As we journey with these psalms of ascent, the pilgrim psalms, we gradually become aware that they also journey with us. They mark each season and hope, they speak to us of our needs and desires.
Audio version & music
Psalm 131
1 O Lord, my heart is not proud
nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great
nor marvels beyond me.
2 Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace.
A weaned child on its mother’s breast,
even so is my soul.
3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
both now and forever.
Reflection
As we journey with these psalms of ascent, the pilgrim psalms, we gradually become aware that they also journey with us. They mark each season and hope, they speak to us of our needs and desires.
We pray them but they also pray us. They are our companions, our teachers, and even when they speak painful truths, they are also our consolers.
Above all they make present the reality of the One to whom they are addressed: God, the one who calls us, making every journey into a pilgrimage, a journey of discovery God’s ‘hesed’ – that loving-kindness that is never wearied or exhausted, that always accompanies us through our nights and waits for us carrying us into the light again.
Commenting on one of the psalms, Augustine says ‘of you my heart has spoken seek his face for evermore’ (Ps 27.8). In them we hear the language of our heart in all its moods and longings, for the psalms are also our inward journeys. With them we become conscious that we never make our journey alone. When we pray them, we join with all those who have prayed them and are praying them now; all those in every age and situation and so with the psalm we are gathered into a great company of pilgrim journeyers (viatores) like ourselves.
No matter how familiar the path it is never predictable. No life can ever achieve absolute security. To try to do so carries such a high cost that can smother life itself and all those life-giving relationships. If we choose to build our protective walls so high and so thick that nothing or no one can climb them or find the entrance, we discover that instead of building a secure home we have actually built a tomb.
Psalm 131 is one of the shortest of the pilgrim psalms and it is not afraid to admit to vulnerability. It teaches us that vulnerability is actually a strange sort of freedom. We know we can only be really safe and at peace when we are held by another in whom we can trust.
The beautiful simile at the heart of the psalm is that of a mother who carries, protects and cares for her young child. The relationship is as natural as it is profound, for every child knows that the one who has given them life; whose face is the first face that they have seen; whose body is the first body whose warmth they have felt and whose smell they recognise; whose heart they heard beating before they heard their own; who has feeds them every time they cry with hunger; who delights in them every time they laugh with pleasure, she is the one who knows how vulnerable they are. But far from making this a reason for rejection, a mother makes it the very reason for her care. She is the one in whose arms they can feel safe.
There is a simple, uncomplicated intimacy of love and trust. In the arms of our mother, we are not afraid to live and play and walk into the future. Even on the most difficult part of the journey we can still set our soul, our heart, at peace.
In this direct and natural image, the psalm gives us such an immediate experience of God who loves our vulnerability and knows it more deeply that we do ourselves. It is God, our mother, who carries us with gentleness and holds us with such caring love. Who gives us life and in whom our life secured against destruction and death. In the arms of this God we are safe even unto eternity.
The experience is so deep and profound it is repeated and echoes through the whole of scripture.
“Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,
all the remnant of the people of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since your birth,
and have carried since you were born.
Even to your old age and grey hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you”
(Isaiah 46.3-4)
When we know this God we do not need to put on any show. We do not need to enter into the illusions of greatness or the seductions of fame and recognition. We do not need to be constantly demonstrating our superiority or competences, our titles, our wealth or our pretensions to power and self-sufficiency. These, and many more, are all the ways in which we are terrorised and robbed of our peace. In rejecting these illusions of security, the humility of the psalmist is a quiet declaration of freedom which also instructs us in a simple refreshing wisdom.If we can truly set our soul on the things that really matter, live out of that deep intimacy and security of knowing God – not an intellectual knowledge but one that is just the child-like loving-trust that Jesus speaks of and himself shows us (Matt.18.1-4) – then we can face any journey without fear or anxiety. The psalmist gives us the key, Israel “hope in the Lord both now and forever.”
If we can acquire even a little of the humility of the psalmist during our Lenten pilgrimage, we shall have a lasting peace of soul. In some sense we will discover that the light and peace of Easter already touches psalm 131, for even death itself cannot take away the security of being a child in God’s arms.
For reflection and prayer:
Take time to ponder the psalm. Let it open up your own life for you. What demands, voices, habits prevent me from living the wisdom and humility of verse 1? At some point during the day, take time to put aside all the cares, pressures, demands and anxieties, and try to ‘set your soul in silence and in peace’. Give time to contemplate the intimacy of the ‘weaned child’ as an experience of God and God’s care for each one and also for our earth. Look at all its different levels and while it is both peace and security it is dynamic for the mother is also carrying her child. As so God with us, with me… (cf. also Deut. 1.1; Hosea 11.3)
About music:
Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (I call to you Lord Jesus Christ), by Bach transcribed for piano by Busoni. It is a plea for God’s help it is also a beautiful prayer asking for the grace to lead a fully Christian life, to forgive our enemies, to have new life and to be always nourished by God’s word, whatever difficulties or oppressions come. As the music suggests, it is a deeply reflective movement but one of confidence and peace that the prayer will be answered.
