Speak Lord: Heal the city

O praise the Lord, Jerusalem! or Alleluia!

O praise the Lord, Jerusalem!
Zion, praise your God!
He has strengthened the bars of your gates
he has blessed the children within you.

O praise the Lord, Jerusalem! or Alleluia!

He established peace on your borders,
he feeds you with finest wheat.
He sends out his word to the earth
and swiftly runs his command.

O praise the Lord, Jerusalem! or Alleluia!

He makes his word known to Jacob,
to Israel his laws and decrees.
He has not dealt thus with other nations;
he has not taught them his decrees.

O praise the Lord, Jerusalem! or Alleluia!

Psalm 147:12-15,19-20

The Responsorial Psalm sung at Mass tomorrow celebrates Jerusalem and God’s care for the city and its people.

Etymologically Jerusalem means ‘city of peace’. It is a name sadly belied by its present division and the violence born of occupation and resistance,. The present situation echoes a long history of earlier wars and political settlements with their victors and victims.

And yet Jerusalem remains a place for encounter between God and the faithful (Jew, Christian, Muslim and others), and a place of hope. If in Jerusalem we see the scars of human failings, it is in the mysteries revealed in Jerusalem that we seek the ways of healing for our future here that we hope will prove stepping stones to heaven also.

God helps us to safety, but we may not leave it all to God, taking the psalm at a naively literal level. God helps us also to know that he is God not only of the ‘literal’ Jerusalem but also God of the nations, called to a new unity in Christ.

Jerusalem – Mount Moriah across site of former city of David. (c) 2013, Allen Morris