(Samech) I have hated the unjust: and I have loved thy law. Thou art my helper and my protector: and in thy word I have greatly hoped. Depart from me, ye malignant: and I will search the commandments of my God. Uphold me according to thy word, and I shall live: and let me not be confounded in my expectation. (Ps. 118: 113-116)
I did not think I would be returning so soon to talk about the benefits that have come my way from embracing the old Office (yesterday), but here I am, because I cannot remain silent about a very important gain or recovery... gain is probably the better word, because I think we are speaking rather optimistically, at least in my case, about spiritual growth.
For all its petitions about confounding the enemy, about banishing evildoers, about vanquishing the foe, the full Psalter us unapologetically reliant upon the Lord of Glory. Prayed within the Church that immediacy to very human feelings and emotions translates eloquently into total reliance upon Christ, Who made us for His own and saved us from sin and everlasting death, by swallowing up death in His Victory upon the Cross.
In terms of the reform of the Office, after Vatican II, PC - political correctness (before it had been so labelled) robbed us of the full Psalter. The lists of inappropriate or forbidden verses were published. I can remember in college, when a very irate spiritual director would stomp out of our "evening curfew" compline on the weekend when a distracted hebdomedary let us read or chant the forbidden psalm with the verse "happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the rock"... Yes, they are hard words and have always been such, never easy in any age. Apart from multiple patristic attempts to explain away the brutality with some allegorical or other interpretation, I always found the immediate bitterness of the words to be much more in touch with life. They also register the helplessness in suffering of a people who should be safe under God's mighty wings.
Why did those vicious unicorns have to disappear? But maybe more to the point, why did we have to stop hurting deep down and profoundly over our oppressors and somehow lose the need of turning them over to the Lord for judgment? Emasculating the Psalter did little more than dumb us down. In a sense, the new Office made us "snow flakes" long before that was a term.
From the silence of the tomb on Holy Saturday there wells up for me a profound yearning not to be spared. As a child, every Lenten Friday, our whole parochial school went over to church to pray the Stations. We sang a popular setting in English of the Stabat Mater. The one verse went: Make me feel as thou has felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ our Lord (Fac ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam).
Maybe what I am living since embracing the old Office would have happened anyway. Would have happened without all the fervent and repeated petitions to vanquish my enemies. That is, maybe my longing would have been no less pronounced, no less acute, for Christ to triumph in judgment in His Glorious Rising from the tomb, where scribes and pharisees had placed a watch, a huge stone and seals.
No! Forget it! It is the full Psalter! It is a Divine Office much more adequate to this priest's needs and heart.
For all its petitions about confounding the enemy, about banishing evildoers, about vanquishing the foe, the full Psalter us unapologetically reliant upon the Lord of Glory. Prayed within the Church that immediacy to very human feelings and emotions translates eloquently into total reliance upon Christ, Who made us for His own and saved us from sin and everlasting death, by swallowing up death in His Victory upon the Cross.
In terms of the reform of the Office, after Vatican II, PC - political correctness (before it had been so labelled) robbed us of the full Psalter. The lists of inappropriate or forbidden verses were published. I can remember in college, when a very irate spiritual director would stomp out of our "evening curfew" compline on the weekend when a distracted hebdomedary let us read or chant the forbidden psalm with the verse "happy the man who shall seize and smash your little ones against the rock"... Yes, they are hard words and have always been such, never easy in any age. Apart from multiple patristic attempts to explain away the brutality with some allegorical or other interpretation, I always found the immediate bitterness of the words to be much more in touch with life. They also register the helplessness in suffering of a people who should be safe under God's mighty wings.
Why did those vicious unicorns have to disappear? But maybe more to the point, why did we have to stop hurting deep down and profoundly over our oppressors and somehow lose the need of turning them over to the Lord for judgment? Emasculating the Psalter did little more than dumb us down. In a sense, the new Office made us "snow flakes" long before that was a term.
From the silence of the tomb on Holy Saturday there wells up for me a profound yearning not to be spared. As a child, every Lenten Friday, our whole parochial school went over to church to pray the Stations. We sang a popular setting in English of the Stabat Mater. The one verse went: Make me feel as thou has felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ our Lord (Fac ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam).
Maybe what I am living since embracing the old Office would have happened anyway. Would have happened without all the fervent and repeated petitions to vanquish my enemies. That is, maybe my longing would have been no less pronounced, no less acute, for Christ to triumph in judgment in His Glorious Rising from the tomb, where scribes and pharisees had placed a watch, a huge stone and seals.
No! Forget it! It is the full Psalter! It is a Divine Office much more adequate to this priest's needs and heart.
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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