Righteousness and Joy
V. Endue thy ministers with righteousness;
R. And make thy chosen people joyful.
Three weeks ago I wrote about the first of the suffrages; this is the second. It follows our asking God in his mercy to grant us his salvation. The means of salvation are found in the church, that fragile instrument that has survived twenty centuries and is often far from what it ought to be. And so, having asked for salvation, we ask that the ministers of the church be righteous. You can receive grace through the sacraments even if the ministers are scumbags, but it does no favor to the church, and it is hard on our own souls, when they are.
The response to a church that shines through the righteousness of its ministers is joy. It’s similar to a country where the authorities are righteous: the people respond with glad affirmation of their authority. That gladness, that joy, extends far beyond the church proper, into all of life. Having received God’s salvation, people are joyful in everything—at work, at play, at home, abroad, everywhere. But joy is not in fact tied to the righteousness of the ministers, not tied to the condition of the church. Joy comes from the grace of salvation, regardless of the condition of the ministers of grace.
This truth, which may well surprise, is captured in a line that comes early in the Eucharistic prayer. I give it to you in the antique version. “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord.” No matter the time or place, no matter where or when, no matter what, it is fitting to give thanks to God. Rain or shine, weal or woe: to give thanks is right.
However, we cannot on our own give thanks to God always and everywhere; as with everything else, we are dependent upon God for this. And so we ask him to give us joy. Make thy chosen people joyful. To have God’s salvation is to know this joy.
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Out & About. I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas on Sunday, Feb. 16, at 9 and 11:15 a.m.
Coming up next in the monthly book seminar: Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather, on Sun., Feb. 23, at 5 p.m. at St. Matthew’s in Dallas. Set in Botswana and written by one of Africa’s great mid-20th-century authors (but now hardly remembered), this novel takes us into complexities of social and political change, science and tradition, tribalism, race, and male-female relations. Bessie Head was an outcast in South Africa’s apartheid who took refuge in Botswana and became a tough and compelling author. This novel is profoundly human.
On the Web: I have written a short piece on how monks die. Here’s an excerpt: “A Time to Die [is] a remarkable book by the French journalist and author Nicolas Diat (published in English translation by Ignatius in 2019). About a decade ago, Diat visited several European monasteries, specifically hoping to learn how monks die: What happens when they get ill and approach death? How is that moment of death understood? What happens afterwards?
“To seek out monasteries with these questions in mind was a brilliant move, because if Western culture at large has lost sight of the truth about human mortality, monasteries are likely to be places where at least some of this truth survives.”
You can read my post here: https://humanlifereview.com/when-a-monk-dies/