As I draw close to the end of my life, I realize more fully than ever that there is only one thing in life worth truly desiring and perhaps actually receiving and that is the love of God. Everything that we love and delight in in our lives has its being and beauty from God; how can we not help following that goodness back to its source in God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
How did I get to be the unique individual that I am? How did I get to be born to these particular parents in this particular place at this particular time? We are so accustomed to being who we are, this self, that we forget what an astonishing miracle it is that we even exist at all.
The philosopher/theologian/self’s fundamental question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
The line from that question to the awareness of our own unique presence in this cosmos is direct. Particular life and being itself and the human awareness that goes with that awareness are an astonishing mystery, one that every rational creature, every human being, is called upon to face, to reflect on. And yet night after night as we look at the news and see the continual violation of this mystery unfold before us, we wonder, I wonder how such senseless ignorance can exist.
The book of Psalms—as I understand what exists at the heart of these texts is the self’s desire to see the Face of God. Augustine told us that our hearts are restless until they rest in God! The Psalmists all see that in terms of their inspired verse. They desire God.
Why then are the Psalmists so outraged at the presence of evil in their lives? Is it that they know and understand that evil is an absolute violation of the Goodness of God and of all His creation and of the way that life ought to be?
Our lives ought to be centered in that which is Truth, Beauty and Goodness, the reality of the presence of God. And day after day in our culture we see images of the exact opposite of that reality manifested in the evil that is the terrible violation of the human mystery of goodness. Augustine in The City of God defines the nature of the two cities each bound by that which is at its center—love of God or love of self. And every night on our news broadcasts is that image of what the city of man truly looks like: a city in ruins, the consequence of that unspeakable war in Ukraine and one man’s idolatrous substitute of greed, power and barbarous egotism for the reality of divine Goodness, Forgiveness and Love.
The Psalms are like a handbook pointing us clearly to that desire that ought to be the central reality for our lives, the Face of God, the reality of the City of God in which God is truly present.
Psalm 130, one of the seven penitential psalms, might be the cry of the person who finds him or herself in the center, in the depths, of the ruined City of man, yet who truly desires the presence of God in the heavenly City. “My soul is longing for the Lord / more than watchmen for daybreak.” In some sense our sin helps contribute to the ruin of the City of Man, but our sin does not have to be our underlying reality as the Psalmist makes clear throughout the various texts, as is especially clear in Psalm 42, following.
We are all, as the phrase defines us, “dead men walking.” The question is what are we walking toward, what do we really want to know and understand, where do we really desire to go? There are only after all two cities.
Psalm 130
From the depths of sin, of sorrow, of suffering, of pain, we call with confidence upon the Lord, whose promise is life.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
Lord, hear my voice!
O let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.
If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,
Lord, who would survive?
But with you is found forgiveness:
for this we revere you.
My soul is waiting for the Lord,
I count on his word.
My soul is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak.
Let the watchman count on daybreak
and Israel on the Lord.
Because with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption,
Israel indeed he will redeem
from all its iniquity.
“Psalm 42 (41) 1 For the Choirmaster. A Maskil. Of the sons of Korah. 2 Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God. 3 My soul is thirsting for God, the living God; when can I enter and appear before the face of God? 4 My tears have become my bread, by day, by night, as they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” 5 These things will I remember as I pour out my soul: for I would go to the place of your wondrous tent, all the way to the house of God, amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving, the throng keeping joyful festival. 6 Why are you cast down, my soul; why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him yet again, my saving presence and my God. 7 My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and Mount Hermon, from the Hill of Mizar. 8 Deep is calling on deep, in the roar of your torrents; your billows and all your waves swept over me. 9 By day the LORD decrees his merciful love; by night his song is with me, prayer to the God of my life. 10 I will say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning oppressed by the foe?” 11 With a deadly wound in my bones, my enemies revile me, saying to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” 12 Why are you cast down, my soul; why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him yet again, my saving presence and my God.”
— The Revised Grail Psalms: A Liturgical Psalter by Francis Cardinal George, Abbot Gregory J. Polan
I would call this Meditation another perspective on the nature of the City of God. Found in Magnificat, Tuesday, March 15, 2022: [LES]
Raissa Maritain:
“You have but one Father in heaven”
From the words of Christ, the Word Incarnate, we know in a very certain way, henceforth unveiled and glowing in our hearts, that we have a Father in heaven, a God who loves with paternal tenderness, and not only a Creator. God takes delight in all that he has made—God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good (Gen 1:31)—but he loves only men and angels as his children.
For the pagan sages also, in particular for the Stoics, the name Father was doubtless befitting to God, but in an entirely different sense, referring only to the Principle of the cosmos as the universal First Cause: God was our Father because he had begotten us, and because his spark in us caused us to be marked with a resemblance to him. Even in the Old Testament the true meaning of divine Fatherhood remained implicit and was not unveiled. “Fatherhood was the attribute of God the Creator and the God of providence” (Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, o.p.). It was the Only Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, who told us of this God whom no man has seen at any time (Jn 1:18).
All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son may choose to reveal him (Mt 11:27)—Father in an absolutely unique sense for Jesus, whose Person is consubstantial and identical in nature with the First Person of the Trinity. God is Father for his adopted sons in a sense which Jesus alone revealed: He calls us to share, through the supernatural gift of grace, in his intimate life, his possessions, his beatitude, in the heritage of his incomprehensible and infinitely transcendent Godhead, and to become perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48). As Saint John Chrysostom said, “By the very name Father, we confess the remission of sins, sanctification, redemption, adoption, inheritance, our bond of brotherhood with the only Son, and the gifts of the Spirit.”
Raïssa Maritain
Raïssa Maritain († 1960) was born in Russia. She was a convert to Catholicism and the wife of philosopher Jacques Maritain. / From Prayer and Intelligence & Selected Essays. © 2016, Cluny Media, P.O. Box 1664, Providence, RI. www.clunymedia.com. Used with permission.
