Psalms 120 · The Lantern

A song of ascents. To the LORD in my distress I called, and he answered me.

Therefore it was none other than God whom David too implored for his deliverance: "When I was in trouble, I called on the Lord, and he heard me; deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue." To him also giving thanks he spoke the words of the song in the seventeenth psalm [LXX], in the day in which the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies…

Let us come to the psalm that was read after the hundred and eighteenth psalm. The hundred and eighteenth psalm, as we have often said, is a lettered one — that is, it is an alphabetic psalm: for it begins from aleph all the way to the last Hebrew letter, which in Hebrew is called THAU, and each set of verses begins with a single letter.

When therefore a man has commenced thus to order his ascent; to speak more plainly, when a Christian has begun to think of spiritual amendment, he begins to suffer the tongues of adversaries. Whoever has not yet suffered from them, has not yet made progress; whoever suffers them not, does not even endeavour to improve. Does he wish to know what we mean?

In My Distress I Cried to the LORD

LORD, deliver my soul from a lying lip, from a deceitful tongue.

What will he give to you, and what will he add to you, deceitful tongue?

Sharpened arrows of a mighty man, with coals of the broom tree.

Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!

Too long has my soul dwelt with one who hates peace.

With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they attacked me without cause. Unhappy we, we cannot restrain our tongue, we cannot help slandering the brethren. If someone offends us, we as it were present a peaceful face, but for the rest the heart has poison. We are called monks, and although we are not such as we ought to be, yet we are so called.

"My soul hath wandered much" [Psalm 120:6]. Lest thou shouldest understand bodily wandering, he hath said that the soul wandered. The body wandereth in places, the soul wandereth in its affections. If thou love the earth, thou wanderest from God: if thou lovest God, thou risest unto God.

Which peace our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed and gave; of whose preaching our father Francis was a renewer, announcing peace at the beginning and end of every sermon, wishing peace in every greeting, sighing for ecstatic peace in every contemplation, like a citizen of that Jerusalem, of which that man of peace speaks, who was peaceable with those who hated peace: Pray for the t…

I am peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

Psalms120

In My Distress I Cried to the LORD