My dear friends, each time we get together to speak about the Psalms, we should keep in mind that we do so with the intention of understanding the Psalms as prayers which we have received from above and which are being put upon our lips, that through them the power of the Holy Spirit may enter into our lives and transform our lives into acts of worship. This is what we call to pray our lives. It does not mean that we should interrupt the whole process of living to enter into a completely different transcendent sphere. The day-hours, in particular, are intended to fulfill precisely this function, and this is the reason why a man like St. Benedict, who did not want the life of his monks to be entirely cut off from the ordinary human condition, chose the so-called pilgrim songs, or songs of ascent, to accompany our daily lives.

[01:14]

Indeed, those eight hours of our working day are a pilgrimage. They are not suspended in a vacuum. They are practical. They are ordinary daily service. They mark the basic rhythm inherent in our work-day work. a new beginning in fervor and hope, which is terse, arriving at a certain climax, which shows already the first signs of decline, fatigue and suffering, sixth, and running out in the late afternoon, with people returning from their working-day world, with its alienation and coldness, into the warmth of their homes. We have seen how well Psalm 125 fits into this moment of liberation.

[02:16]

You will see that the second psalm, Psalm 126, as well as Psalm 127, the third and last psalm of None, fit admirably into the same context. I read it to you. If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labor. If the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain does the watchman keep vigil. And I add immediately the second verse, because it fits so closely. In vain is your early rising, your going later to rest. You toil for the bread to eat when he pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber. You hear the key word immediately, in vain, in vain, in vain. What is in vain?

[03:18]

Our laboring, our keeping vigil, our earlier rising, and our going later to rest. All these activities express an underlying tension. This is the important point. These activities spring, are dominated usually by worry. They represent a desperate attempt to keep things under control. What the psalm wants to bring us to is to relax by letting go instead of trying to hold on. We know from our own experience how deeply we are rooted in the conviction that our success depends, in last analysis, on our own power. If we would keep at home the same attitude of tenseness, of wanting to control everything, our return home would not really be a turn in our life, but only a change of scene.

[04:29]

Of course, responsibilities are waiting for us at home, too, but they are done in a different spirit, in the spirit of love, and therefore of patience, of understanding, of trust, of freedom. The competitive attitude and the perfectionism that goes with it, the impersonal coldness that looks only for the achievement in quantity or quality, or the humiliation inherent in the lower tasks and echelons of an enterprise geared to success, all that should disappear at home, especially in a Christian home, where the agape reigns and not the eros. What we understand by agape you know by now. It is the love that descends from above, that is happy to serve, that is not out for itself, but rejoices in the happiness of the beloved.

[05:38]

Psalm 126 invites us to leave the narrowness, the anxieties of our world of worries, to look through its inevitable frustrations, and to shift the weight from the leg on which we stand to the leg on which we play. That means to pass from our self-made world into the kingdom of the children of God's love. At the root of all our worries is the dim realization of our inadequacies and our refusal to admit them. This inevitably throws us back upon ourselves, and as a result we find ourselves shut up in the four walls of our limitations. The only way into freedom is absolute trust in God's love for us. The psalm expresses this clearly at the end of the second verse.

[06:42]

He pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber. While the captives of the arrows try to deal with their insufficiency by extending the hours of work and shortening their sleep, those who are conscious of their being loved by God accept their limitations, and surrender to sleep. It is precisely through their sleep that their strength is being restored by Jarve. Our returning home at the end of our working day is not complete without this inner relaxing in God's love for us. Psalm 126 speaks of the Jewish home not only as a building but as a living reality. The last three verses of the psalm make this clear.

[07:46]

I am reading them to you. Truly sons are a gift from the Lord, a blessing, the fruit of the womb. Indeed, the sons of youth are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. Oh, the happiness of the man who has filled his quiver with these arrows! He will have no cause for shame when he disputes with his foes in the gateways. As long as we are involved in material tasks, either the building of the house, or the protection of the city, or the daily labor of maintaining our lives, we are apt to consider our efforts as the exclusive source of our success. In a working world, the presence of God is hidden by man's own activity.

[08:48]

If then the first part of the psalm takes the form of a stern admonition, In vain, in vain, in vain, The intention of the psalmist is not to minimize the reality and the value of man's work, but to warn against any attitude of self-sufficiency and self-complacency which is apt to destroy the fear of God or the realization of our constant dependence on Him. As soon as we enter into the world of life, the predominance of man as maker ceases. We feel close to the immediate breathing of God's Spirit. Of all living beings, it is said in Psalm 103, verses 29 and 30, you take back their spirit and they die. You send forth your spirit and they are created. Life is a gift of God's special blessing.

[09:53]

This is the reason why the second half of our Psalm 126, which treats of the living house the family, takes on the form of a blessing. The admonition in the first part of the psalm is intended to liberate us from our anxieties. Now, in the second part, we enter into the joy of new life that flows into the house through God's love. The Hebrew text in verse 3 begins with the word, behold, rather than truly, as in the English version. Behold asks us to open our eyes, to look, to see the love of God which manifests itself so clearly in the children of the family. Sons are Jarve's inheritance. This term expresses that they are the gift of Jarve's love and his pledge of permanency and stability.

[10:58]

The fruit of the womb is Jarvis' reward for the trust given to him by those whom he loves. Sons are like arrows in the quiver because they are the strength of the family and its future. At the gate, that means in the public life of the community, they are the glory of the father. All this constitutes the nature of God's blessing—abundance of life, springing up from the divine source of love, youth, strength, stability, order, security, unity, glory. The entire psalm is an invitation to rise above the worried state of mind which self-centeredness necessarily causes in us. It is an invitation to realize that first of all we are God's beloved children, and as such we should trust in our Heavenly Father's love for us.

[12:05]

This is especially the case with us as Christians, who are through baptism and the Eucharist incorporated into Christ. Therefore, our Lord urges us in a most emphatic way to throw our worries on God. Let us conclude the meditation of this psalm by letting Jesus speak to us. I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow and reap and store in barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. You are worth more than the birds. Is there a man of you who by anxious thought can add a foot to his height? And why be anxious about clothes?

[13:09]

Consider how the lilies grow in the fields. They do not work, they do not spin, and yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his splendor was not attired like one of these. But if that is how God clothes the grass in the fields, which is there today and tomorrow is thrown on the stove, will he not all the more clothe you? how little faith you have. No, do not ask anxiously, What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What shall we wear? All these things for the heathen to run after, not for you, because your Heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your mind on God's kingdom and His justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. So do not be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow will look after itself.

[14:11]

Each day has troubles enough of its own. Man who in the afternoon of his workday finds himself free to return from a cold and alienated world of competitive effort to his home again, to a world filled with sympathy and love, has all reason to sing Psalm 125. When the Lord delivered Zion from bondage it seemed like a dream. Once back at home, it will be good for him to allow himself to be freed further from all anxiety, to see his house and his family as a manifestation of God's love for him, and remember that God gives His gifts to those who are loved by Him in their sleep. That is the lesson of Psalm 126.

[15:12]

And it's easy to see that Psalm 127, the third and last psalm of the afternoon hour, fits right into this context. It leads us into the divine mystery of man's home. It makes us realize that Yahweh, the God of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the God of the home. Now let me first read to you the English translation as we have it in our grail-sorter. O blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in His ways! By the labor of your hands you shall eat. You will be happy and prosper, your wife like a fruitful vine in the heart of your house, your children like shoots of the olive around your table. Indeed, thus shall be blessed the man who fears the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion all the days of your life. May you see your children's children in a happy Jerusalem.

[16:17]

On Yisra'el, peace. If you compare this psalm with Psalm 126, you immediately recognize one basic difference. Psalm 126 started with the triple warning, in vain, in vain, in vain, while the first word of Psalm 127 is blessed, in Hebrew, ashray. The word is repeated in verse 2, where the English translation uses the term happy. You will be happy and prosper. In verse 4 it says again, Indeed, thus shall be blessed. And in verse 5, May the Lord bless you from Zion. In these last two verses, the Hebrew text has the word barak. In verse 4 in the passive, in verse 5 in the active form. Both expressions, ashray and barak, belong to the same general field of blessedness. The first, ashray rather with the connotation of the state of prosperity, of hope, of direction, of progress and development proper to the man who fears God and walks in His ways.

[17:28]

while the second, Barak, evokes the idea of life and material well-being as being given to us in abundance by God's love. The first puts the accent more on the fear of the Lord, which in the Old Testament is not an emotional, pious behavior, but consists in a practical, cheerful obedience to God's commands, as verse 1 of our psalm indicates. The happiness which is meant here has its roots in the labor of obedience, of which the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict speaks. It is not by any means necessarily accompanied by what we call good fortune, success in business, the comforts of life, or any favorable external situation or circumstances. It is independent of all this. It consists in the inner satisfaction and peace. the joy which accompanies the awareness of spiritual progress, of coming closer to God, the realization of the fact that one's life makes sense, that it has meaning by the very fact that it is lived in obedience to God's command.

[18:42]

Verse 2 of our psalm makes this clear, especially when we try to give an exact rendering of the Hebrew text. the labor of your hands, if you enjoy that, then growth and salvation is yours. Something good is yours." The same thought continues in verse 3. Your wife is a fruitful vine in the recesses of your house. Your children like shoots of olive trees around your table. You see, it is yours, yours, yours. Salvation is yours. What is good is yours, your wife, your house, your children, your table. Speaking in modern language, one could say, all alienation is gone where a God-fearing man labors in the blissful spirit of obedience to God's commands, where the goods of this world don't fall into man's lap only by blind chance.

[19:51]

Such a man is ashray, prospering, living in his own, and his own is then filled with the blessings of life and abundance that come from God's hands. The wife is seen in the light of God's love as the fruitful vine, the most noble of all trees, because of its fruit which cheers God and man. The mother is the cheer in the family, and flourishes in the very heart of the home as a hidden source of warmth and loving care. The children are seen in the same light of God's love as cuttings. The Hebrew word does not mean shoots, but carefully planted cuttings. It is the same term as is used in verse 3 of Psalm 1, where we have explained it. The accent here is on the care with which the children grow up as members of the family, in that spirit of loving attention which is most clearly manifested around the family table.

[21:04]

Here I have to call your attention to the fact that the two outstanding symbols of God's blessing in the Old Testament are the vine and the olive tree. When Noah, after the flood, started a new life on the firm basis of obedience to God's command—read Genesis 6.22, 7.5, 7.16, and 8.18—and in this spirit of thanksgiving, building an altar to offer sacrifice to God, he planted a vineyard as a symbol of the new world of God's favor, because wine gladdens the heart of man. If Noah overdid it, it was more likely out of lack of experience than out of bad will. Before, as the waters of the flood were receding, he had sent out the dove, and when she returned he took her in with a gesture of loving care, and then sent her out again, and she returned with an olive twig plucked off.

[22:12]

And that was the sign that the world was consecrated anew to God. The oil is the symbol of the spirit of wisdom that rules the world through God's anointed ones, the kings and the priests, and finally, through the anointed one, the Messiah, Jesus. Compare Gospel of St. Luke 4, 18-25. Verse 4 of our psalms sums up the first part of the psalm. Wherever the fear of the Lord, in the sense in which we have explained it, as in our contentment, as reliance on God and obedience to His Word, takes a hold of man, one can see this blessing. One can point it out. There it is. Look at it. What happiness! What peace! The unmistakable effects of God's blessing. Behold, thus shall be blessed the man who fears the law.

[23:15]

But then in verse 5 we pass from the privacy of the individual and his home into the bigger context of the whole of God's people. The Lord's blessing comes from Zion, it says. The home is not an island, even less a castle fenced in on all sides, separated by walls from the rest of the world. No. It is a cell in the living organism of the chosen people gathered around Mount Zion as the place where Yahweh dwells, not as an object of individual private devotion, but as the center and core of the whole assembly gathered around their divine King in public worship. As the whole people grow out of Jacob's family and always remain the house of Jacob, so the individual family finds its own fullness of blessing and happiness in the peace of Jerusalem. In Psalm 47 it says, Mark well her bulwarks, walk about Zion, go round about her, tell the towers thereof, consider her palaces, that you may tell it to the generation yet to come.

[24:28]

This intimate union between the family home and the house of God centered around Mount Zion is even more intimate in the Body of Christ, the Church of the New Testament, of which we are the members. If our happiness as individuals would be sought through separation from the home, If one generation would turn against the other, if we would all turn against Christ's church, if we would close our eyes to the wonders of her towers and her palaces and her bulwarks, if we would tear them down in blind hatred of the institution, then there would be no peace over Israel. Let us never forget that our God is the God of the home, because the home is the dwelling place of that love which labored on the cross for the building of a home made of living stones, compact together in brotherly love and filled with the Spirit that gathers us around the one table and lets us pray, Our Father.

[25:33]

This love frees us from the vanity of our self-centered efforts. that cut us off from God and from our brothers. Love frees us from the deadening drudgery of racing after meaningless purposes. It gives meaning to whatever we are doing. It is itself the meaning of our lives. It tears down the walls of separation, opens the doors of reconciliation, gives us the assurance of confidence and the joy of vision. from the depressing experience of inanity, love transfers us into the blessedness of God. May we see our children's children in a blessed Jerusalem. On Israel, on the Old as well as the New Testament, peace.

[26:25]

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