Psalm 86
All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God.
Psalm 86:9-10
(Revelation 15:3-4)
Many psalms, like this one, are prayers that assume God is (or ought to be!) listening, answering and guiding His people.
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me.
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my cry of supplication.In the day of my trouble I call on You, for You will answer me.
Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere Your NameShow me a sign of Your favor, so that those who hate me
may see it and be put to shame,
because You, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.
(Psalm 86:1,6-7,11, 17)
The scriptures are filled with accounts of people acting—sometimes dramatically—on the guidance they perceive God has given them. Noah builds an ark when everyone else says he must be crazy. Abraham leaves his homeland not knowing where the endpoint will be. Moses confronts Pharaoh and leads Israel out of Egypt, all at God’s direction. In Acts, the life of the early church is dominated by this sense of palpable direction from the Holy Spirit. How that direction is given and how it is discerned from delusion is another matter, but attentiveness to the Spirit of God in practical decisions is understood as basic to the spiritual life. God’s voice comes in “many and various ways”—through worship, spiritual reading, confession, counseling, words of faithful friends and above all through the Scriptures.
The writers of the New Testament were immersed in the Old Testament. In Revelation 15:3-4, the song of the victorious martyrs, the Apostle John refers to Psalm 86: 9,10 in a passage that is a almost all quotes from the Old Testament. On this topic Father Paul Tarazi once said in class, “Why would God bother to give us 1,500 pages of scripture if He didn’t mean for us to read it and be guided by it?”
Holy Synod Meeting
Among other items, yesterday the Holy Synod heard reports from the officers and on external affairs and the state of world Orthodoxy. For the latter Father Leonid Kishkovsky was joined by Dr Paul Meyendorff and Protodeacon Nazari Polataiko who reported on the current situation in Ukraine.
Archbishop Alejo of Mexico presided at the Presanctified Liturgy (with Protodeacon Joseph Matusiak), serving in Spanish. We were blessed to have the inspired singing of the Saint Tikhon’s Seminary Mission Choir, under the direction of Benedict Sheehan (and including the tenor voice of Dean, Father Steven Voytovich.)
Afterwards Maria Sheehan introduced the bishops to the musical training ministry of “The PaTRAM Institute” (Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute, www.patraminstitute.org).
On behalf of the clergy of Eastern Pennsylvania Bishop Mark of Philadelphia presented to Bishop David of Sitka the gift of a bishop’s panagia as an affectionate remembrance of his years as a priest serving the diocese.