When we finally arrive, not only is our journey complete, we, too, are as well. Journey’s end can be a place, and it can also be a person. It can be both and then our joy at arriving is truly complete.
1 I rejoiced when I heard them say:
“Let us go to God’s house.”
2 And now our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.3 Jerusalem is built as a city
strongly compact.
4 It is there that the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord.For Israel’s law it is,
there to praise the Lord’s name.
5 There were set the thrones of judgment
of the house of David.6 For the peace of Jerusalem pray:
“Peace be to your homes!
7 May peace reign in your walls,
in your palaces, peace!”8 For love of my brethren and friends
I say: “Peace upon you.”
9 For love of the house of the Lord
I will ask for your good.
It doesn’t matter if the journey is short or even if we are enjoying it at some point we begin to think of the end, especially if our arrival is a place we have been looking forward to. We begin to realise that our journey becomes and pilgrimage when we come to understand when we recognise its goal and intentionally make it our own. For the pilgrim the goal is not a threat but a promise. It is a sort of homecoming; something we have cherished in our hearts. When we finally arrive, not only is our journey complete, we, too, are as well. Journey’s end can be a place, and it can also be a person. It can be both and then our joy at arriving is truly complete.
At the very beginning of our Lenten pilgrimage with these psalms, we remembered that they were the songs that Jewish pilgrims sang or recited as they made their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These pilgrimages were on the roads of memory as well as on the land. They gathered up the journeys of a people in history seeking the land, the home, that God had promised them. Of course, they also discovered that the home was God’s own self. But God also chose to dwell with God’s people and the Temple was the symbol of this double abiding – God with God’s people and they with God. The ‘shekhinah’ or glory of God’s presence was certainly dwelling in the Temple, but it also dwelt with Israel. Even when in exile, the Divine Skekhinah went into exile as well. God, too, becomes a pilgrim searching for God’s people and journeying with them; so deep and indissoluble is the bond, the promise and the covenant. Knowing this, every pilgrimage was a pilgrimage of hope; a preparation of the heart and the mind to enter into God’s glory and dwell, or tabernacle, with the God who calls us into life, who is our unfailing good and our final end.
Psalm 122 is celebration of arrivals; promises fulfilled and longings answered. It is a psalm celebrating the way in which God completes us, all our journeys and our lives. We may have passed through the valleys of darkness or stumbled on the way; felt exposed and vulnerable and often lost or taken the wrong turn. No journey is every straightforward or totally planned.
Nor do know the one(s) we are travelling with. We begin with some knowledge, but the journey discloses aspects and responses which could never have been anticipated. The journey teaches us to be open to change and new insights, some wonderful and others painful. We learn that no judgement is ever final until the end and we stand before The Presence. Those experiences and their painful memories are now taken up. They are not denied but transformed in the joy of arriving, ‘and now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.’
It takes to realise that we have arrived. Jerusalem is not a dream but a reality, one that cannot be destroyed or taken from us. Whenever we arrive, there is a time to pause, to wonder, to give thanks. To celebrate with all who have come with us and gone before us, with ‘all the tribes’ but, above all to know that we are now secure. Here, at last, we can rest and be at peace.
‘Shalom’ or peace is more than just a casual social greeting it is assurance that I am not your enemy but your friend. I am not a threat but one who comes wishing you only good, wishing you only life. ‘Shalom’ is blessing. It is a deep blessing that goes to the very heart of being itself and assures it that it is secure. In this blessing all life can flourish because it no longer lives under the insecurities and struggles that rob it of its peace and drain its resources in the struggle to survive. What greater good can we offer someone but the blessing of peace? What greater gift can we give them, that to help them find that peace, and pray that it will be theirs,
“
For love of my brethren and friends I say: “Peace upon you.” For love of the house of the Lord. I will ask for your good.” When we bring this blessing to another we also receive the blessing of peace, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”
(Matthew 5:9).
It is not hard to see how Psalm 122 is a good psalm as we come to the end of our Lenten pilgrimage and enter into the great mystery of Holy Week – our own pilgrimage in faith. In the solemn and beautiful liturgy of the Church’s triduum we will make our journey into the heart of God. The Risen Christ greets us as he did his disciples with the great Easter ‘shalom.’ The shalom of God’s mercy and forgiveness, the shalom that proclaims the life overcomes death in all its forms, the shalom that secures our being and our life forever. In the Easter Shalom the whole of creation is renewed and restored. We know that even though we still have some way to go on our own pilgrimage our peace, our joy and our life is already before us for the Risen Christ, himself, is our Temple; our Jerusalem.
In His blessing and from with the light of the candles in our hands, lit from His own light, we are sent into the world to be its peacemakers and reconcilers. To pronounce the Easter blessing of Shalom over all those places of violence and war, over all the victims and their wounds of body and soul, and over our suffering disfigured creation. To pray from the depth of our hearts for their good, whether they are our friends or our foes.
Music. Vidi Aquam.
“I saw water flowing from the Temple, from its right-hand side, alleluia;
and all to whom this water came were saved and shall say: Alleluia, alleluia.
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good
for his mercy is forever.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, unto ages of ages. Amen.
I saw water flowing out of the Temple, from its right side, Alleluia:
And all to whom this water came were saved,
And they shall say: Alleluia, Alleluia.”
This is an ancient antiphon sung on Easter Sunday and through the Easter season. It is taken from the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel 47.1 ff. It is the prophets beautiful vision of the restoration of the Temple and the life-giving waters that flow from it – the new creation in which all life shall flourish. “Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”
The image is also used for the waters flowing from the pierced side of Christ in Jn 19.24. It is Christ who is the new temple and the water of the Holy Spirit that flows from his side brings food and healing to all.
It is profound vision of the sacramental life of the Church and its mission of healing for humanity and restoration of creation.
It captures for us the Easter Shalom that the Risen Christ bestows on the world for its life and healing and of which we are all ministers.
