"Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord!" Psalm 95!

“Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord!”  Psalm 95!

Perhaps the most profound psalm we pray with the morning prayer in the Breviary.  A prayer that prepares our voices to praise our God before we even speak without a forethought of the day’s work.  

If today we would take the opportunity to acknowledge God, his generosity, and the love he places at our feet daily, there would be no more violence towards each other and greed to take the possessions of our neighbors with no pre-thought of the harm we have deep in the recesses of our minds.   What can we do when the harm of defeat is present within our own lives where doubt and fear exist because of a tragic malady which is beyond our control seems to cover our well-being?

Jesus tells us: “Just as my human nature, which I took from you, has won its resurrection in virtue of the Godhead that dwelt in it and with which it was united, just as this nature has shed decay and suffering and passed over to incorruptibility and immortality; so, in the same way, you too will be set free from the grievous slavery of death;  you too will cast aside your corruptible nature and your sufferings and you will be clothed with impassibility.”  (Impassibility describes the theological doctrine that God does not experience pain or pleasure from the actions of another being)  (taken from the 2nd reading in the office for Tuesday, of the nineteenth week in ordinary time) 

To the one who has lost all connection to life because of a debilitating malady that places their future in a holding pattern of distraught, no human explanation is possible.  However, the words of our Savior to his disciples before he Ascended back to heaven; “Go, he said, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is a kind of symbol and type of the Lord’s death, which is why Paul says: "if we have shared with God’s Son in a death like his, we shall certainly share in his resurrection.”

In this suffering humanity, including one or more individuals, hope is the only  solace we can extend, and that hope is their suffering matches the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ from the death/resurrection which is ours as well.  His words: “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”  (Jn 11: 25). 

Ralph B. Hathaway