Psalm 97: “When the Land was Restored”
Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness!
(Psalm 96:11-12)
Christ is risen!
Most English versions of Psalm 97 don’t have a title, because there is no title in the Hebrew manuscripts from which they are translated. But the ancient Greek version (the Septuagint), from the third century BC, does include a title: “David’s. When the Land was restored to him.” The Fathers took this as a prophetic reference to the Lord’s final victory in the Kingdom, when the Lord will reign over all (96:1), when all peoples will behold His glory (96:6), idols will be revealed for what they are (96:7) and light will dawn for the righteous (96:11). As a prophetic psalm, verses 11 and 12 are used in services in honor of prophets, including “the prophet and forerunner John the Baptist.”
Saint Augustine says that the “restored land” refers to our life in the Resurrection. The psalm is thus a song to “excite our hope” and reshape our living from now on.
The earth restored is the resurrection of the flesh, for after His resurrection all those things which are sung in the psalm were done. Let us then hear a psalm full of joy at the restoration of the Earth. Let the Lord our God excite in us a hope and a pleasure worthy of so great a thing. May he rule our discourse, so it will be fit for your hearts, so whatever joy our heart feels in such sights, he may bring on to our tongue, and from there conduct it into your ears, then to your heart, and from there to your actions
Ukraine
Father Leonid Kishkovsky and Protodeacon Nazari Polataiko are participating this week in a symposium on the Orthodox Church in Ukraine at the University of Toronto, sponsored by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada. OCA Deacons Nicholas Denysenko (Loyola Marymount University) and Paul Gavrilyuk (University of Saint Thomas) are also participants. Another presenter is Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, who is a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and currently a researcher at Yale University (he serves regularly at the OCA’s Holy Transfiguration parish in New Haven, Conn.) Some of my Ukrainian Catholic colleagues from the Sheptytsky Institute, including Father Peter Galadza, also have a leading role in the discussions. For more on the symposium see http://symposium2014.ca.
Meanwhile, as the situation in Ukraine has become increasingly violent, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Metropolitan Onufry, Administrator of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (MP) have issued important statements calling for a cease-fire and negotiations, noting that both sides are predominantly made up of Orthodox Christians.
Statement by Metropolitan Onufry: mospat.ru/en/2014/05/06/news102113
Statement by Patriarch Kirill: mospat.ru/en/2014/05/03/news102028