There is an essential difference between the battles of the gods in pagan myth and the strategy of God in the Old Testament and, still in a superior way, in the New Testament. Take, for example, Psalm 2, which describes the uprising of the world against Javi and his anointed. Why this tumult among nations, among peoples this useless murmuring? The Hebrew text says here, instead of useless murmuring, why do peoples meditate vanity or think about nonsense? What is the reaction of Yahweh to this tumult and this vanity? It's this, he who sits in the heavens laughs.

[01:02]

Yahweh is laughing them to scorn. It is the same Yahweh who according to Psalm 103 verse 26 creates the monster Leviathan to play with it. Yahweh is the One who truly is, and the powers that rise against Him are essentially nothing. This is the case with the idols, who have ears and do not hear, nostrils and do not smell, eyes and do not see, hands and do not touch, feet and do not walk, Those who put their trust in them become like them, as it says, is said in Psalm 113b. This is especially evident in the case of the liars, those who say, our tongue is our strength, our lips are our own, who is our master?

[02:04]

Psalm 11, verse 5, all their power will come to nothing, not because Yahweh will send out heavenly armies against them, but because of their inner untruth, their falsehood, their duplicity. They are divided in themselves and work against one another, destroying themselves. And Yahweh sits on his throne and laughs them to scorn. All the powers which bear down on the people of God, on the individual faithful, with such seemingly overwhelming gigantic strength, carry within themselves the germ of their own destruction. In one way or another, they are digging their own graves. We have seen this with our own eyes when the power of Hitler and of Nazism swept all over Europe and seemed to be irresistible.

[03:07]

all the while it nurtured in itself the sickness from which it died—namely, the unscrupulous use of lies and propaganda, the absolute contempt for all those who opposed it, and the blind obedience to a leader who was blind himself by his megalomania. This is the key to the right understanding of Israel's weakness, which reached its zero point during the exile. The Jews were not able then to fight and to break their chains by military power. They had no horses. to put their trust in. They could do nothing but wait and trust that the powers which tried to destroy them were themselves destined to destruction and had no future. Because of their evil nature, they were not able to bring lasting peace and happiness to the human race.

[04:09]

This meaning of Israel's exile was fulfilled in Jesus, who did not want legions of angels to protect Him, but died for us when we were still God's enemies, as a propitiation for our sins. However, the snare of his death on the cross was broken through his resurrection, which became the source of peace and unity for the new Israel. And now it seems that the time has come when we, this new Israel, the people of the new covenant, when we enter into exile again. We know the Church cannot and will not fight against her enemies with earthly power. Her power is the love which urged Christ to die for his enemies. It is the Holy Spirit who alone was able to conquer evil by good.

[05:12]

The last verse of the psalm shows us the true way from exile into freedom. Our help is in the name of Lord Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. This sentence is being repeated by the Church in her liturgy innumerable times, and yet do we realize its meaning as it comes so easily from our lips? In order to pray this word, we have to understand what the name Yahweh means. Let me remind of it again. Yahweh is the one who is and who shall be the God of our fathers, of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, the God of Chesed, of absolute loyalty and love for those with whom he has entered into a covenant in the spirit of a bridegroom who rejoices over his bride and knows he belongs to her forever.

[06:17]

He is the God of Rahami, of compassion, like a father, even like a mother who never ceases to care for her children. He is the God of Hinn, of grace, who bends low, shows his face to the poor ones, the sinners, the publicans, the harlots. He is the God in our midst, who solemnly proclaims, I will not destroy you Ephraim, for I am God and not man. the Holy One in your midst. OC 119. The thoughts of this God are as high above all human thoughts as heaven is over the earth. And that means as high as his absolute love, his agape, is above all our human love. The name of this God, Yahweh, Lord, is given to Jesus.

[07:28]

who emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, namely the name Yahweh. that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord Yahweh, to the glory of God the Father. From Philippians, the second chapter. We see prayer directed in the name of Spirit of Jesus to the Father will be our way from exile into freedom. The third psalm

[08:42]

of sexts in the tradition of Saint Benedict is Psalm 124. And again, this psalm fits very well into the crisis of noon, that part of the day when fatigue sets in, when alienation spreads and conflicts reach their height. It is of utmost importance that our awareness of the unrest around us in the world may not draw us into the same whirlpool. We should not allow ourselves to lose the firm ground under our feet. We have to remember the unshakable foundations on which we stand.

[09:45]

And this is what Psalm 124 does to us when we pray it in the midst of the city of confusion of this world. It pulls us back from the periphery of forgetfulness and makes us remember the center of our faith. The chosen people of the Old Testament had two symbols of strength and security and peace. The one was Mount Zion and the other, Jerusalem. Mount Zion, the mountain, was, in Jewish tradition, rooted in the very depth of the earth. It was the place that Yahweh had chosen for his rest.

[10:50]

The very word Zion is in Jewish tradition associated with the idea of a lasting memorial of God's presence and of His covenant with His people and with all of mankind. You may read Isaiah 28, 16. Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believes shall not make haste. The other symbol of confidence that Javi has given to his people is Jerusalem. Jerusalem built as a city strongly compact.

[11:55]

You remember these words from Psalm 121, verse 3. Jerusalem is the symbol of that peace and of that union of love among men, which is the reflection of God's love for us. Jerusalem has a center, the house of the Lord, with the Holy of Holies, where God's Torah is kept, the visible sign of God's wisdom resting in Jerusalem in this holy communion of peace. Now this is the way the Psalmist starts his song, Psalm 124. He remembers the foundations of Israel's confidence and strength. It says, those who put their trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion that cannot be shaken, that stands forever.

[13:03]

Jerusalem The mountains surround her, so the Lord surrounds His people both now and forever. The unshakable stability of Mount Zion becomes a quality of those who put their trust in Yahweh, who believe. Those who believe are Mount Zion. While the very site of Jerusalem, a city, surrounded on all sides by higher mountains, is a picture of the care and protection and love with which God surrounds his people, and which makes his people really and truly one, strongly compact. The two pictures taken together show the true nature of Israel's strength.

[14:12]

Its faith is not only a fixed idea, wishful thinking, something irrational, so that no arguments can reach it. But this faith is based on God's love for his people, visible symbolically in the mountains surrounding the city, but also proclaimed by God's Word, the Torah, and by the prophets, and by the help the people have received all through their history. This makes them a community of mutual love, a community of peace. We as Christians realize that all these signs have been fulfilled in Christ, whom the Father has sent from his bosom to make known to us in reality what in the Old Testament had been only shown in shadows.

[15:22]

Christ is the cornerstone, a sure foundation. the Word made flesh, the Lamb that carried the sin of the world, that died and rose for us. Him the apostles have seen with their own eyes, their hands have handled Him, the Word of life they have heard. And what they have seen and heard they declare to us, that we may have fellowship with them, and that our joy may be full, as the first epistle of St. John explains in the beginning of the first chapter. Do this in memory of me, Christ told his apostles when they were gathered with him in the upper room. and he gave them the memorial on Mount Zion of his death, his body and his blood.

[16:30]

And this is the center around which New Jerusalem, the church, has been built. Here are the foundations of our faith and of our peace. Christ is our peace, and we are incorporated into him by our faith and by our participation in his death and resurrection through baptism, the sacrament of faith, and the Eucharist, the sacrament of communion. So you see, as the faithful of the Old Testament are invited to lift up their eyes to Mount Zion as the symbol of the strength of their faith, and as they draw peace and security from the contemplation of Jerusalem, so we Christians, when faced with pressures from the outside,

[17:36]

and with weakness, fear, and chaos from within, are invited to lift our minds to Christ, the new Mount Zion. As St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, you are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. to the festive assembly and the church of the firstborn, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. Now, the following verse of Psalm 124 makes it even more clear Our Grail edition translates, verse 3, for the scepter of the wicked shall not rest over the land of the just, for fear that the hands of the just should turn to evil.

[18:53]

The first half of the verse is evident. It characterizes the situation in which this psalm is addressed to Yahweh. A foreign power has occupied the Holy Land, but it will not rest there. It cannot have the stability of Mount Zion nor the peace of Jerusalem. because it is in itself filled with the spirit of rebellion against God. The Holy Land is God's gift to the members of the Covenant. And eventually this rule of the scepter will break, as the fowler's snare of the preceding psalm broke and the captured bird was free. The scepter of the wicked shall not rest over the land. The second half of the verse presents a difficulty to our understanding, for fear that the hands of the just should turn to evil.

[20:01]

Now, what does that really mean? Do we understand it? Other translations give different versions. It seems to me that the psalm here refers to a very common and a very dangerous effect, namely that injustice has upon its enemies affecting and coloring the attitude of those who are subject to it. Injustice and violence may tempt the just subjected to it to use the same means. The just may consider it more expedient or more realistic from a political point of view to oppose violence with greater violence, to answer injustice with greater injustice, to fight destruction with greater destruction, to answer hate with hate.

[21:20]

What the psalm seems to say is that the just, instead of allowing themselves to be sucked into the whirlpool of power, should transcend the feelings of vengeance and realize the inner weakness behind the external appearances of strength and power shown by the scepter of iniquity. They should break out of that vicious circle of encountering might with more might, or avenging blood by shedding more blood. Christ himself, as the Just One, has broken out of this vicious circle, in the power of that love in which he died for his enemies. He enables us now, who have died with Him in baptism, to follow the new law which He has proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount,

[22:36]

You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you that you resist not the evildoer. But whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue you at the law and take away your coat, let him also have your cloak. and whosoever compel you to go a mile, go with him too. If we would understand the meaning of verse 3 as saying, Don't let yourself be caught in the heat of hate and injustice, but confront it in the peace of Christ. Break out of the vicious circle of revenge, and conquer evil by good, as St. Paul puts it, then the following verse of our psalm would immediately reveal all its beauty.

[23:45]

Do good, O Yahweh, to those who are good, to the upright of heart. And let us add immediately the verse that follows, But the crooked and those who do evil drive them away. Do good, O Yahweh, to those who are good. Good is one of the key words of the Old Testament. Good is what corresponds to our and the world's well-being by fulfilling God's intentions. God saw that all He had made was very good, because it corresponded to the essential goodness of God's Word, and this divine goodness is love, for God is love. In the midst of a world which is ruled by the scepter of iniquity, everything depends on this one thing, that we, Christians, remain good. In the language of the New Testament, St. Paul says, Be rooted and grounded in charity, Ephesians 3.17.

[24:50]

This is our true shield in a world of violence. Love, agape, is the rule, Galatians 6.16, that keeps us straight. but straight of heart, not just straight in our thinking. Abstract straightness may lead to absolute injustice. The goodness of Yahweh is not the abstract, absolute perfection of the philosopher. No. Yahweh has a heart, and that heart is full of mercy, and out of this heart the Father has sent the Son to us. In Psalm 105 it says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his great love is without end. Straight of heart are those who follow God's goodness. Those who do not are crooked. They go their own way, and God lets them go and lets them join the ways of those who do harm through violence.

[25:59]

And then the psalm closes with the blessing on Israel peace. A priest may be the speaker of this verse, but Yahweh is the giver of all blessings. And we should think of this when we pray this psalm. The psalm started with the expression of complete trust in Yahweh, who has chosen Mount Zion and Jerusalem as the symbols of His unshakable love for His people, of our faith and of our mutual love. To us, this means our return into the peace of Christ in front of the situation which is indicated in the third verse, the sept of iniquity rules over God's country. And the danger is that the victims of this regime, the just ones or the straight ones, yield to the temptation to leave the road of trust in Yahweh's charity and answer violence with violence. This leads the psalmist to pray to Yahweh, to do good to the good ones, to fill them with his love, to leave the haters to their hate, and Yahweh's answer to this prayer is peace over Israel, not a wish but a blessing, and that means a reality of peace here and now.

[27:16]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ