Dear friends, the life of man has always been deeply influenced by the rhythm of the hours of the day, of the month, and of the seasons. They reflect and affect, first of all, the basic theme of man's life, the constant succession of dying and rising. The setting of the sun and our retiring at night are an anticipation of death. The dawn and the sunrise work in us a resurrection. In this context, we have explained Psalm 3 as a prayer at our daily rising from sleep, and the Psalms 490 and 133 as prayers accompanying our going to sleep, as compliment prayers. Now between morning and evening the day itself unfolds, not as a monotonous uniform block of time, but as a living thing with a rhythm of its own.

[01:09]

The various phases may not be felt as distinctly as morning and evening, and yet they are there, even amidst all the activity of a modern day. At noontime, work is interrupted everywhere for the lunch hour. In the morning, work begins usually between eight and nine, especially intellectual activities as teaching, research, and the work at the courts or in the offices of lawyers or administrators. Work comes to an end in the afternoon between four and five, at least in the cities. So we have three hours which mark the rhythm of the day—morning, noon, and afternoon. In the context of the Divine Office, at least as outlined in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, they are terce—third hour—sext—sixth hour—and no—the ninth hour—the afternoon.

[02:16]

According to the old Roman usage of counting the hours, Because these hours are definitely of lesser importance than the night office, the vigils, or the laws and vespers in the morning and the evening, we speak of them as the little hours. It is evident that the attention of the mind during the day is primarily directed to work. Night is coming when no man can work. —John 9, verse 5 For this reason the little day hours are only short stops. They remind us of two things. First is the fact that our daily work takes place under the auspices of wisdom.

[03:20]

the wisdom of God, of His plan of salvation for all men, that reaches from the beginning to end with strength and with gentleness, together in cooperation with the wisdom of man, the human common-sense rules. which have crystallized through all the ages and all over the world in short sentences or maxims. It is for this reason that in the tradition of the Roman Church, Psalm 118, a wisdom psalm, a mosaic of sentences on the general theme, Happy are those who walk before God in holiness, has been used all through the week for the little hours. The second intention of the day hours is to remind us of the fact that our life here on earth is a pilgrimage, and a pilgrimage which is essentially an ascent upon the mountain of God's presence.

[04:32]

Then there is still, in the background of the New Testament thinking, in the life of Christ, the Son of Man, the day. his hour, which is one ascent to Mount Golgotha, the Skull Hill, where he is crucified. And the three hours of terse, sext, and none mark the various phases of the ascent or the way of the cross. For this reason, at least the monastic offices in Benedict has outlined it, has chosen Psalm 118, the Wisdom Psalm, for the little hours on Sundays and Mondays. And for the little hours from Sunday to Saturday, he has chosen a group of fifteen psalms, which in the Psalter are collected under the title of Psalms of Ascent, or Gradual Psalms.

[05:41]

The Hebrew term is shir hamala'ot, songs of ascents. They are said to have accompanied the ascent of groups of pilgrims to Mount Zion on the three national feasts of the Pasch, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles. In Genesis 35, the word alach, to ascend, is used for the first time for Jacob's pilgrimage from Sikkim to Bethel, which is the prototype of all pilgrimages in the Old Testament. And Bethel was 900 feet higher than Sikkim. And Jerusalem, which later took the place of Bethel, also is situated on the height of Mount Sinai, the highest elevation in the country of Judah. The idea of the ascent was therefore essential to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem because it symbolizes the essential spirit of the worship of Yahweh, I mean the spirit of the resurrection.

[06:54]

The everyday life of man is lived in the lowlands of toil, of exile, of dispersion, of earthly things, of sadness, disappointment, of pressures of all kinds, of poverty, sickness, death. So many things happen in the daily life which are apt to depress us. It is on this level that the first of the Ascension songs begins, Psalm 119, with a lamentation. I read to you, To Jave, in the hour of my distress, I call, and he answers me. Our text uses here the present time, translating the Hebrew perfect More recent commentators recommend keeping the past tense, which makes good sense. The way in which we rise out of distress is to remember that Yahweh has heard us in our distress and that He has answered our cry.

[08:10]

And this remembrance of the past is the mother of our hope for the future. This is contained in the very name Jahweh, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the fathers. but ever living, committed to fulfill the promises which he has given to the fathers concerning the glorious future of all their sons, the chosen people, and eventually all mankind. Javi is the faithful God, the God of the covenant, his law, in Hebrew, chesed. lasts forever. The demands and dangers of the present are apt to make us forget the gifts God has bestowed upon in the past. He has come to our assistance, and by remembering His past goodness, we make it present at the moment of our distress.

[09:18]

In turning to Yahweh, we arise beyond the moment into the continuity of past, present, and future, which is contained in divine name, who was, who is, and who ever shall be. To live too much in the moment, as we are inclined to do, neglecting the memories of the past, is apt to make us impatient, isolates us, throws us into sadness and hopelessness. As Christians, we live through the sacramental remembrance of Christ's past saving deeds for us, His death on the cross and His resurrection. The sacraments are the memory of the Church, not an empty wandering back in our mind to things that happened in some insignificant corner of the earth. but a making present again for us here and now what Christ has done for us once and forever, as it is expressed in the letter to the Hebrews.

[10:30]

The reality of this presence is most evident to the faithful at the mere in which the Eucharistic celebration of Christ's death and resurrection culminates. We eat Christ's body and we drink His blood and are so incorporated into Him who was, is, and ever shall be. The decisive thing for us is then not to forget. If in any situation of distress we look only into the future, we cannot help getting anxious and losing hope. We have to look back and remember that Christ has loved us and has given his life for us when we were still his enemies. This agape of Christ, as it is called, is for us and for the whole Church the rock of the ages. The Israelites had to remember Jarvis' promises to confirm them in their hopes in time of distress.

[11:39]

We Christians remember what Christ has done for us, that He has offered the sacrifice of reconciliation to the Father for us, that our sins have been covered, that in baptism this reconciliation has established our peace with God, and that salvation to us is not a matter of waiting and expectation but of the present. This kind of new memory gives us joy in the presence of salvation in the Emmanuel, the God with us, and the sure hope that the day will come when it becomes manifest, what we are right now, as St. John's first epistle expresses it. Remembering past answers to our prayers, the psalm now continues, and with it we pray with great assurance.

[12:48]

I read verse two, Jarve, save my soul from lying lips, from the tongue of the deceitful. This petition reveals the actual situation of the psalmist. He is forced to move in a world of deceit. His social environment is bare of truth. The root of the evil is characterized in one word, lie, and the fruit of the lie is war. There is probably no age in history in which this evil of organized lying is more evident, more disastrous, than in this age of mass communication. The more the individual person moves out of the range of corporate trust and acceptance into that of subjective criticism and freedom of judgment, the more necessary it becomes for the powers-to-be to maintain their position through manipulation of public opinion

[13:50]

by an organized apparatus of centrally directed news agencies in the political sphere, and through the massive use of slogans introducing and directing tastes and needs of the consumer masses in the commercial sphere. The information that reaches the public is carefully screened, we know this. A great deal of anonymity hides the interests of social and economic groups. National and social hate is deliberately being cultivated by misinformation that distorts the public image of individuals, political leaders, national groups, and entire races. On this background of our time, we understand, when the psalmist continues his prayer, saying—I read verses three and four—What shall he pay you in return, O treacherous stone?

[15:01]

The vale warrior's arrows sharpened, And coal's red-hot blazing. The social lie, in fact every lie and deceit, destroys human togetherness. It destroys faith in one another. The sense of loyalty and reliability disappears. Its root is hatred. The fruit of lie is war. The word of the group of Proverbs describes it well. As a madman who casts firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceives his neighbor. As coals are to burn in coals and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. The words of a tale-bearer are as wounds, and they go down to the innermost parts of the belly. A lying tongue hates those that are afflicted by it.

[16:06]

You may compare Proverbs 26, 18, and the following verses. And the psalm then continues, Alas, that I abide a stranger in Meshech, dwell among the tents of Kedar. He takes a great deal of effort to interpret this verse as expressing a nostalgic longing to dwell in the peaceful surroundings of harmless, free, simple, genuine Bedouins, as Samson Raphael Hirsch tries to do in his commentary. Meshach and Kedah are so far off geographically that the whole sentence has to be taken as a figure of speech. You may compare Genesis chapter 2, verse 2, 10, verse 2, and Genesis chapter 25, verse 13. In German, one would say, to live among heathen and Turks.

[17:09]

Or in my hometown in Hanover, one would say, go to Buxtehude, for go to hell. Buxtehude was considered, far in the north, the epitome of exile. Evidently, Meshach and Kedah stand for utter strangeness in hostile surroundings with all the misery that results from such a situation. The psalm continues, verse 6 and 7, Long enough have I been dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak they are for fighting. I am for peace, but when I speak they are for fighting. We probably would say, I am sick and tired of living with people who hate peace. Those who hate the truth must also hate peace, because only truth makes unity among people possible.

[18:13]

Truth is the result of man's effort to adapt his thinking and his actions to reality and to the obligations that this reality imposes upon man. Only so long as people respect reality, Are they able to find a common ground upon which to build their life in freedom? The lie does violence to reality. It is man's attempt to distort reality according to his own wishes. And this can lead to escape from reality or to violence and tyranny. The attempt to impose one's own reason, the fictions of one's own mind upon others. Only the cognition of truth is able to liberate man and to make free cooperation possible." Now this is what you hear is the bill for and I have to stop for a moment. This is the very essence of peace.

[19:20]

In this way, the one who hates the lie can say of himself, I am peace. Only truth is. Jave, the one who is, is the true God, and that means He is the truth. He is the reality. He is the peace. The Word of Christ, my peace I give unto you, cannot mean I want to share with you my own peace of mind, which I happen to have at this moment. Christ has the right to give his peace to others because he can say, I am the truth. And this is, in fact, the note on which Psalm 119 ends.

[20:27]

The Hebrew original says, I am peace, or simply, I peace. and also when I speak they are for war. I am peace and they want war. Mystery of iniquity. Christ had to live through this drama of a hatred which seems to be without any reason, as essentially lying, as Christ is essentially peace. My dear friends, in the Gospel of St. John, the eighth chapter, when you read it, our Lord reveals this mystery of iniquity, the theme of Psalm 119, and He reveals it in all its depth.

[21:31]

Then He says to them, to the Pharisees, You seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my father, and you do that which you have seen with your father. If God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God. Why do you not understand my speech? because you cannot hear my words. You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and a boat not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

[22:40]

And because I tell you the truth, you believe me not. This mystery of iniquity we shall encounter again and again, all through history, the tender generation of our days not excluded. Even the most pure, disinterested man of peace will encounter those who are for war. And war in this context does not only mean armed war, atom bombs, nuclear war, but lie, deceit, thought-control. To be peace, on the other hand, is not identical with being a pacifist. It means to be at one with oneself, excluding all duplicity, to accept oneself. This does not mean to be satisfied with oneself, to accept oneself as God's love accepts me. to accept oneself because one realizes that one is being loved completely by Christ, who laid down His life for us, although He had legions of angels at His disposal to fight for Him if He wanted it.

[23:54]

Only in the Father's forgiving love can one be one with oneself and avoid frustration and inferiority complexes. To be peace further means to think peacefully, not to harbour jealousy, envy, discontent, rash judgments in one's heart. It means to speak peacefully. Explosions of anger may be unavoidable, considering our quick temper, but they should be considered as what they are, as weaknesses and not as glories. It means to act peacefully. This is an art which has to be learned and can be learned, not through some good resolutions only, but through daily training. Relaxing the body and the soul systematically every day and frequently in the course of the day are part of this training. This is not the place here to explain this in detail, but one can easily see that it makes sense to pray the Psalm 119 at terse, before the workday hustle and bustle begins, and throws us inevitably into the whirl of a world where there are many people who are for war, especially if they meet a man who strives to be peace.

[25:20]

St. Paul had experienced this conflict amply in his own life, and he outlines an entire life program for a man who, in and through Christ, longs to be a man of peace, and he puts it as if he had just meditated on Psalm 119. Please read Colossians 3, 8-17. Now who would be so blind as not to see that it is in this direction of peace, that our future lies, and that the new generation's deepest longings goes in this direction. But the important thing is that by allowing Psalm 119 to penetrate into your mind and your heart, you begin today to build this new world of peace in Christ.

[26:13]

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