Acrostic Psalm 25

Easter Weekend

NRSV Psalm 25: 1-5

To you O Lord I lift up my soul

O my God in you I trust

Do not let me be ashamed

Do not let my enemies exult over me

Make me know your ways

Teach me your paths

Lead me in your truth and teach me

For you are the God of my salvation

For you I wait all the day

On Easter Weekend some friends enjoyed a drive in the Highlands, Balahulish and Nunraw monastery.
The scenery was glorious in the sunshine and took advantage of taking pictures en route. Quickly after returning home they sent us a PowerPoint show making a theme of the scenes with text of Psalm 25: 1-7.


This is one of the acrostic Psalms is another very interesting play of the Hebrew writers.

The pictures send me to study the different versions of this alphabet acrostic Psalm.

Mgr. Knox Bible Psalm 24(25) An Alphabet of Trust (Of David.) 1) All my heart goes out to thee, 2) O Lord my God. Belie not the trust I have in thee, let not my enemies boast of my downfall. 3) Can any that trust in thee be disappointed, as they are disappointed who lightly break their troth? 4) Direct my way, Lord, as thou wilt, teach me thy own paths. 5) Ever let thy truth guide and teach me, O God my deliverer, my abiding hope. 6) Forget not, Lord, thy pity, thy mercies of long ago. 7) Give heed no more to the sins and frailties of my youth, but think mercifully of me, as thou, Lord, art ever gracious. 8) How gracious is the Lord, how faithful, guiding our strayed feet back to the path! 9) In his own laws he will train the humble, in his own paths the humble he will guide. 10) Jealous be thy keeping of covenant and ordinance, and the Lord's dealings will be ever gracious, ever faithful with thee. 11) Kindly be thy judgement of my sin, for thy own honour's sake, my grievous sin. 12) Let a man but fear the Lord, what path to choose he doubts no longer. 13) Much joy he shall have of his lands and to his heirs leave them. 14) No stranger the Lord is, no secret his covenant, to his true worshippers. 15) On the Lord I fix my eyes continually, trusting him to save my feet from the snare. 16) Pity me, Lord, as thou seest me friendless and forlorn. 17) Quit my heart of its burden, deliver me from my distress. 18) Restless and forlorn, I claim thy pity, to my sins be merciful. 19) See how many are my foes, and how bitter is the grudge they bear me. 20) Take my soul into thy keeping; come to my rescue, do not let me be disappointed of my trust in thee. 21) Uprightness and purity be my shield, as I wait patiently, Lord, for thy help. 22) When wilt thou deliver Israel, my God, from all his troubles?

New Jerusalem Bible Psalm 25: 1-23 1) Aleph ADORATION I offer, Yahweh, to you, my God. 2) Bet BUT in my trust in you do not put me to shame, let not my enemies gloat over me. 3) Gimel CALLING to you, none shall ever be put to shame, but shame is theirs who groundlessly break faith. 4) Dalet DIRECT me in your ways, Yahweh, and teach me your paths. 5) He ENCOURAGE me to walk in your truth and teach me since you are the God who saves me. 6) (Waw) FOR my hope is in you all day long -- such is your generosity, Yahweh. 7) Zain GOODNESS and faithful love have been yours for ever, Yahweh, do not forget them. 8) Het HOLD not my youthful sins against me, but remember me as your faithful love dictates. 9) Tet INTEGRITY and generosity are marks of Yahweh for he brings sinners back to the path. 10) Yod JUDICIOUSLY he guides the humble, instructing the poor in his way. 11) Kaph KINDNESS unfailing and constancy mark all Yahweh's paths, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees. 12) Lamed LET my sin, great though it is, be forgiven, Yahweh, for the sake of your name. 13) Mem MEN who respect Yahweh, what of them? He teaches them the way they must choose. 14) Nun NEIGHBOURS to happiness will they live, and their children inherit the land. 15) Samek ONLY those who fear Yahweh have his secret and his covenant, for their understanding. 16) Ain PERMANENTLY my eyes are on Yahweh, for he will free my feet from the snare. 17) Pe QUICK, turn to me, pity me, alone and wretched as I am! 18) Zade RELIEVE the distress of my heart, bring me out of my constraint. 19) (Qoph) SPARE a glance for my misery and pain, take all my sins away. 20) Resh TAKE note how countless are my enemies, how violent their hatred for me. 21) Shin UNLESS you guard me and rescue me I shall be put to shame, for you are my refuge. 22) Taw VIRTUE and integrity be my protection, for my hope, Yahweh, is in you. Ransom Israel, O God, from all its troubles. Of David

Psalm 25

It is enough to read the psalm as you prayerfully listen for what God will say to you in those ancient words. However, if you wish to go deeper, continue with the study that follows. It is intended for personal reflection or for family or group conversation.

About the Psalm

Psalm 25 is a prayer song. It is written in acrostic form meaning that the first letter of each line is the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet as was the case with Psalms 9 and 10 studied earlier.

The psalmist appeals several times to God’s “hesed” – “steadfast love and faithfulness.” This psalm alternates sections that express trust in the Lord with petitions that ask something of the Lord. Many things are requested perhaps because the poet needs to work in all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The psalm begins with the line “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” The traditional posture of prayer for Jewish people is to stand with arms raised and palms facing to heaven. This first line is a spiritual description of that that posture of prayer intends. (Prince of Peace online)

[Psalm 25] In the Hebrew original this psalm is an alphabetic poem: the first letters of the lines follow the Hebrew alphabet. The result is a patchwork of standard formulas adding up to a prayer interrupted by lines of Jewish wisdom and covering a number of concepts and attitudes going back to very different layers of the Old Testament tradition: the Covenant, the sufferings at the hands of (pagan) enemies, awareness of sin and prayer for repentance and salvation, "the way" after the fashion of Deuteronomy and the Wisdom books, and the frame of mind of the anawim, the poor of the Lord, who await their rescue from oppression from God alone.

The surprising feature of this psalm, however, is its unity of atmosphere, which shows how all the major elements of the variegated tradition of the Old Testament were eventually fused in the spirituality, at once simple and full of ardour, of the pious Jews after the period of exile, a few centuries B.C. - "This is also the witness of the holy Spirit to us. For first he says: 'This is the covenant I will make with them one day, says the Lord; I put my laws in their hearts, I stamp them on their minds.' And then: 'I will no longer remember their sins and their evil acts.' But where these are forgiven there is no need for a propitiating sacrifice any more. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we may confidently go up to God's holy place in virtue of the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the temple-veil of his own body" (Heb. 10. 15-20). (Fifty Psalms B&O London 1968)

Easter Sunday

Homily for Easter Sunday, 2009
Fr. Mark

We may feel faintly disappointed by the Gospel reading today for Easter Sunday. After all the rich glories of the last three days – the institution of the Eucharist, the celebration of the triumph of the cross and the solemn but joyful celebration of the resurrection at the Easter Vigil – today’s Gospel (Jn 20:1-9)seems a bit flat. It appears to present only half the story – the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. It seems to emphasise the absence of Jesus rather than his risen presence. Perhaps a key question we are left with at the end of the Gospel is: why is it said of ‘the other’ disciple that ‘he saw and believed’; especially as until this time they had failed to understand the scripture that he must rise again?

The answer lies in John’s understanding of ‘signs’ in the life of Jesus. For John, Jesus is a wonderful mystery – a revelation of God and of God’s great plan of salvation for all mankind. Mysteries for John can be entered into, glimpsed and experienced by putting faith in the signs. All through the Gospels these signs give us some revelation of the meaning of Jesus. Here at the end of the Gospel the signs of the stone rolled away, the empty tomb and the folded linen cloth – that can be clearly seen – serve to give us entrance into the mystery of the resurrection. We are standing on the threshold of something wonderful and amazing, something that draws us to faith.

The signs become meaningful when the disciples saw them in the light of what they already knew of Jesus. They grew in this knowledge from living with him and as they journeyed along with him. Their love of Jesus and the trust they put in him left them open to gradual and fuller understanding of what he said and what he did.

As we ourselves see and believe these signs we are drawn into glimpsing and experiencing further revelation of the mystery we have been celebrating these past days.

If we were to read the rest of this chapter of John and the next one (Chapter 21), we would see a progression of revelation about the resurrection until the climax at the sea of Tiberias when the beloved disciple exclaimed to Peter: ‘It is the Lord!’ In today’s Gospel the disciple only experienced the beginnings of understanding of what had happened. So the signs had opened to him the doorway through which he could go and discover more fully the mystery of Jesus’ resurrection.

This is a telling point because it corresponds to our own experience. Full Easter faith is something we progress into as we see happened with the disciples. An important element of this progress is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Later in John’s Gospel Jesus appears to the disciples, breathes on them and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ For John this is the key to experiencing the resurrection in real and deeper way. This is reflected in our liturgy by the fact that following Easter Sunday we enter a seven-week period in which we will rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal more and more the wonder and joy of the risen Jesus.

Today we are given an opportunity to let the Spirit begin this work anew in our hearts and our daily lives.

Easter Vigil

Abbot Raymond: Homily

I HAVE THE POWER

“I have the Power to lay down my life
and to take it up again.” Jn 10:17-18

These awesome words were spoken by Jesus during his earthly life. They may pose a challenge to the world that refuses to believe in his Resurrection, but they hold no difficulty for those who believe that he is indeed himself Divine. After all, if God can “raise up, even from dead stones, children to Abraham” how much more can he raise up from the dead his own Sacred Body in which he had lived for thirty years?

What does however pose a challenge to the faith, even of those who believe in the Incarnation, is that part of the doctrine of the resurrection which proclaims that each and every one of us will rise up in the flesh to enter into our eternal destiny. True enough, God has told us that ‘no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man to consider, what things God has prepared for those who love him’ yet, because of this doctrine of the resurrection of the body, we know that whatever life is like in heaven it is a thing of flesh and blood as well as of spirit. Jesus himself went to great lengths to impress this on us. When he returned to visit his apostles after his resurrection he appeared, not as a shining figure as at the Transfiguration, but as such an ordinary figure as could be mistaken for a simple stranger on the road. He said: ‘See, it is myself! I am no ghost! Touch me, feel me! Have you got anything to eat?’ and they gave him a piece of broiled fish which he immediately consumed in their presence.

That our life in heaven will be a thing of flesh and blood as well as of spirit makes heaven so much more real for us; it makes God himself so much more real for us; tangible, visible, perceptible in some wonderful way. Our whole being, body as well as soul, is just made for communion with God. Every fibre of our being finds its ultimate meaning and fulfilment in Him. ‘The Body’, St Paul tells us, ‘is for the Lord’

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Paschaltide thanksgiving

Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Rom 6:4)

Easter Blessings

The Resurrection is a cosmic event, which includes heaven and earth and links them together. In the words of the Exsultet, once again we can proclaim: "Christ ... who came back from the dead and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your 5017 who lives and reigns/or ever and ever". Amen!

(Benedict xvi, Easter Homily, 2006)

Friends,

Happy Easter,

Wishing you all a lovely Easter.

A personal recovery note in Paschaltide thanksgiving.

It was so good of you, for love and prayer in seeing me through Stroke time.

Just for the record, The Stroke Association glossy magazine members keep us Aphasia fellow travelers in all sorts of information. I have learned so much about the needs of Stroke people worse off than I know. It is amazing to see extent of the great caring, support, charities on all sides.

Thank God, since last August, this Good Friday I was privileged to be President of the Liturgy of the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, Special General Intercessions, Veneration of the Cross, and Communion, (Mass of the Presanctified).

The Sacred Triduum has been blessed by so many visitors and guests attending the ceremonies. We appreciated the number of men and women sharing in the diversity of roles in the liturgical action.

A picture of the cemetery cross looks over Lothian. In site too are the fields in the glory of successfully cultivated the crops.

May you also rejoice in this Easter and blessed by good health this spring and all this year.

In the hope and joy of the Risen Lord,

Donald

Mount of Olives

Gethsemane Memory

February 2004

Chronicle my Holy Land Sabbatical

The Mount of Olives has become a centre-of-gravity-place for me. It contains a whole concentration of the beautiful elements of Jesus life. From my window in Via Dolorosa, the highest point on the skyline is the bell tower of the Ascension. Below it, on our side, are all the associated sites of Gethsemane. Beyond it, on the far away side, looking to the Judean desert, are Bethphage and Bethany. It is an extremely small area and all of it was within Jesus’ walking distance, and therefore within an almost tangible sense of His presence.

Nowhere was this more real to me than on the only remaining piece of wasteland, ‘no-man’s’ land, on the Mount of Olives that I could see. It lies between Gethsemane and Atur. At the six o’clock Mass in Gethsemane one morning I met three Sisters of the Little Family of the Resurrection, contemplative Sisters all in white, the Superior Italian and the other young ones from India. In order to reach their convent, the road lead up the way, not quite vertically although it felt like it. Then the Sisters followed a very rough footpath through a wild open side of the hill until eventually coming to the rickety gate hanging on its hinges at their convent. I was to say Mass for them later, getting there in the dark of the morning. Later in the day, in the same wild spot I found a Bedouin family had camped with their sheep and goats. Then out of that group of shepherds and their flock came a little Polish nun, Sr. Christina (Polish), with two little children from the nearby orphanage. I guessed she had been smuggling some food to the Bedouins. I could hardly believe all of this happening totally to my amazement - the appearance of ‘no bodys’ in a ‘no place’, unknown people (like myself) in an unknown place. It conveyed the real Mt. of Olives to me more vividly than the nicely tended olive trees of the Basilica or the beautifully kept gardens of Saint Mary Magdalene’s Church and the other well known shrines. These great Gospel Sites all have wonderful and moving histories, but I shall cherish my own unwritten (not the full picture), secret, history of meeting Jesus in his little, hidden, unknown friends (children, Bedouins, little Sisters) on the same bare and rough and poor hillside. All I can say is, thank you, Jesus, for keeping this little space of place and time for me in this quiet and expressive way, in your own Garden of Memory.

Gethsemane

In the Steps of the Master

H. V. Morton

A timeless account of a journey through the Holy Land by the world's favourite travel writer .

(Extract: Garden Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, pp. 42-43)

. . . the warmth in the air, for the sun in Palestine leaps up into the sky like a ball of fire and is warm to the skin from the first second of his arrival.

I hear the call to prayer from the nearest minaret. As I turn the corner, I see the muezzin standing in his little railed-in balcony, lit by the first light of the sun, an old blind man who cries in a loud chanting voice: "AIlahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar ; ashadu an la ilaha illa-llah, ashadu anna Muhammedarrasulullah ... hayya 'alas-sala ... Allah is great; testify that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet . . . Come to prayer! "

And as he calls he does not cup his hands to his mouth, as artists always paint him, but he holds them behind his ears, the palms to the front and the fingers up.

I go on over the rough cobbles and, passing through the Gate of St. Stephen, I see ahead of me a blinding sandy road and the Mount of Olives with the sun above it.

In mountain country there is nothing older than a road.

Cities may come and go, the most splendid buildings may live and die, but the little road that runs between the rocks lives for ever. One is shown all kinds of sites in Jerusalem which may be open to doubt-such as. the very spot On which the cock crowed when St. Peter denied his Lord-but one looks at them with respect for the piety which created them, and with distaste for the principle which profits from them. On the Mount of Olives, however, one knows that these little stony tracks that twist and turn over the rocks are the very paths that He must have taken and that they are marked more truly with the imprint of His feet than any rock within a golden shrine.

The road runs downhill from St. Stephen's Gate into the Kedron Valley. It bends to the right, leading down to the stony place, and, when I look up, the walls of Jerusalem, with their crenellated sentry-walks, stand like a challenge, golden in the morning sun. At the bottom of the valley the road rises over the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, and a little to the right stands a clump of cypress trees with a wall round them. This is the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Franciscan friars, who touch everything with beauty, grace and reverence, own the little Garden and, while they have built a church near by, they have not touched the Garden except to make flower-beds among the ancient olive trees.

In a land where the footsteps of Christ, real or imaginary, can be traced by huge churches built over stones and caves and legends, this quiet little Garden on the Mount of Olives stands out as an imperishable memory. Time has not altered this Garden. City has followed city on the hill opposite, but the Garden, so near that in the evening the shadow of Jerusalem's wall falls across it, has remained to-day as it must have been in the time of Jesus. There would have been a wall round it and probably an oil press to which the people on the Mount would have carried their olives to be crushed. Dotted about the garden are eight aged olive trees of tremendous girth. They are more like rocks than trees. Slim new shoots spring out of apparently dead wood, and the old trunks, vast as ancient oaks, are propped up with ramparts of stones and stout wooden poles. These trees still bear fruit from which the monks press oil.

An old monk, who is working in the Garden, unlocks the rate for me and turns again to his weeding basket and his rake.

He is a French monk who has spent many years in the Holy Land, and when I talk to him he straightens himself from the hedge of rosemary and stands, politely anxious to get on with his work, his brown gardener's hands folded across his brown habit, the fingers locked together.

He points out to me a rock which marks the place where Peter, James and John slept, and not far off is a column in the wall which is the traditional spot on which Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss.

" And is it true," I ask him, " as so many believe, that these nre the actual trees that were growing in the time of Our Lord? "

" They may well be the trees," he replies, " for their age is lost in antiquity. I will tell you a very interesting thing about them. They have never paid the tax which, since the Moslem .on quest, was imposed on newly planted trees. That means that they were not young trees many centuries ago. That, my son, is an historic fact, but whether they sheltered our

rd I cannot say; but, for myself," and here the old man smiled gently and bent towards his rake and basket, " I believe they did."

There is no sound in the Garden of Gethsemane but the click of the Franciscan's rake among the sharp flints and the drone of bees among the flowers and, intermittently, that hot sound like a whip-lash that will always remind me of the blazing Sun of Palestine-the noise of grasshoppers.

And, as I stand in the shade of the olive trees, I look up and see, through a screen of leaves, the great yellow wall of Jerusalem on the ascending slope opposite, and the walled-up Golden Gate, the site of the triumphal entry into the city. In this quiet garden, striped with cool shadow, that wall seems cruel and terrible.

It Occurs to me that there could be no greater contrast than the proud, hard, yellow wall and this little garden among trees, where the lizards come out of holes in the stones to stare in the sunlight with their small frogs' heads lifted, listening and watching; where every leaf and every flower achieves an added beauty by reason of the barren harshness and the cruel heat beyond the garden.

"Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. ... "

I finish the chapter of St. Matthew and close the Book. The monk has weeded to the end of his row. He stoops down, picks a stone from his sandal and bends again to his work. And above us the gaunt, cavernous trunks of the eight olive trees that will not die rise up like the columns of a crypt.

As the Franciscan lets me out of the garden he gives me a little slip of paper, which I place in my pocket as I walk back up the hot road to Jerusalem. Remembering it, as I pass in under the gate of St. Stephen, I open it and find pressed inside a spear-shaped olive leaf and a blue flower from the Garden of Gethsemane.

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Beloved Disciple at Empty Tomb

Beloved Disciple at Holy Sepulchre

Comment to William.

How wonderfull to ponder your exciting Easter Greeting poem.
Now I would love share this Easter Message with others.
Since it is an exceptional focus on words of the beloved disciple's proclaim of his belief (Jn 20:8) it raises my interest. I searched for a picture of the experience of the tomb of the Resurrection. There are countless depictions of Mary Magdalene's encounter "noli me tangere", (Jn 20:17) (1000s such on www). It was amazing to discover I found only one painting ‘the beloved disciple in the sepulchre’ among artists ancient or recent. See the picture opposite .

The contrast in popular perception between Mary Magdalene and ‘the beloved disciple’is so striking.
Thank you, William, to allow me to use your lovely contemplative (mystic) comment and poem. To add a picture may provide pictorial note for an Easter Greeting for friends.

After this it was a surprise of the appearance of a very recent painting of Empty Tomb, beloved disciple-Peter-Mary Magdalene. A surprising view of the three together.

Chancing on the current Aberdeen Diocesan Newsletter, Easter 2009, I found one painting when thinking about “the other disciple also went into the tomb: he saw and he believed.” (Jn 20:8), from an unusual source. It is the paining of the Empty Tomb among the the collection of artist, Dr He Qi

Chinese Christian artist, Dr He Qi presents us with art that connects us to the biblical story in a fresh, even a surprising, way. He is both story-teller and evangelist in his art. He is not only preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, but he is also conveying a message that transcends cultural types. In seeking to de-westernize the Christian story. . .

He Qi said, "There are two different ways in China for people to become a Christian;' he says. "One is by the strong influence from his family background; another way is by his own choice-'step by step: I belong to the second way.”

William’s lines will inspire more reflections and illuminate more light and sense of the heart of ‘the beloved disciple'.

Easter Blessing

Easter Blessings
Our good friend, William, shares a very thoughtful and prayerful Greeting.
He reflects on Easter morning in a way that the experience of 'the beloved disciple'
speaks from his heart in the empty tomb.
William writes that may our faith in the Risen Lord fill us with hope and joy.

The Entrance

From darkness to light, this is the gift of faith's enlightenment as we come with the disciples to discover the intimate mystery of Our Lord's death and resurrection. There is one particular time and place in which the meaning is revealed - in the darkness of the sepulchre on Easter morning - for the light to shine upon the entrance to our mind.

John 20:8 .. the other disciple also went into the tomb; he saw and he believed

I love to enter the deepest realms of faith

Of the meaning of Your death and resurrection,
Standing in the shadows within Your sepulchre
As the morning rays lighten upon its entrance.

Man amongst men You lived on earth,
Eternal God committed by the trial of life
Through the witness of Your living testimony
To Evil's enslavement of humanity.

Condemned You bore the burden of our guilt,
Cast out and crucified You healed the wounds
Which we inflict upon You and upon each other
As we wrestle in the embrace of Your cross.

I am overwhelmed by the aura of the tomb
For Your death reveals what life conceals
The emanation of the Essence of Your Being
Shining in glory upon the entrance to my mind.

Ps 56: 12 .. 0 God. arise above the heavens; may Your glory shine on earth!

Ps 16: 15 .. in faith and righteousness
/ shall see l'our face and be filled,
when I awake, with the sight of Your glory.