“Turn us, O God our Saviour”
The Psalms of David are the Prayer Book and Hymnal for Jews and Christians alike. They embrace a wide range of poetic forms of expression and provide a way of praying the Scriptures.
Among the many treatises of Augustine, one of the most charming and most instructive devotionally is his Enarrations or Expositions on The Book of Psalms. For the English reader, it was only translated in the 19th century as part of the project of recovering the Patristic heritage of the Church, an interest both in England and on the continent. As E.B. Pusey, one of the outstanding figures of the Oxford Movement, remarks in an 1857 advertisement of the translation of Augustine’s Enarrations:
St. Augustin was so impressed with the sense of the depth of Holy Scripture, that when it seems to him, on the surface, plainest, then he is the more assured of its hidden depth. True to this belief, St. Augustin pressed out word by word of Holy Scripture, and that, always in dependence on the inward teaching of God the Holy Ghost who wrote it, until he had extracted some fullness of meaning from it. More also, perhaps, than any other work of St. Augustin, this commentary abounds in those condensed statements of doctrinal and practical truth which are so instructive, because at once so comprehensive and so accurate.
This doctrinal and practical sensibility about the Psalms means that they are read in the light of a theology of Revelation. They are not read as a mine of historical information and they are not read ‘critically’ as that term has become to be used by the schools of biblical and historical criticism, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are read with a certain insight into the nature of Scriptural Revelation. In Augustine’s case, they are read from a Christian perspective as bearing testimony to Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law. This point is made explicitly in the beginning of his commentary on Psalm 85.
Its title is, “A Psalm for the end, to the sons of Core.” Let us understand no other end than that of which the Apostle speaks: for “Christ is the end of the law.” Therefore when at the head of the title of the Psalm he placed the words, “for the end,” he directed our heart to Christ. If we fix our gaze on Him, we shall not stray: for He is Himself the Truth unto which we are eager to arrive, and He Himself the Way by which we run …
What this means is a necessary emphasis on a multi-layered approach to the reading of the Psalms: allegorical, moral, and mystical. It means a way of reading the Psalms that identifies different voices: the voice of Christ, the voice of the human soul, the voice of the Church. As Augustine remarks on Psalm 139: “Our Lord Jesus Christ speaketh in the Prophets, sometimes in His own Name, sometimes in ours, because He maketh himself one with us.” The Psalms are seen, in other words, through the lens of the doctrine of the Incarnation and with constant reference to the doctrine of the Trinity implicated in the Incarnation, as well as to various aspects of the doctrine of Redemption, particularly, the passion and resurrection of Christ. The use of the Psalms in the early Church belongs, in short, to the development of Christian doctrine.
The task of defining and working out the nature of Christian doctrine was the great achievement of the Patristic Period. Augustine is a seminal figure with respect to that accomplishment. His treatment of the Psalms is a kind of summing up of much of the Patristic development, particularly in its western and Latin expressions. The Psalms in The Book of Common Prayer self-consciously retain that sense of connection to the continuum of praying the Scriptures by virtue of their Latin titles – the first few words or line of the Psalm – provided at the outset of each Psalm.
The treatment of the Psalms belongs to Augustine’s life and work as a preacher and pastor, to his teaching ministry, as it were. His reflections on the Psalms are a form of doctrine in devotion. Almost all of the Enarrations were sermons and they have that sense of immediacy and topicality. In Augustine’s view, they all speak of God and Christ, of Christ and the Soul, and of Christ and the Church.
Psalm 85 is used to a considerable extent liturgically in Advent; for instance, as the gradual on The First Sunday in Advent and on the Advent Ember Days, but also as the introit and gradual psalm on The Sunday Next Before Advent, and at Evensong on Christmas Day. In each case, a particular line or phrase connects and contributes to our prayerful adoration of God’s coming to us.
Benedixisti, Domine. God has blessed our land and “restored the fortunes of Jacob”. It is an image, quite literally, of the restoration of the land, the restoration of the fortunes of Jacob – Israel. It belongs to the Advent theme of God’s light and love restoring us to grace and salvation out of the darkness of our confusions and in the chaos of our intentions.
Why? Because in him is found our salvation. “Surely his salvation is near them that fear him,/ that glory may dwell in our land.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear refers to the awe and wonder of God in his majesty and truth and to the awe and wonder of God being with us, dwelling with us. The Christian understanding of that awe and wonder are invoked even more fully in the lovely image of “mercy and truth hav[ing] kissed each other,” terms which have their fuller meaning in Christ’s Incarnation, in the union of heaven and earth, of God and man. “Truth springeth out of the earth;/ and righteousness hath looked down from heaven,” words echoed, too, in the Advent Prose, “Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.”
By God’s turning to us and looking upon us, we are turned and made whole. Advent is about our turning to God because God has turned to us in Jesus Christ. The Psalms show us something of the dynamic of prayer as doctrine in devotion by way of the stirring of hearts and the enlightening of minds. Psalm 85 belongs to the Advent of our being turned to the God who has turned to us.
How? By way of God’s forgiveness of our darkness named as sin. By way of God’s turning himself away from his wrathful indignation. By way of God’s turning both to us as light and salvation and away from us in terms of his wrath and anger. Only upon that basis can the Psalmist can pray “turn us, O God our Saviour,/ and let thine anger cease from us.” We turn to the God who turns to us in love.
This turn-about is further emphasized in ways that highlight the mercy of God in contrast to human sinfulness. What is the point? Simply that God’s forgiveness triumphs over human sin and wickedness. The prayer of the Psalm opens us out to one of the recurring phrases of the Prayer Book liturgy at the Offices. “O Lord, show thy mercy upon us, and grant us thy salvation.” It leads us into some of the most poignant and powerful prayers of the Psalm.
It leads to our listening to “what the Lord God will say,” our openness to the pageant of God’s Word as light and truth conveying peace. “For he shall speak peace unto his people and to his saints, and unto them that turn their heart to him.” Advent constantly emphasizes metanoia, the turning of our hearts and minds to God; in short, repentance, a kind of circling back to him from whom we have turned away.
“Turn us, O God our Saviour”
Fr. David Curry