euphemos

There’s no Psalm I’ve read more often than Psalm 63, but this morning I finally listened to what Psalm 63 has to say.

How often I find myself thirsting for God, seeking (hopefully not like Lazarus’ persecutor) just a drop of God’s soothing presence. And yet here’s the answer, in the same Psalm that I’ve read scores of times.

David too finds himself in a dry and dreary land, thirsting for God. How does he slake this thirst?

He chooses to recommit himself to praising God in the wilderness where he finds himself this morning and where he lies down to rest in the evening. To praise with his lips, and to lift up his arms. When David praises, he finds his soul satisfied, and not merely satisfied, but richly so.

When our mouth is filled with praise, our soul is likewise full.

Not the other way around.

Yet another way that praise works!

To self or others…

I can’t see you; all I can see is the Son.

Communion only reaches its true depths when it is supported and surrounded by adoration. The Eucharist Presence in the tabernacle does not set another view of the Eucharist alongside or against the Eucharistic celebration, but simply signifies its complete fulfillment. For this Presence has the effect, of course, of keeping the Eucharist forever in church. The church never becomes a lifeless space but is always filled with the presence of the Lord, which comes out of the celebration, leads us into it, and always makes us participants in the cosmic Eucharist. What man of faith has not experienced this? A church without the Eucharistic Presence is somehow dead, even then it invites people to pray. But a church in which the eternal light is burning before the tabernacle is always alive, is always something more than a building made of stones. In this place the Lord is always waiting for me, calling me, wanting to make me ‘eucharistic.’ In this way, he prepared me for the Eucharist, sets me in motion toward His return.  (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 90).

Don’t miss

Infant Baptism in Early Church History
by Dennis Kastens

available at http://www.mtio.com/articles/aissar40.htm. This Lutheran pastor presents an excellent summary of the history of infant baptism in the early church.

So many of us are scared of the physical, spiritual or emotional dark, or at least the things that might be lurking in that darkness.

Did you notice in today’s mass readings that the Lord, our light and our salvation, speaks out of the darkness? I often look for the Lord when things are all light and good, and he speaks there too, but so often he speaks most profoundly in the darkness. The Father’s most profound message of love, that of Christ on the cross, was delivered in darkness. The Son’s most profound message of love, “not my will, but thine”, was likewise delivered in the dark of night. Perhaps the Spirit’s most profound message of love, “today is born to you a savior”, was also delivered in the dark of night.

Whether the darkness is in our external circumstances or internally, as we recognize the darkness of our sin and disobedience, we can take comfort from today’s message that the Lord, our light and our salvation, speaks even out of darkness.

I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.

(Psalm 27:13-14)