Category: Creation

Psalm 113: Over All the Earth

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, ordinary time, Prayer, Psalms7 Comments

Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

October 12, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 113, a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, focusing our praise on the Name of the Lord.

Praise, you servants of the LORD,
praise the name of the LORD.
Blessed be the name of the LORD
both now and forever.

Psalm 113:1-2

A particularly beautiful dynamic emerges in the following verse:

From the rising to the setting of the sun
is the Name of the LORD to be praised.
High above all nations is the LORD;
above the heavens is his glory.

Psalm 113:3-4

Praying this verse, we might picture the sun slowly lighting and darkening the contrapuntal curves of the earth.

Within that inverse yet complementary rhythm, the morning and evening prayers of believers encircle the globe. The whole Church, the Communion of Saints, each takes up its part in the prayerful caress of our world.

As I go to sleep at night, I know someone is waking on the other side of the world with the Holy Name on her lips. When I rise in the morning, I lift that song from the semi-darkness to offer my part to the Great Embrace.

Each morning and evening, I pray for my blog followers, thinking of their moment in this universal prayer. I imagine that prayer dawning near St. Barbara Catholic School in Guam, then drifting westward to Australia, Uzbekistan, Rome, and the little village of Hampstead Norreys, England.

I see it reach the shores of the Americas, deepening as it resounds in various languages through Rio de Janeiro, Haiti, Guyana, and Chulucanas, Peru.

I feel the warm healing of God’s Name prayed over my own country from Silver Spring, MD to McAllen, TX; from Dubuque, IA to Sacramento, then on again over the Pacific.

As each of us joins this global song of praise, let us be aware of the Infinite Power Who holds us all within the Divine Song – beyond time, beyond borders, beyond space, beyond any comprehension but Love.

Praise the Lord,
the Unnamable, the All-Perfect, the Inconceivable, 
who, higher than the highest heavens, 
stoops to the lowest of the low, 
who raises the poor from the dunghill 
and lifts the wretched from the dust, 
who grants them an infinite abundance 
and showers them with all good things.

from A Book of Psalm Selections Adapted from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell

Music:  Praise the Lord, Psalm 113 – Blanca Vega and Roby Duke

Psalm 111: Make It Personal

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms4 Comments

Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

October 9, 2020

2018 Reflection on Readings
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 111, an elegant and simple hymn of praise to God.

Wikipedia says that the psalm praises God for a few specific things:

  • God’s great works v.2
  • God’s enduring Righteousness v.3
  • God’s grace and compassion v.4
  • God’d provision v.5
  • Truth and Justice v.7
  • Redemption for God’s people v.9
  • Granting of wisdom to those who revere God v.10

As I pray this psalm this morning, I will thank and praise God for these things. But I also want to be more personal in my gratitude, to thank God for the elegant Divine Presence in my life and in our world.

  • How blessed are we even to have been born, let alone loved, sanctified, and redeemed by God!
  • How blessed are we to know God and to seek the depths of God in our lives!
  • How blessed are we to share our moment in time with other beloveds of God who enrich and challenge us!
  • How blessed are we to be enlivened with the exquisite grace of God’s own life, and to know that our eternity will be the fulfillment of that grace!

Poem: Grace by Wendell Berry

Music: Arioso, Cantata 156 – Johann Sebastian Bach played by Susanne Beer

Psalm 139: Life Knitter

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Faith, justice, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms1 Comment

Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

October 6, 2020

2018 Reflection on Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 139 with its powerful image of God, the Life Knitter.

This psalm is hauntingly beautiful as it carries us in prayer to the moment of our own incarnation. We are awed by the thought of God touching us into life deep in the darkness of our mother’s womb.

Paul, in our first reading, says that even from that first moment, he was “set apart and called through grace.”

Every one of us receives the same divine mark as Paul. Every one of our lives is known full well in God’s love:

My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.

Praying with this psalm, I am profoundly aware of the “life issues” at the root of U.S. culture and politics which face us in this election. I place myself before my Creator as I grapple with my abhorrence of abortion and my deep commitment to a “whole life” morality.

The document I share below has guided me as I try to faithfully discern the best moral choice in voting. As the document points out, “Faith does not fit into political parties neatly”. Indeed there is currently no party platform that fully and perfectly responds to the moral demands of our faith. Yet that faith requires that we participate in the political process of moving toward such a response.

Faithful voters are presented with a dilemma in the fullest sense of that word, that is, ” a circumstance in which a choice must be made between two or more alternatives that seem equally undesirable.”

Still, it is not enough to abandon our discernment to a single-issue mentality.

Besides considering the whole range of life and justice concerns, we must calculate the moral character of those we choose to govern and set national policy:

  • their honesty, compassion, decency, respect, toward all people; 
  • their capacity for mutuality, dialogue, and peace-building; 
  • their “economics morality”, (i.e. who shares in the basic rights necessary for a decent life)
  • their vision of democracy, human rights, and international power
  • their compatibility with the total legacy of Catholic social teaching

As we pray with Psalm 139 today, let us bring our concerns and hopes to God and ask for inspiration and courage.

Click below for the voting discernment document Equally Sacred Priorities

Click here for document

Poem: Invocation by Everett Hoagland

(Originality from Philadelphia, PA, Hoagland was Poet Laureate of New Bedford, MA 1994-1998. He is Professor Emeritus at UMass Dartmouth.)

Architect of icebergs, snowflakes,
crystals, rainbows, sand grains, dust motes, atoms.

Mason whose tools are glaciers, rain, rivers, ocean.

Chemist who made blood
of seawater, bone of minerals in stone, milk

of love. Whatever

You are, I know this,
Spinner, You are everywhere, in All The Ever-
Changing Above, whirling around us.

Yes, in the loose strands,
in the rough weave of the common

cloth threaded with our DNA on hubbed, spoked
Spinning Wheel that is this world, solar system, galaxy,

universe.

Help us to see ourselves in all creation,
and all creation in ourselves, ourselves in one another.

Remind those of us who like connections
made with similes, metaphors, symbols
all of us are, everything is
already connected.

Remind us as oceans go, so go we. As the air goes, so go we.
As other life forms on Earth go, so go we.

As our planet goes, so go we. Great Poet,
who inspired In The Beginning was The Word . . . ,

edit our thought so our ethics are our politics,
and our actions the afterlives of our words.”

Music: I Cannot Hide from You

Fratelli Tutti

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Creation, Discipleship, Faith2 Comments

Celebrating the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
October 4-5, 2020

This year, in normal liturgical custom, our Sunday celebration supersedes the Feastday of Francis. But I can’t let this special day go by without notice. Therefore, I am publishing tomorrow’s reflection early, hoping that you will read some of it today. I write with warmest greeting to all Franciscans, especially my dear Sisters in Aston. PA. (The Franciscan Spiritual Center has designed some wonderful programs and made them accessible even during the pandemic. Here is a link to explore their wonderful offerings.)

https://fscaston.org/events-retreats/
St. Francis Preaches to the Birds – Giotto

For reflection, I plan to spend this evening and tomorrow morning with Pope Francis’s new encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers and Sisters All), issued on this feast. St. Francis inspired the world with a renewed Gospel vision. Our Holy Father seeks to do the same with this ground-breaking teaching.

These will be the first of many prayerful days with this powerful document which Michael Sean Winters, in the National Catholic Reporter, describes:

What is clear is that Pope Francis has given the church a testament of authentic solidarity at a time when our president — and his nationalistic allies abroad — offers a counterfeit of solidarity. Both varieties of solidarity are responses to the excesses and the poverties created by neo-liberalism. Yes, poverties, it is clear, … that the material wealth neoliberal economies generate is precisely coincident with the generation of spiritual and moral poverty. The whole world groans to move beyond the moral slovenliness of laissez-faire ideas. But only the pope’s version represents an authentically Christian version of solidarity and, I would add, an authentically human version. This text challenges Christians in unique ways, but it challenges all….
…. If this pandemic does not shake us out of our post-modern cultural and moral and spiritual lethargy, what will? Pope Francis is throwing the Catholic Church and the whole world a lifeline. Will we grab it?

If you would like to pray with this profound and challenging instruction from Pope Francis, here is a link to it.

Click here for Fratelli Tutti on the Vatican website

A second opportunity for prayer over today and tomorrow comes from our Mercy Sister Eileen Dooling. On our Sisters of Mercy blog, Eileen offers a lovely reflection on the Franciscan-Mercy connection. I’m sure you will enjoy it.

http://www.sistersofmercy.org/blog/2020/10/02/francis-assisi-beyond-birdbath/

As you can see, there are so many ways to reflect, pray and grow on this beautiful feast. May your prayer be blessed by Francis (both of them) and by this amazing music!

Music: St. Francis Preaching to the Birds by Franz Liszt, played by Kotaro Fukuma 

Psalm 37: Divine Delight

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Friday, Sept 4, 2020

Click here for today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 37, a psalm which Walter Brueggemann says describes “a world that works!”

Jalopy with headache 🙂

Living in a world that sometimes feels like a crumbling old jalopy, “a world that works” sounds very inviting. So how does the psalmist imagine such a world’s genesis?

Trust in the LORD and do good,
that you may dwell in the land and be fed in security.
Take delight in the LORD,
you will be granted your heart’s requests.

When we hear a consoling verse like this, we might be tempted to picture a magical world where whatever we desire is granted to us – you know, sort of like the genie in the lamp! We’re good people – we deserve that, don’t we???

Rather, what we have been given, undeserved, is the eternal assurance that God is with us, and that as we open ourselves to God’s gracious Presence, our hearts will be transformed.

For ancient Israel, that heart-opening was accomplished by making just choices, remaining faithful in difficulty, and building a community of mutual care.

Turn from evil and do good,
that you may abide forever;
For the LORD loves what is right,
and forsakes not his faithful ones.
Criminals are destroyed 
and the posterity of the wicked is cut off.

So, in the end, it is surely not that our “every wish” is granted. It is, instead, that we become so aligned with God’s hope for all Creation that it becomes our greatest desire and delight. We trust and live within God’s loving and Omnipotent Will for our good.

The salvation of the just is from the LORD;
God is their refuge in time of distress.
And the LORD helps them and delivers them;
delivering them from the wicked and saving them,
because they take refuge in God.

Poetry: Primary Wonder – Denise Levertov
( I am repeating this poem and, oh my, it is so worthy of the repetition!)

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
                                                        And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

Music: I Delight in You, Lord – David Baroni

Psalm 33: Fashioned by God

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Hope, joy, Love, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, Thanksgiving5 Comments

Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Click here for 2018 Reflection
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray again with Psalm 33, this time with one different verse from a few days ago:

From heaven’s fixed throne God beholds
all who dwell on the earth,
God Who fashions each heart
and knows all its works.

Think of that: God fashions each heart.

The phrase has special meaning for me today because, yesterday, we welcomed a precious new baby girl into our family.

I look at her newborn innocence and realize that she is the freshest, most hopeful breath of God, still so wrapped in the heavenly air from Whom we all receive life.

We all received that Breath once and it lives eternally within us. Every one of us has received a heart fashioned in God’s own image.

Sometimes that reality is hard to believe about ourselves and others, as it seems to have been for the Corinthians in today’s first reading. Sometimes we make a real mess of the gift we have been given!

Nevertheless, the gift is true and remains true despite our worst efforts!😉

Reflecting on today’s Gospel, there may be “various diseases” and dysfunctions that we wish to bring to the healing hands of Jesus today – for ourselves and for our world. We ask God to restore our innocence and hope throughout our lives and world.

In order to remember and live within the sacred truth that God breathed us into being, we might repeat today’s psalm refrain throughout our day:

Blessed are we, chosen to be God’s own.

Poetry: Two poems today to bless our dear new child Claire:

Songs of Innocence - William Blake
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee; 
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name, 
For He calls Himself a Lamb 
He is meek, and He is mild, 
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb, 
We are called by His name. 
Little Lamb, God bless thee! 
Little Lamb, God bless thee!


Christina Rossetti - Holy Innocents
Sleep, little baby, sleep;
The holy Angels love thee,
And guard thy bed, and keep
A blessed watch above thee.
No spirit can come near
Nor evil beast to harm thee:
Sleep, sweet, devoid of fear
Where nothing need alarm thee.
The love which doth not sleep,
The eternal Arms around thee:
The shepherd of the sheep
In perfect love hath found thee.
Sleep through the holy night,
Christ-kept from snare and sorrow,
Until thou wake to light
And love and warmth to-morrow.

Music: Innocence – Roberto Cacciapaglia

Psalm 145: Mercy Makes Us Sing

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Faith, Hope, Jesus, Mercy, ordinary time, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 1, 2020

2018 reflection on Corinthians 

2018 Reflection on First Reading
Today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 145, a consoling hymn of confidence in God’s Mercy.

And, my dears, all I really want to say to you is, “September 1st! God bless us! We have made it this far in these times (as one gifted friend calls them, “these quantum weird times”.)

And, certainly, we pray in profound companionship with all those who suffer because of this pandemic. But at the same time we are so grateful for all who have, so far, been delivered from its grasp!

So hooray for us, and hooray for God! Let’s pick up our hope, energy and faith by drinking in the beauty of Psalm 145. Together, in faith, we CAN make it to a vaccine time- a time to forget,  AND to remember all that might transform and bless us from these days…

… because God is MERCY,
and there is some gift for all of us
even in shadow

The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.

Jesus meets the demon in today’s Gospel, a demon who is no match for Uncreated Grace. By the power of our Baptism, let us draw that Grace into our spirits, into our world today as we pray. 

And let us be at once both astonished and confident in the power of God’s Word to heal even the immense darkness of our world.

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.
He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.

Poetry: The Fountain – Denise Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

A Second Poem for the month’s beginning: September by Deborah Landau
Some of us might also find ourselves somewhere  in this wistful poem. I just like it. Thought some of you might too. 🤗

Dazzling emptiness of the black green end of summer no one
running in the yard pulse pulse the absence.

Leave them not to the empty yards.

They resembled a family. Long quiet hours. Sometimes
one was angry sometimes someone called her "wife"
someone's hair receding.

An uptick in the hormone canopy embodied a restlessness
and oh what to do with it.

(How she arrived in a hush in a looking away and not looking.)
It had been some time since richness intangible
and then they made a whole coat of it.

Meanwhile August moved toward its impervious finale.

A mood by the river. Gone. One lucid rush carrying them along.

Borderless and open the days go on—

Music: I Will Praise Your Name – Marty Hagen and David Haas

Antiphon: | will praise your name, my King and my God.
1. I will give you glory, my God and King, and I will bless your name forever.
Every day I will bless and praise your name forever.
2. The Lord is full of grace and mercy. He is kind and slow to anger.
He is good in all His works and full of compassion.
3. Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord, and let all the faithful bless you.
Let them speak of your might, O Lord, the glory of your kingdom.
4. The Lord is faithful in all His words, and always near. His name is holy.He lifts up all those who fall. He raises up the lowly.

Psalm 119: Divine Thread

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms2 Comments

Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

August 31, 2020

2018 Reflection on Today’s Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 119, a song of the wisdom that comes from holiness.

Your command has made me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers
when your decrees are my meditation.
I have more discernment than the elders,
because I observe your precepts.

Psalm 119: 97-98

And we’ve all met them, haven’t we – those grounded, simple, wise and joyful people whose spirits are tied to that Sacred Thread running through all Creation. These blessed souls may be young or old, schooled or not. No matter – they shine with the reflection of Wisdom Itself.

Paul humbly claims such wisdom in our first reading. It is not a worldly persuasiveness, but rather a demonstration of truth and power grounded in the Spirit.

… my message and my proclamation
were not with persuasive words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of spirit and power,
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom
but on the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2: 4-5

In our Gospel, Jesus chooses his hometown synagogue to announce that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the Spirit and Wisdom of God:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Luke 4: 18-19 (Isaiah 61: 1-2)

Jesus is the Incarnation of Wisdom, the Divine Spirit that surpasses all human understanding.

Many turned away from Jesus at this proclamation. May we never be among them.

From every evil way I withhold my feet,
that I may keep your words.
From your ordinances I turn not away,
for you have instructed me.

Psalm 119: 101-102

Poetry: Wisdom by Rumi

I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. 
Let it dissolve in Your ocean.

Music: Be Thou My Vision – Eden’s Bridge ( On the video, you can drop the menu you down using the little arrowhead on the right under the picture. The Irish and English lyrics will then be displayed.)

Psalm 128: Blessing

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, joy, Poetry, PsalmsLeave a comment

Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

August 26, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 128 which describes what it means to be blessed by God. The psalm has only six verses, and when we read the whole thing, we get a picture of a man with a happy home, he and his family peacefully enjoying the labor of his hands.

The psalmist’s vision is very simple, and it is through that simplicity that blessing comes.

When our lives, our needs, our desires become too complex or cluttered, it is hard for blessing to reach us. We lose our capacity to experience the simple treasures of our lives when we become dulled by excess or the desire for it.

Psalm 128 offers some greats clues on how to deepen our gift of simplicity:

  • Take time to let yourself be awed by God – in nature, in good people, in the wonders of your own life.
  • Imitate that beauty and reverence in your actions.

Blessed are all who fear (are awed) the LORD,
and who walk in God’s ways.

  • Work to build up the gifts of Creation.
  • Let your own labors magnify God’s generosity to all of us

What your hands provide you will enjoy;
you will be blessed and prosper

  • Seek a community who sustain your life, (for some a traditional family, for others a different pattern)
  • Reverence and appreciate them, and encourage new life for that community.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your home,
Your children like young olive plants
around your table.

Our consumeristic, power-hungry, and materialistic culture can confuse us about what is truly precious – what is truly BLESSING. Psalm 128 is reminding us of the TRUTH. Let’s listen.

In many homes and communities, members bless each other as they retire in the evening. I love to think of “Good night, God bless you” wrapping around the earth as it turns toward the western stars. 

Tonight, as we offer that accustomed benediction, let’s be very conscious of the the graceful simplicity we wish for our beloveds. And let us stretch to wish that blessing out over the whole world as we ourselves hope for peaceful rest.

Poetry: blessings the boats by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary’s)


may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back        may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Music: Sabbath Prayer from Fiddler on the Roof

May the Lord protect and defend you.
May He always shield you from shame.
May you come to be
In Israel a shining name.
May you be like Ruth and like Esther.
May you be deserving of praise.
Strengthen them, Oh Lord,
And keep them from the strangers’ ways.
May God bless you and grant you long lives.
(May the Lord fulfill our Sabbath prayer for you.)
May God make you good mothers and wives.
(May He send you husbands who will care for you.)
May the Lord protect and defend you.
May the Lord preserve you from pain.
Favor them, Oh Lord, with happiness and peace.
Oh, hear our Sabbath prayer.

Psalm 96: Singing in the Rain

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Faith, Prayer, Psalms, suffering1 Comment

 Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

August 25, 2020

2018 Reflection on Gospel
Today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 96 which calls the people to praise God in music and dance because they have been chosen and confirmed as God’s People. 

The psalm may have been composed by David to mark the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. At that time, Israel had a sense of great victory, restoration, and security as David assumed kingship at God’s command.

But today’s particular verses have an eschatological tone. They turn the attention of the praise singer to the overarching fact that God is infinitely larger than any present small victory. They imply that the only true victory and restoration are found in complete abandonment to God’s power in our lives no matter our situation.

Say among the nations: The Lord is king.
God has made the world firm, not to be moved;
God governs the peoples with equity.

That Divine Power is easy enough to sing about when things go well for us, as they were for Israel at that time. But can we still praise God’s dominion and power when things seem bleak, when we don’t feel in control of our reality?

Psalm 96 invites us to that deep abandonment of self into God’s unfailing Mercy, no matter our life’s weather.

Declare among the nations: The LORD is king.
The world will surely stand fast, never to be shaken.
God rules the peoples with fairness.

When we struggle to find that kind of holy equanimity, Psalm 96 suggests we look to nature, and to its persistent return to Divine Balance, even after upheaval. So too will any unbalance in us be restored within the infinite arc of God’s abiding love. And that is the real reason to always sing God’s praise!

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.

Before the Lord Who comes;
Who comes to rule the earth.
God shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with constancy.

Poetry: To Him Who Is Feared by Eleazar Ben Kalir
Translated by Lady Katie Magnus
from the Liturgy for Rosh Hashana

To Him who is feared a Crown will I bring.
Thrice Holy each day acclaim Him my King;
At altars, ye mighty, proclaim loud His praise,
And multitudes too may whisper His lays.
Ye angels, ye men, whose good deeds He records—
Sing, He is One, His is good, our yoke is the Lord’s!
Praise Him trembling to-day, His mercy is wide—
Ye who fear for His wrath—it doth not abide!
Ye seraphim, high above storm clouds may sing;
Men and angels make music, th’ All-seeing is king. 
As ye open your lips, at His Name they shall cease—
Transgression and sin—in their place shall be peace;
And thrice shall the Shophar re-echo your song
On mountain and altar to whom both belong. 

Music: O Sing Unto the Lord – Handel