Eventide & Altar

The kings assemble, they come on together; they also see, and at once are stunned, terrified, routed. Quaking seizes them - anguish like a woman's in labor. The power that terrifies the assembling armies is the presence of God in his city. The same anguish that seizes the enemy is what Ahaz felt before Isaiah arrived. The difference is the address: the enemy faces the city's defense; Ahaz is inside it.

God upholds his city forever. The psalm is the word beneath the prophet's instruction to Ahaz: what you are standing in has not changed because armies have assembled. The city is still upheld. The stumps are still stumps.

Kateri Tekakwitha's life models the faith-firmness that Isaiah calls for. She could not hold the faith in the environment where she was born without cost. She moved to a Christian community in Canada, intensified her practice, and died at twenty-four radiant with the life she had chosen. The stumps of her opposition were real and she named them as stumps.

The Sorrowful Mysteries follow the one who was apparently not protected - the one whose city seemed to fall. But the protection was real; the raising was coming. Pray them tonight as a meditation on what it looks like to remain tranquil when the armies have assembled.

• For those whose hearts are trembling like trees in the wind before the specific enemies of their peace, that the remain-tranquil-these-are-stumps would reach them tonight, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who have seen the works and not yet been moved by them, that the reproach would arrive before the judgment and the sackcloth would still be available, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Precious Blood month, for the Precious Blood that is the city God upholds - the defense that stands when all other defenses have been assembled against, we pray to the Lord.

Unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm. Before sleep tonight, name the specific thing you have been trembling before. Name it as a stump - the fire almost out, not the conflagration it appears to be. Then name what you are actually standing on.