Dear Friends,
Every day I will bless you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever… The Lord is faithful in all his words and gracious in all his deeds. —Psalm 145
The Psalms are the human heart’s great cry to God. Every emotion, every thought, every doubt, every hope, and every experience becomes a prayer. And God wants it thus. As the spiritual masters put it, in the Psalms God teaches us how to pray.
And we notice something interesting as the Psalms progress. Some Psalms are primarily howls of anguish. Some Psalms are primarily exclamations of trust. Some Psalms are primarily prayers of petition or intercession. But the last five Psalms – Psalms 145-150 – are all songs of praise.
In fact, the Hebrew name for the Psalms (Tehillim) means, precisely, “Praises.” We are created to praise, to “live for the praise of [God’s] glory” (Ephesians 1:12). In the end there is only praise.
And as the trees turn brown and the days draw short and the year begins to die, can we praise God? From our own lives – whatever they look like – can we, perhaps, pray the last lines of the last Psalm? “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
God bless you,
In Christ,
Fr. John Pietropaoli
Two Priests and a Mic podcaster
