have been made worthy by God’s Anointed to become, ourselves, the chosen resting place of the Almighty – that He has chosen us in Christ to be His presence for the world: the font through which His love is lavished upon all who seek Him; the living stones upon which His Blood is poured out – His sacrifice and, as we are so called, our own participation in it – and offered to the Father for the forgiveness of sins; and His ministers at whose hands the hungry have their fill of the Bread of Life.
We might well ask, with David, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought it thus far?” (2 Samuel 18). But the Lord remembers David, and is faithful to every one of His promises. It is not our worthiness that builds the House of the God, nor of our own merits that we should be called brothers of the Anointed Saviour. We are destined by grace to have gained through adoption, sonship before the earthly throne of David and the heavenly throne of the Father. We are so appointed; we are so charged; we are so anointed as His holy ones: the guardians of His abiding presence in the temple of our soul, to keep the lamp of His Holy Spirit burning bright upon the altar of our hearts until, consumed, our very hearts become the oblation, which in union with His, grants us rest in the New Jerusalem for ever and ever.