Eventide & Altar

You have rejected us, O God, broken our defenses; you are angry. Restore us. The psalm is the honest prayer after the catastrophe - naming the rejection, the anger, the shaking of the earth, and asking for restoration. You have given those who fear you a banner to rally to. Help with your right hand and answer us.

The fall of Samaria stands in the evening reading as a warning and a mercy: the warning that accumulated rejection produces consequences, and the mercy that even in the psalm of desolation the request for restoration is made and the Lord's answer is expected. He will tread down their foes. With God they will do valiantly.

Remove the beam from your own eye. In the evening of life the self-examination becomes easier and harder simultaneously: easier because the patterns are clearer, harder because the investment in the self-image is deeper. The beam that has been there for decades is harder to name precisely because it has been there for decades. But the clarity that follows the naming is still available.

The Joyful Mysteries trace the beginning of what Israel's rejection kept delaying - the coming of the one the prophets had been warning toward. Pray them tonight as a meditation on the mercy that does not stop warning even when the warnings are consistently ignored.

• For those in the evening of life who are still naming beams that have been present for decades, that the naming would not be too late for the clarity that follows, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who have been removed from a relationship or community through accumulated rejection, that restoration would still be possible, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that warned through every prophet and still waited for the return, we pray to the Lord.

With God we will do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes. Name one foe in your life that you have been trying to tread down with your own strength. Give it to the God of the right hand tonight. The doing valiantly comes after the giving.