For neither from the east nor from the west,
\nnor from desert or mountains comes judgment,
\nbut God himself is the judge.
\nOne he humbles, another he exalts.<\/p>\n
The Lord holds a cup in his hand,
\nfull of wine, foaming and spiced.
\nHe pours it; they drink it to the dregs:
\nall the wicked on the earth must drain it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Begging for shame and confusion on the wicked is a long way from asking that they be punished or obliterated. \u00a0Shame is the natural feeling of the bully or the sinner, but usually, we try and find a way to twist away from that feeling, as quickly as we\u2019d pull our hand back from a stove. \u00a0I can flinch from a still-hot burner, because it is not part of myself, but I\u2019ve already gone a fair way into confusion when I try to disassociate from my own actions and their consequences.<\/p>\n
Praying to be allowed to retreat, covered in shame, or hoping that someone would offer this prayer for me, is asking to be reunited with myself and delivered from the freedom to act with callousness. \u00a0I\u2019d rather struggle with cognitive dissonance, acknowledging my own hypocrisy, than go on in a feeling of pleasant certainty and righteousness.<\/p>\n
Of course, when I say this is what I\u2019d prefer, I mean it\u2019s what I\u2019d prefer in the abstract. \u00a0Preferring it in the everyday is still a struggle. \u00a0So I find a kind of strange hope in the second psalm included in that day\u2019s prayer. \u00a0In this section, when the psalmist speaks of judgment, he tells us that the Lord will humble the wicked, but the means of their justice is baffling.<\/p>\n
God offers them a cup of wine, which, for Catholics, always has eucharistic undertones, and bids us to drink fully. \u00a0None of the lines that follow tell us that the wicked will choke on it or find it turns to ashes on their tongues. \u00a0But it doesn\u2019t take much work to imagine straining to accept mercy, or that humbling judgement might take the form of showing you what was always available to you, if you\u2019d only stopped contorting yourself away from confusion, shame, and honesty.<\/p>\n
In the first and second psalm, deliverance looks like punishment, until you\u2019ve come out on the other side and can give thanks for the confusion that stayed your hand before you struck a blow or the shame that came just in time to keep you from speaking uncharitably or the mercy that followed you all the way to the end of the world, asking of you only that you accept the wholeness that you were meant for, even if it means acknowledging that you spurned this peace for your whole life\u2026 up to now.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few days ago, I was praying the Midday Prayer of the Divine Office, and I was struck by the juxtaposition of two of the psalms slated for that day (Wednesday, 31st week of ordinary time). \u00a0First there was this part of Psalm 70: O God, make haste to my rescue, Lord, come to my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":8248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[178],"class_list":["post-8243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parsing-catholicism","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2013\/11\/chalice.jpg\" "\\"chalice\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n