Psalm 101: Prayer to the Eternal King for Help

This series by Fr Stravinskas was originally published during Lent, but given the ongoing pandemic, I thought I'd share them. I've edited the Psalms and their numbering to conform to the Douai-Rheims Bible. 

Previously:
The Seven Penitential Psalms in Time of Pandemic
Psalm 31: The Joy of Forgiveness
Psalm 37: A Penitent Sufferer’s Plea for Healing
Psalm 50: Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

From Catholic World Report

By Fr Peter M.J. Stravinskas

Modern man’s God is way too small. Strong doses of holy wonder and amazement need to become once more an essential element of our spirituality.

101:1. The prayer of the poor man, when he was anxious, and poured out his supplication before the Lord.

101:2. Hear, O Lord, my prayer: and let my cry come to thee.

101:3. Turn not away thy face from me: in the day when I am in trouble, incline thy ear to me. In what day soever I shall call upon thee, hear me speedily.

101:4. For my days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.

101:5. I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered: because I forgot to eat my bread.

101:6. Through the voice of my groaning, my bone hath cleaved to my flesh.

101:7. I am become like to a pelican of the wilderness: I am like a night raven in the house.

A pelican, etc. . .I am become through grief, like birds that affect solitude and darkness.

101:8. I have watched, and am become as a sparrow all alone on the housetop.

101:9. All the day long my enemies reproached me: and they that praised me did swear against me.

101:10. For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.

101:11. Because of thy anger and indignation: for having lifted me up thou hast thrown me down.

101:12. My days have declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.

101:13. But thou, O Lord, endurest for ever: and thy memorial to all generations.

101:14. Thou shalt arise and have mercy on Sion: for it is time to have mercy on it, for the time is come.

101:15. For the stones thereof have pleased thy servants: and they shall have pity on the earth thereof.

101:16. All the Gentiles shall fear thy name, O Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory.

101:17. For the Lord hath built up Sion: and he shall be seen in his glory.

101:18. He hath had regard to the prayer of the humble: and he hath not despised their petition.

101:19. Let these things be written unto another generation: and the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord:

101:20. Because he hath looked forth from his high sanctuary: from heaven the Lord hath looked upon the earth.

101:21. That he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain:

101:22. That they may declare the name of the Lord in Sion: and his praise in Jerusalem;

101:23. When the people assemble together, and kings, to serve the Lord.

101:24. He answered him in the way of his strength: Declare unto me the fewness of my days.

He answered him in the way of his strength. . .That is, the people, mentioned in the foregoing verse, or the penitent, in whose person this psalm is delivered, answered the Lord in the way of his strength: that is, according to the best of his power and strength: or when he was in the flower of his age and strength: inquiring after the fewness of his days: to know if he should live long enough to see the happy restoration of Sion, etc.

101:25. Call me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are unto generation and generation.

101:26. In the beginning, O Lord, thou foundedst the earth: and the heavens are the works of thy hands.

101:27. They shall perish but thou remainest: and all of them shall grow old like a garment: And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed.

101:28. But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.

101:29. The children of thy servants shall continue and their seed shall be directed for ever.

The opening verse of this psalm is put on the lips of the priest in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass just before he ascends the steps of the altar: Domine, exaudi orationem meam. And the faithful pick up the response: Et clamor meus ad te veniat. At that moment, the priest stands at the head of his people, preparing to re-present in their name the once-for-all perfect Sacrifice of Christ. A most appropriate dialogue.

The psalmist rehearses his profound alienation; as we have seen, it parallels the alienation our first parents brought on themselves and their progeny: human against human; man against the earth; man against God; man against himself. This is the cycle of sin as evil spreads – a veritable contagion – a word with which we have become very familiar of late.

After reciting his litany of miseries, the psalmist puts things in proper perspective: The God of Israel is above all of this, yet this divine sovereignty should not be interpreted as aloofness. Although God is “enthroned for ever,” He will “have pity.” In the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, there is a perfect balance between God’s transcendence and His immanence. The very first encounter between God and Moses is paradigmatic: Moses is told to remove the sandals from his feet, for he is standing on holy ground (divine transcendence) but, within minutes, he is also advised that the Lord God has heard the cry of His people (divine immanence) (see: Ex 3). The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of Jesus Christ – is not like the Greco-Roman gods on Mount Olympus who delighted in toying with human lives, even vying with one another to multiply human tragedies. The psalmist’s conviction here is given poetic expression by Robert Browning: “God’s in His Heaven—All’s right with the world!”

That immanence of the God of Revelation is called “mercy”: He is ever-ready to forgive our sin; He is even ever-ready to bring good things out of the stupidities into which we fall. Shakespeare rhapsodized on the beauty and glory of mercy when he had Portia exclaim in The Merchant of Venice:

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: It is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.”

As beautiful as that soliloquy is, as one commentator has observed, “before Shakespeare wrote it, God was it!”

The psalmist concludes that God’s forgiveness of Israel will draw all nations to the one, true God (after all, that is the vocation of the Chosen People). The Gentiles will come to “fear the name of the Lord.” But what kind of fear are we talking about here? We can identify two kinds of fear: servile fear and filial fear. Servile fear causes us to reverence and obey God because, like slaves, we cower before the lash of a cruel and exacting Master. Filial fear causes us to reverence and obey God because, like grateful children, we would never wish to sadden a loving Father who has done so much for us. The latter is the type of fear the biblical prophets sought to instill in the Jews of old: “After everything that God has done for you, how can you continue to flout His laws which, after all, have been given only for your good?” That’s the fear God expects from one of His children.

Now, there is another aspect of all this requiring our attention. Way back in the 1940s, Pope Pius XII noted that the fundamental sin of the twentieth century was a loss of the sense of sin. I would suggest that, firstly, that “fundamental sin” is still very much with us in the twenty-first century. Secondly, why this aversion to calling sin by its proper name? I suspect it may have something to do with the philosophy of existentialism, which gripped so many in the aftermath of the two world wars. That philosophy made cynicism a virtue. As it seeped into the popular consciousness (among those who could not even spell “existentialism”), a conviction set in that one’s sins were too great ever to be forgiven. And then, by a very circuitous path, that gave rise to the belief that no sin had been committed at all. That has certainly been the pattern I have observed in hearing the confessions of those who have been away from the Sacrament of Penance for years or even decades on end.

I would be grossly remiss were I not to underscore how often in this psalm – and throughout the Old Testament – we are enjoined to honor the holy Name of God, for the Name and Person are one. The Name of God most revered among the Chosen People was the one given to Moses: Yahweh (I Am Who Am), the Source of all being. That Name was so sacred, that it was to be uttered only once a year on the feast of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple. That reverence for the sacred Name is still part and parcel of Jewish spirituality, so much so that even when proclaiming a text of Sacred Scripture and that Name appears, the reader substitutes a synonym. Would that Christians had such devotion, let alone our culture.

All kinds of supposedly offensive words cannot be used on television, however, such sensitivity does not apply to the holy Name of God, which is regularly taken in vain. In the era of mass compositions of would-be sacred music for the liturgy, it was commonplace to have “Yahweh” feature in those songs. It took a notification by Cardinal Francis Arinze in 2008 in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, to bring a stop to the practice as he reminded us that the Jewish honor in which that Name is held should be ours as well.

The psalm ends on a note of absolute, unwavering confidence in God’s ongoing mercies toward the sacred author and toward all Israel.

A final thought: What comes across, loud and clear, in this poem-song – indeed, in all the psalms – is the majesty of God and the awe in which we humans ought to relate to Him. Modern man’s God is way too small. Strong doses of holy wonder and amazement need to become once more an essential element of our spirituality. A hymn like “Immortal, Invisible” would be a good starting place:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest—to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but nought changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.