Thursday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 3, 2023

Psalm 84

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in thy house, ever singing thy praise! Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!  Behold our shield, O God; look upon the face of your anointed! For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in you! 

The Church uses verses from Psalm 84 (in the Douay Rheims, Psalm 83) as the Responsorial Psalm for today’s Mass.  Prior to the new Missal of 1970, a Gradual was recited or chanted after the Epistle (the “First Reading”) and the Gospel.  This Gradual was composed of two or three verses from two different sources.  One source would be the Psalms and another might be from the Letters of Paul or from a Gospel.  The purpose of the Gradual was to bring the worshipper from the Epistle, which elaborated on the theme of the Mass for the day that was introduced in the Introit verses at the beginning of Mass and in the Collect prayer to the Gospel.  All of these parts of the Mass were linked together in theme, unlike the corresponding parts in the Missal and Lectionary today which come together more or less at random.  These psalm verses were called the Gradual from the Latin word gradus, meaning step or steps or even ladder.  This is because the Gradual was recited or chanted by the priest or deacon on the step of the altar.  We might also think of how we take a step up from the reading of a lesson from one of the Apostles to the words of the Lord himself.

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!”  The “dwelling place” refers both to heaven and to the heart of the faithful believer which is illuminated and adorned with the splendor of heavenly grace. Unconditional love flows from this heart to God and from God to the heart.  There is no place more delightful, more lovely, than this.  “My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the Lord.”  And yet as much as we might love him here, we shall love him perfectly, and experience his love perfectly in heaven.  “My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.”  The faithful soul on earth lives for God, aware of his love and beauty, and longs to enter into communion with him at Holy Mass.  “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars.”  Typically, sparrows prefer to build their nests in open spaces, but they are here said to be drawn to God’s altars.  That is, the human soul which rebels against authority and anything constrictive still is drawn to the worship of God and to obedience of his law.  God has made us and despite our rebellious tendencies resulting from original sin our hearts, made for him, ever desire him.  As St. Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

“Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.”  Those who dwell in God’s house either in this world through grace or already in heaven, as the saints and angels, are truly “blessed”.  The Hebrew word means “happy” in the sense of “made happy by the Lord”.  That is, so filled with his love, knowing themselves to be so greatly treasured, that nothing could cause them greater happiness.  “Blessed are the men whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”  For the faithful, one’s strength or “virtue” comes from God, and it is increased through  perseverance on the road to “Zion”, heaven.  “As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.”  Pilgrims going to Jerusalem for the Jewish festivals crossed this difficult, rugged territory which is called “Baca”, that is, weeping: hence, “the valley of weeping” or, “the valley of tears”.  In the Psalm, tears form the pools it mentions.  But the tears of those doing penance for their sins make pools that become freshwater springs.  These are tears that lead not to greater sorrow but to joy in our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

“They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob!”  The penitent practice their virtues and increase them, building up their capacity for experiencing the love of Almighty God.  

“Behold, O God, our shield: look upon the face of your anointed!”  God is a shield in time of temptation, lest the penitent fall back into their old sins, as “the dog returns to its vomit” (2 Peter 2, 22).  God looks upon the face of those anointed with the Holy Spirit and hazes upon him with the sweetest love.  May his anointed raise his face to God and not hide it with a shield of shame for his previous sins.

“For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”  Eternity has no past or future but only a continuous present.  When we are in heaven there shall be no sense of time.  As God says in a vision in the Book of Revelation: “Time is no more” (Revelation 10, 6).  In the eternal embrace of love, we know nothing but God.  For this reason, the faithful soul says, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”  

“For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor.”  As a “sun” God shines his rays of grace upon the penitent; as a “shield” God protects him from all harm.  We note that there is nothing here that says that a person may attain growth by his own efforts are protect himself from danger.  The one who tries to do these things deluded himself and will wind up not in a place of light but in a place of absolute darkness.

“No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in you!”  Almighty God provides us everything we need in order to become saints.  With the help of his grace we cooperate with his will and so come to his altars, for which we long.  We are able to trust in his promises because he is the Truth himself who neither deceives nor can be deceived.  We see the clearest proof of his sincerity with us in the brutally slain Body of his Son who died so that we might live forever.