This morning I was visiting someone in the hospital, and as I rode home on the bus I prayed my midday prayer from the 1962 Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum. As far as I can tell we are allowed to do so, and it's a lot smaller and lighter a book to carry around.
In praying from the older breviary, once in a while one gets a shock in coming by one of the psalms or sections of psalms that were expunged from the psalter in the production of the reformed Liturgy of the Hours. Imagine how taken aback I was to suddenly find myself praying the end of psalm 58, which does not appear in the LOH at all:
Laetábitur iustus, cum víderet vindíctam, pedes suos lavábit in sanguine iníqui.
"The just one will rejoice when he sees vengeance, and will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked."
There's a pious thought for one's midday prayer!
5 comments:
Who's ready for lunch?!
Fr. Charles,
Ar you observing the Winter Ember Days this week?
While I don't expect to make it to mass until Sunday, I do enjoy the extra lessons in the Ember Day masses, It reminds me so much of the Easter Vigil.
And Happy Posadas!
Surely, you can find the allegorical or tropological meaning in that verse. How would St. Bonaventure interpret it? ;-)
St. Augustine:
Therefore saith the Scripture, “The just man shall rejoice when he shall have seen vengeance” (ver. 10). Not that future punishment; for see what followeth: “his hands he shall wash in the blood of the sinner.” What is this? Let your love attend. When man-slayers are smitten, ought anywise innocent men to go thither and wash their hands? But what is, “in the blood of the sinner he shall wash his hands”? When a just man seeth the punishment of a sinner, he groweth himself; and the death of one is the life of another. For if spiritually blood runneth from those that within are dead, do thou, seeing such vengeance, wash therein thy hands; for the future more cleanly live. And how shall he wash his hands, if a just man he is? For what hath he on his hands to be washed, if just he is? “But the just man of faith shall live.” Just men therefore he hath called believers: and from the time that thou hast believed, at once thou beginnest to be called just. For there hath been made a remission of sins. Even if out of that remaining part of thy life some sins are thine, which cannot but flow in, like water from the sea into the hold; nevertheless, because thou hast believed, when thou shalt have seen him that altogether is turned away from God to be slain in that blindness, there falling upon him that fire so that he see not the sun—then do thou that now through faith seest Christ, in order that thou mayest see in substance (because the just man liveth of faith), observe the ungodly man dying, and purge thyself from sins. So thou shalt wash in a manner thy hands in the blood of the sinner.
I'm not a Marcionist. But...yeah. I prefer to stick with the NT.
Father Charles, this passage in question is easy reading compared to Deuteronomy : )
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