Catholic Sensibility

Neil's commentary on Psalm 118

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.” As Konrad Schaefer, OSB, reminds us, Psalm 118 is the concluding Psalm in the “Egyptian Hallel” (Psalms 113-118). We have already heard that God “raises the needy from the dust, lifts the poor from the ash heap” (Ps 113:7), turns “rock into pools of water, stone into flowing springs” (Ps 114:8; Ex 17:1-7), and deserves the praise of all nations (Ps 117:1). Now we hear the culmination of all this in a thanksgiving liturgy – we hear that “God’s love endures forever” (118:1-4), and the presider, once hard pressed, declares “the Lord, my strength and might, came to me as savior” (118:14, Ex 15:2), so that, as the assembly responds, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (118:22). They have all entered into the temple, and the assembly cries “Hosanna!” (118:25); they then process to the altar with leafy branches, and the presider summons them, “Give thanks to the Lord, who is good.” The assembly responds, “whose hesed endures forever” (118:29). St Luke quotes Psalm 118 four times in his writings. Jesus tells the Pharisees that “you will not see me until (the time comes when) you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Lk 13:35), so that Psalm 118:26’s description of an entrance into the temple becomes a vision of Jerusalem welcoming its Messiah. The disciples quote this same verse when Jesus enters into Jerusalem (Lk 19:38) on the back of a colt - a messianic sign (Zech 9:9). But it is only the disciples who see this, not the people of Jerusalem - Jesus is the rejected stone that will have to somehow “become the cornerstone” (Lk 20:17). This too comes to pass. In Acts, St Peter, after curing a lame man and proclaiming that Jesus is the “cornerstone,” tells us “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed” (Acts 4:11). As J. Ross Wagner concludes, “The vindication of Jesus that was a promise in Luke 20 has now become a reality through the resurrection. What was insinuated indirectly in Lk 20:17, the identification of the ‘cornerstone’ of Ps 118:22 as Jesus and the ‘builders’ as the leaders of Israel, is now proclaimed boldly in Acts 4:11.” So, “with great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all” (Acts 4:33). Christ is risen, Alleluia! But do we today bear witness “with great power” to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as did Peter and the apostles? Do we do justice to the assembly’s responses in Psalm 118? Not always. As the Jesuit church historian John O’Malley tells us, “the tradition of empathy with the sufferings of Christ as one's spiritual center,” despite its legitimacy and power, “can lead to neglect of the Resurrection.” He tells us that the reform of the Easter triduum under Pope Pius XII and the liturgical reforms of Vatican II were actually attempts to “redress the balance” left by a spirituality that treated Easter Sunday as a mere anticlimax to Good Friday. And the Redemptorist moral theologian Brian V. Johnstone writes of the Resurrection, “that belief does not seem to have left any mark on Christian ethics or moral theology, at least as this is portrayed in the standard texts.” It would be a tragedy, I think, if the Resurrection were merely a “proof” or “evidence,” ready for us to deploy in an apologetics exchange but meant for very little else. So, let’s meditate on the resurrection with an image from Psalm 118: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (118:22). And let’s think about actual, concrete stones. The Cambridge theologian Janet Martin Soskice directs our eyes to Ely Cathedral. The consecrations of medieval cathedrals associated the massive stone structures with Jerusalem, “the place of God’s tabernacling with the people.” The standard lesson was almost always drawn from the Book of Revelation: “I saw the holy city, and the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful as a bride dressed for her husband” (Rev 21:2). The consecration liturgies also looked back to Solomon’s consecration of the First Temple as a prototype (2 Chr 7:1-16). Then the assembly heard a sermon of St Augustine “amplifying the awareness that the true temple of God is made not of inert rock, but of human hearts and spirits.” This might seem to be rather off point, but remember that, as Dr Soskice says, “early Christians, it would seem, believed that Jesus had styled his own body as the Temple, or at least that Jesus’ body could be styled as a temple.” After all, St Paul imagines Christ as a foundation, himself as an architect, and all Christians as builders and building simultaneously. “Didn’t you realize that you were God’s temple and that the Spirit of God was living among you?” (1 Cor 3:16). What would it mean to imagine the resurrected body of Christ as the foundation of a structure like Ely Cathedral with Christians as “living stones” built upon it? We would then have to really see our bodies as “temples of the Holy Spirit” and also “members making up the body of Christ” (1 Cor 6). We would have to ask if our giving and receiving to and from one another really manifests a continual self-emptying (Phil 2:7). We would have to become concerned for corporate sins and delusions that might lead to the defilement of the body of believers. As Paul asks, “Do you think I can take parts of Christ’s body and join them to the body of a prostitute?” Likewise, we would need to become concerned that our individual bodies do form one body, that “to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor 12:7). The body of Jesus Christ is our Temple. He told us, “I will pull down this Temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build up another, not made with hands” (Mk 14:58). That is what we celebrate today. This means that we can meditate on the Resurrection by meditating on the medieval cathedrals. Dr. Soskice once more: “The complexity of these structures reflects the complexity and specificity of the living Body of Christ – a Church made up of many distinct individuals who, not despite their individuality but because of it, can be brought through their Lord into a glorious architectonic whole.” Do you feel part of an architectonic whole? Does the living Body of Christ remind you that God’s “hesed endures forever” (Ps 118:29)?