| 27 October 2013 |
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LETTER FROM TAIZE:
LEAPING OVER WALLS OF SEPERATION
http://www.taize.fr/IMG/pdf/121-en.pdf
(http://www.taize.fr/IMG/pdf/120enletter.pdf)
Short Writings from Taize:
ICONS
http://www.taize.fr/IMG/pdf/cahiers16en_web.pdf
Bible texts with commentary
These Bible meditations are meant as a way of seeking God in silence and prayer in the midst of our daily life. During the course of a day, take a moment to read the Bible passage with the short commentary and to reflect on the questions which follow. Afterwards, a small group of 3 to 10 people can meet to share what they have discovered and perhaps for a time of prayer.
November 2013
Psalm 150: Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;praise him in his mighty heavens.Praise him for his acts of power;praise him for his surpassing greatness.Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,praise him with the harp and lyre,praise him with timbrel and dancing,praise him with the strings and pipe,praise him with the clash of cymbals,praise him with resounding cymbals.Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.Alleluia!(Psalm 150)
From the beginning of Psalm 1 to the very end of Psalm 150, from “Happy is the one...” to “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord, alleluia!”, the book of Psalms is an invitation to let our faith breathe, and to praise God. Not because all is necessarily well when we pray, but because God listens and answers prayer. The living God often surprises us but never lets us down. This is the profound conviction which undergirds these ancient prayers. The wonder is that everything in human existence, from the highest joy to the deepest desolation, has a place in the Psalms. Nothing is filtered out. Such prayer embraces life whole so as to bring it before God. In this case praise is more than praying to God when things go right. It is all of life as it enters mercy’s light.
Psalm 150, the conclusion to the Psalter, is a prayer of pure praise. The invitation to praise God, “hallelu”, is repeated in each line. A final “Hallelujah” comes once again at the very end. The setting is given in the first verse: we are in God’s sanctuary, his holy place, the Temple where the people gather to worship God. Singing with joy to God draws the faithful together and brings them into God’s presence. But of course no matter how beautiful or vast the sanctuary may be, it cannot contain God. The psalmist looks up and considers the firmament, the sky which is the reflection of God’s immensity and strength. Who could take hold of the sky or push back the heavens?
Praise grows verse by verse. Praise God with his deeds of power, it says in verse 2. To remember the good things which have been done for us or others is like a motor for praise. As with friends and loved ones, so with God: to recall the good things we have seen or received increases our thankfulness and deepens our joy.
The words used here, “power” and “greatness”, are not facile affirmations of God’s transcendence. In the Scriptures in general and the psalms in particular, they evoke God’s special regard for the powerless and weak. The Lord shows who he is when oppression is overturned, when suffering is alleviated. God’s power goes hand in hand with his mercy.
In verses 3 to 5, different musical instruments are named one after the other and invited to join the singing. If remembering good deeds can stir praise, it is when the sound of musical instruments is joined to that of human voices that praise grows full. Sing with all your skill, says Psalm 47. Praise is an art. It is playful and alert, ever inviting others to participate. Dance and tambourine and finally cymbals join in, loud clanging cymbals! The crescendo swells.
When we reach the final verse, the vista opens wide and the crescendo spills over into a call addressed to all living beings: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord, alleluia!” Praise carries the believer always further. Where does it lead us? To rejoicing in God’s beauty, to serving God’s joy in one another until it spreads throughout all creation. The breath that makes us live and sing is that which animates all that God has made.
For what “deeds of power” can I praise God? Where can I see God’s “greatness”? If praise is an art, what helps us “learn” to praise God? What changes in our lives when we praise or thank God?
This agenda for life is concrete and the core of what matters. It would be enough on its own to create a different kind of society, one where people are more like brothers and sisters, more supportive. It was part of a broader project put before Christians in Asia Minor.In these communities ‘peace’ had been reached between Jews and Gentiles, the two peoples representative of a humanity till then divided.The unity given by Christ has to be constantly renewed and translated into practical social action wholly inspired by mutual love. This is the basis for suggesting how our relationships should be:Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.Kindness: wanting the good of others. It means ‘making ourselves one’ with them, approaching them being completely empty of ourselves, of our own interests, our own ideas, of the many preconceptions that cloud our vision, to take on ourselves their burdens, their needs, their sufferings, and to share in their joys.It means entering into the hearts of the people we meet in order to understand their mindset, their culture, their traditions, so as to make them, in a certain sense, our own, and really understand what they need and be able to discern those values God has planted in the heart of every person. In a word: kindness means to live for whoever is near us.Tender-heartedness: welcoming others as they are, not as we would like them to be, with a different character, with our political views or our religious convictions, and without those faults and habits that annoy us so much. No, we need to expand our hearts and make them able to welcome everyone, with their differences, their shortcomings and troubles.Forgiveness: always seeing the other person as new. Even where we find our most beautiful and most peaceful relationships, in the family, at school, at work, there are inevitably moments of friction, differences of opinion, clashes. People reach the point of not speaking to each other, of avoiding one another, to say nothing of when real and true hatred towards someone who thinks differently roots itself in the heart. We have to make a strong, rigorous and thorough commitment to try and see each brother or sister as though they were new, completely new, not remembering at all how they have hurt us, but covering everything with love, with a complete amnesty in our hearts, imitating God who forgives and forgets.True peace and unity are attained when kindness, tender-heartedness and forgiveness are lived not only by people individually, but together, with one another mutually.And just as the embers of a fire have to be stirred every now and then, so that they are not smothered by the ashes, so too from time to time it is necessary deliberately to revive the decision to love one another, to revive our relationships with everyone, so that they are not covered up by the ashes of indifference, apathy, selfishness.Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.These attitudes demand to be translated into deeds, into practical action.Jesus himself showed us what love is when he healed the sick, when he fed the crowds, when he brought the dead back to life, when he washed the feet of his disciples. Actions, deeds: this is what it means to love.I remember the mother an African family whose daughter, Rosangela, lost an eye after an aggressive young boy poked her with a stick. He even continued making fun of her afterwards. Neither of the boy’s parents said that they were sorry. The silence, the lack of relationship with that family, made Rosangela’s mother feel bitter. ‘Don’t be upset,’ said Rosangela who had forgiven the boy, ‘I am lucky because I can see with my other eye!’‘One morning,’ Rosangela’s mother said, ‘the boy’s mother sent someone to get me to go round to her house because she felt ill. My first reaction was: “Look, now she comes to me for help. With so many other neighbours she could have asked, she asks me, after all her boy has done to us!”‘But suddenly I remembered that love has no limits. I hurried over to her house. She opened the door and fainted into my arms. I took her to the hospital and stayed with her until the doctors saw her. A week later she was discharged from the hospital and came to my house to thank me. I welcomed her with all my heart. I had managed to forgive her. Now we are in touch again. In fact, our relationship is totally new.’Every one of our days, too, can be filled with real acts of service, humble and intelligent expressions of our love. We will then see fraternity and peace grow around us.Chiara Lubich(First Published August 2006)
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