Foreword:     The published spiritual writings of Charles de Foucauld run to some sixteen volumes, yet only a fraction of his work has been translated into English to date.  Cause for Brother Charles’ canonization already has given him the designation “Venerable”. We feel therefore it is time to help put into English some of the works which we have not been able to locate in translation.

         Beginning June 1, 2003  this site will share the series of meditations Brother Charles of Jesus wrote on eighty-three of the Psalms.  We plan to do this in installments as the work is completed.  We invite you to bookmark the site, and freely to download, print and share the work of this extraordinary priest, hermit, and follower of our dear Lord Jesus.   You may also enjoy visiting   www.jesuscaritas.info/   for information on Charles de Foucauld and the world-wide Lay Fraternities devoted to his work,
 
 

        My Lord Jesus, this evening I begin my meditations on the Psalms and the Prophets.  Thank-you for this particular grace which you give me in letting me start these prayers this evening blessed above all, when for the first time bread is changed into your Body at the voice of a man, in this blessed evening after which you have not ceased to live with us on earth, O beloved Emmanuel.
        Sacred Heart of Jesus,  I consecrate these meditations to you.  I want to make them, not for myself nor for any creature, but like all the acts of my life, like all my thoughts, words and actions, I want them to be done only to glorify you, to console you as much as possible.
        Mother of Perpetual Help, grant me your all-powerful help and the grace to ask ceaselessly for it, that by this means I may make these small prayers in the manner most pleasing to our Lord Jesus.
        My father St. Joseph, my mother St. Mary Magdalene, my good guardian angel, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John, St. Stephen, holy apostles, holy women and holy disciples, St. Ann and St. Joachim, St. Benedict, St. Bernard,  St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Alexis, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis Xavier, St. John Chrysostom, Blessed Benedict Labre, St. Monica,  St. Teresa, Blessed Margaret Mary,  St. Claire,  my patron saints, all of you who are my special protectors, assist me in these prayers so that in making them I may please our beloved Jesus as much as is possible.
        I will meditate first on the Psalms, then on the Prophets.  The subject of each meditation will be one half of a Psalm or half a chapter of prophecy.  Each meditation will be made up of two parts: in the first part I will try to find out in what way the love of God for us stands out most clearly in the subject;  in the second I will ask myself what lesson is to be drawn from it.
 
 

Psalm 1: 1- 4

          Happy the man who does not ally himself with the impious nor with sinners,  you say.

          My God, I am miserable;  I fall a hundred times a day;  but at the last I do not wholeheartedly go the way of the wicked.  As you say further on, “...my will is in the law of the Lord, and I meditate on his law day and night.”  So I myself am happy, my God, in spite of my endless miseries.  By you I am proclaimed happy in spite of my imperfections, my countless falls;  and you add “This man will be like the tree planted by the waters; it will bear fruit in its season.  Its leaves will not fall and all it does shall prosper...”  I then, my God, in spite of so many faults, in spite of this wretchedness into which I feel plunged.   Only because my heart does not ally itself with the impious, and because I do not voluntarily stay in sin, but because my will is attached to your law and I meditate on it to fulfill it -- only for that, in your infinite goodness, you tell me, and you tell me repeatedly that it is the first word of the Psalms “Beatus vir...” (“Blessed the man...”)  you tell me that I will be happy, happy with true happiness, happy on the last day,  that as miserable as I am, I am a palm tree planted at the edge of living waters, living waters of the divine will,  of the divine word, of the divine love, of grace; and that I will bear my fruit in its due season.

           You deign to console me; I feel I am without fruit, I feel I am without good works;  I say to myself  I was converted eleven years ago; what have I done?  What were the works of the saints, and what are mine?  I see myself with hands completely empty.  You kindly console me:  you will bear fruit in your time, you tell me.  What is this time?  The time for all of us is the hour of judgement.  You promise me that if I persist in good will and the battle, poor as I see myself, I will bear fruit in that last hour.  And you add  you will be a beautiful tree with leaves eternally green and all your works will have a prosperous end, all of it bearing fruit for all eternity.  My God, how good you are, how divinely consoling.

         O Heart of Jesus, it is as though it was you who dictated the first tender words of the Book of Psalms!  You tell us there, as you will say one day in Galilee, “My yoke is sweet and my burden light.”  Thank-you, my God, for your consolations of which our poor hearts have so much need.

          Let us then be of good will, since Our Lord promises us beatitude at that price!  Let us be of good will!  Let us seek the will of God with our whole heart; let us do nothing for our own sake nor for the sake of any creature; everything for the sake of God alone.  Let us seek his will and do it, whatever it is.  And then, to know this will, let us meditate on the law of God day and night, searching it deeply, trying to know it better, retain it better, understand it better.  For this let us meditate on the holy Scriptures, above all on the holy gospels all the days of our lives.
 

Psalm 1: 5-end

          My God, how good you are!  Having encouraged your children with promises and having shown them how easy it is for them to merit their fulfillment, to keep them on the way of salvation,  you take another way no less strong,  the threat of chastisement.  You repeat to them several times, one after another, that if they are impious, if they haven’t good will, they will be condemned.  What love, what goodness !  To permit us to love him and follow him, what a grace!  But to command us to do so, and command it under pain of the most rigorous punishments, that is the ultimate grace!  My God, how good you are to use all the means of keeping us in your love.  How good you are!

          We must note that God announces here, from this first psalm, the Resurrection, the Last Judgement, the blessed life of the just in heaven.  Then let us consider the fate of the impious in not being among their number; let us think sometimes, often, of the judgement of hell so as not to be numbered among the condemned.  Since God recalls it to us, let us think about it.

           Who are the impious?  those who do not have the desire, the good will to follow God;  those who do not love God.  “Impious” means one who is not good,  who does not love.  The impious is one who voluntarily, of his own will, his mind made up, does not love God.   Let us not be among those!

          Sinners also will be damned, and God tells us in the last verse of this Psalm what he means by “sinner”: these are they who settle themselves in the way of sin, who stay there voluntarily, without attempting to get out of it.  These are not those people who get lost in the way of sin but hate it and try to leave it.  (Sinners are) those who stay on that road and do not want to leave.  Let us not be impious, not want to stay in sin.

          So as not to fall into this icy frigidity, into this total indifference of wickedness, we must avoid the least tepidity;  the gradual cooling of love, little by little, leads to divorce.  Let us rather be fervent, increasing in love each day.  That does not consist in the sweetnesses experienced in prayer and in consolations of the heart which feels that it loves.  To be fervent is to do at every instant of the day, at every moment of life, what most pleases the loved one, the will of God, the most perfect.  It is not within our power to have consolations;  true fervor is always within our power to possess.

          Let us not settle in sin;  for this purpose, let us not begin committing any.  Little infractions lead to big ones.  Let us never deliberately commit any fault, no matter how venial, small, tiny it may be,  (nor) any imperfection on purpose.  Let us never put even the tip of our toe on this road of infidelity;  that is how to avoid being settled there.  Let us love, let us love looking for only one thing: to do at every moment of our life the will of God, keeping him in mind.  Let us seek to know this will, think of it night and day, and do it with all our heart without ever allowing ourselves any cooling, any lukewarmness, any infidelity, any voluntary fault.  That is the teaching of this psalm.
 

 Psalm 2: 1-5

          My God, how good you are!  For the good of our souls, to make us humble, to make us look for you, to teach us the price of your presence, to make us fervent, you sometimes leave us -- perhaps very often -- in dryness and darkness.
All is painful to us on the earth, and the earth also because we have said goodbye to it and that we want absolutely no more of it; and yourself because you hide yourself from us: prayer, office, orison, holy communion, all weighs on us, all costs us,  even to tell you that we love you.  Painfully we feel our distress, our coldness; it seems to us there is a great abyss between you and us, that you regard us with a severe face and we ask ourselves where we are and where we are going;  it seems to us we are sinking in those moving quicksands from which one does not escape.  But my God, how good you are: then you cry out “Seek yourself in me” and you show us a secure anchor to which we can attach our joy and attach it in such a way that nothing can tear it away, even to the gates of hell.  This anchor is the joy of your happiness, the joy of your infinite blessedness.

          I may be bad, unhappy, ungrateful, cold, unloved, even damned -- what does it matter after all.  That doesn’t make you suffer any more, my God; nothing can make you suffer any more.  You are happy for eternity.  You are happy and that is all I need.  You are happy, therefore I am blessed.  You are happy, therefore I lack nothing.  You are happy, O my God, and I am filled with joy!   What matter to me what I am, what I will be;  I am blessed, my Lord and my God, because it is you I love and not me;  it is in you that my self rests;  since you are happy why think about myself or other people.  I lose myself in the contemplation of your happiness, O my beloved.  I forget myself, I lose myself in you.  I look at you, happy in heaven, happy in the Tabernacle; good or bad, whichever I may be, you are happy, O my love.   Nothing can tear your happiness away from you, and consequently  nothing can take mine from me.  I have only to look at you while repeating that you are happy; if I have the strength I can stammer out the Regina Caeli Laetare or to recite the Glorious Mysteries on my rosary, or at your feet lose myself in the blessed contemplation of this happiness where you are, and that my offenses cannot take away from you.

          To lose oneself in the joy of your glory is what the first verses of this Psalm teach us. “The nations have shuddered; the peoples have meditated insanities, the princes are assembled, the kings are united against the Lord and against his Christ...but he who is in the heavens laughs at them and the Lord mocks them”.  Yes, my God, you are in heaven, you are God, you are the Lord; you are infinitely powerful and infinitely happy; the offenses of men and my distress cannot reach you, nothing troubles the smile of the blessed and always-tranquil Trinity, and the thought of your happiness which nothing can take from you,  this thought which the first verses of this Psalm inspire is one of the greatest graces which you might give us here below.  It is to give our joy a basis that no one can take away from us;  it is to give us a consolation always ready in all of our sufferings and a foretaste of of the happiness of the elect.  My God, how good you are to give us this infinite favor.

          Joy and confidence...joy of the happiness of God, joy from the idea of this beautiful image of the changeless felicity of God.   “He who is in the heavens laughs at them and the Lord mocks them.”   And at the same time, confidence --confidence in the power of God who loves us, who protects us and whose sovereign power the same verse expresses so well.  Who can come against us, be they men or demons?  They never will do anything but what God will permit them to do.  “He who is in the heavens laughs at them.”

           Courage, then, and confidence.  Nothing will happen to us except with the permission of our beloved, of our spouse, of the one to whom we have given ourselves, who has chosen us to belong to him, who has filled us with so many graces, and who has said “All that happens, happens for the good of the elect” -- and joy.  Our beloved is eternally blessed.
 

Psalm 2: 6-end

          My God, how good of you to speak to us in the Old Testament about your Son.   Here we are in the time of David and already you are announcing the Gospel: “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you...’ ” And not only do you speak to us of the eternal generation of your Word, but you make us glad by informing us that the reign of Jesus will have no end: “I will give you the ends of the earth for your possession, you will reign with sovereign power.”  And after revealing to us a part of the mystery of the Trinity, after having put us into a perfect joy in announcing to us the glories of Christ, it still isn’t enough for your heart:  the last word of the Psalm has to be this infinitely gentle word: “Blessed are they who have confidence in me!”   It is enough then, as it were, to have confidence in you, to be blessed on the last day.  Unceasing love in this humble confidence will suffice to obtain for us the graces necessary to die in your peace!  O sweet word!  My God how good you are!

          Serve the Lord in fear, exult in him with trembling,  embrace discipline.  Here are three serious pieces of advice which you give us, my God: to serve God with all our heart, and in fearing him, fearing him as one to be dreaded, for he is our judge;  and in fearing him above all as one fears one whom one loves.     One fears no one so much as the person one loves; and the more one loves, the more one fears.  One fears so much to offend, so much to cause pain,  so much to displease, so much to serve poorly, so much not to give all possible pleasure,  so much not to serve as well as possible, of not rendering all possible services,  so much of not pleasing, so much of not pleasing as much as possible, of not giving the greatest signs of love possible, of not loving enough.  One fears also because one respects, and one respects so much when one loves!

         Exult in him;  yes, let us rejoice in him.  God is happy, happy for all eternity; he lacks nothing and will never lack anything.  If we love him, we are happy because of his happiness;  because he lacks nothing, we lack nothing.  Let us forget ourselves, let us not consider ourselves, not have a single glance at ourselves, not look at anything but our beloved.  He is blessed, let us rejoice;  let us exult with joy, lose ourselves in him in the happiness of his felicity: to forget ourselves and lose ourselves in God in the contemplation and the jubilation of his happiness.

         To embrace discipline, make a rule for oneself,  embrace a rule, seek how we will glorify God the most, to ask him how he wills that we serve him;  and when he has answered, to draw up our rule of life in accordance with his will, to hold on to it with a steady hand and not let go for a single instant.  This is the will of God for us.  This is inviolable.  Any failure is a lack of love, any fault against our program, this program willed by God, is a disobedience to God, a voluntary distancing from his will, an infidelity, a sin against the love which we owe to our beloved.  He wants of us one thing;  we do not give it to him.  He tells us that one thing pleases him; we do not do it.
 

Psalm 3: 1-4

          My God, how good you are to have given us in the Psalms so vivid an expression of the combats of our soul, and so consoling an image of the victories she wins when she appeals to you.  How true it is, how consoling, strengthening: “Lord, how much those who torment me have increased in number; many rise up against me...”  How true this is!  I feel it every day!  How I need to repeat your words every day, even at every hour!  And alas, these enemies are so relentless that they hope, not without reason, to discourage me.  “Many were saying to my soul ‘You have no security in your God!’ “  How often this voice of discouragement resounds in our ear!  It is very much our daily complaint.

          But later, my God, your Psalm consoles me; with what force it continues; it answers the enemies of my soul: “But you, Lord, you are my support, you are my glory, you lift up my head.  I cried to the Lord and he heard my prayer, from his holy mountain.”   How consoling this is, how supporting!  What confidence these words inspire.  My God, how good you are to have inspired these prayers in order to put them on our lips our whole life long.

          Let us do as the last of these four verses tells us: when our enemies rise up against us, let us not fight alone;  we are sad soldiers.  Let us at once call God to our aid; let us cry  out to the Lord.  From his holy mountain, he will answer our prayer.

          The principal artifice of the devil is to distract us by his attacks to the point where we do not think to call God to our aid.  The devil tries first to render us mute like the possessed persons in the Gospel, and then he has a fine time of tormenting us; we are so weak when alone.  Let us ask often in prayer for the grace of invoking God in temptation; temptations often vanish so quickly when one cries out to the Lord.  And when our darkened spirits seek to resist by their own strength without calling on the only true force, temptations last so long and are so dangerous that they can easily make us fall, and fall so low.

          Now, first lesson:  to take great care to call on God in all temptations from the beginning and as long as they last; and to ask God often to inspire us to pray to him as soon as we are tempted, and to put far from us this mute spirit which seizes us when tempted.  Second lesson: if we are tempted to discouragement, to respond with all our heart “The Lord is my support, my glory; he will know how to make me lift up my head.”
 
 

Psalm 3: 5-end

          My God, how good you are to have inspired these words so divinely consoling!  What power they have to console, to strengthen,  for these are not human words but your own, O Holy Spirit!  It is you, O Holy Spirit, who makes David say, who makes me say, “I slept and I was slumbering...”  How true it is,  I am deplorably asleep on the road to doing good;  I have been sluggish in the practice of virtues.  Instead of being a blazing fire in your service, like the angels, I have been cold and drowsy.  “But I awoke, for God took me by the hand...”  Yes, I can awaken from this slumber, not by myself but by the grace of God who is so good and so strong, and who never ceases to incite me.  Trust, then.  However miserable I may be, I can leave my torpor.  God is there who calls me to trust and gives me his hand; here he is who awakens me.

          And I have nothing to fear.  Courage!  “I shall not fear a thousand foes assembled around me.  Arise, Lord; save me, my God.”  The Lord is there to defend me; with him, what shall I fear?   With his aid what can I not do?  “Lord, you have struck down my adversaries.  Salvation is from God, and his blessing is on his people.”

        What trust is in all these words.  It is the Psalm of the sinner who is surrounded by temptations, whom the demon tries to discourage, who has even fallen asleep on the road to doing good, and has given himself over to spiritual drowsiness, to torpor, to numbness.  But the grace of God awakens him; he feels God close to him.  He no longer fears;  he gains confidence.  He throws himself into combat courageously, defying all his enemies and saying  “You, Lord, you are my support.  I would not fear a thousand foes.  In God is salvation.  Your blessing is on your people.

          Let us never be discouraged.  If it happens that we fall asleep, let us not be discouraged on awakening, but on the contrary let us think that this awakening we owe only to the mere goodness of God.  This kindness, which awakened us without our asking it of him, will for all the more reason wake us up if we ask him to do so.  His goodness has extended its hand to us; it still does, it always is there watching over us, ready to help.  The Lord is always in the boat, the Good Shepherd is always near his sheep.  “You have struck my adversaries...In God is salvation.”  He always is there, ready to vanquish all our enemies, ready to save us.

          Courage, then; trust!  But at the same time, prayer: the psalmist prays “Arise, Lord; save me, my God.”  Trust always, but prayer always.  However low we may have fallen, we can get up again, and rise to the throne of God like St. Mary Magdalene, like St. Paul, like the Good Thief, like St. Thais and so many others; but for that let us pray,  let us pray.  Let us pray in all temptations, in difficulties.  Let us pray always “Arise, Lord.  Save me.”  Let us often pray to God that we do pray to him in temptation; let us ask him for this special grace of having recourse to him, to call on him as soon as we are tempted;  let us ask him not to let us be overcome by temptation to the point of forgetting,  in the struggle, to call to our aid him from whom alone victory can come to us.  Let us indeed ask this grace which is of prime importance, for the devil, who knows “...that in God is salvation; he strikes our adversaries and breaks their teeth”.  This devil does all that he can to distract us, overcome us, render us mute and prevent us from calling God to our aid.
 
 

Psalm 4: 1-5

          How good you are, my God; how divinely consoling are your Psalms.  In all those we have seen thus far, what stands out in them is consolation.  All are a blend of consolations and counsels to resist temptation.  This Psalm is the same: “When I called on the Lord he heard me;  he comforted me when I was in trouble.”

          This is consolation:  God hears, God consoles God gladdens, puts at ease.  With one glance he puts an end to tribulation.  The means come now:  first, prayer: “Have mercy on me; hear my prayer.”  Then good will, courage, the quest for God alone, no longer to be preoccupied with self,  nor with creatures which are but vanity, but only with God who alone is truth.  “How long will you have a heavy heart?  Why do you love vanity and seek after falsehood?  Why this lack of courage?  Why do you seek after yourselves and seek after creatures?   Prayer, purity of intention, to do all for God alone.  These are two ways to obtain the help of God in trouble.  Here is a third one:  “God has glorified his Holy One;  God will hear me when I call out to his Holy One, to Jesus”;  prayers to Jesus, or to pray to God through Jesus;   both always will be heard, as the Gospel repeats to us.  The fourth means: repentance and good resolutions” : to become annoyed with oneself because of one’s faults, to review them with regret in one’s soul and no longer commit any of them.

          How consoling this is!  First, the assurance of consolation, then these many of ways to gain it.  How sweet that is!  How good you are, my God, to have inspired these words.  Each of these five verses contains a lesson, one thing to practice.  Let us have trust, since God condescends to tell us about them with so much kindness.

          Let us pray.   Let us do all for God alone without any seeking after ourselves or creatures.  Let us pray to Jesus and pray through Jesus, in the name of Jesus.  Let us repent of our offenses, ask pardon for them, make good resolutions, sin no more, be faithful, fight our least imperfections.  Let us examine our consciences and apply ourselves to self-correction.  And finally there is a sixth lesson which derives from these five:  that it is very necessary to read the Psalms, to meditate much on them, for they are rich in consolation and instruction.
 
 

Psalm 4: 6-end

          My God, how good you are, and how you console your poor creatures!
Is there anything more consoling than these last verses of Psalm 4.   You remind us there of the greatest, the kindest favors that you have done us: your incarnation, the sacraments, and then you add these words of sweetness and infinite peace on which you finish the Psalm: “In peace I will fall asleep and I will rest.  For you, Lord,  have established me in profound hope.”

          The teaching of this Psalm is hope, joy, peace, resting in God.  Hope, because God enjoins it on us: “Hope in the Lord.  You have especially established me in hope” and how good he is to command it of us, for in the light of his justice and our sins how could we dare to hope without the command he gave us.  Joy -- alas!  often it seems to be very far from this poor earth, so incompatible with out souls bent down under so many sins and woes, with our souls so fragile, so poor, so suffering.  But no,  sadness -- certain sadnesses are good, coming from God -- “Beati qui lugent...” -- but at the same time joy is there, immense joy.  “Many say ‘Who will show us good things?’ ”  Alas, yes, everything appears a source of distress around us and in us.  “The light of your countenance rests upon us, Lord.  You have given joy to our hearts.”

          Yes, Jesus, the light of your countenance illuminates us, it shines softly upon us.  And at this sight, what joy invades our hearts!  You are there: it is the beginning of heaven.  You are there, Son of God, because God is everywhere.  You are there, Son of Man, by your Gospel, the recollection of your life.  You are there by your holy Eucharist, and how close to us and how much in us, and with what sweetness and what love.  You are there by your grace always, always present.  You are there by your love which never abandons us as long as we live, which pardons us seventy-seven times and always wants our salvation, by your love which cherishes us more than the most loving wife cherishes her husband, more than the most tender mother cherishes her child.  The light of your countenance shines on us, Lord;  you have given us joy.

          And so that our joy might be greater still, to crown your gifts and confirm us in hope, you gave us your sacraments “...by the fruit of wheat, of wine, and of oil”:  the Holy Eucharist first, the supreme good , yourself,  my God!  Confirmation, the Holy Spirit;  Holy Orders which creates your ministers;  Extreme Unction which fortifies our last moments.  You have forgotten nothing, my God; how good you are!  How well you have provided for us!  Nothing remains for us but that  “...we sleep and rest in peace: for you, Lord, have marvelously confirmed me in hope.”

          This peace, the peace which comes from hope, this peace which depends upon one thing alone: the mercy of God, but which depends upon it so absolutely that on this mercy, on the Heart of Jesus,  our soul rests and sleeps.
 

Psalm 5: 1-7

          My God, how good you are to teach us to pray !  So often we don’t know how to do it.  So often we need to say with the Apostles, “Lord, teach us how to pray.”   You give us in your Psalms, my God, so many examples of prayers. They are your own words, the indescribable groanings of the Holy Spirit in the soul of David, divine prayer.   The Our Father and the prayers reported by the holy gospels are the lessons in prayer that you give us !  How good you are to give them to us, to remedy our weakness, our dryness.  And to give them to us in such abundance and in designating them yourself for such-and-such state of soul or moment of the day.  What a consolation, what a good thing it is for us to be able to pray to you in your own words, in so perfect a way and perfectly appropriate to our condition.

          This Psalm is the psalm of morning.  The Catholic Church recites it at Lauds on Monday.  The first seven verses are divided in a simple and remarkable way: the first three are simply invocations “Lord, I pray you, I pray you, I pray you, listen to me, listen to me.”  The fourth verse indicates the hour for which this Psalm is composed: “In the morning I will stand before you, Lord, and what will I see?  I will see that you hate sin, that the evildoer will not live near you, that the unjust will not be allowed before your eyes.  You hate all those who do evil, you curse liars;  you abhor the bloodthirsty and the perfidious.”

           This, then, is how the Holy Spirit wants us to place ourselves upon awakening,  in the presence of God.  Let us adore him, let us beg him to listen to us,  to make us pray to him himself,  to make our prayer within us himself, that it may be acceptable; that Jesus continue his life in us, that he may live in us and not we ourselves; that his kingdom may come into our souls, that he may make our thoughts, words and actions,  that he may pray to his Father in us.

          And then, with him, we will look at this Father.  And what will we see?  “A God who hates evil, who abhors sin”. We will consider this horror of sin, which is proper to the divine holiness.  Holy Father,  said Jesus;  Holy Father,  Just Father.  These are the only two names that Jesus gives to his Father in the Gospel.  It will be this holiness, this abhorrence of sin, which will present itself to our eyes when in the morning we stand with Jesus before God and look at him.  Let us do this carefully and in prayer on awakening;  having adored God, let us contemplate him, and “what do we see?”  A God who abhors iniquity.

          May this have its place in our morning prayer, since the Holy Spirit himself indicates to us this great and beneficial truth and at the same time this dazzling beauty -- the holiness of God, so formidable to the living, so terrifying to sinners, so sweet to the just, to begin the day and enlighten all our thoughts and our actions until evening -- to the evening of the present day and the evening of  life.
 

Psalm 5: 8 - end

          How consoling still are these verses, my God, and how good you are to have inspired your prophet for our consolation!

          You have willed that this Psalm should start with harsh images: “I will stand before you in the morning, and what will I see?  A God hating iniquity.”  Before all else, you inspire in us the hatred of evil, the fear of sin, fear of your judgments, the fear of offending you.  But you do not want to leave us with only this impression.  Having,  in the first place engraved it on our hearts as the first thing, the most necessary, the most beneficial, you have us make an act of adoration and confidence:   ”I am surrounded by the multiplicity of your mercies.  I will enter your house.  I adore you in your holy temple.”  And immediately after, you have us make an act of the detestation of evil, of this evil we have just seen that you hate, and as an act of the renouncement of Satan and his works.

          Finally in the three last verses there is the tender and filial expression of trust in God.  It is on this that you want us to end our morning prayer,  “All those who hope in you shall rejoice; they will be eternally happy and you will live in them.  All those who love you will be glorified in you, for you bless the just one,  Lord.  You have spread out your love over our heads like a shield.  Is there anything sweeter, anything more consoling?  God himself, it seems, could not have found a more tender word than the one he chose to end this prayer, and which with his ineffable goodness he orders us to say to him, “You have  spread out your love over our heads like a shield.”

         Let allow these acts to enter into our prayer;  let us always begin by saying to ourselves “I will stand before the Lord and what will I see?  A God who hates iniquity.”  And then let us ask him pardon of our faults, great and small, and let us beg him that we not commit any of them again, not even the least imperfection, because any imperfection displeases him, is an infidelity, a lack of fervor, a lack of love, a sadness for his heart.  Afterward should come the act of adoration:  “I adore you in your holy temple.”  This is the sequence which the priest follows at mass.  And after the act of adoration which will last as long as it will please God to make it last, let us finish with an act of detestation of evil and the renouncement of all that is not willed by God.  And finally let us throw ourselves upon the heart of God.  Let us thank him for his love, let us tell him that we believe, that poor as we are, we want, we hope to avoid every imperfection, to glorify him as much as possible because he has spread out his love over our heads as a shield , because we can do all in him who strengthens us.

          Let us finish our prayer by recalling his kindness, his heart, his mercies.  This is an act of gratitude, of necessary confidence in his love, necessary because to give it to God is just, necessary because he will give us the strength to fight the temptations of the day.   Moreover,  since God makes us do it in this Psalm, we must think thereby that it is very good to do.
 

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 Brother Charles' meditations on Psalms 6 through Psalm 10 will be posted on or before July 1.