Tag: Psalm 24

Becoming Saints

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Poetry, Psalms, spirituality2 Comments

Monday, November 1, 2021
Feast of All Saints

Synaxis of All Saints – Anonymous Russian icon
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 24, an exultant song of praise and celebration whose opening lines leave no doubt of God’s overarching Supremacy

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, 
the world and all who dwell therein.
For it is God who founded it upon the seas
and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

Psalm 24: 1-2

The psalmist then asks and answers the burning question of all spiritual seekers: who may come into the presence of this Omnipotent Being? Who may live in Eternal Love?

Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord,
and who can stand in the holy place of God?
Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, 
who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, 
nor sworn by what is a fraud.
They shall receive a blessing from the Lord
and a just reward from the God of their salvation.

Psalm 24: 3-5

It is these successful seekers whom we celebrate today,
the ones already embraced in everlasting glory.

As we consider their lives, we might ask the further question: how did they do it; how did they achieve holiness.

John, in our second reading, says the key to holiness is to honor the gift already given to each of us at our creation and confirmed in our Baptism:

Beloved:
See what love God has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.
The reason the world does not know us
is that it did not know God.
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like God
for we shall see God as God truly is.
Everyone who shares this hope seeks a heart purified in God.

We honor all the Saints today, especially the multitudes whose names are unknown to us. They are the ones who lived lives of Beatitude among us, as our Gospel teaches. May they help us to learn the lessons of:

  • a liberated spirit
  • an unpretentious persistance
  • a hopeful endurance
  • a thirst for righteousness
  • a merciful and pure heart
  • a gentle peace-making
  • and a courageous pursuit of justice

These are the keys that will lift up the gates of Heaven for us, allowing the Holy One to make us holy:

Lift up your heads, O gates;
lift them high, O everlasting doors;
and the One who reigns in glory shall come in.

Psalm 24:7

Poetry: In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being – Denise Levertov 

Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight. We cower
in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest. The wind
marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.

Music: two songs for the big feast🤗

Psalm 24: Lift up your heads, ye gates – Georg Friedrich Handel
Sung by the Gramophone Chorus – Ghana

Give Us Clean Hands – Charlie Hall

Psalm 24: The Gates Are Lifted

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Hope, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

February 2, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray once more with Psalm 24, still knocking on God’s door. As it is the Feast of the Presentation, we might picture Anna and Simeon murmuring this psalm as they await the appearance of their Savior.

Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
    reach up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may come in!

Psalm 24: 7

Anna and Simeon longed for the promised Redemption. They hoped and believed that Creation would be restored by the Messiah. They waited faithfully in the dark for the Light to come. And on that wondrous morning, sparks flew through the Temple door wrapped in a baby blanket!

In pre-Vatican II days, we nuns had sparse communication with our families. Throughout my over 1000 days of initial formation, I spoke with my mother fewer than 30 times. I stood it well because I was all wrapped up in my new life. But Mom languished. She pined for me and for our little daily chats.

So when the post-Vatican II era hit, Mom got on that phone. She called me every night just about seven o’clock – a brief, but treasured, check-in. Mom likened our phone calls to Stevie Wonder’s popular song at that time. Every now and again, even though it has been over thirty years, I still long for that ring.

For Mom and me, the gates had been unlocked, the lintels lifted up. The ancient portals had opened at the touch of John XXIII and his like-minded buddies. A mother-child light flowed back into us. We were both renewed by the reconnection.

On the Feast of the Presentation, we pray with Anna and Simeon, two so deeply practiced in prayer. As the child Jesus was carried into the Temple that morning, the plea of Psalm 24 was answered before their eyes. In our prayer today, let us joyfully welcome God into our hearts. Let us talk and walk with God as easily as we might with a beloved parent or a dearest friend on any given evening.

Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
    reach up, you ancient portals,
    that the God of glory may come in!

Poem: You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night — Rainer Maria Rilke

You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.

Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.

The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.

And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.

Music: He Walks with Me – Anne Murray

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The son of God discloses

And he walks with me and he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known

He speaks and the sound of his voice
Is so sweet, the birds hush their singing
And the melody that he gave to me
Within my heart is ringing

And he walks with me and he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known

Psalm 24: Your Face

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms3 Comments

Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Grant me, O Lord my God,
a mind to know you,
a heart to seek you,
wisdom to find you,
conduct pleasing to you,
faithful perseverance in waiting for you,
and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.
– St. Thomas Aquinas

January 28, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 24 which expresses our longing to be in God’s Presence.

Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

Psalm 24:6

Of course, we know that we are always in God’s Presence. What the prayer really asks for is to recognize that we are in God’s Presence and to feel that accompanying comfort.

Psalm 24 may have been written by David after he acquired the Temple Mount, intending for it to be sung at the dedication of the Temple by his son, Solomon. In verses 7 and 9, David instructs the gates of the Temple to open to receive God’s glory at that time. 

The complete psalm is divided into three parts which:

  1. acknowledge God as Supreme Creator and Lord of All

The earth is the LORD’s and all it holds

2. describe who may come into God’s Presence

Who may go up the mountain of the LORD?
Who can stand in his holy place?
The clean of hand and pure of heart,
who has not given his soul to useless things,
what is vain.

3. implore admission into that Presence

Lift up your heads, O gates;
be lifted, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may enter.

Psalm 24 presents a great pattern for our own prayer:

  • say “Hello” to God in greetings of praise and gratitude
  • talk to God about the disposition of our souls, asking to be transparent before God
  • express our deep desire to be always aware of and attuned to God’s Presence in our lives

With Psalm 24, we are asking God to bring us, every moment, into the joy of the Divine Presence. We are asking to be admitted to God’s “party of unending grace”. As I prayed the psalm, I couldn’t help hearing today’s song in my mind. I think it was received by God as a playful prayer to deepen our friendship, love, and joy.😉 (I think God likes to play sometimes too.)

Poetry: Letter to Lewis Smedes about God’s Presence – Rod Jellema

Dear Lew,
I have to look in cracks and crevices.
Don't tell me how God's mercy
is as wide as the ocean, as deep as the sea.
I already believe it, but that infinite prospect
gets farther away the more we mouth it.
I thank you for lamenting His absences —
from marriages going mad, from the deaths
of your son and mine, from the inescapable
terrors of history: Treblinka. Viet Nam.
September Eleven. It's hard to celebrate
His invisible Presence in the sacrament
while seeing His visible absence from the world.
This must be why mystics and poets record
the slender incursions of splintered light,
echoes, fragments, odd words and phrases
like flashes through darkened hallways.
These stabs remind me that the proud
and portly old church is really only
that cut green slip grafted into a tiny nick
that merciful God Himself slit into the stem
of His chosen Judah. The thin and tenuous
thread we hang by, so astonishing,
is the metaphor I need at the shoreline
of all those immeasurable oceans of love.
(Adapted from an e-mail discussion, summer 2002)

Music: Let Me In – The Sensations

Let me in whee-ooh (whee-ooh, whee-ooh, hoop-whee-ooh)
(Whee-ooh, whee-ooh, hoo-ooh-oop-whee-ooh, whee-ooh)
I can see the dancin’ (let me in)
The silhouettes on the shade
I hear the music (music), all the lovers on parade
Open up (let me in), I want to come in again
I thought you were my friend
Pitter patter of those fee-ee-ee-ee-eet
Movin’ and a-groovin’ with that be-eat
Jumpin’ and stompin on the flo-o-o-o-oor
(Lemme in) Let me in!
(Open up) Open up!
Why don’t you open up that door? (let me in)
I-uh (open up) hear music let me in (music)
I want to come in again
Let me in (let me in),
a-well I heard it just then
I thought you were my friend
Pitter patter of the fee-ee-ee-ee-eet
Movin’ and a-groovin’ with that be-eat
Jumpin’ and stompin on the flo-o-o-o-oor
(Lemme in) Let me in!
(Open up) Open up!
Why don’t you open up that door? (let me in)
I-uh-I-uh-I (open up) hear music, let me in (music)
Oh I heard it just then
Let me in (let me in)
I want to come in again
I thought you were my friend

Psalm 24: God’s Face

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Love, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, PsalmsLeave a comment

Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

October 23, 2020

2018 Reflection on Readings
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 24 which has been described as “an entrance psalm” for the Temple liturgies.

Praying Psalm 24 invites us to consider how we enter and meet God in the Holy Space of our lives. 

That space, first of all, belongs to God Who created all things. We do not create it. God opens it.

The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness;
the world and those who dwell in it.
For the Lord founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.

Psalm 24: 1-2

Everything within us and around us — that “fullness” of life — belongs to God. When we acknowledge this truth in humble faith and loving awareness, we realize that we already exist within God’s sanctuary:

Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?
or who may stand in his holy place?
The one whose hands are sinless, whose heart  is clean,
who desires not what is vain.

Psalm 24: 3-4

The journey of the spiritual life is about finding that still point in our souls where we see God’s Face in all things. That sacred stillness holds us in God’s Presence until we let go of ourselves within that Love. The Lord blesses that letting go with a “reward”:

That person shall receive a blessing from the LORD,
a reward from God the savior.
Such is the race that seeks the Lord,
that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.

Psalm 24: 5-6

The psalm doesn’t clearly state what that “reward” is, but I think it might be the grace, insight, passion, and courage to live as Paul describes in our first reading:

to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another through love,
striving to preserve the unity of the spirit
through the bond of peace;  
one Body and one Spirit,
as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all,
who is over all and through all and in all.

Poem: The light shouts in your tree-top, and the face
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems from the Book of Hours

The light shouts in your tree-top, and the face
of all things becomes radiant and vain;
only at dusk do they find you again.
The twilight hour, the tenderness of space,
lays on a thousand heads a thousand hands,
and strangeness grows devout where they have lain.
With this gentlest of gestures you would hold
the world, thus only and not otherwise.
You lean from out its skies to capture earth,
and feel it underneath your mantle’s folds.
You have so mild a way of being.
……………………………………………They
who name you loudly when they come to pray
forget your nearness. From your hands that tower
above us, mountainously, lo, there soars,
to give the law whereby our senses live,
dark-browed, your wordless power.

Music: I Have Loved You – Michael Joncas 

I Have Loved You

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;
I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.
Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his light and his peace.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;
I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.
Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his joy and his hope.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;
I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.
Seek the face of the Lord and long for him: He will bring you his care and his love.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine;
I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.