“Turn us again, O God; / show the light of thy countenance,
and we shall be whole”
The Psalms are the most familiar and the most used parts of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Christian liturgy and yet they are easily and often taken for granted. What are the Psalms? The Psalms are prayers and praises and they play an important role in the Christian understanding of the Gospel. The two psalms which stand out for consideration in our Advent meditations are Psalms 80 and 85. They are two of the most used Psalms in the Christian liturgy during the season of Advent.
Psalm 80 is used on The Sunday Next Before Advent at Morning Prayer, on The Second Sunday in Advent as the Introit at Mass, and on The Third Sunday in Advent as the Gradual. Psalm 85 is used as the Introit and Gradual Psalm on The Sunday Next Before Advent, as the Gradual Psalm on The First Sunday in Advent and as the Gradual Psalm for The Advent Ember days. It is even the Psalm appointed in its entirety for the evening service on Christmas Day – not the most highly attended service, to be sure. But there it is.
Our initial focus will be on Psalm 80. Augustine notes about Psalm 80 that “the song here is of the Advent of the Lord and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His vineyard.” This interpretation alerts us to an intriguing and important feature of the Psalms. They are at once the hymn book and the prayer book of Israel but become the hymn book and the prayer book, too, of the Christian Church. In a way, the Psalms gather together into song and prayer the teachings of the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures at the same time as illuminating something of the meaning of Christ and his Church. That is really Augustine’s point.
Psalm 80 signals the important meaning of the Advent for Israel and for the Christian Church, namely, the idea of God’s Word coming to us, the Word in which we find wholeness and healing in the face of suffering and hardship, the Word which is salvation and life, the Word which is hope and life. “Turn us again” is the repeated refrain which is further intensified in the piling up of descriptive terms of the God to whom we are speaking. “Turn us again, O God”; “Turn us again, O God of hosts”; and again as repeated, “Turn us again, O God of hosts”; before reaching the final crescendo of prayer, “Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts”. Within that sense of mounting intensity, the prayer itself, however, remains the same. “Show us the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” Four times we hear those words that conclude the four sections of the Psalm.
Advent is about the turning of God to us without which we cannot be turned to God. In the Christian understanding that turning of God to us has its fullest expression in the coming of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, in whom the Law and the Prophets and the Writings of the Hebrew Scriptures are in some sense fulfilled and transformed. Not repudiated but transformed.
Psalm 80 captures something of the Advent theme of the redemption of human desire. The darkness of Advent is our awareness of our own limitations, the darkness of sin and ignorance, the darkness of death and despair, and the even greater darkness of the despair of desire. Yet this awareness opens us out to the hope and love of God, the one to whom in the Psalm we look for salvation and healing.
If Advent is about reason as revelation, then it begins with this awareness of our own darkness. In that awareness there is the prior acknowledgement of the reality of God as “the Shepherd of Israel” who “leadest Joseph as a flock,” and the one who, as the transcendent principle of all reality “sittest upon the Cherubin”; “the seat,” Augustine explains, “of the glory of God and [which] is interpreted the fullness of knowledge.” Out of the awareness of the limitations of our reason and knowledge, we look to the light and the fullness of knowledge that is God’s alone. Only in his light can we hope to see light.
Only in his turning to us can we hope to be turned to Him in prayer and praise. “O, let us live, and we will call upon thy Name,” the Psalmist says, before concluding with the last and great refrain.
“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; / show the light of thy countenance
and we shall be whole”
Fr. David Curry
Advent Meditation on Psalm 80
December 1st, 2015