St Vincent de Paul

O send out your light and your truth,
    let them lead me;
Let them bring me to your holy hill,
And to your dwelling places.
                                              Psalm 42 [43]: 3

This is one of a set of two psalms, which, with their refrain ("Hope in God, for again I shall praise him, the help of my countenance and my God" [NASB]) ,were the core of my spiritual life for a large part of my twenties. Despair often settled on me, and I found myself asking "Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why so disquieted within me?" along with the psalmist. "Disquieted" seemed like the perfect adjective to describe my soul a lot of the time. I was grateful for the psalmist's response to his own soul, and repeated it to mine: "Hope in God..." Honestly, this psalm and a handful of others kept me going when things seemed bleak.

During those years, I was too unsettled to see the direction of the psalm, beyond my soul's hope, to the hope of the whole world. The psalmist cries out, "O send out your light and your truth, let them lead me," and so he has. His Light and his Truth came to dwell among us in Jesus. And that holy hill, where God dwells, is also the mount of crucifixion. God is there, too, even as God was there--closer to me than my own soul--during the darkest and most difficult times. It was not for nothing that I encouraged my soul to "hope in God."

Twenty years ago, I was helped by the psalms; now I am also helped by the saints, those who have followed God's Light and Truth before me. Today we remember St Vincent de Paul, who devoted his life to helping the poor, and reminds us that "the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the poor with salvation,"and that God's Light and Truth became poor for our sake, that again we might praise him.

Deo gratias.

Wednesday in ordinary time

I give him thanks in the land of my captivity, 
     and I show his power and majesty to a nation of sinners.
                                                                           Tobit 13: 6

.          .         . 

There is a video that has been making its way around the internet: "Scientists discover one of the greatest contributing factors to happiness." I was curious about the thing that increases happiness (despite the slightly awkwardly-placed modifier)--who wouldn't want to find out what she could do to be happier? Laughter, I thought, maybe.

I was surprised to find that (in case you haven't seen the video) what increases happiness (between 4 and 19%, according to the guy in the lab coat) is expressing gratitude. Immediately, I thought of a verse from one of my favorite psalms:

I know all the birds of the air,

    and all that moves in the field is mine.

 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you;


    for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,


    or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,


   and pay your vows to the Most High;

and call upon me in the day of trouble;


   I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

                                               Psalm 49 [50]: 11-15

So the 'science' reminded me of something I already knew: giving thanks is a balm for the heart. And Tobit seems to have known it, too. He doesn't say, "I give thanks because God has rescued me from captivity"; he gives thanks in the land of captivity. Some days I get stuck between the joys and duties of motherhood and the joys and duties of my life as a (sort of) academic theologian. I love what I do in both roles. I am living two dreams, really, doing what I always wanted to do. So on those days when the tension between motherhood and career seems like captivity, I know what to do: give thanks. 

Deo gratias, Deo gratias.