One of the many
benefits of praying the Liturgy of the Hours is that we become very familiar
with the Psalms, which comprise the core of the Liturgy. These ancient hymns of the Jewish Temple
address many different aspects of our relationship with God: some are songs of praise, others speak of our fears, or of God’s
mercy, or thank him for his protection from our enemies.
One Psalm that
has always resonated with me is Psalm 127 (I also discuss it more briefly in my
post on Daytime Prayer, here,
and it provides the title for a recent post on poverty, here). It is fairly
short (four stanzas), but beautifully reminds us of our dependence on God and
his providential care. The psalm opens
with the image of house construction: “If the Lord does not build the house, in
vain do its builders labor”. The
psalmist then presents a series of images illustrating how useless our efforts
are without God’s help:
If the Lord does not watch over the
city, in vain does the watchman keep vigil.
In vain is your earlier rising,
your going later to rest, you who toil for the bread you eat, when he pours
gifts on his beloved while they slumber.
What an eloquent reminder that it is only through Grace that
our efforts bear fruit!
The focus shifts
in the last half of Psalm 127:instead of building a house, here we are building
our “house”, that is, our family, again only through the Grace of God: “Truly
sons are a gift from the Lord, a blessing, the fruit of the womb”. Here, too, God is the real author; and our
children are Providence in tangible form: both gift and blessing, which is to
say their source is God, and that’s a good thing. And not just good in some
spiritual sense:
Indeed the sons of youth are like
arrows in the hand of a warrior.
O the happiness of the man who has
filled his quiver with these arrows! He will have no cause for shame when he
disputes with his foes in the gateways.
You can’t ask for images more down-to-earth than these: are
sons a like weapons, they’ll back us up when we face our enemies, and all
through the generosity of the Lord.
It will come as
no surprise that the idea of our progeny as gift and blessing is not as common
as it once was. Thirty-five years ago,
in his introduction to Pope John Paul I’s Illustrissimi, John Cardinal Wright
wrote:
The present almost pathological lack of joy shows up in every vocation
and in every area of life. There already
exist among us people who rejoice as little in the coming of children as once
used to do only some of our neo-pagan neighbors. Among descendents of people who, only
yesterday, of the coming of a baby as a “blessed event,” maternity is no longer thought joyful.
That train has gone much further down the track since 1979,
so that now even the President of the United States can speak of a young women
being “punished with a baby”.
We need to speak
out, of course, against this anti-child attitude, the anti-family ethos and
what Pope John Paul II called the Culture of Death. I regularly do so in this space. But we also need to remember, as Cardinal
Wright points out, that our message is at root a message of Joy. Our children,
and children in general (sadly, not all who wish it have their quivers filled
in this way) are “a gift from the Lord, a blessing, the fruit of the
womb”. We need to say it often, and live
it publicly, and always gives thanks to God for building up our house.
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